Quote from: ChristopherKubasik;934957Yes. 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.

If you have the players map and use getting lost rules, you will most likely have a game session that will consist of retracing steps for the purpose of figuring out where the map went wrong.  Whether you and your players think it is fun to retrace steps in order to get the basic geography correct is a matter for y'all to discuss.

Quote from: Old One Eye;935110If you have the players map and use getting lost rules, you will most likely have a game session that will consist of retracing steps for the purpose of figuring out where the map went wrong.  Whether you and your players think it is fun to retrace steps in order to get the basic geography correct is a matter for y'all to discuss.

Thanks. This is important, as the Qelong Valley is poisoned with horrible magic. Breathing the air of the valley, eating game and vegetables from the valley, taking wounds that are exposed to the air, all accumulate Aakom poisoning. There setup is a real challenge in terms of time, travel, exploration, strange monsters, horrible poison, and more. If they need to backtrack, that's part of the situation at hand.

My campaign tracks resource management and time severely -- we count torches and rations and more. As they strike out into the Qelong Valley, it will be even more severe. There are rules for monsoon rains ruining food supplies if they are not packed under shelter, and so on. The valley is poisoned, desperate, and war-torn. The Player Characters will, over time, be feeling the brunt of the magical corruption as much as the natives of the valley do. Getting lost is one more thing they can't afford to do.

As I type this out, it occurs to me I might let them reduce their odds of getting lost if they choose to move more slowly, taking hard routes to always stay focused on landmarks they have picked out, instead of moving around terrain and picking up their landmarks again.

Quote from: ChristopherKubasik;935115Thanks. This is important, as the Qelong Valley is poisoned with horrible magic. Breathing the air of the valley, eating game and vegetables from the valley, taking wounds that are exposed to the air, all accumulate Aakom poisoning. There setup is a real challenge in terms of time, travel, exploration, strange monsters, horrible poison, and more. If they need to backtrack, that's part of the situation at hand.

My campaign tracks resource management and time severely -- we count torches and rations and more. As they strike out into the Qelong Valley, it will be even more severe. There are rules for monsoon rains ruining food supplies if they are not packed under shelter, and so on. The valley is poisoned, desperate, and war-torn. The Player Characters will, over time, be feeling the brunt of the magical corruption as much as the natives of the valley do. Getting lost is one more thing they can't afford to do.

As I type this out, it occurs to me I might let them reduce their odds of getting lost if they choose to move more slowly, taking hard routes to always stay focused on landmarks they have picked out, instead of moving around terrain and picking up their landmarks again.

Ah.  PC vs environment is a huge part of the game I see.  Generally outside my forte, as I rarely have the environment be all that much of an obstacle.

Since that is a significant portion of your game, then I would highly recommend the thread' s general vibe of having the players do their own mapping (with major landmarks already on it since they can see the mountains on the horizon or whatnot).  Keeping the geography secret beyond what they PCs discover in-game for your situation would be similar to how I would never just give the players a monster list for Castle Badness except for what they recon in-game, since the exploration of what is there is a crucial part of game play.

Quote from: Old One Eye;935121Ah.  PC vs environment is a huge part of the game I see...

Well, it's a huge part of the upcoming sessions of play.

The campaign started over a year ago. We've had lots of different kinds of environments, often with different kinds of challenges. The Qelong Valley is a new, specific setting, with its own specific challenges, tone, puzzles. This is one of the reasons I'm polling for thoughts on hex crawls here. Qelong (like most of the LotFP products) is its own, specific thing. When I start running it (near the beginning of next year), I want have thought out how I want to present and use all the pieces at hand.

My thinking is:

I'll have a large hex-sheet ready to go for the players. But I will not give it to them until they ask if there's some method they should be using to map or start mapping on their own. (They always map in the ruins they've explored, but they've never had to map outdoors, having travelled on roads in central Europe. They haven't needed to do much cross-country travel.)

The sheet will have the coastline, the city of Qompang where they'll dock, and a few details they would have seen from shore. (Forest covered mountains along the shoreline to either side of Qompang, for example.)

The setting is a fantasy southeast Asia, humid, during the monsoon season, so humidity will make other landmarks (even mountains) tough to see outside of sixty miles (ten hexes) or so... except on those days the weather suddenly clears and mountains at the edges of the valley will be revealed at, say hundred miles (so, 14 hexes). The valley is about 18 x 24 hexes, so when they get a clear day they'll be able to get a grasp of the valley very quickly -- only to lose it again as the rain falls.

So, if they begin mapping, I'll present them with the paper. They can begin filling in details as they go.

If, while in the city of Qompang, the inquire to the geography of the valley, they can get details about the valley and rough locations of important landmarks. I've decided I won't be giving the Players the prop-map that comes with the book, because I think it gives too much away. Instead, I'll take a blank sheet of 8.5x11 and roughly sketch out the information they acquire. If and when they get more info, roleplaying it out, we'll add the details, with rough approximation of distance and direction using Qompang as the reference point.

Again, everyone, thanks so much! The approach I'll be taking is taking shape.

Quote from: ChristopherKubasik;934779Guys, thanks so much. This was the kind of point of view and thinking I was hoping to find.

Here's what I'm going to do.

This is the prop-map that comes with Qelong:


I'm sure that by the time the PCs have spent time scrounging for information, they'll have come across the map.

I'll create a hex map at 1" per hex for the Players. I'll mark the landmarks noted on the prop-map above the Players' map. They'll have reference points, and be able to see landmarks, but they'll also see lots of area to explore.

Moreover, since the war has ruined the valley, as the move through the hex-map, they'll mark corrections -- canals that have been shattered, bridges that no longer exist, cities that are gone. The theme of the valley being ruined by decades of war is a major part of the setting, and I think it will come through really wonderfully if they expect things to be one way, and come across the ruins.

I had already planned on placing the coastline, but now I really love marking up the mountains, the the rivers, the canals, and so on. Anything that is on the Referee's map (which is gorgeous, by the way) except for secret stuff, ends up on the larger, Player-owned hex map, giving them context and a starting place for exploration. Here's a sample of the Referee's map:


It'll take some work, but I've paused the campaign so I can a) hit a heavy deadline on a lot of work; and b) prep the game. I think it'l be well worth it. Get some colored Sharpies, do up the map nice.

Again, thanks!

I would like to ask... do you need hexes at all?

Can't you just use a map with terrain shown, and then mark on the map itself where things are, once they are found?

Why do we need hexes?

Quote from: Ashakyre;935077Personally, 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?

Agreed.

As I've told my players. The elves and dwarves don't have GPS and satellite images of the world. All mapping is done from the perspective of people on the group, often based on stories from travelers who may be embellishing the facts.

Quote from: Psikerlord;935140Why do we need hexes?

We don't.

They are a great tool for some players. It provides a methodical framework for exploration and makes distance measurement easy for everyone. AKA, the town is 5 hexes away.

Quote from: Spinachcat;935141We don't.

They are a great tool for some players. It provides a methodical framework for exploration and makes distance measurement easy for everyone. AKA, the town is 5 hexes away.

Cool, figured as much.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;934973Yeah.

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.

That was pretty much our first session of BX D&D. We got thoroughly lost on the way to the dungeon.

Quote from: Ashakyre;935077Personally, 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?

While I agree with this, and with Spinachcat's points agreeing with it, keep in mind that in my campaign rules for encumbrance, travel times, food supplies, and other components of resource management all matter. So tracking how far the group has traveled in so much time matters.

I might be missing something, but the point of hexes is to make the tracking of distances easier so that one does not have to pull out the protractor, yes? It abstracts the movement into large chunks (in this case six miles) so that the Referee can quickly calculate how far the group has traveled depending on their movement rate.

In the LotFP rules, depending on encumbrance, cross-country trekking is, respectively, 24, 18, 12, 6 miles per day. The hexes are there as a convenience.

The key is, of course, to keep the focus of the description and imaginative play at the level of the Player Characters. Hex paper can be a trap in this regard... which is why I've started this thread. To poll people for their experiences and techniques.

Quote from: Omega;935179That was pretty much our first session of BX D&D. We got thoroughly lost on the way to the dungeon.

Hahaha awesome. Hope there was a friendly hermit with a mountain lion who set you on the right path.

Quote from: ChristopherKubasik;935181While I agree with this, and with Spinachcat's points agreeing with it, keep in mind that in my campaign rules for encumbrance, travel times, food supplies, and other components of resource management all matter. So tracking how far the group has traveled in so much time matters.

I might be missing something, but the point of hexes is to make the tracking of distances easier so that one does not have to pull out the protractor, yes? It abstracts the movement into large chunks (in this case six miles) so that the Referee can quickly calculate how far the group has traveled depending on their movement rate.

In the LotFP rules, depending on encumbrance, cross-country trekking is, respectively, 24, 18, 12, 6 miles per day. The hexes are there as a convenience.

The key is, of course, to keep the focus of the description and imaginative play at the level of the Player Characters. Hex paper can be a trap in this regard... which is why I've started this thread. To poll people for their experiences and techniques.

I've seen blogs where the party is not assumed to be in the center of the hex, but closer to the edges or vertexes, and then math is required to calculate exact distances. And yes, it completely defeats the purpose of using hexes.

I am certainly locked into certain ways of doing things but printed my hexes because they help make an abstract thing tangible. When I'm done designing the first draft of my game I'll have to see what changes I can make sinthe game doesn't depend on props.

At the end of the day, the mechanics have a lot to do with what you focus on and what you gloss over, and how much mental drag the game has. I personally think that encumberance rules are pretty nifty - but I want to put complexity in other areas of the game.

I just use the hexes as ways to break up scenes.

I don't care where they are in the hex, I just say they travel until they run into the next encounter, which is in the new hex they're in, and then that's it.

Quote from: Psikerlord;935140I would like to ask... do you need hexes at all?

Can't you just use a map with terrain shown, and then mark on the map itself where things are, once they are found?

Why do we need hexes?

The benefits I receive from using hexes are:

Makes it easy to calculate distances.

Gives an organization methodology to make a key when the hexes are numbered.

When I am making a key, makes it easier to notice when I leave large blank areas on the map without anything on my key.

Quote from: Old One Eye;935297The benefits I receive from using hexes are:

Makes it easy to calculate distances.

Gives an organization methodology to make a key when the hexes are numbered.

When I am making a key, makes it easier to notice when I leave large blank areas on the map without anything on my key.

Rightio yeah they help with organising a map, and as an earlier poster suggested, you can simply roll an encounter when crossing each hex, so that makes things easier too.

I started with 2e and never really saw any hex games, well I dont recall any. I am in the middle of writing what I consider a "sandbox" setting, but I'm not planning a hex map. Instead I figure folks will just estimate distances, based on the legend/key (plus misc factors based on system used). Then the players can just say the direction of travel and off they go. I dont usually worry about things such as getting lost, however. Perhaps hexes help with that too.

Quote from: Spinachcat;935141

Quote from: Psikerlord;935140Why do we need hexes?

We don't.

They are a great tool for some players.

I found that hexes are a better tool for the GM.
They make eyeballing travel times easier.

Regardless of players succeeding in their mapping.