Hexcrawling with systems other than D&D?

Shipyard Locked · December 31, 2013, 01:41:12 PM

Quote from: danbuter;719665Because hexes are more accurate for measuring distance. You forget most gamers are anal about weird stuff like that.

Actually I've never personally run into that level of fixation on accuracy. Is it really that important to people? I guess it must have been for WotC to bother including those odd rules for moving diagonally on a grid in 3ed. They did away with it in 4e and no one in my circles complained (a few didn't even notice the change).

RunningLaser · December 31, 2013, 01:51:44 PM

Quote from: estar;719518Of course what do you mean precisely by hexcrawling? A lot of folks use it differently. In my games it meant that the players were free to go where ever they like in the setting.

I've never played a hexcrawl game, but interested and reading up on it. I suppose just moving from hex to hex, exploring what's inside, then on to the next hex. Pretty much everything that I've read about it, puts it hand in hand with D&D.

dragoner · December 31, 2013, 01:52:54 PM

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;719651Why are hexes so standard in games where exact distance from the center of the space isn't important? Why not square grids that are easier to label with letters and numbers along the margins? What am I missing?

It comes from wargames, it made for easier movement on the board.

arminius · December 31, 2013, 07:51:10 PM

Yes, with hexes you can

Count the shortest route in hexes between A and B, and it'll be pretty close to actual distance between A and B. Fairly important and convenient for things that involve ranges and radii. (So, tactical.)
Regulate movement by assigning "point costs" per hex based on terrain. You can do this with squares, too--but you can move in more directions without having to apply a conversion factor.

True, if you're willing to multiply by 1.4 and keep track of decimals, you can have eight directions with squares. There are other ways of handling diagonal movement. All of them are more complicated. (Like, double everyone's MP and then charging 2 for a clear square, 3 if moving diagonally.)

Phillip · January 01, 2014, 10:32:51 PM

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;719651Why are hexes so standard in games where exact distance from the center of the space isn't important? Why not square grids that are easier to label with letters and numbers along the margins? What am I missing?

It's primarily to have distance travelled be the same in 6 directions as opposed to only 4 on a square grid. This was standard for wargame maps back in the day, and sheets with hexes individually numbered in the customary fashion were available from Gamescience, The Armory, and other vendors.

Aesthetically, when you make terrain features conform to a regular grid, it looks a bit more outdoorsy with the angles of hexagons than with squares.

LordVreeg · January 02, 2014, 06:36:57 PM

I have had my PCs do a ton of Hexcrawling in our Skill based system. I had a group of three pcs ( a pair of knights from different orders and a Priest of the Winiary) searching for an ancient Vineyard. Used a pretty small scale with the venerable Campain Hexagon sheets. went on some 14 sessions, including a long parley and alliance with a humanoid tribe.

soltakss · January 03, 2014, 09:25:16 AM

Like Sandboxes, HexCrawls can be done in any system.

If a system cannot cope with the PCs saying "We want to go out of this town and explore what's out there" then it shouldn't be counted as a RPG system.

Of course, settings are different. Paranoia is a RPG set in a very specific, closed-Dome setting, where sandboxes and hexcrawls are not really part of the game. However, sending clones outside the Dome us something that could happen, so even that is suitable for Hexcrawls.

I'd second Griffin Mountain as a pure Hexcrawl supplement, so was Borderlands, to a certain extent.

Old One Eye · January 04, 2014, 10:46:38 AM

Quote from: Justin Alexander;719571Hexcrawl: Short Analysis and one way to do it.

This is a pretty good read. Did you write part 12?

Kaiu Keiichi · January 05, 2014, 11:43:13 AM

Quote from: soltakss;720488Like Sandboxes, HexCrawls can be done in any system.

If a system cannot cope with the PCs saying "We want to go out of this town and explore what's out there" then it shouldn't be counted as a RPG system.

Of course, settings are different. Paranoia is a RPG set in a very specific, closed-Dome setting, where sandboxes and hexcrawls are not really part of the game. However, sending clones outside the Dome us something that could happen, so even that is suitable for Hexcrawls.

I'd second Griffin Mountain as a pure Hexcrawl supplement, so was Borderlands, to a certain extent.

Borderlands however had a planned campaign arc. However, it's very easy to do hexcrawl -in addition- to the 7 planned adventures in the Borderlands pack.

Telarus · January 15, 2014, 11:45:39 PM

Good thread. I'm planning on expanding my Earthdawn/oD&D mashup experiment into a hexcrawl, once my player wander away from Hommlet/The Moathouse (which I've thrown into a new kingdom in Barsaive based on Greyhawk).

Oh, oddly enough, it seems our brains track spaces with physical-traingular-grids of neurons (like the movement paths between hexes). CRAZY interesting. After I found this out, I went back to hexes for both over-land movement and combat.

http://www.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fncir.2012.00016/full

QuoteThe puzzling grid cell has become a popular topic in neuroscience due to its simultaneously simple behavioral firing correlate (the animal's position) and complex spatial activity (a nearly regular hexagonal arrangement of spatial fields; Figure 1).

http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/36881/title/Mapping-Humans--Mental-GPS/

jeff37923 · January 16, 2014, 12:26:20 AM

Quote from: RunningLaser;719496Just curious if anyone has played a hexcrawl game with other games and what game was used.

Yes, I've been hexcrawling with Traveller for the past 32 years.

What I've found works best for me, and this can be dropped into any hexcrawl game, is make the first hexcrawl to be one of pure exploration. Traveller lets you do this as a solitaire game, so it can be done as campaign prep. The second hexcrawl in the same area is one of exploitation and colonization as resources mapped out of the first hexcrawl are mined and grown by the settlers brought in who must be defended by PCs from indiginous nastiness.