A question about map scale

[cbwjm]

Because it's somewhat relevant to the conversation, this video about how much is in a 6 mile hex might be useful for some.

I once measured out a 6 mile hex over Auckland on google maps and it made me realise just how big it really was covering an area that stretched from the waterfront all the way to Onehunga (I'm sure these names mean nothing to most reading this) which is well beyond the distance I'd want to walk within Auckland. From my home in the CBD to Newmarket it probably takes me about 30 minutes and it's the furthest I'd want to walk between places.

 

[Nytmare]

I feel as though one of the most common problems I've seen, for the decades and decades and decades (and decades) I've been playing, has been the difficulty of hammering reality into a game's attempt at a simulation. Especially when we're dealing with player and GM knowledge and expectation of high fidelity satellite imagery and GPS coordinates instead of misinterpreted scribbles on a third hand, copied sketch of a map.

What are you using these hexes for? Are you just cataloging information, or are you fighting to establish a set of real world weights and measures? Are you trying to run granular overland travel? How does your system of choice handle that overland travel? What information does it really need? Are people travelling through these mountains? Are you getting hung up on one rusty nail of reality while you're ignoring 20 others?

 

[Thomas Shey]

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.

If I cared at all about those (except occasional city chronographs because I can't be bothered to map out most cities above the size of a small village) I'd care more. You obviously do, but that doesn't require me to consider your priorities generally important here.

I'll occasionally do non gridded large-scale maps---but when I do, I still list scale, because I think that's important for understanding the sense of the place for most people. Again, if you don't, your choice--but I'm not making my map making decisions for you.

Honestly in a non modern fantasy game it makes no sense to have precise modern maps anyway and also I dont see their use.

I've explained my use. If you don't find that significant, well, not my problem.

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).

Which, frankly, is extra work to no real benefit to me. Chrronographs (which I think are the same thing you're referring to) are the case I'm least likely to use distance in the first place.

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.

I don't find them simpler to use on larger scale, given I present terrain and similar modifiers for everyone to see they're not particularly dependent on me, and I've been able to use them to what feels like good effect for a half century, I'm afraid this doesn't seem a compelling statement.

 

[Thomas Shey]

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.

While I get your point, making that distinction only seems particularly useful in an exploration-focused game.

 

[Nytmare]

I once measured out a 6 mile hex over Auckland on google maps and it made me realise just how big it really was

Yeah, this is something I always encourage people to do when they're worldbuilding a setting and trying to figure out what to put where realistically on their overland map. Put a 6 mile hex over your home town and think about how many adventures fit inside that space. Think about how many months you can spend discovering new things in that 30ish square mile space. I spent my first three years of college only ever leaving that 6 mile hex to go home for holiday breaks.

Think about how hard it would be to find one singular home or restaurant somewhere in that 6 mile hex without having a physical address system or a set of GPS coordinates.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Because it's somewhat relevant to the conversation, this video about how much is in a 6 mile hex might be useful for some.

I once measured out a 6 mile hex over Auckland on google maps and it made me realise just how big it really was covering an area that stretched from the waterfront all the way to Onehunga (I'm sure these names mean nothing to most reading this) which is well beyond the distance I'd want to walk within Auckland. From my home in the CBD to Newmarket it probably takes me about 30 minutes and it's the furthest I'd want to walk between places.

Well, that's because most of us in the modern world are not used to going by foot (or mounted) long distances, unless they're hobby hikers and the like. It wasn't an uncommon thing for long distance traders and the like at one time.

(Now, the one problem you can run into with hexes of any significant scale is when you have pretty varied terrain within that limited space, but what else is new, some degree of abstraction is necessary in a lot of game contexts. I tend to be more bothered by how casual we are (and I'm including myself here) with the problems in conducting combat in some terrains. I live in an area surrounded by hills and think I'm far more blaise about what that would mean for most pre-modern combat than I should be).

 

[Thomas Shey]

What are you using these hexes for? Are you just cataloging information, or are you fighting to establish a set of real world weights and measures? Are you trying to run granular overland travel? How does your system of choice handle that overland travel? What information does it really need? Are people travelling through these mountains? Are you getting hung up on one rusty nail of reality while you're ignoring 20 others?

Well, of course, sometimes the one matters to someone more than the 20. A lot of people who pay any attention to maps find travel and physical hazards of same far more interesting, and thus worth paying attention to than, say, the logicstics of keeping supplied away from civilized areas or the like. That just is what it is.

 

[Nytmare]

Well, of course, sometimes the one matters to someone more than the 20. A lot of people who pay any attention to maps find travel and physical hazards of same far more interesting, and thus worth paying attention to than, say, the logicstics of keeping supplied away from civilized areas or the like. That just is what it is.

That was meant less about someone choosing the one in twenty things they wanted, and more about someone obsessing over one thing in an attempt to capture "realism" without realizing that they were turning a blind eye to twenty equally realistic things that had been sort of xeroxed out of existence in the common language of RPG overland travel maps.

 

[Thomas Shey]

That was meant less about someone choosing the one in twenty things they wanted, and more about someone obsessing over one thing in an attempt to capture "realism" without realizing that they were turning a blind eye to twenty equally realistic things that had been sort of xeroxed out of existence in the common language of RPG overland travel maps.

I get that, but even there you can hit the perception that some elements of realism are more crucial to follow-up on than others, depending on the tone, genre and style of the game. This is the low-hanging fruit here, but an example is that a lot of people will find things that don't match their experience of psychological behavior far more jarring than things that violate the laws of biology or physics, because they're used to the latter in genre fiction assumptions and conventions, but the former can disconnect them from what's going on in a way not normally done.

(You can make an argument that things that are "unrealistic" from genre-convention reasons are in a different bucket from things that are because of setting assumptions, but to most people the line isn't very hard there. In most superhero settings you can have people who bounce bullets off their chest and you have a lot of people who just never get hit solidly by a potentially lethal attack; the first is a setting assumption and the second is (generally) a genre convention, but people who've absorbed that genre generally take both those as a given (and you sometimes have problems with people who either haven't or are actively resistant to the genre conventions part ending up working against the tide there). Yet everyone still expects people to sometimes get parking tickets or occasionally come down with a cold. Not all the relism is treated equally).

 

[Fenris-77]

While I get your point, making that distinction only seems particularly useful in an exploration-focused game.

Well, yeah. That why I said just that in the post you quoted. Another probably fair point is that massive maps and questions of scale and travel time in general are all only really important to games that put some sort of emphasis on exploration.