Hex Maps & Hexcrawls
Wyvern
🖼️ 293 images Cartographer
Ralf posted about hexcrawling on the ProFantasy Blog earlier today, following his fascinating live hex-mapping video stream yesterday. In the blog notes he asked: "Have you used and created hex maps yourself? Do you like creating them, or is their layout too abstract for your liking. I’d love to hear your thoughts."
So I thought starting a fresh topic to discuss this very matter would be appropriate!
To get things rolling, I'm no stranger to hex maps myself, given that even before I discovered RPGs 50 years ago, I'd been using them for counter-and-map board wargames for five or six years before that. That they quickly started to feature in RPGs from very early on was scarcely surprising, as RPGs developed during the early 1970s from tabletop figure wargaming, and drew on various standard mechanics from those.
In more recent times, I've done a few Community Atlas hex maps, including for the Whispering Wastes in Peredur, the Seer's Hall in Ezrute, and the Barrows of the Ferine Magi in Alarius. All of those have a few notes on constructing hex maps in CC3+, but the discussion I began about a year before the first of those, Hexcrawling starter maps, perhaps says more about hex-mapping for hexcrawls than those other topics.
There are, of course, many more topics on hex-mapping elsewhere on the Forum - a quick search for "Hex maps" brings up around nine pages of options to explore alone!
So, hex maps - do you draw/use/love/hate them? Discuss!
Comments
I struggle making hex maps in the style we're likely discussing here - one symbol per hex. Maybe it feels too restrictive to me? Or not precise enough?
I do, however, prefer overland maps in more traditional styles but using hex rather than square grids for measurement. I actually also prefer more local maps (city/town/dungeon/etc) with hexes because I like the improved precision for measuring diagonal movement and flanking.
@Mike Patterson noted: I struggle making hex maps in the style we're likely discussing here - one symbol per hex.
Actually Mike, if you take a look at some of the example maps just of mine, there are both the one symbol per hex types, and area maps with a hex-grid superimposed, so I wouldn't like to deter you from commenting on those grounds! There's definitely more than one way to use hex maps, that's quite certain - and as with maps in general, they're useful tools, rather than constraints (or that's how I've long seen them).
For sure useful tools! I was thinking specifically of the trouble I always encounter when I sit down to make a "one symbol per hex" map. My own preferences, I think - I always end up wanting more than one terrain in them and just can't get past it 😊. I do love the way those maps look, and I've enjoyed using ones others have made; I just don't make them myself.
But like I said, I do prefer hex for overland maps, and I used to love playing HERO system RPG in part because it uses hexes for everything - no square grids.
Loved Hexmaps when I first saw them for Becmi and Greyhawk settings. The Greyhawk map by Darlene is one of the most famous maps ever, a work of art.
Have I ever done one, nope. Don't think I ever will. Over land maps are my fave.
Agreed on the Greyhawk map being a work of art. That huge foldout map was one of my first forays into a published RPG setting, and I still take it out and look at it every once in a while.
One option you might think about @Mike Patterson is using plain coloured hexes instead of symbol ones. The terrain types on the one symbol per hex maps tend to have uniform, separate colours for the terrains, and while these work particularly well for coastal hexes with "proper" coastlines, rather than having the hexes run directly into the sea (so you don't end up with partial symbols in the wriggling coastline hexes), they can work just as nicely for the main maps, especially if you only use a limited range of terrains/hex colours. Which was pretty much how that Greyhawk map was drawn, barring the symbol-filled forests and mountains.
For anyone unfamiliar with the Darlene map of Greyhawk incidentally, try this page of the Greyhawk Online Wiki, although this blog post by Rob Conley (Bat in the Attic Games) has much higher-res versions of his own reworking of it for free download.
Thanks, Wyvern, that's a good suggestion. I'll give it a try!