A question about map scale

[Tigris]

I guess a hex map with 12 miles per hex would work. This would allow 2 hexes walking on a road or just one in rough terrain, or even half of one in a swamp. This would also work fine with 6 miles or even 4.

Again, forget these stupid "miles". There are no miles, thats not needed you making it more complicated by trying to add in distance.


You just have hex fields in different colours. Depending on the colour they have time value 1, some 2 some 3 some 4, some 5 some 6.

Like normal travel rout is 2, perfect road is 1, grass is 3, forest is 4, sand is 5, swamp is 6, mountain is 7 etc.


Traveling a hex takes time units time. No need for any artificial distance like "miles" 2 villages are 4 time units away from each other etc.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Teleportation is no problem, its just instant. Or you can teleport "2 hours worth of travel" etc.

If you do the latter, you're still using distance, you're just not calling it that.

Flying could be a problem in theory, but if thats only high level and really fast in general, then just taking an average should be fine.

Depends on the game. Note this is not a D&D specific thread.

 

[aramis erak]

I'll note that human travel on foot is typically 10-15 miles per day, with marching units 15 to 25 miles per day...
I found the BECMI/D&D 8 mile hexes problematic, because it was too slow for daily hike or too fast for a quick hike, but it was ok for march/force-march. 6 miles wasn't standard.

Wilderness maps are usually on hex
paper, one hex representing 8, 16, 24, 32,
72. or any other distance in miles.

6 miles means hiking about 2 hexes a day, marching 3, forcemarching 4 hexes a day.
24 miles is 2 days hike or one day's forcemarch...
72 miles (triple 24) is the logical next step up - 3-4 days forcemarch, 5 days march, 6-7 days hike.

6 miles is also about as big as a village's fields - an hour to the outer edge from the center.

 

[Tigris]

If you do the latter, you're still using distance, you're just not calling it that.

Yes I know. But I use distance in a useful way. Its not useful in any way to know that something is 5 miles away. It is useful to know its 2 hours away. In a fantasy world (not dnd) they might even have distances we cannot compare at all to our world distances. (Like even if a "humanlike" character in that world is something like 0.00173 inches big and can travel normally 0.826 inches per 1/17.5th of a day, then we can still use the method with time units to travel and make our live easier.)

Depends on the game. Note this is not a D&D specific thread.

Sure it has not to be DnD but still you do t lose that much if you just kind of assume average speed and explain that travel over certain places takes longer because the airflow there and number of other animals in the sky is making progress slower.


If a slow flying animal has a multiplier of 3 and a fast one 5 thats fine.

 

[Thierry-Advent]

nevermind

 

[Coroc]

Throughout my years of playing D&D, I've seen various scales used for maps. I was looking at real world mountain ranges and placing comparable ranges to my map, I find the cscale seemed to not fit quite right. I find that I do like the 6 mile hex for regional maps works quite well for overland travel but when it comes to mountains, things seem off. For further out 24 mile hexes seems logical. For example.

Hexes in 6 mile/hex and 24 m/hex

The Andes
Length 4,300 miles 716 hexes 179 hexes
Width 70-300 miles 11.6-50 hexes 2.9-12.5 hexes

Rocky's
Length 3,000 miles 500 hexes 125 hexes
Width 70-300 miles 11.6-50 hexes 2.9-12.5 hexes

Himalayas
Length 1,500 miles 250 hexes 62.5 hexes
Width 125-250 miles 333.3 hexes-341.6 hexes 5.2-10.4 hexes

Appalachian
Length 2000-2,050 miles 333.3-341.6 hexes 83.3-85.4 hexes
Width 100-300 miles 16.66-50 hexes 4.1-12.5 hexes

Now, I've using this scale. I am just not sure what scale to use for continet scale that fits this formula. I've seen where some people suggest using 24 m/h for continets but that seems rather small.

Local 1 mile/hex
Regional 6 miles/hex
Kingdom 24 miles/hex
Continet ?? miles/hex

as you can see from your own examples: IRL Mountain structures seem to be around 1500-4300 miles long and between 70 and 300 miles wide. Now the Andes span along a whole continent N to S, so that should be your absolute limit for thia exercise. On the other hand we need a fine enough scaling to depict 70-300 miles in a meaningful way.
i would say if you got 180 hexes on your grid sheet, tehn go for your scaling, but let us turn this down a bit. let us say you want to produce handouts so that is roughly 8" x 10 "
here if 10" is 3000miles then 1 inch is 300 miles. so that one would roughly fit. i guess your hex grid might be available with 1" or maybe 1/2 " ? is this correct, then here you go.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yes I know. But I use distance in a useful way. Its not useful in any way to know that something is 5 miles away.

Except it allows you to have maps that look consistent in space (since otherwise you have to flag mountain or swamp hexes as being different temporal "size" than others) and allows you to adjust for things of different speeds where the speed difference may not be the same for all terrain. If you don't care about any of that, you don't, but I think it should be obvious why temporal distance alone doesn't suit everyone's needs.

If a slow flying animal has a multiplier of 3 and a fast one 5 thats fine.

See above. The difference is that their multiplier relative to inviduals moving on foot or horseback will change relative to the terrain if you're using temporal hexes. Because they don't care about hills, swamp or forest, and care less about mountains. Same thing applies to things like teleportation.

 

[Tigris]

Except it allows you to have maps that look consistent in space (since otherwise you have to flag mountain or swamp hexes as being different temporal "size" than others) and allows you to adjust for things of different speeds where the speed difference may not be the same for all terrain. If you don't care about any of that, you don't, but I think it should be obvious why temporal distance alone doesn't suit everyone's needs.

No what you want constrains maps to be exactly in 1 format. While mine allows to have maps in way more different formats. Like metromaps, like hex things, like mediaval looking ones which sre unprecise etc.

Honestly in a non modern fantasy game it makes no sense to have precise modern maps anyway and also I dont see their use. If you want to have maps which care for different transportations really a lot, use metroline maps with different coloured lines. So you then can have different distances. With the blue air line its 2 hours with a standard griffin (and then hsve multiplier for flyers on that).

See above. The difference is that their multiplier relative to inviduals moving on foot or horseback will change relative to the terrain if you're using temporal hexes. Because they don't care about hills, swamp or forest, and care less about mountains. Same thing applies to things like teleportation.

See above can be easily fixed with metro lines if you care about that. Much more consistent simpler to use and not GM dependant / not prone to error due to bad GM math.

 

[Fenris-77]

Precise maps allow the GM to be precise about travel, which is actually kind of important if travel is going to be a key feature of a game. Player facing maps, on the other hand, can certainly be less modern and less precise.

 

[Rothe]

....

Local 1 mile/hex
Regional 6 miles/hex
Kingdom 24 miles/hex
Continet ?? miles/hex

For continent hexs I use 144 miles, which is about 6 days fairly easy travel by horse (or extra effort if by foot) or about 2 days travel by sailing ship at about 5 knots.

As to other scales, I like 3 miles (5 km) or 6 miles (10 km) because the horizon (for standing human) on an Earth sized world is about 3 miles. The horizon from a 20 foot town tower is about 6 miles, of course a quarter mile (400 m) is about as far one can distinguish a stationary person under good conditions. So either 3 miles (5km) or 6 miles (10 km) works well for what one can see from where one stands for game purposes.

Also 3 miles is about an hour determined walk, or half hour "easy" jog. Would also postulate that 3 miles (1 hour) is about as far from a town that famers are going to want to walk (spend time on) each day to get to fields.

I tend to scale everything in units that are easy for use in-game and for world building.