The Hex-Card

I love collaging & I love hex crawls, so to prep for games I started combining them! 

The Hex-Card is a simple tool that details my process and helps you make your own hex collages. Just follow the procedure below:

1. Print out a hex-card, making sure to print at "actual size" for a standard 1" hex or at a custom scale of your choosing.
2. Trim the edges and cut the hex out of the center. This can be done easily with a precision knife or by folding the hex in half and using scissors like a paper snowflake. 
3. Use the removed hex or the hex-card window to trace however many connecting hexes you'd like for your map.
4. Give each hex a one-word label indicating what you'd like the hex to contain, whether it be something specific like "forest" or vague like "danger." *To gamify this step, take turns as a group assigning words to hexes!*
   
   
5. Gather collage sources. This can be anything from magazines, to newspapers, to Magic the Gathering cards as long as you don't mind cutting them up.
6. Using the hex-card as a window, find images that fit your keywords. *To gamify this step—or simply make it go faster—throw a collage party and search for images as a group!*
   
7. Trace hexes around appropriate images and cut them out.
8. With a glue stick or other adhesive, paste the found image to its corresponding hex.
   
9. Repeat steps 6, 7, & 8 until you've filled your map.
   
10. Lastly, to make borders more visible, ink any gaps between hexes with a marker or pen.
    

Now you have a unique, evocative hex map and can continue GM prep as usual! *Or, to use the collage as a basis for a story game, take turns moving from one hex to the next and interpreting what the images represent in a journey.*

The above was collaged from a November, 1967 issue of National Geographic, but I'd encourage you to think outside the box for your collage sources as well! For example, here's a second map made with the same keywords as Step 4 but collaged from an old One Piece volume instead (specifically the Dressrosa arc):

Enjoy, and if you create any collages with this method, please share them with me on twitter! Otherwise, feel free to use and repurpose this tool however you'd like!