I find that showing players the maps, including the GM's hex map, generally works best for me. In my Wilderlands game the maps are 15 miles/hex and the players started with a map of the core campaign area, with more added later. I found when they were adventuring through an area where they didn't have a map it did not work so well, they did not have enough info to make meaningful choices despite my best efforts at description. A player told me he keeps the core campaign map as his phone screensaver!

I will point out that hexes became nearly universal for map-based wargames because they were so useful.  They WORK.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;935504I will point out that hexes became nearly universal for map-based wargames because they were so useful.  They WORK.

They work better for terrain, but not as well for buildings constructed with right angles. An approximation of 1.5 squares for diagonals is less bad than the approximation of 2 for moving two hexes on a path with a 120 degree turn, and not very hard to manage. TFT maps forcing rectangular rooms onto hexes just felt wrong to me. (The very first dungeon, or maybe the second, my character explored when I started playing D&D was graphed on polar coordinate graph paper. That mostly did not work.)

Quote from: rawma;937020They work better for terrain, but not as well for buildings constructed with right angles. An approximation of 1.5 squares for diagonals is less bad than the approximation of 2 for moving two hexes on a path with a 120 degree turn, and not very hard to manage. TFT maps forcing rectangular rooms onto hexes just felt wrong to me. (The very first dungeon, or maybe the second, my character explored when I started playing D&D was graphed on polar coordinate graph paper. That mostly did not work.)

SJ Games used quashed hexes in their dungeon tile product so that the hex grid and the square grid aligned over the same area. It was nifty and it worked well.

Quote from: estar;937023SJ Games used quashed hexes in their dungeon tile product so that the hex grid and the square grid aligned over the same area. It was nifty and it worked well.

I remember partial hexes in TFT; one could offset every other row of a square grid (to get a brick wall pattern) but there would still be half squares at the end of each row in a square room. Do you have a picture of or link to the quashed hexes so I can see what you mean?

Quote from: rawma;937026I remember partial hexes in TFT; one could offset every other row of a square grid (to get a brick wall pattern) but there would still be half squares at the end of each row in a square room. Do you have a picture of or link to the quashed hexes so I can see what you mean?

http://www.sjgames.com/heroes/art-df.html

Quote from: estar;937041http://www.sjgames.com/heroes/art-df.html

Thanks. (I still prefer the 3x3 square grid to the 8 hexes plus two half hexes, though.)

Good thread! I'm exploring some rules for Campaign-scale play with Earthdawn and this has been very helpful.

(Also, Christopher was one of the authors for the 1st edition material for Earthdawn. Great to see you around the rpg forums, man!)

Quote from: rawma;937047Thanks. (I still prefer the 3x3 square grid to the 8 hexes plus two half hexes, though.)

Which is why you dont map towns and buildings in hexes unless you are ok with half spaces. Just switch to squares for dungeons and towns and hexes for wilderness and caves for example.

And actually if you dont mind a little weirdness to the map. You can slant a square map to fit a hex pattern.

Not the best of examples. But should get the idea across.

Quote from: Omega;937366Which is why you dont map towns and buildings in hexes unless you are ok with half spaces. Just switch to squares for dungeons and towns and hexes for wilderness and caves for example.

I usually map buildings in squares and do natural terrain freeform (combat on a grid and just live with the granularity in caves).

QuoteAnd actually if you dont mind a little weirdness to the map. You can slant a square map to fit a hex pattern.

Non-orthogonal spanning set; but distances are not equivalent.

Nothing wrong with hexes; I liked TFT, but not the maps of buildings.

Quote from: rawma;937384
Non-orthogonal spanning set; but distances are not equivalent.

Nothing wrong with hexes; I liked TFT, but not the maps of buildings.[/QUOTE1: The distances should still match. Its just skewed at a slant.

2: The accordion walls? Was never overly fond of those. But they work.

Using square grids for buildings can often lead to them being too aligned to the square grid, unless it's a modern location with no terrain features to bend around that happens to all be aligned on the same grid. Most pre-modern towns were not grids with rectangular buildings, and even modern towns built where there are hills or streams (and sometimes even without them) often don't just align everything to a grid. Too much grid alignment tends to lead to not so great design & aesthetics.

Quote from: Skarg;937516Using square grids for buildings can often lead to them being too aligned to the square grid, unless it's a modern location with no terrain features to bend around that happens to all be aligned on the same grid. Most pre-modern towns were not grids with rectangular buildings, and even modern towns built where there are hills or streams (and sometimes even without them) often don't just align everything to a grid. Too much grid alignment tends to lead to not so great design & aesthetics.

Nowadays the grids I use are almost entirely for combats between small forces and therefore very local; my house has only three very short walls that do not run parallel or perpendicular to the other walls (and they run at a 45 degree angle). Small round towers would probably be the most awkward common structure for the square grid (the granularity of a larger curved wall is not so bad). But it is also the case that the main walls of my house are not parallel to my neighbors' walls (because the street curves). A fight in narrow irregular alleys of a haphazardly arranged town would also be awkward, though. Introspection leads me to wonder why I am less bothered by these issues than forcing a rectangular room onto a hex map even though they present the same kinds of mismatches and partial squares; a combination of how commonly the issue arises and my arbitrary preferences, I think.

Back when I didn't draw anything for the players, aligning to the grid was a desirable feature because it was too hard to describe the dungeon if it followed a more natural or aesthetically pleasing design - everything was like "30 foot by 80 foot room; the door you entered is in the 3rd square from the east of the longer wall" or "you can see 60 feet of corridor to the north, with doors east at 20 and 50 feet and a door west at 60 feet", accurate distance estimation apparently being an automatic proficiency for adventurers.

I use hexes when I bother with grids. For small-scale stuff that incorporates architecture that doesn't line up with the 2-yard hex-grid, I just count partial hexes as "difficult terrain" (in Earthdawn that means costing additional movement points to enter, or reducing total movement rate for area effects, mud, etc).

Quote from: rawma;937558Nowadays the grids I use are almost entirely for combats between small forces and therefore very local; my house has only three very short walls that do not run parallel or perpendicular to the other walls (and they run at a 45 degree angle). Small round towers would probably be the most awkward common structure for the square grid (the granularity of a larger curved wall is not so bad). But it is also the case that the main walls of my house are not parallel to my neighbors' walls (because the street curves). A fight in narrow irregular alleys of a haphazardly arranged town would also be awkward, though. Introspection leads me to wonder why I am less bothered by these issues than forcing a rectangular room onto a hex map even though they present the same kinds of mismatches and partial squares; a combination of how commonly the issue arises and my arbitrary preferences, I think.

Yep. Somewhat similarly, hexes for buildings started to bother me after a  while, but when I switched from TFT (whole hexes of all-one-terrain, line-of-sight/fire traced from center hex dot to center hex dot) to GURPS (draw the actual shape and treat partially open hexes as full hexes, line-of-fire traced from any part of a hex to any part of a hex), I would mainly free-hand things and just use the grid to track locations and distances and such, then it wasn't much of an issue because the hex grid wasn't making buildings be weird shapes.

Using no grid at all for combat can work, but can also be more tricky because there is no longer a really precise definition for rulings of who can reach whom and what the facing is, etc.

QuoteBack when I didn't draw anything for the players, aligning to the grid was a desirable feature because it was too hard to describe the dungeon if it followed a more natural or aesthetically pleasing design - everything was like "30 foot by 80 foot room; the door you entered is in the 3rd square from the east of the longer wall" or "you can see 60 feet of corridor to the north, with doors east at 20 and 50 feet and a door west at 60 feet", accurate distance estimation apparently being an automatic proficiency for adventurers.

Yep. There are trade-offs. I think it's funny when the players start to want the world to conform to an artificial grid organization so they can map accurately, but of course if/when everyone can agree on what way to handle maps, that's nice.