Good afternoon,

I'm tinkering with a fantasy setting that involves a pretty fluid political map. The rise and fall of clans, tribes, and warlords means that the control of land will change on an ongoing basis. To make life easier on myself, I plan to use hex maps and designate each hex as controlled, disputed, unclaimed, etc. As the story progresses, the actions of the PCs and NPCs would impact who controls each hex.

What I'm trying to figure out is what zoom level the map should be. I don't want to micromanage every square mile, but I also don't want to make the chunks too big.

If I did my math correctly, the relationship between flat-to-flat distance and hex area is as follows:

2 miles across / 3.5 square miles
4 miles across / 14 square miles
6 miles across / 31 square miles
8 miles across / 55 square miles
10 miles across / 87 square miles

I'm inclined to make the hexes 6 miles flat to flat and deal with the world on 30 square mile chunks (roughly 20,000 acres). Opinions? Too small? Too big?

Thanks,
Alan

In addition to the size of a hex, you should also be thinking about how many hexes you will have to manage. So the size of the hex should be a compromise between the scale of play and the total number of hexes you will need to monitor.

How many square miles is the part of the world you want to track and manage?

It can also pay to have several scales for your hex map. Work with the broad brush of 1 hex = 1 day travel as much as possible for the big picture (or even broader for large areas that the PCs mostly don't actually see). When more detail like control of single towns, villages or narrow mountain passes becomes relevant for the actual play of your players, zoom closer and determine the details you actually need.

Never micromanage detail no one will ever see, or actually care about for actual playing purposes.

Quote from: Bren;787079In addition to the size of a hex, you should also be thinking about how many hexes you will have to manage. So the size of the hex should be a compromise between the scale of play and the total number of hexes you will need to monitor.

How many square miles is the part of the world you want to track and manage?

Great question. 30,000 square miles would be a swath of land about the size of Austria. That would work out to a box about 170 miles on a side, be enough space to keep everyone busy for a little while. I wouldn't get super-detailed with all of it at first.

Quote from: Skyrock;787110It can also pay to have several scales for your hex map. Work with the broad brush of 1 hex = 1 day travel as much as possible for the big picture (or even broader for large areas that the PCs mostly don't actually see). When more detail like control of single towns, villages or narrow mountain passes becomes relevant for the actual play of your players, zoom closer and determine the details you actually need.

Never micromanage detail no one will ever see, or actually care about for actual playing purposes.

Agreed. There will be plenty of areas that are relatively wild, which means that the controlling factions could be dropped in as needed. A wandering tribe of orcs would only really control a small area at any given time, so I could drop those in on the fly.

In Pathfinder, an unencumbered character on foot can cover 24 miles per day, an unencumbered horse 40. I'm thinking that either 6 or 8 mile hexes will do the trick for the detailed zones and much larger ones for everything else.

Quote from: worldeater;787121Great question. 30,000 square miles would be a swath of land about the size of Austria. That would work out to a box about 170 miles on a side, be enough space to keep everyone busy for a little while. I wouldn't get super-detailed with all of it at first.

Which would be about 1000 six mile hexes or a square that is 32 hexes by 32 hexes in dimension.

Personally I've found 5 or 6 mile hexes work pretty well for gaming. It allows normal movement (foot, coach, or horse) to cover multiple hexes in most terrains while allowing different speeds to move different numbers of hexes.

Sixes, man.

Actually anything between 2 and 8 works, but 5-6 works the best.