Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Hex size?


To be honest - I never used fully detailed hex map in my games (only had several hand-drawn maps, more or less detailed), but this time i want to create and use "full version" of map, with hex descriptions etc., but I discovered a big problem - I have no idea how big hexes should be! At the first moment I thought about ~12mi hexes (with this scale, PCs should be able to travel thru approximately 2 "plain" hexes per day), but now I'm not sure about it.

What hex sizes do you use in your campaigns?

6 comments:

  1. I base my hexes on a factor of 6. Large scale maps have a hex for 24 miles, which is roughly a day's travel; then smaller scales are 6, then 3 miles (which is a common figure for a league, and for an hour's journey). It works well for figuring out travel times and the like.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I too choose hex size based on travel rates. My campaign map is almost entirely jungle so I choose six mile hexes, i.e. one day of jungle travel.

    Also, check out this other fella's blog post describing other benefits of six mile hexes:
    http://steamtunnel.blogspot.com/2009/12/in-praise-of-6-mile-hex.html

    ReplyDelete
  3. I use 5 mile hexes, but as seen above, some folks really like the 6 mile hex.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I don't base hexes on miles. I base it on travel speeds. For he, 3 hexes = 1 days travel by foot. So I guess I use something around 6-7 mile hexes.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thanks for all responses - now my mind is clear as midnight sky on the North Pole :D I'll stick to 24 mile hexes, but i like Ian's idea too - they will be not necessarily hexes of exact size - one day of travel by foot is a good solution too :-)

    ReplyDelete
  6. I use 2 league hexes.

    The joke, here, is that a "league" is the distance a person can walk in one hour, so it's not set in stone; it can be 2 1/2 miles or 3 miles.

    A 2 1/2 mile league results in 5 mile hexes.

    A 3 mile league results in 6 mile hexes.

    See? We *can* all just "get along".

    ReplyDelete