Quote from: estar;431900Determining the distance between two points on a hex map is a matter of counting the hexes between the two points. You can't do that with a square grid unless it is only straight up or down as the diagonal are 1.77 units larger than the horizontal or vertical.

This blog post of mine: http://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2008/10/mapping-with-hexes.html talks about mapping with hexes and how to make adjoining maps.

I hand drew my maps in the harn style. As you can see here. http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_mFjy4EWzmtg/SREW5-5tMXI/AAAAAAAAATg/ubuEZaApJgo/s1600-h/csio_regional_sm.jpg

The steps are

1) with a pencil lightly sketch the coast line
2) Check for mistakes
3) With a fine line blue pen (not a ball point). Draw the coasts
4) With a pencil lightly draw the boundaries of the hill and mountain regions
5) With a fine line black pen draw the mountain border and fill it with light diagonal slashes
6) For the hill you want to do a dot pattern. Just take your pen and tap solidly inside the hill boundary forming a pattern of dots. You don't draw a boundary for hills.
7) Take your blue fine line pen and draw in your rivers
Note where the swamp and use a swamp symbol to fill it boundary. Note like hills you don't draw a boundary. The swamp symbol is a line with a small V or W on top.
9) Assemble at set of coloring sticks and coloring pencils. Dark Green for Forest, Light Green for normal woodland, Light Blue for water, A golden yellow for crop, light brown for grassland, tan for alpine terrain. Areas of snow and ice (like mountain tops) are left white.
You want to color in the smaller areas of vegetation first.
10) Cropland are generally the smallest areas draw first
11) Then Forests
12) For mountains you will need to decide their elevation. The lowest could completely covered in woodland, grassland, or forest. Higher still will have crowns of alpine terrain, and the Highest crowned with ice/snow. The vegetations for elevations goes from highest to lowest: Ice/snow, Alpine, grassland/woodland/forest.
13) Color the rest of the map with the base terrain which is generally woodland (trees cover 25% to 75%) for temperate regions.
14) With a red pen market various settlements. I use filled squares for towns and cities, filled circles for castles, open circles for keeps, and open diamonds for villages, open triangles for points of special interests, and upside down open diamonds for mines. Also use any other symbols drawn with the pen for things like dungeons, etc.

15) Draw Roads with a red pen. I uses solid lines for Roman style roads, dashed lines for the main dirt roads, and dotted lines for trails and unimproved roads.

16) With a black pen for terrain and red pen for settlements and points of interest label your map.

The advantage of this approach you can freely mix terrain and vegetation in a natural way.

This is all good information, and I especially enjoy the stuff you've written in your blog. For now, I'll focus less on the grid, and more on the drawing of the actual map. The current map I'm working on has a very faint square grid that will probably become almost invisible once I photocopy it.

I'll eventually experiment with a hex grid, though hexes only really feel right to me for somewhat smaller regional maps, rather than semi-global maps.

Quote from: BenoistAs for your issue of graph paper, my advice is to design and print your own!

You can decide the size of the hexes or squares or whatnot, the thickness of the lines, their color, etc etc. Then you download the PDF of the graph paper you want, and you print it out as much as you want for yourself.

I've recently started fooling around with this. The first map I'm working on is one square grid line per inch, with a light grey grid color.

Quote from: PseudoephedrineIt's the most beginner-friendly mapping program I know, let alone hex-mapping.

It can be as precise as you want. You just need to decide on your scale. There's a free-paint option for doing rough edges if you don't want to follow the hex boundaries.

Quote from: SowelBlackThanks for the recommendation!

As for doing shorelines... that is the most time-consuming part if you don't want the coasts to match the hex borders--which most people don't want. I should point out there is a new approach to doing coastlines... the old way was to draw a couple of thick blue lines over the portions of the land hexes that should be water. But Hexographer was recently updated with polygons, so you can now go to the "Shapes" tab, click "Polygon" set the polygon's border width to 0 and the fill color to sea blue then draw polygons to cover the portions of hexes which should be land. Note that you need to click the "save" button near the bottom of the Shapes tab between polygons. (Otherwise you're still editing the previous shape.)

The other option you may not see at first that addresses one of the concerns mentioned is that you can place features (city, castle, ruins, village, mines, etc. icons) freely (such that they aren't centered in a given hex) by going to the "options" menu and looking at the feature placement choices.

And in addition to the Mystara/basic D&D style maps there are now map objects and techniques to support 1st edition Greyhawk style maps. Here's a short text tutorial: http://inkwellideas.com/?p=1063

Thank you, kind sir, for the information. I like the "old school" aspect of it, and will look into it.

I'm seeing a lot of votes for hex maps here... :hmm:

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;431886Yo, Benny...that map looks really good. Did you draw it, and if so...what medium did you use? Also....what's going on with that hex grid? It looks numbered. Did you buy some hex paper?

Thanks mate!

I drew it by hand, then 'colored' it in shades of grey with pencils. I actually colored it, added the names, as well as features like shadows dropping and so on, with Photoshop. I generally don't like maps that are computer generated, no matter how pretty. I prefer the maps drawn by hand. No contest, to me.

The hex grid I didn't buy. It's actually a Judges Guild PDF. I printed out a few pages of it, and used one for this.

Here, Right Click, Save As (it's a direct link to the PDF).

Quote from: Benoist;431942Thanks mate!

I drew it by hand, then 'colored' it in shades of grey with pencils. I actually colored it, added the names, as well as features like shadows dropping and so on, with Photoshop. I generally don't like maps that are computer generated, no matter how pretty. I prefer the maps drawn by hand. No contest, to me.

The hex grid I didn't buy. It's actually a Judges Guild PDF. I printed out a few pages of it, and used one for this.

Here, Right Click, Save As (it's a direct link to the PDF).

Here we go....hexes with numbers. I'm the same way, I guess. I like to draw maps by hand myself, though I could stand to learn a little computer enhancement....for city names and the like.

Thanks for the link!

el Saco Lambo

Squares are acceptable for towns or very small regions.  For larger maps, hexes are the correct format.

RPGPundit

Pund's got the right of it.

The explanation is that over a larger area, squares will inevitably distort space more than hexes will (non-contiguous triangles are the best of all polygons, but that's neither here nor there).

If you're familiar with the Mercator projection and its problems, you can see how this distortion can completely bollocks things up if you're drawing on a large enough scale.

If you're not, here's a diagram from wikipedia. Each red circle covers the same amount of real area on the earth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tissot_mercator.png

Is there any kind of plastic hex grid out there...? Something that I can place over a hand-drawn map? I'm trying to draw over that numbered hex grid right now, and it's...distracting. On the other hand, the faint lines of the 1 inch square grid I'm also drawing on are so unobtrusive, that they aren't distracting at all... :hmm:

Quote from: RPGPundit;432102Squares are acceptable for towns or very small regions.  For larger maps, hexes are the correct format.

RPGPundit

I'll be focusing on regions that are hundreds of miles in size, if that's relevant.

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;432127Is there any kind of plastic hex grid out there...? Something that I can place over a hand-drawn map? I'm trying to draw over that numbered hex grid right now, and it's...distracting. On the other hand, the faint lines of the 1 inch square grid I'm also drawing on are so unobtrusive, that they aren't distracting at all... :hmm:

You could also hand draw it first, then feed the sheet into a printer and print the hex grid overtop it.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;432130You could also hand draw it first, then feed the sheet into a printer and print the hex grid overtop it.

That's a great idea. I wish I'd thought of that myself. Thank you!

I'll experiment with both types of grids, so we'll see how it goes...

Anyone posted this yet?

6 mile hex is just short of a 10km hex, btw.

Quote from: Hairfoot;432141Anyone posted this yet?

Nice..

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;432136That's a great idea. I wish I'd thought of that myself. Thank you!

I'll experiment with both types of grids, so we'll see how it goes...

Do it a color photocopy first.

Make several color photocopies for various purposes.

You can do a high resolution scan and draw notes and lines on the map for various purposes. In some cases this marries the best of both approaches.

Quote from: estar;432155Do it a color photocopy first.

Make several color photocopies for various purposes.

You can do a high resolution scan and draw notes and lines on the map for various purposes. In some cases this marries the best of both approaches.

You mean like DM maps and players' maps..? Hmmm...

Quote from: Sacrificial Lamb;432254You mean like DM maps and players' maps..? Hmmm...

That's actually what I do myself. I produce a file of the map, JPG or whatnot, and then I print several copies. One being used for the game itself, others for various DM notes I write directly on the map. I might as well change colors and whatnot to create different maps based on the same original drawing.

For instance, the Seven Spires:



Which I modify then to show the different political areas: