Ranger REG said:
While I'm an old-school wargamer, I have embraced the use of square grids. After all, you can gang up on PCs using 8 guys rather than 6.
If those on the adjacent corners (as well as sides) can attack with a square-based system, why not in a hex-based system (that would mean 12 could gang up on 1)?
Hex upside: they're not conducive to exactly tiling typical constructions. That is, the fact that corridors are typically (1) straight and (2) rectilinear means that, when tiled with hexes, there will be lots of edge cases, where hexes are bisected and the like. Thus, the grid cannot be a perfect description of the world, but only a useful measuring tool. Hopefully, this would mean rules that are less tightly integrated with the grid (whatever it may be), and thus less wargamey. IOW, maybe it would encourage less reliance on the physical/visual representations, and rules that depend on them less, and instead try to represent a real, analog, world. Currently, the grid determines facing, size, reach, movement--all sorts of things, and the smallest unit of length in the system is therefore 5'. Reduce the importance of the grid itself, and maybe we could see, frex, reach rules that can differentiate between a dagger and a longsword.
Of course, this probably won't happen, since it is likely that the rules will only move in the direction of greater abstraction (that is, the rules modeling only a ruleset, not attempting to model a real world), and tighter integration with the physical representations at the gaming table (as opposed to the fictional elements that are only in our minds).
Hex upside: give a closer approximation of measuring the actual distance at more angles. Squares only come even close when you stay very close to one of 4 directions, at 90 degree intervals. Using the 3-for-2 rule, you can also do 45 degree diagonals, but at the cost of the distance being significantly different than the number of squares crossed. With hexes, not only do you have 6 equal directions, the 6 diagonals in between are close enough for government work. So you go from 4 to 12 directions that are close enough to not need any converting.
Hex upside: if you choose to line your characters up in the grid units, it leads to less-obviously-rectilinear (and thus non-plausible, to my eyes) arrangements. Real people, excepting trained groups, don't neatly line up. Of course, as i say above, my real preference is for a system where people put their character representation wherever the heck they want on the map/battlemat, and we just use the grid for those few times when we need to interface the actual occurrences with the rules in some way.
Hex downside: if you insist on quantizing your world and the characters' behaviors according to the mechanical grid, it'll either lead to a world much unlike our own, or to bizarre anomolies of behavior. But then, the square grid already does this to a lesser degree.
