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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6440577" data-attributes="member: 4937">I never mention hexes to the players.  I try as hard as possible to avoid referring to metagame constructs like levels, classes, 5' squares, hexes, or anything else that is just an abstraction when describing the shared imaginary space.  One of the reasons that I prefer a small hex size is that it allows for an easier translation of the map to narrative.  Ideally this narrative involves hours travelled and sights seen, and says nothing about distances or hexes or map symbols.  I prefer relatively dense 'wandering encounters' with relative rare risky ones, if only to help me generate things like, "In the late afternoon you startle a troop of monkeys feeding on persimmons.  They scramble into the trees and shout what are doubtless obscenities to you in their crude language."   The point is to spend a few seconds each day of travel reminding the players, "Oh yeah, we are _in_ a vast jungle, not merely travelling by map."  Well, the other point of harmless encounters like that is to allow stealthy insertion of less harmless things, otherwise you end up with players just attacking everything they see because even if they don't know what it is, they figure it probably wants to take hit points from them.I track miles traveled per day.  Depending on the hex size used, this may allow for 'center to center' travel or it might not.  I can remember one occasion with 1" hexes representing 36 miles.  Obviously, players never travelled more than a fraction of that in a day, so plotting movement was more of a protractor and ruler sort of thing than anything else.  However, in general, I don't feel there is a need to be exacting in the placement of the party.  Even when an 1/8" of an inch error represents being off 4 miles or so, in the long run it doesn't matter much to the narrative so don't sweat it.</blockquote>

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