A Compelling Hexcrawl Key
Start with the fiction of the game. Find or design a fun encounter map. Include some great NPCs. These standard pieces of advice apply, but are not specific to this design problem.
- Ensure there is a reward for discovering the location. There are many kinds of rewards you can include. The simplest is treasure, and depending on the tone of the game, this may be the best and most common answer. Players LOVE to find treasure (as long as they don't find so much of it that it becomes meaningless). A reward could also be a resource they can't find elsewhere, a passageway to an otherwise inaccessible area, or a friendly NPC who is willing to offer help or services.
- Provide clues about other locations. If you want players to explore, give them information that encourages them to visit other locations on the map. This can point towards new places the players have heard of, provide additional clues on how to find a location they are already looking for, or point them back to a previous location in which they have unfinished business. The information itself can come in many ways: an NPC there might have information they're willing to share. They may find a note, journal, or map. They could find instructions on how to reach a destination, or information on what they might find in an unnamed one. They may even be able to see another location from this vantage point. Ideally, no locations should be "dead-ends" in which players have no leads on where to go next.
- Give players a good reason to return to this location. This could be because there's a resource here they cannot bring home with them. It could be a challenge they are not yet equipped to overcome. It could be a mystery they have yet to solve. Read Landmark, Hidden, Secret over on the DIY & Dragons blog. It's a great way to organize information and provide players with layers of discovery which they may not be able to consume all at once. Looking back to point 2, provide Hidden and Secret information that would be difficult to unlock without a clue from another location, and make a note to yourself that you need to seed that info in another location somewhere. A point of caution: don't make this resource TOO valuable. You want your players to explore, so ensure that they aren't tempted to retread the same ground every session just to capitalize on a single resource (ask me how I know).