What does /tg/ think of hex crawls?

>>95992043 (OP)
The idea is nice, the execution is a slog. Use the hexes to determine how long it should take to go from A to B and plan some encounters along the way, don't "crawl" there.

They're extremely fun and the most interesting way to do exploration. But you need everyone on board or else it turns into a few people having fun with logistics and mapping while the others just sit there.

>>95992043 (OP)
I find them a bit boring unless they're really tightly packed with a variety, don't really care to resolve the 4th gnoll lair in the 18th forest hex
I prefer pointcrawls where the surrounding wilderness is just background dressing between the interesting bits

>>95992043 (OP)
I get bored of running them, and players generally have to be dragged kicking and screaming into anything more exciting than "let's endlessly roleplay negotiations with every fucking merchant and wizard in town." Players tend to just bumble about without any real aim and it's often the worst version of "you're at an inn, what do?"

Could be fun with the right players, but I don't seem to have those players.

>>95992043 (OP)
I'm prepping for a simplified sci-fi hexcrawl at the moment.
The key things I'm working with:
* 10*10 hex sheet to start with, and frankly I doubt I'll go bigger. If they get bored of this planet they can buy a starship.
* Scale. 1 hex = 1 day's travel. Ground vehicles allow you to double move if terrain is suitable. Air vehicles can move from landing strip to landing strip in one day.
* No getting lost, at least not in hex scale. Trackless wastes require daily rolls to progress through, mind.
* I'm ruthlessly stealing ideas for encounters and activities from Ubisoft vidya as well as everything I can read in relevant sci-fi
* I like the overloaded encounter die concept, but I'm currently working on making it nice and simple to use at the table. d6 or 2d6, haven't decided.

They're great fun. A good hex-crawl is one of the best ways to do an open world setting without players slowing to a stop or being overwhelmed.
It reduces the process down to
>Here's where you assholes are
>Here's the location you assholes might find interesting
>What're you assholes going to do?
Simple, clean, easy.

>>95993000
So I assume this is on a planet or something? Like a space colony campaign? Or Mars 1887?

>>95992043 (OP)
>On average
Meh/10
>When you have a group that's actually into it and also is experiences enough to make it work
It's pretty fun one-shot/very short campaign, but ZERO sustainability
>OSR faggotry
HELL NO. It means you are either using some ultra-retarded set of rules trying to reinvent the wheel or playing with obnoxious faggots that think playing specific brand of games is capable of replacing personality. Probably both
>When you have a group of newfags that want to try things
I won't GM that, I'm not about to do cat herding for the whole evening, and trying to do it any other way means you might as well drop the pretense of hex crawl and run regular game
>Western Marches
The older I am, the more I'm convinced the original posts were just a tall story for meme value, but ever since people keep trying to make it work. This has as a result two subsets:
- retards who try to do it by an actual table, which will NEVER work
- people who run them as PBP, so there is an actual archive of what happened and thus this shit actually works (reminder the original story was about literal open table, not posts)

tl;dr 4/10, would not recommend

>>95993714
>HELL NO. It means you are either using some ultra-retarded set of rules trying to reinvent the wheel or playing with obnoxious faggots that think playing specific brand of games is capable of replacing personality. Probably both
Sounds like a skill issue to me.

For people bad at creating interesting stories or scenarios, so they just fill a board with random events and play what is basically a boardgame.

>>95993731
>It's a skill issue that OSR is containment for retards and try-hards
Sounds to me like a bot-generated random bait reply. Grab a petty (You)

>>95993743
>Only retards and try hards play [game]
>But you're the one trolling for (you)s
Yeah, sure I am, buddy.

>>95993755
>N-no, OSR isn't co-containment, w-why are you saying that?
Here, a last one, you seem to be really starved for attention given you keep going

>>95993157
>Hexcrawl
>But not really, just hex grid over a splotch map
One job.
One fucking job

>>95993819
Anon.
Open the image.
And zoom in.
And that's at a 24 mile hex grid level, see that 4x4 circled bit in red in the middle? Pic related is the 6 mile hex map for it

>>95992043 (OP)
I like the idea but never got to play in one properly.

>>95993860
>24 mile hex
Disgusting, unplayable.

>>95994273
Only on the larger map anon. Check that second one I posted in the post you just replied to for a zoom in. It's a great compromise I find, you can have a true sense of scale by having the 24 hex, then zoom in for detail.

>>95993860
Nta, but this is even more retarded
You've got a fuckhuge map with bazillion hexes that will never be visited or get boring before fully explored. There is a reason people do those as 100x100 or 200x200

>>95993447
Yeah. Sort of an industrial, space banjo kind of setting, starting on a newly-colonised planet.

>>95992043 (OP)
They're fun when I run them, I provide the group with a version of the map which I draw free-hand, adding some points of interest.

I also pepper them with smaller dungeons that have different kinds of challenges and structures within them that the players can suss out. There's something I like to call the Ultima 1 syndrome, and that's when the world is full of dungeons, but they're all the same with the exception of layout.

Caves are going to be chaotic and full of hazards, barrows are shorter but often have curses and undead, dungeons are proper complexes where the rooms make sense to whoever built the thing and usually full of traps.

At the table the choices laid out are mostly just super dry and procedural for the sake of brevity:

"YOU ARE IN A FOREST, YOU CANNOT SEE ANY OTHER ADJACENT REGION, WHAT DIRECTION DO YOU GO?"

"YOU ARE IN HILLS, TO THE NORTH TO SOUTHWEST ARE WOODS, NORTHWEST IS PLAINS."

"YOU SEE A STRANGE BLACK IRON TOWER IN THE PLAINS AND A LARGE LONE MOUNTAIN IN THE NE WOODS, WAT DO?"

I have one sub-table for random encounters to determine what the creatures were doing (use a die based on their intelligence, scaling upwards as intelligent beings have the same base needs as a wolf) and I have another complications sub-table with situations that have yet to be resolved in the world.

So I roll on the encounter table, motivation and complication and put a scenario together right there for random encounters. This resolves the feeling of "aimlessness" as objectives are always presenting themselves to the PCs while using random encounters to do so, all while preserving player agency.

Of course I have a rumor table at the home base as well.

>>95996004
>adding some points of interest

I actually add a shit ton of these, mostly so they can serve as navigational touchstones like major features like mountain ranges and river systems.

Plus they don't all have to have interactive components or be full adventures in and of themselves, I use 6 mile hex scale and it actually fucks up the pacing of the game to have a major feature in every single hex (monster, treasure, trap, trick/special.)

>>95992043 (OP)
honestly, they can be fun for solo.
For groups? nah, maybe use hex maps for distances and so on but no actual "hex crawling", chances are too high for it to end up being boring to multiple players while 1 goes ultra autistic.

>>95993860

Absolutely based, but keying that has got to be a bitch. Truly a work of ages.

>>95992043 (OP)
I would like to play something in that style with harnmaster and pilots almanac to make a nautical campaign. Very structured, almost board game like though. Probably 1-3 players.
Also while not requiring the use of hexes twilight 2000 (2nd edition) heavily assumes that sort of play which could be fun to explore

Has anybody ITT tried doing a hexcrawl where the players don't see the hexes? Basically, I'd make two versions of the map: A precise hexmap, and a much more janky medieval style map without any hexes. I'd give the latter to the players, and use the former to keep track of where they are. Wondering if this would be immersive and cool, or just a hassle for everyone involved.

>>95997234
By the table? Takes way too much fucking time to organise, and if people are to make their own, it takes even more time when they are mapping shit.
Online? Sure, just have two layers of the map: hexes themselves and FoW over them, then erase the FoW as they discover things, learn rumours, find pre-existing maps, climb vantage point etc.
But then again, if you are playing hexcrawl without the benefit of having a PC in front of you to handle all the book-keeping and bean-counting, you are actively fucking yourself as a GM

>>95997174
>>95996317
To play devil's advocate:
The key is immersion. Last time I did hexcrawl, I took my group on a May weekend hiking. We were going through a hill-land in the total backwater of my country, and after striking camp and feeding, we played a hexcrawl that was set in a hill-land. Even if we wrapped it for the rest of the May and first week of June, the hike get them into the mood and proper immersion, so everyone was into it and we had our own in-jokes for it, too.
I did something similar few years prior (but just basic exploration, no hexes) when I organised with my then-group a sailing cruise in a lake system interconnected by a set of half-derelic canals. We were playing a river exploration scenario, so they weren't even questioning stuff lke "You get into water-weed, roll d3 to see how many hours it took you to get free from them", because we had this sort of shit to deal with on a regular basis, sometimes more than once per day.
But yeah, running hexcrawl straight, with just people sitting around the table means you are risking boring everyone to tears. Either get people into actual, immersive environment, or get fucked.

t. /out/ raider

>>95993731
You even sound like an OSR player (i.e. a cunt) so it checks out

>>95997659
that's really cool, getting people to hike with you sounds like they're going to take things seriously in any case and not flake on you

Making my first hexcrawl map for a Pokemon tabletop region based loosely off the Balkans. I plan on adding routes that are much easier to travel through than raw wilderness hexes. The scale's 1 hex = 10 km (system uses meters instead of miles). Yet to place down towns and such.

>>95998804
>Single hex is 10 km
>Map is 500x500
Are you fucking mental?

>>95998944
It's Pokemon so there's numerous ways to speed up travel, but maybe it is a bit excessive.

>>95998965
Nigger, let me put it this way: your map represents 5% of Earth's surface.
Europe takes 2%. All of it. Balkans aren't even 10% of Europe.

>>95999280
Alright, yeah, scaling shit down. My bad.

>>95993157
What program did you use for this? I like the nested hex look

aight

>>95995241
>You've got a fuckhuge map with bazillion hexes that will never be visited
And? No one party has to explore the entire world. In fact, it's better if they don't in my eyes.
Tolkien talked of making the world larger by including distant mountains that don't get visited. My party meanwhile hears of the sunken swamps of the south islands which grow wetter each year as the entire region sinks below the waves, the great sea of grass of the northland plains and its savage inhabitants, and of course the Heartcities, which are those yellow ones around the middle of the map.
More importantly they can choose to go these places and I have an idea of how far it is and what'll be there when they get there, as well as what exists en route.

>>95997690
Funny because you sound like a cunt entirely independent of what games you play.

>>96003456
Worldographer.

>>95992043 (OP)
Hexcrawls can be fun but you have to put a bit of effort into them. If you get lazy with them they feel half ass and you making it up as you go along over your players are exploring the region and all.
Ways I would suggest making it more fun is make the hex 3 miles and basically make it where it an hour to travel on normal terrain and 2 for rough and 3 for hard. (Plains and roads are normal, forest and hills would be rough, and swamps and mountains would be hard.) That and they can see each hex if able as well as give basic descriptions of what they see. Like they see some ruins, they see a campfire in the distance, or maybe a deep forest. However the party kind of needs to want to explore outside of dungeons and towns. Also don't just make them crawl, have them hunt and gather stuff to craft their items along the way to the next goal and have fun events outside of just bandits and creatures.

>>96011501
Global warming isn't real

>>96011916
>Global warming isn't real
Who cares, Doggerland was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland
>Using real life politics as a reference for your fantasy settings
>Not antediluvian history
Git gud

>>95992043 (OP)
Tis shit. It works good for strategy games, it works poorly for party games. Party splitting becomes even more of a bitch, while actual travel isn't enhanced.
I genuinely recommend going hiking to get an idea of how travel works in a pre-modern world.
If you're carrying any real luggage or have large animals or god forbid drawn vehicles (wagons/carts), you're going to be sticking to roads, while not all of them will be passable. Going even over small streams can be a bitch if you want to stay dry (which you certainly want to), while even steep slopes and streams can be next to impossible.
Hell, a lot of those will remain next to impassible even for purely backpack laden people, as there is a large incentive to not get wet from going into a stream and going up or down a steep slope will slow you down to a crawl. There's a reason why roads played such a massive role in historical transportation.
And the more you carry, the more you extend the distance you can cover, however, you slow yourself down more and at a certain point, start decreasing the range you can cover.
So, a hexmap is, for me, a bad depiction and a much better one would be a simple verbal description of the environment and maybe a sketch from the ground perspective, rather than an aerial view if you want to actually describe the feel of the situation.

>>96012405
Exactly. People would not be carrying wagons full of treasure back to town without multiple trips or many hirelings to carry it.

>>96013348
People would probably not be hiking in chainmail or plate either and would have a hard time reaching really out there locations or dungeons without ways to gather provisions in the wild. It's less about "oh just tough it out having 10kg of armour on you", but that shit tires you out and expends more energy, forcing you to bring more food for a trip, tiring you out even more and even further decreasing your range of travel.
If you're in flat lands where you can have wagons or even just mules or horses, you can just dedicate a mule to carrying your equipment, but in the proper hills and mountains, good fucking luck.

>>96011501
>Retard goes beyond retarded
This is the state of the mind you get from designing a hex map by imposing a hex grid over a shape.

>>96012405
Friendly reminder majority of this stuff - hexes, heavy armour, acrobatics etc - was just bunch of suburbian faggots trying to reinvent the wheel on how things work, without actually trying those things in real life, and then different idiots down the line enshrining those idiotic ideas as "muh tradition".
Hexes are dreadfully boring to use, and trying to roll non-stop on encounters slows the game into a crawl, but you are going to get never- and barely-games instantly chimping out if you point this out, because it goes against traditional passage.

tl;dr it's a bad mechanic that is treated like some golden standard by fags who don't play and don't go outside

>>96013759
>Faggot pretends he has a point
Here's your (you) don't spend it all in one place.

>Don't use an easy mapping method with reliable measuring that makes it quick to compare how far things are in relation to each other and keep details on key locations
>No, that's gay, keep it all in your head and just describe the world, the memory is far more reliable than having any sort of reference or notes.
Are you actual, honest to god, bug fuck insane? And if so can you please go do that elsewhere?

My guess is probably a lot of people think they want to do a hex crawl without really interrogating why hex crawls are fun or what they are actually good for or if they would fit their group. People read like a cool story on an osr blog and think "I want that!" Without much critical thought.

>>95993714
>HELL NO
Imagine being this mad at d&d

>>95992043 (OP)
I just finished a 9 month hex crawl of Isle of dread in ose. Good stuff

>>96014060
That's been me the past 5 years. I've done some hexcrawling and it is fun and really good for a general campaign to mark population and determine travel distance but an actual crawl is kinda lame sometimes especially if you're realistic about it and have % chance of you actually running into the feature(s) each time you pass through, because just because you enter a 6 mile wide hex doesn't mean you see everything in there.

>>95992043 (OP)
I really like them. Every time I've ever played a game with a DM who doesn't use a hex system to manage overland travel (I've played with probably 5+ DMs), overland travel looks like
>DM: "Alright, here's the map, you want to go here"
>PCs: "Alright, we go there"
>DM: "Okay, something does/doesn't happen, now you're there"
When I decided to DM myself, I tried hexcrawling with a small ~5/5 space. No exploration, just gave the players terrain and rough clues to where things were. It went fantastically.

For people who are anti hexcrawl, you should be pro hexcrawl. Or at least something that functions similar to hexcrawls. A short summary of my reasons why:

1. Converting to a hex-based terrain system establishes a fixed cadence for travel. Things happen at a specific pace that you can plan on. The party goes through X amount of terrain per day, at a fixed pace that can be measured in something that actually matters in the game. This structures the game in a way that takes effort off the DM _AND_ the players, and puts it on the system. Simply put, hexcrawling makes the entire game easier to manage. It also gives more opportunity to drive worldbuilding through hazards. The VALLEY OF ANCIENT DEATH region is not just spooky and has X number of planned encounters, it actually has an increased risk-per-movement of encountering enemies and a different random encounter table.

2. Hexcrawling, especially in combo with resource management and fixed inventory slot counts, gives more opportunity for players to leverage unique skills and invest in the actual world. When distance can be measured and matters, especially if you have fixed item slots, then players have to plan and leverage resources. They should be doing this using connections and the social aspects of the game, which creates emotional investment. If your players need Godrith the Caravan Master to coordinate wagons, then the BBEG kidnapping Godrith will actually upset them.

>>96013776
You're retarded but I don't blame you for it, I blame OSRfags for being insufferable. Getting angry at hexes is like getting angry at dice because they have 20s on them.

>>96011501
I think you're missing the point.

The function of a hexcrawl is to create a semi-structured exploration experience with high opportunity for player agency while removing effort from the DM to create scenarios and situations on the fly to keep the game running. It's a tradeoff between prep-time and improv-complexity. You trade higher prep-time making the map for lower improv-complexity running the game. Creating a hexcrawl that includes content you specifically do not expect players to encounter is an incorrect usage of the hexcrawl. The hexmap should be entirely content you DO expect to come up in game, either to flavor the actively running session, provide 1 or 2 session "layover" adventures, or support the main adventure

You want to solidify the bounds of this as late as possible. Creating the hexmap should be done almost just-in-time for the session. The key should be finished <1 week before you're there. This ensures you can keep the content of the map as up to date as possible.

If you like worldbuilding and choose to create portions of your world as hexmaps for fun, there's nothing wrong with that. But understand you COULD just draw it out or make concept workups of what you want the region to be. You would probably be better off not turning the content into something concrete in hex form, which starts to lock you into a single structure.

>>96016460
Even the OSR hates the OSR. There was a time when factions were fighting over who was the true OSR and could call themselves OSR, and terms like NuSR or OSR-adjacent were being used to try and be derogatory, but now people are actually preferring calling themselves NuSR so they can distance themselves from what's become of the OSR.

>>95992043 (OP)
They aren't as good in practice as theory, however making travel not move at the speed of plot is useful for pacing, prep, and the general balance of D&D's ability economy.

Most players aren't actually interesting in exploring a hex map fog of war, or self-directed exploration generally.

>>96016460
>>96016560
Take some meds and play some games

>>96016872
Oh dear. John is that you? It's okay the hexman can't hurt you anymore. We're playing a hexcrawl this Sunday. Don't worry it's fun, an actual game even, rather than the narrative larp you've been doing at your parents' house.

>>96016523
See, unlike the fuckhead earlier in the thread you're being constructive and civilized.
Thank you for that.

But I disagree. What you described are some of the benefits of hexmapping and the ones I'm looking for when I do the zoomed in maps ala >>95993860 this one.

But for the big world map? I see the real benefit of it as having shit organized and ready.
It's a structured way of storing information in a format that gives distances, that lets you focus in on different areas and, and I find this is the most important part for me, lets you actually create a sense of scale.

It's one thing to say 'The campaign map is the size of South America', it's another to be able to go 'Here's the world map, see that little 4x4 highlighted area in the middle? That's where the past 6 months of campaign sessions have taken place.

Don't get me wrong, there's a reason I've not keyed out the entire larger map, because I'm not a psychotic, it's purely broad strokes and I'll generate content in the form of smaller maps which are the 'make it on the quick, almost at the table' type of map.

But I think the Hexmap is slept on for its other virtues.

I ran a semi-hexcrawl once to try it, as in it was a proper campaign with an overarching plot and side quests but when the party wasn't pressed for time, they could fuck around and explore on their own, and even when pressed for time they had to blindly traverse uncharted areas.
It was fairly fun, being able to exactly calculate how long travelling takes satisfied my autism. I'm not sure if I will use the method again though, in my current game I went the opposite way and now there's no map whatsoever, locations and travel time are handwaved, the focus is entirely on destinations with 0 focus on travel.

>>96016460
Riddle me this:
What do hexes ACTUALLY bring to the table?

Are they making the outdoors more interesting? Are they speeding up the game? Are they making traversing distances easier/faster/more engaging?
In other words: what's the benefit of using them.
Because so far, you managed to project on me that I'm angry (lol) rather than pointing out what's the benefit of using this useless stuff that is kept alive almost entirely for the sake of "tradition" (a tradition that is purely artificial at this point, like an open air museum performance)

>>96017728
Nta, but for the purposes you described, you are unironically better off making an actual map, preferably one that's in electronic format for eaiser book-keeping, using QGIS or GRASS, rather than trying to cram this shit into a grid, and a hex-grid at that. Hell, even if you make an analogue map or non-interactive one, hexgrid just adds two extra steps of work that doesn't do anything useful, just adds the hexgrid itself.
And for your specific problem of zoning in and out, hexes are easily the worst solution, because, well, they are hexes. You want 3-axis co-ords for that, which, depending on the projection of sphere (or even playing on a flat world) allow for far more usable and
>inb4 hexes are faster and easier to eye-ball
That's the same logical fallacy that is the "natural" argument Americans always make for their imperial system. It actually sin't, you, specifically you, are merely used to it. But there are better, faster and also easier to use and master ways of handling this stuff, both for autism-tier details and general handwave. Hexes exist as a stop-gap measure for a diagonal shortcut in wargames when using a square grid, which is absolutely redundant for map-crawling.

tl;dr you are using wrong tools to solve your genuine problems, but are also invested in defending said tools, since you (probably) don't know about better solutions

>>96017963
*more usable and readable maps

And keep in mind the most important bit:
You don't need hexes for map crawl. Those two things are completely disconnected from each other. Map crawl done without any grid, not to mention hexgrid, is not just feasible, it's actually faster to handle and easier to make (even if you are imposing grid over pre-existing terrain shape and type).
You are just using very awkward cells for storing your map's information. The end result is a vector map that operates like a raster map, having downsides of both and benefits of neither.

t. land surveyor, which I should probably said earlier

>>96017945
nta.
>What do hexes ACTUALLY bring to the table?
Hexes give you a measurable distance between locations first of all. Even if you go full narrative and handwave that shit it is still usefull to know if something is a day, a week or a month away just for the expected travel time alone. If you re gonna have a campaign/game map a hex map will simply provide more utility.
Secondly the provide some structure if you want to engage with travel in a more procedural way and all games that are interested in exploration use them in one way or another.
Some show the players an unfilled hexmap, others use it just for the dm's eyes but either way it's a useful tool.

>Are they making the outdoors more interesting?
If the game engages in any sort of travelling rules they for sure provide the foundations for making it more interesting, by simply knowing what is there for the players to find.
>Are they speeding up the game?
Not to my experience, no, but they dont slow it down either. It's a map. Is a regular map speeding or slowing down the game?
>Are they making traversing distances easier/faster/more engaging?
As mentioned they are the foundations for making travel more engaging. Fuck OSR. Even One ring, the quintessential traveling and exploration narrative focused game uses them.

Tldr, they most definitely arent something useless kept alive for the sake of tradition. They are a tool that can be between useful to downright essential to playing certain types of games.

Your dislike of them doesn't make them obsolete, or relics.

>>96017963
Anon, i 'm a geologist that took cartography classes and even i wont bother to make a real functional map with scale, elevation etc for an rpg campaign.
I dont want to bother with gis files on my fucking free time and nobody else does either.

>>96017989
i am genuinely interested in your system/procedure for map crawling that is faster to handle and easier.
If you said better i would understand it because i properly made "real" map would be better but that takes much more time and investment than plopping down 60 hexes worth of terrain in a printout in half and hour and having a usable map for months of campaigning at the very least and a simple layout for the geography of the region with the scale baked in, even if it's in an autistic way

>>95992043 (OP)
Like them in board games but don't like them in RPGs.

>>96018011
Please keep in mind: I'm not trying to be snide here, or to go combative over this, just going through your points as they are.
>Hexes give you a measurable distance between locations first of all
A simple mile/km scale can do that.
Even better, a terrain scale can do that for specific circumstances.
It's both faster and more engaging to use.
>Even if you go full narrative and handwave that shit it is still usefull to know if something is a day, a week or a month away just for the expected travel time alone
That assumes you have the terrain explored/map never was "hidden" in the first place.
And, if you go narrative, it's meaningless visual representation of information you were already gven, because you being "X km away from Y" is actually more useful than finding your positioning on a map in a narrative game, both for GM and the players.
>the provide some structure if you want to engage with travel in a more procedural way
They provide a hexgrid structure, a very, very specific thing. Not "some" structure (both in sense of "structure of any kind" and "a non-deterministic structure")
>and all games that are interested in exploration use them in one way or another
That's just "muh tradition" non-argument, especially since no, not even majority of exploration games use hexgrid for their purpose of going through land. The most popular form is, in fact, structurless. Always have been.
>Some show the players an unfilled hexmap, others use it just for the dm's eyes
A blank piece of paper can do that. In fact, a blank piece of paper offers both a greater flexibility and better accounts for the "on hand" map done by people when exploring the unknown, as they aren't walking with GPS (unless they are, but that makes exploration pointless) and don't use triangulation points (unless the point of the campaign is to explicitly set those, for which hexgrid would be counter-productive due to inability to triangulate on hexes alone)
>1/2

>>96018011
>>96018057
> it's a useful tool.
This is true for any map, no matter how it is divided and filled in into cells. Hexgrid doesn't do anything special, extra or unique here, and a gridless map (not just hexless) would do the exact same job
> foundations for making it more interesting
>by simply knowing what is there for the players to find.
Those statements are cotradictionary
>but they dont slow it down either.
Move to position by specific amount of hexes, triggering specific amounts of specific encounters over specific terrain types, which have specific tables, all handled manually.
vs. handwave on all of that
vs. using distance-encounters, rather than location-encounters
Bonus points if its exploration over FoW map, so you need to wait for players to code that on their own map hex-after-hex.
... did you remember to bring crayons?
>As mentioned they are the foundations for making travel more engaging
And, other than repeating that for the third time, how does it ACTUALLY happen? Don't tell me they do, tell me HOW.
>downright essential to playing certain types of games.
The only game it is essential for is hexgrid crawl. That's like saying a horse is essential for horseback riding.
>Your dislike of them
And, yet again, a pointless projection. I'm questioning their (lack of) ultility. Has nothing to do with personal preferences.
>Anon, i 'm a geologist that took cartography classes and even i wont bother to make a real functional map with scale, elevation etc for an rpg campaign.
Yet you plan to make a hexgrid, which is all of that AND the then coding it into the honeycomb itself.

To sum this whole thing up, your statment boils down to:
- claiming hexgrid is useful, without answering the question of "how"
- trying to sideline the critique on (projected) personal dislike of the solution

>>96018024
He's not wrong, Is kinda silly that every direction takes the same travel time to traverse regardless of Terrain. The best way Is write those points and write near them how long does It take depending on cardinal direction, you don't even need to draw a map, a list would do. Maps look cool tho, I give you that.

>>96018057
>>96018060
>A simple mile/km scale can do that.
Yes, but not as fast, simply or coherently as a simple hex map.
To use the scale you would need a ruler and then to place than on the map, see how far it is in inches or centimeters and convert that to scale.
Or it can be 7 hexes away with a 5 mile hex for example and then its an obvious 35 miles away.
Simple stuff like that.
Also take note that most people cant use a map for shit because last time they did if ever was in primary school.
>That assumes you have the terrain explored/map never was "hidden" in the first place.
Yes. The map can just be a DM tool never shown to the players just to have a basic map.
Most people cant draw for shit and using software to craft a map is much more effort than a GM will expend for a casual game.
It's the most simple fast map available to a GM.
>They provide a hexgrid structure, a very, very specific thing. Not "some" structure (both in sense of "structure of any kind" and "a non-deterministic structure")
At the very least they provide distance, terrain and vegetation, as well as the relative locations of landmarks, towns etc.
>That's just "muh tradition" non-argument, especially since no, not even majority of exploration games use hexgrid for their purpose of going through land. The most popular form is, in fact, structurless. Always have been.
I have never played or tried any exploration focused game that didnt use a hex map and i dont know of a single game that goes structure less.
What are these games you are talking about?

Finally, i used the blank piece of paper example for the super hexcrawl-y osr games.

>>96018024
>but that takes much more time and investment than plopping down 60 hexes worth of terrain in a printout in half
That's only true when you do it the RNG way. Namely: if you print a blank page of hexgrid with automatic numerals to each hex, and then during the play players explore the map by filling it with randomly-assigned hexes.
In any other circumstances, taking a blank page of paper, a pencil, and drawing bunch of lines for 30 seconds will be infinitely faster process, while getting more detailed results
>i am genuinely interested in your system/procedure for map crawling that is faster to handle and easier.
Let's split it into few different approaches, each having their uses, each better than hexgrid
>Exploration of pre-defined area, FoW map
- full-on narrative; players are burdened with mapping; there is no "proper" scale, because they just cover their route in a general way
- gridless, players are equipped with a compass for their measure of the straight line they've crossed during their last leg (regardless of meandring, because that's already accounted for in the distance)
- navigation points that are known and pre-defined, filling between them is players job, they get distances to the nearest known point (if visible); effectively primitive triangulation
What it does is allowing to cover for impassable/hard terrain without people knowing there will be impassable terrain beforehand, since, duh, they are exploring
>1/3

>>96018024
>>96018123
>Exploration of pre-defined area, no FoW
Two takes on it
>Narrative
Why fucking bother with the bean counting at all at this point? You have the map anyway, so all it takes is declaring where and when they've reached and what's the (potential obstacle)
>Non-narrative
Map already had be made, so there is a simple scale on it and a compass to apply it.
The scale covers for both terrain type AND potential meandring, which is faster to use than saying "you moves X hexes" (surprising, I know) and keeps people focused on the map, since they know where they were and where they need to reach

Compass is always faster than any kind of grid, offers better flexibility, accounts for terrain types and/or other difficulties. It also allows to overcome the straight lines problem, because it can be pre-defined for that, despite in theory measuring a straight line path
>But you need to make scales, and in hexgrid you don't need to!
What's faster: drawing 2d6+1 lines of specific length, or coding those 60 hexes of yours?
>2/3

>>96018024
>>96018126
>Travel by time
You don't actually travel by distance, but by time intervals.
Each day you can cover X intervals, between wrapping up camp and setting it up. This allows things that travel by distance is utterly unable to account for on a fly: pre-defined and event-caused issues with travel.
Let's use the classic example, river expedition: you can move 12 intervals per day normally. Every X intervals you roll from table. Whatever is rolled, can affect your daily quota of intervals. On top of that, current can be stronger/weaker and weather can affect things further, affecting number of intervals you make AND how often you roll (which can be further modified by safety of the area).
This ALSO allows to account for a strategic decision of "do we travel max we can, or we strike camp earlier to forage and rest better".
>Example
You start with 12 default intervals. Every 2 intervals you roll from table (potentially up to 6 encounters).
First 2 rolls give nothing, (4/12). 3rd interval (6/12) gives you an encounter: abandoned camp. Players can move on, ignoring it, or spend 1 interval to scavenge it for whatever useful. They decide to scavenge for useful shit, so they advance the clock to (7/12) now. They move on for another 2 intervals (9/12) and face a gorge - they can try to find way around it (d6+1 intervals) or try to go through it (4 intervals). Players decide to just climb down and up. They spend 3 remaining intervals (12/12) and are left still inside the gorge, with 1 interval of the next day to be already shaved off to get them out of it. Since they run out of intervals, they can't spend extra on camping, so they get standard rest check and standard forage check.
>3/4

>>96018128
>Example continues
The next day, they instantly finish climing out of the gorge (1/12), and after a single interval (2/12), roll an encounter with a pack of hungry predators. And they roll next interval for another encounter (3/12), because they are now in dangerous territory, so encounters are rolled every interval and the table gets +20 to encounter roll (so 1-20 "Nothing Happens" is ignored and it's possible to roll the 101-120 events that are extra nasty)
>But distance!
The distance is meaningless in this, because you still have specific amount of supplies on you and specific amount of forage you can get, so you have a ticking clock over your head when to head back/reach your destination and at what pace
Even when reaching back/destination points, they are all covered in intervals, and those can be modified by stuff like roads, mounts/wagons etc

>>96018057
>>96018060

>Move to position by specific amount of hexes, triggering specific amounts of specific encounters over specific terrain types, which have specific tables, all handled manually.
vs. handwave on all of that
vs. using distance-encounters, rather than location-encounters
Bonus points if its exploration over FoW map, so you need to wait for players to code that on their own map hex-after-hex.
... did you remember to bring crayons?

You consider that the use of a hexmap implies osr style hexcrawling. This is not the only way to use one.
Yes if you want to hexcrawl they are the way to do it.
>They provide a hexgrid structure, a very, very specific thing. Not "some" structure (both in sense of "structure of any kind" and "a non-deterministic structure")
Man, do you want me to copy paste the rules of different games that use hexes like ADND, The One ring etc? they all use a different procedure and most osr clones change minor things as far as i am aware.
Just go read those a review of those systems, or the very pdfs if you want the exact procedure.

I dont even know if there is a point to answering every other point you made. You seem to be missing the point i am making. A map is a useful tool.
The hexmap is the easiest map with the bare minimum of necessary info on it, to construct as a gm by far. Therefore it's a useful tool.
It is easier to make than a random handdrawn one and easier to use. It's not the best map that can be crafted but it is one that gets the job done.

You seem to believe that a random map with a scale is simply superior. To most people it isnt. Therefore it has a place at their table even if only for the DMs eyes and for the speed of grasping simple information at a glance.

This has been my personal experience as a player but mostly as a GM. I have found them to be more useful than a simple handdrawn map and i have tried both.

>>96018067
This isnt the case you know. different hex types have different traverse times and difficulty

>>96018164
Most people here say the do 1 hex = 1 day or something similar. Is what makes It "easy".

>>96018144
>A map is a useful tool.
And I agree.
What I disagree is that your insistence that dividing it with grid and especially hex grid makes it a better tools.
It makes utility tool into a very specific tool. Kind of like you can have an adjustable wrench and you can have a 12 wrench. Both are wrenches, and both are useful - but you can only use 12 for 12 screws and awkwardly try to use it for nearby screws.

>To most people it isnt
Source?
Other than, you know, your claim.
Because that's the big problem with the entire talk with you - you keep making those claims, without providing any arguments of any kind to back them up. You just make them, acting like they are objective, infaliable truths.
And last time I've checked, hexes were a niche of a niche when handing map travel. Even within a niche that's OSR community, eg people who rely most on those.

You seem to base your entire argument around the fact that you can just draw one and place a compass and then it's better but thats a very disingenuous take.
To provide enough detail to make a handdrawn map better would require far more time for most of the gms out there than just plopping down a 4-6 clusters of hexes prefilling a printout, putting down a couple countries and major cities and maybe generating or handcrafting some additional content as the needs come along.
This is not for a hexcrawl type btw, just your typical modern dnd narrative driven game.

Hexcrawls entirely depend on them and even arguing about them is retarded. They are a style of play in by itself. If you dislike it or find it pointless thats inconsequential.

>>96018176
Not really. Most hexcrawling uses 3 or 4 difficulties. SO a paved road on a planes will get you 4 hexes away but a mountain pass one.

>>96018176
>Most people here say the do 1 hex = 1 day or something similar. Is what makes It "easy".
As someone that's played a shitload of hexcrawls that's an outright crazy claim to make.
Whoever told you that was lying to you. A hex is an easy measure of movement because you can scale them so easily.
>How long does it take us to cross the mountains
>Well its 12 miles of mountains, that's, uh-4 days?
>Wait, isn't there a path that winds through the mountain passes, we could use that, does that speed things up with us having horses?
>Fuck, I don't know
vs
>How long does it take us to cross the mountains
>Mountain hexes take 3 days a hex
>Even with the road?
>Roads in hexes make them take 50% less time so 1.5 days, there's 4 hexes so-
>6 days, groovy.

>>96018144
>hexmap
>It is easier to make than a random handdrawn one and easier to use
Different anon, but nigga, you are reaching here.
I put a timer when making this one.
Tell me you can do hexgrid that fast. Come on, lie to me.
And I've been using MS Paint. I'm confident I would get better and more detailed map in that time using a pencil and a piece of paper.

>>96018239
>A hex is an easy measure of movement because you can scale them so easily.
>Continues to use multiplications of 1.5 to make it actually work

>>96018282
>He's too stupid to think in halves
That's not the flex you think it is. If you really can't picture half a day then I don't think anyone can help you.

>>96018239
I saw it right here in this thread >>95993000
And what do you said sound like a convoluted to do something that would be easier without hexes. I just eyeball it on the vague map I draw as the game progresses and never had an issue to run travel or exploration.

>>96018057
>And, if you go narrative, it's meaningless visual representation of information you were already gven, because you being "X km away from Y" is actually more useful than finding your positioning on a map in a narrative game, both for GM and the players.
No? Maps are cool to look at, people love looking at maps, there's a reason every software that tells you where to turn includes the word "maps" and visualizes your route before you commit. Additionally, a map makes it easier to understand where things are in relationship to each other, and lets you figure out how far you are from X location without asking the GM for every single location (including, say, in between sessions).

What a dumb post.

>>96018176
>>95993000
The whole one day travel for a hex will make it boring and kind of pointless fast. Give it a set size and make it more than one so it doesn't feel boring and point less. I often make a hex 3 miles, and depending on the terrain is how fast you can move. So if you are on a road or plains hex. It only takes a hour, however places like hills and forest make it 2 hours where Swamps and Mountains make it 3 hours. This make your party feel like they're doing more just moving once a turn and all. Plus make it worth exploring the area worth it. Maybe they find rare herbs or food, maybe they find traveler and learn about the area more. Maybe run into monsters, etc. However make it so it worth just a simple move one or two hexs a turn before their party set up camp for the night.

>>96018116
>I have never played or tried any exploration focused game that didnt use a hex map and i dont know of a single game that goes structure less.
>What are these games you are talking about?
NTA, but Gardens of Ynn and The Stygian Library are both exploration-focused and use a pointcrawl structure.

>>96018287
>He misses the point entirely
It's not about halves. It's that you, yourself, on your own, instinctively used an easy to multiply and divide into value when using hexes, claiming this is a virtue of the solution, and not something you must use to make it work in the first place.
Which brings two extra issues:
- the exact same math makes square grid useful, since you can then apply the diagonal tax to avoid diagonal shortcuts
- you end up with terrain modifiers that either make no sense or are too lenient to properly represent the difficulty

... so who's the mathlet here, given you use hexes to simplify stuff in the first place?

>>96018273
you probably could. I for sure know that i couldnt and i m sure a lot of people cant either.
Some people are artistically challenged anon. It's not that hard of a truth to grasp.

I 'm not saying that it is the best map to use, but that a hexmap is a useful one and for some people it's simpler and much easier, me included.
I am simply arguing from that standpoint.

If you can draw something that decently coherent in under 2 minutes on paint then obviously you dont need a hexmap to get a basic campaign map going.
I wouldnt be able to replicate that on paint no matter how much time you gave me.

>>96018390
thanks anon. i will have t check those out, even if i consider pointcrawls to be the worst of both worlds between hexcrawls and completely freeform travel. They might change my mind

>>96018380
>No?
>Maps are cool to look at, people love looking at maps, there's a reason every software that tells you where to turn includes the word "maps" and visualizes your route before you commit.
Nta, but those two are unrelated.
Just say you like maps, rather than trying to look like a moron when insisting distance left is less valuable than an X mark on a piece of paper.

>>96018402
>You want things to run smoothly by using simple numbers, why would you want that when everything could be obtuse, hahah, the big brain am winning again.
Here's your (you), don't spend it all in one place.

>>96018411
nta but man, a visual aid is always useful especially if you are a visual person. It aint that hard to grasp. That's why videogames include them whenever possible and most people use them obsessively

>>96018411
>Just say you like maps, rather than trying to look like a moron when insisting distance left is less valuable than an X mark on a piece of paper.
Literally a computer that instantly calculates distance and time also displays the physical route because people like seeing the physical route, dipshit.

>>96018409
>Hexgrid is faster!
>Proven it is not
>B-but not everyone can sketch few color-coded lines on the map with sets of color pencils!
So what's your actual argument here, other than "I've been culturally indoctrinated to accept hexes as a perfect solution and I'm incapable of examining my belief, not even when directly questioned"?

>>96018419
>I play game of pretend to have visual aids
>My argument comes from vidya
Now bear with me: are you by chance a zoomer? As in - a generation raised with a smartphone in their hand?
I need it for a research purpose.

>>96018384
I already have to key a hundred hexes, you dipshit. If I move to THREE MILE hexes I'll have to key over a thousand.
One day per hex, extremely difficult terrain requires a skill roll to pass each day.

>>96018420
You are playing a tabletop game using analog tools... remember?
Or rather - do you even know that?

I swear, every time I face knobs like you, I'm confused if they are just outing themselves as never-games, or they only ever played online and thus have no fucking clue what sort of shit they are spewing

>>96018433
Different anon, but remind me - how were hexes a good, preferable and fine solution to travelling problems?
Because you just listed how you can't fucking handle terrain difficulty without extra work that you are unwilling to put up.
In defense of the system you insist that is good and usable.

>>96018436
You are such a stupid piece of shit it is incredible, holy fuck.

My point is that a computer DOES NOT NEED, AT ALL, AT ANY POINT, to show any user, ever, a map. It can PERFECTLY AND PRECISELY calculate all that bullshit: distance, turns, time, etc. Yet even the computer chooses to display a map.

And you want GMs - who, to be clear, will have nothing but mush in their brains without drawing a map of some kind, somewhere, even if they don't show it to their players - to just say "yeah it's 20 miles"? And that's better? And I'm never-games because I correctly point out this is fucking retarded?

>He has now entered full deadbeat in a wife beater squaring up in an IHOP car park at his kids birthday mode and is just throwing out insults left and right because people disagree with his half-cooked hot take on hex maps
Incredible.
Imagine being so passionately enraged over something you're so damn wrong about.

>>96018449
>I can't express my points
>But this means you are stupid for not being a mind-reader!
Stay mad.
No wonder you MUST have a map and one with grid on it, too, if you are this fucking dense.

>>96018457
Nothing was hard to understand, at all. I said people like maps, and as evidence cited the way direction software displays the directions as a map first. You then used this info to decide that I'm nevergames because your IQ is sub-zero. I am not "angry," you are just retarded, and being insulted because you are retarded.

>>96018421
my answer is that i cant draw. A lot of people cant draw. Even some people that can, draw slowly or dont find much pleasure in doing so.
Some of these people like the visual aid of a map.
The hexmap is both a simple and useful alternative. This is who the hexmap is for.
Also for people enjoying a full procedural hexcrawl.
I was never indoctrinated to to the cult as you say. I spent years playing roleplaying games before encountering a hex map before and i came to gradually appreciate them after having dmed a bit.

>>96018432
Anon you are grasping at straws. maps existed long long before your great grandpa was a thought and have been a tool used in rpgs since the start of the medium.

>>96018449
>And you want GMs - who, to be clear, will have nothing but mush in their brains without drawing a map of some kind, somewhere, even if they don't show it to their players - to just say "yeah it's 20 miles"? And that's better? And I'm never-games because I correctly point out this is fucking retarded?
Yeah, pretty much. Let's dissect this:
>I am so fucking dense, I need a visual representation of distance, or else information "You are 20 miles away" means nothing to me
>People will be overloaded with that information, you must point it to them on a piece of paper
>If you won't, their brains will turn into puree
This is like the perfect example of how stupidity works in action: you attribute your own inability to operate a simple info and utter fucking inability to visualize as a global issue, and then chimp out when someone tells you you are simply dense.
Here, a map for you, so you can better handle this shit, you absolute moron

>>96018499
Your pathetic strawman is obvious to everyone with an IQ above 70.

Time to grab a cup of tea, take a deep breath, and try to relax a little.

>>96018481
Neither of them, but way to fucking miss the points both are making
But since you are absolutely fucking lead-tier on this shit, let's help a disabled person. Their posts are, respectively
>Hexgrid isn't faster than a fast sketch by any means
and
>Were you born after the year 1995?
Not big statements or questions, but seeing how you struggle, I guess it has to be simplified to you to the most basic concepts and informations

>>96018503
I only have peppermint with lemon juice. It's too fucking hot for tea.

>>96018503
Time to WOYA

>>96018507
anon, nobody here is a zoomer. sorry for not responding to inane shitflinging and low tier insults, but let me get down to your level.

>it is if you cant draw (but still want to depict the same amount of information available as that on a simple hex map) you fucking obtuse niggers

how mentally challenged are you to misunderstand this very basic concept?

I can't really follow this hex vs plain map argument, but from my experience with a map players will always ask how long it takes to get somewhere, about alternative routes through forests and stuff, unless it's a path they already travelled through more than once. Even if I gave them info on how to calculate travel distance they'd still have doubts and it'd be a pain to plot longer journeys compared to a hex map. With a hex map I just give them the map and they explicitly know the distances, can easily plot routes and can argue about which path to take amongst themselves while I do some last minute session prep.

>>96018536
>In one they plan like they would in real life, in the other they do it like a video game
I guess it depends on personal preference

>>96018536
the arguement has devolved into which is faster to draw and how you are a brainlet for not grasping distances on a plain map with a compass and a simple scale and a drawlet if you cant draw a simple one faster than you can make a hex map.
You must also be a zoomer to want a map to help you visualise things better

>>96018555
>one is cooler but the other is more convenient
pretty much

>>96018532
You can type.
Which means you have enough fine motor skills to sketch a map.
Which is why people question your idiotic non-argument.
>b-but I can't draw
Neither can I and yet I don't build my personality around the fact nor lash out at random people over the fact or insist that all the extra work and hassle of making a hex map (which I assume you are making on a PC, thus spending even more time to deliver) is a better solution than making a fucking doodle with a pen.
People are jumping on you not because they can't grasp the fact you can't draw, it's because that's completely and utterly irrelevant.

>>96018440
I don't have any preference between square and hex grids per se, if that's what you mean.
I just wanted a way to easily create a map of an area despite not being able to draw. So I grabbed a printable hex template online and put together the simplest rules I could to make use of it.
My table is a paper-and-dice type affair, we don't use phones or computers at the table at all. I'm not going to pretend that's the most efficient possible way to do it, but it's how we roll because it's nice to have no-screen time sometimes.
I don't want to do a per-mile scale because I want to minimise the number of hexes I actually have to key, and therefore I don't want more movement per day than one or two hexes.
I don't want to do a pointcrawl because I don't want to have to boil down the map to a few routes, or put a route between all possible destinations.

>>96018555
>because most people use a regular physical map daily
They are also measuring distances with a ruler just as they are meant to be used, and providing corrections to those measurements with simple calculations as well, because a road doesnt travel in a straight line on the map.

Compare that to an abstraction.
In original dnd they started including standard size squares to measure distances because it was faster than using a ruler wargaming style and people were actually used to doing that back then.

Abstractions exist for a reason.

>>96018564
What i talked about was just printing one out, not a digital product at all and filling a couple of clusters with the according terrain. It wouldnt take someone much time to fill this and this is the example i used. It would be similar to handdrawing some lines probably.
Those extra work arguements are retarded. Just note a tree, a mountain some grass or a hill with a couple of lines each in each hex pair and you re done.

And i re-iterate. It is not a better solution. It is a different solution for a different demographic.

How fucking retarded are you to be unable to grasp that?

THe very debate started by the arguement that hexmaps are obsolete and just a relic of tradition.

What we are arguing in this thread is not whether they are better or worse but whether they have a use and a demographic that gets more value out of them in whatever way.
And frankly there is. I wasn't arguing from some theoretical standpoint.
I was giving the simple example of myself as a person that prefers them from simple maps and the reasons i do so.

Plain maps are valid and just an alternative.
I never even implied that hex maps are superior. I only ever explained why some may find them useful and preferable, myself included.

>>96018557
>You must also be a zoomer to want a map to help you visualise things better
This, but unironically.
New to the whole heated argument, but I run open tables in the local gaming club. We serve all ranges of age, as long as you are at least 12. The only people who genuinely struggle with the concept of travelling and doing so without map are zoomers. And not even kid-zoomers, but adult people that are like low 20s, yet can't wrap their head around when you tell them stuff in tune of "You've spend the whole day marching, following the forest path". They won't make their own map of them (even if you give them paper, crayons, pens and all), they will completely get lost how much of a distance was passed (despite systems that need this information have distances on the char sheet), and they will be unable to even guestimate where they are when there is a campaign map on the table.
Instead, you need to either point with a finger and say "You are about here" or, even more often, move some token over the map, so they can keep track of it. And it's not even tat they are dumb or something, they just can't connect the dots in their heads without a visual aid that will pin-point their location in the world.
Which makes the ongoing hexgrid argument even weirder, because in my experience zoomers get extra-confused by those, since they get a brain freeze due to inability to either free-move or at least use cardinal directions and start complaining about "wasted range" (since they can't abstract enough to realise the range is measured in hexes themselves, so it doesn't matter what their path looked like) when going in a zig-zag.
It's such recurring thing, it's now just a statistic to me. Kids born after 2005 or so will always have issues with this, and I don't have idea why. It's not even some "smartphones makes kids dumb", since some of them don't use them in the first place, yet they always struggle with map of any kind.
Thanks for reading my blogpost, I guess

>>96018617
the arguement is about the use of a hex map or any type of map at all from the dms side, not from the players side.

i get what you re saying about zoomer kids but not the point of contention.

>>96018273
I literally make my hexmaps by taking a normal map like you have and throwing a hexgrid over top. They are just as fast, you are just retarded and strawmanning a particular version of hexgrids in your mind.

Sometimes I even make a hexmap just for myself because at a glance I can figure out multiple distances simultaneously. For pointcrawls, eyeballing each point to point simultaneously is actually more difficult. Usually I have to measure each thing one at a time.

>>96018432
My bet is that you are no older than 20 yourself.

>>96018629
But I think it still ties into it. There is no winning move when running with zoomers. No map? They get confused. Gridless map? They can't find their position or mark the new one, unless pointed exactly. Hexgrid or even squaregrid map? They can't abstract around the concept of grid-movement.
At this point I just either have no map and avoid running games that require such element of play when facing an "underage" table, or make sure I have someone above 30 in such a group, so there is at least one player that can operate a map of any kind, on purely player-as-functional-person level.

As for non-zoomer cases: doodle maps and player maps beat everything without much content. Grid papers are however extra useful when you give them to players to make their own maps, rather than the one you have made for the campaign/scenario.
Said that, I always remember when I gave people hex-paper back in '19 and I realised during the break that they aren't actually drawing a map - they were ALL just filling the hexes with specific colors, left-to-right, up-to-down, tracking passage of the terrain and potential important bits, but not position of the hexes to each other and their relation. It was both weird and fascinating, because I only ever saw it that one time (but done by the whole group of four people). I guess it served it purpose for them, because they could still orient themselves in the world, despite not having a map, but rather a (weirdly coded) data table for an even weirder raster image.

>>96018655
>I literally make my hexmaps by taking a normal map like you have and throwing a hexgrid over top
Different anon, but how do you handle then overlaping hexes? The whole point of a grid map (not just hex one) is to have specific code for specific part of the grid. So what you do when you have a hex that's covering in the same time mountains, forest, river tile and coastal shoreline? As in - what table do you pick?
Genuinely asking, because it seems like completely pointless at this point to have grid of any kind, if the map is not grid-coded

>>96018676
different anon. when hexcrawling the terrain type is the most common terrain on the hex. doesnt mean that a plains hex cant have a couple small groves or a couple small coastal villages if it borders a sea/lake hex.
He will probably use the according terrain depending on which side they approach the hex from and eventually make a transition to one of the other terrain types depending on the direction of travel.
Let me use your example. You enter from a hex to the west that is also mountainous. As you reach a clearing with good unobstructed view you see the mountain range continuing to the northwest, a forest descending from the mountainside filling most of the land west of your position. It is cut in half but a fast running river descending from the mountains with a bearing towards the east where the vague outline of the shore can be seen with decent visibility

>>96018670
i have had the pleasure of never playing with zoomers so i dont know how i would handle them.
Probably a plain map without much info on it and a simple token like a match that measures for a specific distance like 10 miles or something

>>96018710
>when hexcrawling the terrain type is the most common terrain on the hex
And you decide that on everlapping hexes how? What? You measure percentage of the hex taken by specific biome? Eye-ball it?
You used my example to provide hex description to players, but that doesn't answer which table to roll from.
And if it's "whatever, man", then again, why using the grid?
My argument is this: if you are using grid, have the map grid-coded. Just tossing a grid over a pre-existing map (or one you didn't then adjust on overlapping spaces) defeats the whole point of playing grid-based map crawls.

>>95992043 (OP)
I find it better than just the narrative description of traveling that I was used to when playing 3.5E back in the day. They're not popular now as you can see by reading this thread.

>>96018736
Excluding OSR circles, hex-crawls and map-crawls fall off favour by late 80s, man. It's not even about them being unpopular, but how rare they are in the first place. You would have to purposefully seek a game that uses them at all.

>>96018728
I dont understand exactly what your question is.
I just gave you an example of what you might do on a grid overlapping an already existing map.
What do you mean which table do you roll from? For random encounters? Depending on the location of the party on the map.
If they say the want to make a canoe and go down the river then use the according one.
You decide what else a hex may contain my simply using your understanding of geography and plain reasoning.

>>96018756
>Depending on the location of the party on the map.
Which depends on a grid cell (the hex). Which isn't the problem when the map is grid-build, but becomes one when it's a grid tossed over pre-existing map. So now you have a hex that covers an area that isn't lumped under specific biome.
Here, a visual example, which took fucking forever to make due to NOT having a pre-exiting map

>>96018517
>it's the woyafag who's having a total spergout
Zero surprises here.

>>96018861
>t. triggered

>>96018843
You can make a simple ruling about it depending on where your players are are coming from and which direction they are heading to but yeah, that's a weakness for osr style procedural play, because at the very least you will have to adapt some things.
I am not the anon who overlays his maps with a hexgrid so i dont know how he does it exactly.
He might be using regional encounter tables not based on terrain but with some modifiers depending on terrain type. He might have some other method.
Or simply he might not use the hexmap for the osr style procedural hexcrawling and therefore not face those issues.

Still if somebody wanted to try to use a hexmap for the first time i wouldn't recommend his method either, if only because you need answers to those questions and a first timer wont be able to solve that.
On the other hand i dont see his method as unusable either, at least at first glance but i would have to try it to have an informed opinion on it. And i repeat, i wouldnt use it for an osr style hexcrawl either way.
There are countless hexmaps or generators specifically for that

>>96018922
>You can make a simple ruling
I'm pretty certain it's just faster to grid-correct overlay map, especially in the long run. Avoids the issue entirely. After all, what is a grid map if not a raster, so having single cell cover more data than it can represent is counter-productive.
>Or simply he might not use the hexmap for the osr style procedural hexcrawling and therefore not face those issues.
Which would bring the obvious question of "why using it at all", since for eye-balling distance, square grid would be superior

My main gripe with people slapping grid over exising map is that they either don't correct the map then or even have a rul(ing) to solve the issue, or, which is even more common, slap a grid over a map for the sake of having grid. Why would you even do that, if you aren't using the grid functionality for anything else than eye-balling distance?

>>96019074
>since for eye-balling distance, square grid would be superior
hex grids have less errors from diagonals, not sure why you'd prefer square grids for this. In general hex grids follow natural terrain pretty well

>>96019121
>errors
Which part of "eye-balling" I need to explain? For which, again, square is better, even without accounting for the square root of 2

>>96019245
better how?

>>95992043 (OP)
Best curse of strahd hex map I've seen. There's so much lore from all the editions it's crazy

>>96019330
kinda illegible innit

>>96019074
what i would do is keep 2 versions of the same map.
I would fix one of the maps to one terrain type per hex, to be used with all the relevant procedures and keep the other as is for reference since it makes conceptualizing transitions between hexes much easier.

Either way i can see uses for a hex map over a plain map even if you arent playing an osr hexcrawl. Most games with a focus on exploration would benefit from one, but yeah this is niche territory.
Hell even osr hexcrawls are niche territory.

Unfortunately there is no good understanding of the capabilities, uses and advantages by the general rpg public as shown by the discussions in this thread and this is on tg where some of the most invested partakers in the rpg hobby frequent. I dont expect some rando that saw a 15 minute vid on yt glossing over half the details of how to actually use a hex map to get everything right

>>96019074
>Why would you even do that, if you aren't using the grid functionality for anything else than eye-balling distance?
One thing that comes to mind isn't strictly RPG, but still /tg/-adjecant.
Namely: builders.
Average builder with a map was also gridded (usually hexes), but the idea was to represent the area your faction controls and account for its economy and powerbase via the hexes covered. Not all builders did that, but it was pretty common. National roleplays are excessively tied with hexgrid, to the point controlling enough of them is one of the main ways of increasing your power base.

>>95992043 (OP)
they're often dumb because of gms treating them like old school NES/SNES RPGs with the boring shit being common.
But they can work decently if they're either small with all hexes being actually noteworthy, or if they're large but not played as a "roll for every hex" but just used as a way to visualize the areas and estimate distances.

>>95992043 (OP)
It's one of those things that died for a whole bunch of reasons.
So naturally, OSR fags doubled-down on throwing fits and tantrums for over a decade how this is the ultimate form of gaming (despite not participating themselves).
We are now living in the aftermath of that.

>>96020654
>Tantrum
I guess that 24 hour ban is finally over for you stroking out about how OSR is chud central and you're going to Sodom and Gomorrah it all before salting the earth and twerking on the ashes, is it?

>>96021008
They don't handle 24s anymore. It's now 72/all boards, no exceptions.

>>96021018
>They don't handle 24s anymore
They do in /osrg/, go look in the archive and see the number of posts that've been deleted with people complaining about getting a 24 for calling the one known as Fishfag a faggot.

>>96018676
>genuinely asking
Maybe, or maybe you are >>96018728 trying to fish out a minor aspect of a post that has nothing to do with what is being described and everything to do with the hex bogeyman in his head. Nonetheless I feel sorry for the other anons that are explaining my methods on my behalf, so I guess I'll explain them in full.

The short answer is what >>96019562 says. I keep multiple maps and they serve different purposes. And before the retard says something, making a pointmap and then slapping a hexgrid on top is not difficult and does not take time. It's the same map rendered for two different purposes. As stated in the original post, when I do that it is for myself, meaning it is not for players. The benefit is purely for a glance-level overview of distance.

To give a personal anecdote, I once made a pointcrawl map with a stated scale. Since I had made it, I knew how big everything was and what it was intended to be. At some point I threw a hexgrid over top because I was playing with the idea of converting it into a hexcrawl and what I immediately noticed was how much narrower the straits between certain islands were than I had in my head, because they weren't the main distances I was worried about when I was drawing the map. The sizes and distances of the smaller islands also became much clearer too, which had been thrown down rather arbitrarily. I didn't notice it before because I didn't care about those distances to think about them, but with the hexgrid over top it became instantly clear at a glance. Ever since, whenever I make maps that are "accurate" I always throw a hexgrid over top because at a glance I can see distances and I can even quickly count up hexes to figure out area, stuff which is purely for my own understanding of the world. I don't always have "accurate maps" because I usually just give hastily drawn maps with blobs and paths labelled with time between cities. Different maps for different purposes.

>>96021639
Beyond just my own personal use, if I haven't designed a proper hexcrawl I can always use such maps for "hexcrawl-lite" features (I'm sure this is unfathomable to your crippled zoomer mind). As said by >>96018710 if I want to temporarily employ the map for a hexcrawl I just take the most prominent terrain and say that the hex is that type. I never mentioned random tables at any point >>96018756, so okay retard? But if I did have random tables ready and I wanted to use them for whatever reason, I would decide the hex type and roll on the relevant table. Another similar way I've handled this is that I never decide the hex type and I just look at what the most common landscape was on the party's path, then choose the most appropriate random table. Note well, I am just using this to choose the random table and nothing else. The reason being that if I'm using this map instead of a proper hexmap then I am probably already being loose with the time it takes to travel between areas, which means the only reason to fix the hextype is for determining encounters. At that point I may as well just choose the table which seems appropriate.

I am not going to be pulled into a discussion on the use of random tables. If you can't understand the usage of a hexgrid, then you aren't going to understand the subtleties of how to use a random table, i.e. when it's appropriate, when it's inappropriate and why they can be useful. That's beyond you. For the purposes of setting random tables aside, I use them as appropriate for the campaign. It has never been the case in any campaign that I haven't vetoed a random table roll or that I don't opt in and out as appropriate to the session.

As an aside on my own preferences with hexmaps, I prefer 3 mile hexes and I don't give my players the hexmap. I tend to define hex traversal in terms of time, rather than distance, because I tend to be rather strict on night mechanics so that the hours of daylight become a really important resource.

>>96021776
>3 miles hexes
Are you european? The only reason i can see for 3 miles hexes is that they translate to 5 km under the metric system.
This is why i prefer 5 miles hexes for example

>>96018433
You don't need to fill a whole world map out. Just a the region you are going to be in. You putting in more work than you need to avoid doing it. Think of it like this. a good chunk of it would be the same. You don't have to change every hex to be unique now, it's a forest and you might find a deer or some food when you search the area. Same with Swamp, might have a encounter with a bandit camp or locals but you don't need to go crazy on every hex. Just make a few in the area have something special to make the try feel worth looking around but not that they checking every single hex along the way to the next location.

>because I tend to be rather strict on night mechanics
Like what anon? Watch rotations and so forth I am sure , anything else? What happens if players want to travel by night ? Etc.

I enjoyed your mapping rundown, I do a similar thing leveraging hex grid over previously freehanded maps. 3 mile hexes are interesting scale

>>96022687
>samefagging this badly

>>96022647
NTA but besides being nicely convertable to 5km for people more used to the metric system (although now that I've written this, it's not like 10km hexes are any worse to work from a metric mind), 3 miles is nice for being an hour at reasonable walking speed.
Then again there's perhaps an argument for 2 hours/hex being a nice baseline because it means you can make rougher terrain be 3 hours (instead of 1.5 and getting into fractions)

An old farmer says the trip through the mountain pass takes only three days, but in truth the actual travel distance is several difficult terrain hexes and takes at least a week even with the players' climbing mounts (giant rams/lizards). The farmer is a demented fool and forgot to tell of the old road that indeed took three days, but it leads to a beacon signal fire site above the clouds.

How would you react as a player to this degree of realism? Not only having to think about travel distance, difficulty, movement speed and hazards, but also the chance of getting lost and NPCs lying inadvertently or deliberately.
It could be frustrating, but also very plausible. If the game is about exploration in the wilds, that is. Not your typical RPG linear story experience.

>>96023189
Any party that only asks directions from one person is bringing it on themselves.
Directions in a pre GPS world are consensus based, not defined by the individual.

>>96022647
I am American and also use 3 mile tiles myself. Though the idea is normal speed for a regular terrain tile is 1 hex per hour. 2 hours for rough terrain like forest and hills and 4 hours for hard terrain like swamps and mountains. (The idea is most adventurers would be traveling about 3 mph on average.)

>>96022647
>>3 miles hexes
>Are you european?
When was the last time you were outside?
That's what you can march out in an hour at regular pace without taxing yourself in any way (unless you are a landwhale, that is).
Which makes also a neat multiplier for hard terrain and easy one, since you can apply standard "5/3 in rough, 6/3 in hard, 2/3 in assisted" marching speed modifiers.

>>96023207
Reminds me of that Simpson gag "and I give him directions, even though I didn't know the way. Cause that's the kind of guy I am this week."

>>96019330
You got a source for that? It's cool, but pretty illegible. I found a full size version on reddit, but it's lacking a lot of points of interest: https://www.reddit.com/r/ravenloft/s/rL05uAVM6p

>>96023367
I second that. Would get a full size grid for my campaign

>>95992043 (OP)
Misread that as "Mothfucker Forest" lol. That would be a very difficult kink.

>>96023325
>>96023300
I was just thinking in the mindset of why would you use this instead of the established and most commonly used 6 miles hex.
The maths about distances end up being the same just x2, but it's interesting to think how it would affect generating procedures giving more landmarks, maybe more diversifies terrain and how it would affect play with the doubling of random encounters, getting lost rolls etc

>>95992043 (OP)
Are those hand drawn boxes?
I respect the authours dedication.

>>96023403
>There is this retarded tradition, why are people using more practical and more grounded values?
No idea anon.
But seriously, go outside. It's early July, there is no better period to hike.

>>96023207
>Directions in a pre GPS world are consensus based
This is your brain on being a zoomer-consumer, always having a smartphone in his hand and unable to frame the world in any way pre-2010.

>>96023390
Ladies and gentlemen we got him
https://www.reddit.com/r/ravenloft/comments/obf9u5/to_create_these_maps_of_barovia_i_scoured_through/

>>96023448
Not that anon but here in europe it's 37 degrees celcius outside, which according to google translates to 100 farenheit.
Going on a hike in these temperatures sounds like pure torture

>>96023547
Oh, right, I forgot:
Remember to wear a hat of some kind or at least a handkerchief with knots tied on corners. Sunscreen won't be a bad idea, given you are probably goth-pale

>>95992076
Underrated and fpbp.

>>96022647
The reason is more or less as >>96023300 says, 1 hex corresponds to 1 hour of travel and you apply modifiers from that baseline. It makes it much easier to track how late the day is becoming.

The secondary reason is because of how I generally structure, plan and utilize hexes. Rather than getting into details, the shortest answer I can give is that from sea level a person can see 3 miles to the horizon. I like players being able to see into all adjacent hexes (and potentially more depending on other things), so that they can make informed decisions at each stage, or get sidetracked by something that catches their attention. Essentially, it gives them the opportunity for points of interest. Note that they are choosing to get distracted by it, even if it happens to be that as a GM I randomly rolled the hex in the moment.

>>96022687
If you responded properly to my post I may have responded to you properly. Instead I'm going to say that if their fire goes out they get raped and turned into mind goblins by creatures that stalk through the night.

>>96023448
>>96023583
You are a retard. The best hiking seasons are late spring and early fall. If you actually ever went outside you would have known. I am probably more fit than you are, not that it's an achievement since we are in tg. I don't know what kind of a superiority complex do you get because you walk 3 miles walks or hikes like it's a grand achievement.
This is also completely irrelevant to the use of 3 mile hexes and the math behind it.
6 miles hexes aren't a retarded tradition. The tradition is actually the 5 miles hex originally made popular (and possibly introduced but i m not that well versed in ancient dnd history). The 6 mile hex is the innovation lets call it, mostly because it breaks down cleaner than 5 miles and from 3 miles as well.
Even if they were though, there are tons of good quality hex maps in existing products that use this standard therefore there is real imperative to use this in your games either way.
After all one of the greatest pet peeves people have as delineated in this thread is the amount of time it takes to make a detailed hex map.

>>96023752
Are you randomly generating terrain or only landmarks and other potential points of interest?

Some terrain tables strive for consistency like the judges guild one and other make the odds of each roll more or less equal giving you a more random map which will probably feel worse the smaller the hexes are.

Still an interesting idea to base things around line of sight so that players can choose their direction more directly and at smaller intervals.

>>96023752
I do the same thing with mine. They can only see the adjacent hexes in plain hex, 2 with hills and towers and mountains can see 5 around. Though forests, swamps and other tiles with lots of trees or walls can block your vision of other areas.

>>96023752
Well in my games. Traveling at night can happen however, more chances on being attack by creatures, as well more chances of missing things if searching at night. (Though some items are easier to find at night.) Also unless they sleeping during the day, will cause everyone get to a point in exhaustion which can stack. Also traveling while exhausted makes you go half speed or you gain another point by the end of the day and you can't "double time" it. (Go 2x speed which gives you a point of exhaustion if used too much.)

>>96023547
Your point? You're acting like it's 120. Which is still great for a hike by the way. Just need a hat and maybe extra water.

>>96019330
It looks worse and more confusing than the regular hex map.

>>95992043 (OP)
its a great rpg framework, but thats all it is. every anon bitching itt is like a new homeowner upset that they are standing on a foundation with wooden framing, sheet rock electrical and plumbing started. of course it sucks. the gm either has no idea what to do beyond that or hasnt gotten to the point yet.

>>96023752
While I think being able to see adjacent hexes is a good thing for gameplay, realistically the only time I've ever actually been able to see 3 miles at ground level has been at sea. Regular terrain is just too woody or hilly to see very far, in all the areas I've been in at least. Obviously you can see much further if you're actually up on a hill yourself that's reasonable above the nearby terrain though.

>>96023752
>If you responded properly to my post I may have responded to you properly.
Okay faggot

>>96024510
Are you an actual sandnigger? How the fuck are these temperatures great for serious strenuous exercise? I worked for 3 hours outside during the late morning today and lost three kilos to sweat alone.

>>96024558
This has been my experience as well

3, 5 and 6 mile hexes operate with the earth normal horizon line of sight. With the 3 mile hex you can generally describe into all the surrounding hexes. Same with the 5-6 mile but with more limited descriptions.
This handwaves horizon line on shapes not earth but its familiar enough to use easily.

>>96023823
>The best hiking seasons are late spring and early fall
Yes, the period known for every single fucking trail to be either a river or a mud river. Brilliant!
I'll give you a clue: different places, different seasonal weather. And I'd rather properly cloth myself for sunny hot weather, than waddle in knee-high mud.

>>96024558
You're totally right and it's totally an abstraction in the end. The way I see it is that 3 mile hex means that its 3 miles from hex center to hex center, which doesn't mean you see the entire adjacent hex but you see enough to know the broad features that are in it. Those broad features are what I describe to the players. The actual distance to the hex is only 1.5 miles. I assume at some point while traversing the current hex they'll figure out the adjacent hex type.

What >>96024498 says is more or less how I usually run it, but I suppose I also operate on the assumption that if a player wants to "better scope out" an adjacent hex, there's probably at least one tree or raised area in the 3 mile hex they can go to in order to get a better angle. Depending on what they're trying to figure out I may cost them time but usually that's not worth it because they can always just enter the hex to get better information. I'd rather reward the players for taking initiative and asking questions.

>>96024566
stay mad

>>96028345

>>96024731
I sometimes use 6 mile hex as well. It's a natural extension of 3 and you can always use 3 miles as a subgrid of 6 mile. I really despise 5 mile because it's inconvenient to do fractional modifiers with it. If you care about the distance more than the time, then 6 miles divides nicely and the hex encompasses the entire horizon line.

The main feature I'm aiming to get out of the 3 mile hex is being able to make an informed decision about adjacent hexes before entering. I break down hex info into 3 types: info you see from a distance (including adjacent, but also further), info you see when inside the hex, and info that is hidden. There can be subdivisions of those, but that's more about flavor than abstraction.

The way I treat those divisions is that: distant info is the level of navigational info and navigational hooks, that is, reasons to enter the hex. This is how you can bait players to go off track and reward exploration. Internal info is the level of plot hooks and denizens. This is where you give the players reason to stay or return. Hidden info is where you hide your dungeon entrances, plot threads, magic portals, things only locals can show you, hiding NPCs etc. Hidden info can sometimes be revealed by rolling and searching the hex but not all info can be found in this way. Some can be revealed as the plot demands, but most of the time it requires the players to be actively doing something to uncover it. This is the info that changes your players' perspective on the hex and the broader world.

>>96028345
just scrolling around google maps and looking at 1.5m measurements in places I've been I think this is pretty reasonable as long as you're not in the woods.
Tempted to draw up some hex maps of places I know just to get a better sense for what the scale actually entails

People here arguing about hex sizes based on parameters that have nothing to do with the game. Should be basing it on how you want the map to look when you're done.

Draw a map that appeals to you aesthetically and put the hexes down first then figure how many days you want it to take to get to the next location. With 20-ish miles of travel a day you now know how big you want your tiles.

You want 3-4 tiles between settlements and for it to take a day to travel between? Each tile is 5~ miles. 20 tiles and 2 days travel between locations looks good to you? 2 miles a tile.

Adjust for preference. It's all arbitrary, anyway. Might as well choose the one that looks best.

>>96030824
>it's all arbitrary, anyway
>you can do whatever you want so why even care
This might be the most nogames "I've never used a hexmap" opinion in this thread.

>>96035724
I have, though. That's how I came to the conclusion to not choose a hex size first but a map style instead. Because choosing a hex size first can lead to maps not looking how you wanted or, in my case, having a bunch of useless space that does nothing but denote scale.

The 50 mountain tiles surrounding the 1 fortress that's actually important are useless and lead to wasting time counting steps. But if you think those 50 mountain tiles look very pretty and they're the reason you want to use a hex map then go for it.