Normally, I play on a grid for larger battles. Its just easier. A few years back I got into hexes though and wanted everything to be on a hex grid, cause in my mind it was gonna make things like movement and AoE effects so much easier to deal with.
But it didn't. I don't even know exactly why it didn't, it just didn't feel right. In the end, I came to the conclusion that it was just personal preference, but for the life of me I don't know why. What are your thoughts about this?
Squares for fantasy! Hexes for scifi! To deviate is heresy!
But don't ask me what to do about scifi games with magic! :(
Most of the time, I prefer to use abstract movement and abstract placement of figs. I generally feel that grids lead to boardgame like behaviors instead of immersion.
But overall, I'm sure its personal preference.
Also, start a thread about your RPG. AKA, discuss its design and WHY we should take a look.
Why not have both?
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I think either is fine. Some systems though seem to work better with one or the other. But overall hexes are a little easier to parse and make judging distances easy. YMMV of course.
Though I'm using a grid in the default rules because its familiar, my personal preference for measurement is tape measures and minis with circular bases that actually account for their fighting space. Its prone to a bit of fudging, but it provides a MUCH more realistic sense of the chaos of a melee scramble and lets you use ANY map so long as you scale it properly.
I default to 1" = 1 Roman Pace for fantasy or 1 cm = 1m for personal scale sci-fi (as noted above, metric for sci-fi feels more tonally correct). I like to have my scales such that they are 1 unit = 1 unit since its easier for immersion (you don't measure 5" in your head and then have to convert to 25 feet or 10 meters... its 5" = 5 paces and 10 cm = 10m).
My only problem with hexes is that larger minis take some effort to center and I tend to play with many variously sized creatures.
But my default now-a-days is a square grid for convenience but everyone can move and measure things in inches (yup we use war-game rulers).
I really like rulers best, a la Warhammer Battle.
Hexes work really well, except in structures. Yes, there are ways around the problems, but they are still annoying. I'd hate to do an all-day dungeon crawl on a hex grid.
My real preference is the offset squares, like what Omega posted. I'd like it even more if you could easily buy erasable mats for it. That is, it is my preference, when I use a grid at all, which lately is not much.
It's been a long time since I've run a combat on a grid (square or hex). Ultimately for me, the choice as much depends on the mechanics. When I was running D20, I used a square grid because that was what the mechanics used. Outside of that, my preference is hexes, but I also had not been running very much stuff that was inside rectilinear structures (most of the "inside" stuff was inside caves, where hexes work just as well or better than squares). These days, the combat I run has been theater of the mind so no grid need apply. My dungeons are on a square grid.
Frank
I don't have any super strong feelings. I prefer squares, because they line up with rooms (square and rectangle shapes) easier.
Though I sometimes wonder why TTRPGs don't use gridless maps like miniature wargames.
I prefer hexes. They do a better job of representing someone staggering around as if they were drunk and unable to follow a straight line, which is a better representation of most PCs than the direct linearity of a grid.
I have a slight preference for hexes, but it doesn't really make that much difference to me.
I am a fan of measuring devices for judging range / distance. A string marked off in inches or cm works just fine, also cheap and easy to make yourself.
Hexes for long distances (surface miles or space parsecs) and grids for person level encounters. No real reason why, they just work out like that for me the best.
Kinda depends on the game.
If I'm doing tabletop D&D, I want squares.
If I'm playing Ogre or a similar wargame, "square" is a dirty word and I want hexes.
If I play a skirmish game - fantasy, sci-fi, historical - I don't want either and instead want to use a tape measure.
I'm not sure that I have *strong* feelings about it, but I guess I have preferences that depend on the game.
For tabletop miniatures kind of games (including D&D, if I'm using minis with it), I prefer not having a grid at all, and just use a tape measure (or equivalent). FWIW, the tape measure works fine even with a grid. So you could have a square grid battlemat to help you draw out floorplans, but if a PC/unit cuts out at a diagonal, use the tape measure for that instead of trying to count squares.
Theater of the mind for both! But if you must.... Grids for buildings, hexes for everything else!
I'd prefer hexes but most everyone is used to grids so I stick to that. Hexes get rid of the "diagonal problem" but yet the only people I've ever met who had a problem with diagonals didn't seem the least bit interested in converting to hexes.
Quote from: Thornhammer;1057777Kinda depends on the game.
If I'm doing tabletop D&D, I want squares.
If I'm playing Ogre or a similar wargame, "square" is a dirty word and I want hexes.
If I play a skirmish game - fantasy, sci-fi, historical - I don't want either and instead want to use a tape measure.
I'm kind of the same. For dungeon crawls I want squares. For just about everything else, hexgrids.
I'm not a fan of gridless measuring. I always prefer to have my squares or hexes, even if the one used isn't necessarily my ideal. A hexgrid dungeon is better to me than a freeform measured dungeon. An outdoor mecha battle scenario using square grid is preferable to tape measure.
That said, it's just a mild dislike.
Quote from: Spinachcat;1057719Squares for fantasy! Hexes for scifi! To deviate is heresy!
But don't ask me what to do about scifi games with magic! :(
(6+4)/2=5 so Pentagrams, obviously:D!
Grids for Skirmish combat . Meaning if I'm running a RPG and I'm using miniatures to represent combat.
Then I'll use a grid with each square representing 5' .
For large maps such as Sectors in Scifi RPGs or maps of Terrain (such as coastline/inland maps showing cities , roads etc)in Fantasy RPGs, I'll use Hexes.
I have a bunch of Paizo pawns. And a cool table I use as a riser for combat. So I prefer grids for local combat. I also love sandboxes and hexes for wilderness exploration. So Hexes for regional maps.
Used to using hexes as a Herophile, but actually I prefer just measuring.... My battlemat has both so either work fine. Has anyone used a staggered grid? I find them a good approximation of the mean between the two. YMMV...
Decades of Traveller, Star Fleet Battles, Centurion, Silent Death, and now The Fantasy Trip and maybe even (gasp) GURPS have burned hexes indelibly in my brain.
Except for Car Wars, of course, and War Machine.
I don't use either for combat in RPGs. But squares makes more sense for buildings and such because they tend to be built with a lot of right angles and rectangles. Whereas hexes make sense outside, since they are basically the same size in every direction, eliminating the corners of a square.
Wargames, I used to play Car Wars which used squares, and Star Fleet Battles, which used hexes. The former made sense since again, cars and buildings/roads tend to be straight, while for the latter, it was in space
I prefer hex maps for strategic or terrain maps, and square maps for tactical or minis play.
Bemusingly I actually rarely use hexes or grids for RPGs. And rarely use minis or physical representations at all.
Quote from: Omega;1057904Bemusingly I actually rarely use hexes or grids for RPGs. And rarely use minis or physical representations at all.
I don't think that's particularly unusual. Despite my labeling it a 'tactical roleplaying game', about half my playtests resolved combat entirely using theatre-of-the-mind.
Using 'paces' for measurements really seems to help people visualize close combat even better than using feet or meters. People seem to have a more intuitive sense of "6 paces away" than they do of "30 feet away" or "10 meters away" (even if those are all more or less the same distance) and it completely avoids immersion-breaking measurements like 'spaces' or 'squares' (that said, my world does have an in-unverse measurement of area called a "square" that is short for a "square pace" that gets used for measuring houses and other large structures and can be used for shapeable areas of effects).
It also let me throw in a little real life etymology as "mile" is short for "mille pacum" or "1000 paces" and the game world mile I use is therefore 1000 paces/5000 feet (instead of the modern measure of 5280').
My Minis consist of some little wooden disk from a craft store with little pictures of the creatures on them. It works well.
Even when I have all my grid stuff played out and ready to go, sometimes it makes more sense or helps the encounter to just go straight theater of the mind.
I use hexes or better still nothing but I am running Savage Worlds currently and the players cannot seem to cope without hexes.
Quote from: Chris24601;1057967I don't think that's particularly unusual. Despite my labeling it a 'tactical roleplaying game', about half my playtests resolved combat entirely using theatre-of-the-mind.
Using 'paces' for measurements really seems to help people visualize close combat even better than using feet or meters. People seem to have a more intuitive sense of "6 paces away" than they do of "30 feet away" or "10 meters away" (even if those are all more or less the same distance) and it completely avoids immersion-breaking measurements like 'spaces' or 'squares' (that said, my world does have an in-unverse measurement of area called a "square" that is short for a "square pace" that gets used for measuring houses and other large structures and can be used for shapeable areas of effects).
It also let me throw in a little real life etymology as "mile" is short for "mille pacum" or "1000 paces" and the game world mile I use is therefore 1000 paces/5000 feet (instead of the modern measure of 5280').
I would like to subscribe to your newsletter. I'm using paces in one of my own designs for mostly the same reasons.
Quote from: Steven Mitchell;1058064I would like to subscribe to your newsletter. I'm using paces in one of my own designs for mostly the same reasons.
My promotional website should be up by mid-October. I'll PM you some more details if you're interested.
On topic, one of the things that I think really helps with immersion in fantasy settings are naturalistic units of measure. Hands, feet, finger-widths, arm lengths, steps/paces; volumes and weights determined based on items from nature. Also, anything you can relate to a person in relation to them is always going to be more evocative.
Even though "stands twice the height of a man" is only about 10-12 feet, it sounds a LOT more impressive than "its 20 feet tall" even though 20 feet is far taller in actuality. Because it's easy to imagine something being twice your height... 20 feet is more abstract. Likewise, "the height of a three story building" will convey a better visual sense to players than any specific measure ever will.
Let me know when your site is up, and I'll check it out. I'm in no hurry, because I've got so little time right now to work on my game.
One of the other things that I like about "paces" is that it is conveys an appropriate amount of precision (or lack thereof). That's what drove me to it in the first place. I wanted to make it plain that the players could think in terms of 3 feet or 1 meter or 5 feet or whatever, and that was precise enough for the system to work. Because every now and then I get a player who does have a good sense of distance visualization. I do. If you keep saying "20 feet" or "30 feet" or whatever, that conveys to them something more precise, even if you constantly quality it with "about 20 feet" or the like. "Paces" is simultaneously more naturalistic as you said, but it is also a more correct level of abstraction for what is happening with communication at the table.
One of my players who sometimes DMs very much preferred using a grid and minis or pogs for indoors or towns and a hex grid for long distance outdoors.
You could allways use D&D HeroScape sets. They put out quite a bit of minis for it.
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Squares are easier to draw in Excel.
I don't use either. Theatre of the Mind.