Quote from: Scott Anderson;758293Come to think of it, most of the world is mostly empty in terms of human population. We have seven and a half billion people, more or less?  All those people could be squished into a cube one mile on a side.

Sadly however, the infrastructure to support them all doesn't...

Quote from: Opaopajr;758241Remember, our hobby is at least 15-20 years separated from USA's National Highway project, where great byways crisscross the land with at least 4 and 6, 8, and 10 lanes being not uncommon. Those who created these games were saturated in a world where hopping on the road to truck 40+ miles was becoming an average commute. Nowadays rural to ex-urban areas do that or double for fucking groceries.

Geez. My commute is only about 20 miles, and people think that's a long way (...but it's not even as long as some of my colleagues; one guy, coincidentally a Texan, is about 45 miles each way).

On the other hand; my gran could probably name every time she's been more than 20 miles away from where she was born.

This reinforces the notion that you can start a campaign, even a hex crawl, with one town and one dungeon, both inside the same six mile hex.

In fact, draw a circle with a 45-mile radius around your starting location. That's really all you have to think about for a good long while.

Quote from: Scott Anderson;758317This reinforces the notion that you can start a campaign, even a hex crawl, with one town and one dungeon, both inside the same six mile hex.

In fact, draw a circle with a 45-mile radius around your starting location. That's really all you have to think about for a good long while.

Here's a chart comparing the size of some video game worlds, demonstrating how you can fit a ridiculous amount of content in some relatively small spaces; Just Cause 2 or FUEL's maps feel huge, even traversing them in off-road vehicles. On foot? There's enough in those maps to keep you playing for years.

As the old saying goes: To a European, 100 miles is a long way. To an American, 100 years is a long time.

Quote from: Werekoala;758341As the old saying goes: To a European, 100 miles is a long way. To an American, 100 years is a long time.

Huh. Never heard that way of expressing the obvious superiority of Americans over Europeans, but I'll take it.

Quote from: Scott Anderson;758345Huh. Never heard that way of expressing the obvious superiority of Americans over Europeans, but I'll take it.

Aw, how cute, that American made a joke. Almost like a person!

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;758245Ok, I just had to google it...

I couldn't find something blue but was it this?

Yup, that was it, I think.  Gives a sense of scale.

Quote from: Scott Anderson;758317This reinforces the notion that you can start a campaign, even a hex crawl, with one town and one dungeon, both inside the same six mile hex.

In fact, draw a circle with a 45-mile radius around your starting location. That's really all you have to think about for a good long while.

Yeah, it's not really about how many miles you say are between places so much as it is about the interesting things that happen.

This is why, I try and explain to people how I can't go game with my friends who live in the same state...its a HUGE distance. Relatively.

I live in Massachusetts and I won't go "anywhere in the state" for a game. LOL

Quote from: Premier;758349Aw, how cute, that American made a joke. Almost like a person!

Actually, if you take the roughly 1.249 nanoseconds it takes to process the joke, it cuts both ways, therefore making it really funny on either side of the pond.

Once you get a horse options change, sometimes dramatically.

What modern people also miss is just how mobile people could be back then too. Just at a slower pace. Travelling tinkers, smiths, entertainers and craftsmen were an example pointed out to me way back. They covered alot of ground moving from town to town and job to job. Just as often on foot.

How much of that your have on a wilderness frontier I am not sure though.

But it is factors like these that decided me to go with 6 mule hexes.

V

Quote from: Werekoala;758341As the old saying goes: To a European, 100 miles is a long way. To an American, 100 years is a long time.

Bingo! I'm American of course but have worked and lived in Europe and to me it's positively tiny. Getting across a large country in 4-5 hours maximum is mind boggling. Even now it takes that amount if you get lucky, to cross my average size state (Missouri) and far longer to cross my home states which are no bigger (Oregon and Washington).

Quote from: Scott Anderson;758384I live in Massachusetts and I won't go "anywhere in the state" for a game.

Well ... New Englanders have an innate European sense of distance.  Your average Bostonian doesn't have a mental scope much past Rte 128 -- for those of you not native to the area, the innermost circumferential highway around Boston, about 20 miles from the city -- and Worcester, 45 miles out, is pretty much the frontier.  I live 90 miles from Boston, in a county seat no less, and one of Massachusetts' two major east-west highways starts just north of Boston and goes through my town, but your average Bostonian gasps with horror at the thought of making that trek in (shudders) a single trip.  As the journalist Joel Garreau put it, the only place in North America with that sense of distance is West Virginia, and at least West Virginia had the excuse of having every road built on a mountain slope.

One of my favorites is in California visitors would make a layover in either SF or LA and wonder if they can visit the other in their spare time. We'd explain that of course you can — if you take a 1 hour commuter flight, or 5 to 7 hours if you drive real fast, each only one way — they might see the outer exurbs of the other city just in time to head on back so they don't miss their flight. Once that distance sinks in you start to see eyes widen at the sheer scale.

We also like taking visitors to Las Vegas to view gluttony and excess on a mind boggling scale. Multiple 4,000+ room hotels, one right after the other, with oceans of buffets and entertainers and slot machines, tends to humble B&B and hotel owners from out of country. Like army divisions trying to manage a 24/7/365 endless party. But like LA, LV is best consumed in 72 hour increments; grotesqueries soon lose their power once the victim slips into shock.