Hexes or squares?

[Norfleet]

who's ever heard of a Gelatinous Hexagon?

It wouldn't be a Gelatinous Hexagon, just as it's not a Gelatinous Square. It'd be a Gelatinous Hexagonal Prism.

Personally, though, I'm not terribly fond of either the either the square system or the hexagon system. Although the square system arguably does a better job representing typical rooms, which tend to be rectangular, as you don't see a terribly large number of hexagonal rooms, it also butchered a classic sacred cow: The party of 4 adventurers vs. the orc in a 10' by 10' room: A party of 4 cannot fight an orc in a 10' by 10' room.....and the orc isn't allowed to stand in the middle of the room, since that would be on an intersection, not in a square.

 

[Guillaume]

After using the GURPS system for a few years, I have come to prefer the simplicity of square grids. I mean, drawing a map on the mat using hex grids when you only have measurements or a square grid can be a real pain. Sure, you can eventually do it, but the time I waste trying to figure it out.... Since most of my campaigns are indoors these days, I really prefer using the square side on my battlemat.

 

[Norfleet]

The other annoyance of this very rigid "grid" system is that there's absolutely nothing between a 10' reach and a 5' reach, and a 5' reach and a 0' reach. The result being the details between weapons tend to be lost: A greatsword has the same reach as a dagger, a spear has the same reach as a longsword, etc. The result being that the distinguishing details of *WHY* someone would, realistically, choose the spear over the longsword are entirely lost: In real life, people chose spears because you could poke people with swords in the face while they couldn't reach you, even with "short" spears. And then there's the "small longspear", but that's another issue. The other amusing result is that, as a result, the combat system becomes entirely skewed for "medium" characters: Creatures with a 0' reach, because there's nothing between 5' and 0', are unable to achieve flanking, so two cats can't flank a single rat. This, of course, is absurd, as there's no reason to think that combat between critters of man-size and greater should be greatly more complex than combat between tiny critters. The end result is that this "grid" system promotes a reach mechanic where everyone has a reach in increments of 5'. There's no differentiation between anything of 5' reach, and heaven forbid you try to convert the system into metric: The net effect is that a halfling, which retains a 5' reach, suffers no disadvantage fighting against a human twice his size, whereas a human fighting an ogre twice his size eats an attack of opportunity if attempting to close with a normal 5' weapon. None of this would happen if you had more differentiation in reach, and thus could come up with a simple unified mechanic for determining any character's "reach": Weapon reach plus natural reach. It'd also remove the obvious abomination of the small longspear.

 

[Agback]

grid layouts for cities are a recent thing.

Not entirely. Quite a lot of Greek cities founded after about 500 BC were built on rectangular grids. So were Roman military colonies, Egyptian temple complexes, and quite a lot of other other archaeological sites.

Regards,


Agback

 

[Tom]

What type of battlemat do you prefer (if you don't use battlemats, just ignore this poll), hexes or squares. I know that D&D 3e officially uses grids, but I know a few people (mostly wargamers) who prefer a hex grid over squares, since it tends to be more accurate in determining the shape of circles and cones as far as spells go. Others seem to prefer the simplicity of a square grid.

So what type do you prefer?

I like both systems but I think I prefer squares. Hex system has a few problems movement and drawing wise. Let's say the east west direction has the hexes aligned (back to back with no angled movement required). Then to go north or south, you have to move the pieces angled left then angled right (or vice versa) and therefore the actual North/South distance traveled is slightly less than the distance you would normally move in a straight line. I guess you could come up with a system kind of like the diagonal rule for square systems (every second diagonal counts double), but it would have to be more complicated (something like every fifth angled move doesn't count). Plus, most maps for modules for DnD3.0 are drawn in squares. And dungeon crawl maps and buildings are invariably square in origin. Just seems easier to draw using squares for me.

P.S. I've been looking at a new product that uses dry-erase tiles instead of a mat. You may want to take a look at www.bc-products.net. These tiles look like they might really speed game play up. What do you think?

 

[Voadam]

Red dragons and Orcs with Pies clearly come in 10' x 10' rooms. I don't even want to imagine what sort of funky abomination that would work out to in hexes.

Goblins with tarts in honeycomb chambers?