Hexcom
Hexcom is a large, ongoing mission-based tactical play environment for Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition, designed and operated as a Discord-native system rather than a traditional campaign. I created and ran Hexcom under a pseudonymous handle as both a game mode and an organizational experiment.
At its core, Hexcom breaks play into short, self-contained combat missions. Five-person teams are deployed into a single encounter, complete the objective, and extract. There is no long-form narrative and no obligation beyond the mission itself. Characters advance quickly, adapt constantly, and rotate freely between operations.
Encounters are generated using the Dungeon Master’s Guide random encounter rules (p.193), with treasure and advancement handled by the book. The system draws from the full published 4e ruleset and embraces cross-setting collision: Athas, Eberron, the Far Realm, and everything in between. Balance is enforced mechanically, but outcomes are not curated. Tactical decision-making and coordination matter.
Hexcom was designed to scale. Instead of a single Dungeon Master, missions are hosted by volunteers using shared procedures and tools. A Discord-based operations board handles scheduling, team assembly, and deployment, with games run on Foundry VTT. Characters can be persistent, disposable, experimental, or purpose-built for specific objectives.
A key feature of the environment is the recovery and preservation of anomalous artifacts. Certain missions result in the extraction of unique objects—custom items, relics, and experimental designs—that are archived rather than circulated. These pieces form the basis of the Hexcom Museum: a growing collection of recovered objects with documented provenance, mission context, and mechanical constraints.
The Museum functions as both a record and a boundary. Artifacts are removed from normal play, stabilized, and displayed as finished objects. Some are purely conceptual. Others are mechanically strange or deliberately unusable. Together they act as a material history of the system’s activity, failures, and discoveries.
A supporting system called Appendix X handles encounter generation, mission briefings, and verification. It enforces consistency without dictating outcomes, allowing the environment to produce results—successful operations, catastrophic losses, and recovered objects—without narrative intervention.