Quote from: Ashakyre;934822I hired an artist to make custom hex tiles for me game, so I can quickly create the map as I go. My game has some weird terrain types - crystal forest, mechanical island, etc. I figured if a spell changes a terrain type it's as easy as changing the tile.

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How much did that cost?

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;934838What did you make that tile map with? I want to make something similar.

I'm sorry if the posts above were not clear enough: The full color image I linked to is a portion of the fold-out map from the Qelong book.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;934838As for giving the players a hex map, what happens if they get lost? Then they think they are going to hex X, but really, they are in hex Y. Now suppose they travel a few hexes, not realizing they are lost. They just filled up the map with misinformation.

I hadn't thought of this, but now I'm curious. For those of you with hex-crawling experience, how did you handle this?

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;934839How much did that cost?

The tiles were produced from thegamecrafters.com - $13+  (with shipping) for 32 tiles. I'll produce maybe 8 sets.

The artist's fees were affordable but I don't consider it proper to say. DM me and Ill give you his contact info.

I should also make the tiles available on thegamecrafters if folks want to buy them. I'll sell two versions. One with 32 tiles, all terrains in equal proportions, and anither with 256 tiles, with the more common types in higher proportions. All the tiles flip over and have water on the back.

The tiles are for my game but maybe an OSR supplement free PDF would be helpful... something to do with exploration - so if folks bought tiles they wouldn't have to okay my game.... it would compatible in some way with their game.

Quote from: Ashakyre;934843The tiles were produced from thegamecrafters.com - $13+  (with shipping) for 32 tiles. I'll produce maybe 8 sets.

The artist's fees were affordable but I don't consider it proper to say. DM me and Ill give you his contact info.

I should also make the tiles available on thegamecrafters if folks want to buy them. I'll sell two versions. One with 32 tiles, all terrains in equal proportions, and anither with 256 tiles, with the more common types in higher proportions. All the tiles flip over and have water on the back.

The tiles are for my game but maybe an OSR supplement free PDF would be helpful... something to do with exploration - so if folks bought tiles they wouldn't have to okay my game.... it would compatible in some way with their game.

What do you mean you'll produce sets? You mean you're offering to make more for people?

Hmm, that sounds interesting. Actually, that entire site looks pretty cool.

Quote from: ChristopherKubasik;934840I hadn't thought of this, but now I'm curious. For those of you with hex-crawling experience, how did you handle this?

Yeah I thought this was the entire point of the players mapping out where they go -- so they know when they get lost. But then they have a messed up map.

The sample map you showed is done... there's nothing more to explore.

I'm afraid I can't help you much; in the original Blackmoor and Greyhawk campaign, the players' desire to explore came first, THEN came the creation of the worlds outside "the dungeon and the town." We all wanted to explore and find new shit; I don't know what to tell you about players who don't.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;934879The sample map you showed is done... there's nothing more to explore.

I'm afraid I can't help you much; in the original Blackmoor and Greyhawk campaign, the players' desire to explore came first, THEN came the creation of the worlds outside "the dungeon and the town." We all wanted to explore and find new shit; I don't know what to tell you about players who don't.

I believe, though I might be wrong, that you have managed to misread everything I posted in posts #1 and #8.
But I understand if you can't help. It's all good.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;934877What do you mean you'll produce sets? You mean you're offering to make more for people?

Hmm, that sounds interesting. Actually, that entire site looks pretty cool.

It's a print on demand site. If I hit "publish" - people can buy copies of my design. I might as well. It would be fun.

Quote from: Ashakyre;934934It's a print on demand site. If I hit "publish" - people can buy copies of my design. I might as well. It would be fun.

Right. TheGameCrafter is a board game POD shop that makes the games for you. Its a bit different from other PODs. You provide all the files and then they make and sell it for you on their site as long as you can fit your components into their formats. Their hex tiles have improved as the photo showed. Its where the reprint of the classic Star Explorer is sold for example.

Back on topic. Dragon Storm uses terrain cards which are laid out as the group moves into them. So you know where youve been and where you are. Getting lost meant you couldnt get out of the area that day.

re: getting lost, hex crawls traditionally let you leave the hex, but not to the hex you thought you wanted.

So you might THINK you are going north, but in reality you are going south.

Eventually you might realize you got lost if you run into a landmark that you know shouldn't be there.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;934955re: getting lost, hex crawls traditionally let you leave the hex, but not to the hex you thought you wanted.

So you might THINK you are going north, but in reality you are going south.

Eventually you might realize you got lost if you run into a landmark that you know shouldn't be there.

Yes. I was asking about the element of drawing and re-drawing maps.

Keep in mind, the reason I started this thread is ideas and methods people running hex crawls have found useful and helpful for the players. There's obviously no "right" way to do this. And as noted in the OP, there are specific, unique conditions for this particular hex crawl and setting book.

Clearly there are different ideas as to how to best do this. And I'm happy to weigh them and make my own decisions.

Yeah.

The way I would handle it is, have the players just draw their own map. They can make it from node to node, labeling each location and the direction they think they're going. Then if they get lost they can look at that and try to figure out where it went wrong.

Having a blank hexmap that has the big terrain features already there is cool too though.

I've done various versions of hexcrawl.

* I would do encounter checks based on time, not based on entering hexes.

* The most basic system I would use for a detailed campaign is to have a GM hexmap that represents the world, and let the players try to map if they want, and/or have their PCs buy maps which get represented by "special effect" prop maps drawn either on hex paper or not, but not showing everything and not being entirely accurate in terms of the actual layout/shapes/distances/terrain. Play is always done in narration of what the players see and do, and while they may be really sure what town they are in, they never see the GM world map, and never get OOC information about what hex they are in on the actual map. When they are not following a terrain feature such as a road or river, they have to roll on appropriate ability scores (IQ, navigation, forest survival, etc, modified by terrain and visibility etc) to successfully move in the intended direction at full speed, etc. Sometimes being able to map requires certain skills on the PC and certain equipment (mainly literacy, paper and pen/ink, possibly cartography).

* More often nowadays my map may or may not have hexes, but I consider movement and terrain details at a finer level of detail when appropriate. The hex-based rules and maps can be rough useful guidelines, but play can take the detail level to mapping out more details of what's in each hex and that can override the hex-based movement system. Unlike the more simple hex-based system, having a hex map is not the most accurate and reliable type of map and may even be misleading, because the actual detail of how things are layed out may be more intricate and have nothing to do with hexes.

General comment here.... but when we're talking about combat we can be clear about the differences between simulation or genre emulation, but when we talk about hex crawling we default back to route simulationism. I hope folks don't get crossed up in the precise definitions of those words.

Personally, I couldn't care less about the exact mathamatical ramifications of moving from one vertex of a hex versus another. ("Is this 20 miles or 28 miles. Let's break out the protractor.") What I do care about is... do the players get a sense of exploration? A sense of the world opening up? Interesting choices to make? Variety in terrain?

Are hex systems a little undeveloped compared to combat?

The characters have to have some knowledge of what's in the world so they can make a choice, so the partially filled in map seems viable to me. I tell the players some basic geography (big city to the east, great mountain range here, desert to the south.....) but the characters still have to explore the terrain bit by bit. Even the choice "towards or away from the one thing you know about" is still a choice: known or unknown?

My game, so far, does something like this:

Players explore a terrain hex, random encounter (might not be a monster), roll for exploration, if successful, place surrounding hex tiles and location cards within the explored hex. For the rest of the world turn the characters can move between locations within the hex, and may end the turn at any of those locations or move to a neighboring hex.

Running from an encounter or avoiding it completely makes the exploration roll harder.

Successive turns exploring the same hex add cumulative bonuses until success is assured.

It's not purely literal, but placing all the neighboring hexes and locations at once gives the PC's interesting choices. A little board gamey, maybe, bit I've accepted that design risk. My 2c.