Campaign Retrospective: Realm of the Reluctant King (Hexcrawl25 )

Finally ran the last session for the main-line of the Hexcrawl25 campaign, so let us do a retrospective Against the Wicked City style since there were a lot of experimental practices running under the hood in this one. Realm of the Reluctant King (Hexcrawl25), 28 Sessions (Jan 2025-May 2026) What it was: Actually a dual-mode campaign with persistent campaign and one-shot open tables running on the same map. 83% of sessions were the main campaign so we shall focus on that here. I will continue to use this as an easy frame for running one-shots. - An experiment in bringing an old-school techniques to a typically '5e/Trad/one-shots' crowd. - Pitched as a classic campaign testing a hexcrawl/west marches model where the players tell me what they want to do of a session. - Running 5e but with old-school XP accrual - treasure recovery, monsters slain (or overcome/avoided), treasure squandered through carousing, hexes explored. - Run when we had any three players; sometimes allowing a…