Wilderness Maps - gridded or not?

[Scribble]

Without grids. I actually liked the aforementioned Forgotten Realms plastic grid overlay.

 

[MerricB]

Without grids. I actually liked the aforementioned Forgotten Realms plastic grid overlay.

I thought it was absolutely great for areas like Cormyr, where the players were in Known Terrain.

I find it easier to run the group getting lost when they are on a set hex grid, though.

Cheers!

 

[reanjr]

Once upon a time, wilderness maps were drawn on a hexgrid.

Then they weren't. When did that happen? (I blame the Forgotten Realms and its plastic hexgrid templates...)

I miss the hexgrids. Why? Because they made it easy for the DM to describe which direction the characters were going in, and allowed the possibility of them mapping.

Certainly, hexgrids aren't necessary in known terrain, but consider the original Isle of Dread and its most recent incarnation in Dungeon Magazine. It's not quite the same without the grid!

However, that's me. What about you? Do you prefer your wilderness maps to have a grid, or not? Why or why not?

Cheers!

I prefer maps without grids. I like more fluid discussion of distance and direction, based on landmarks, etc.

 

[rounser]

Big fan of wilderness hex maps, especially with numbered hexes. They let you turn the outdoors into a place of adventure equal to the dungeon if you populate the locations - locations of lairs, dungeons, farms, interesting landmarks, magical fountains, waterfalls, shipwrecks you name it.

I even had a set of hexmapper icons I'd created, set up with a bit of whitespace at the bottom for four digit numbers, but lost them when I reinstalled my operating system and didn't back them up. Will have to recreate them again, sooner or later.

As for the alternative....for the most part, I've found that a gridless wilderness map is a fairly sure sign of DM running an almost completely empty and featureless wilderness, where it's just a place for wandering encounters to happen until you get to a dungeon or city. Present company exempted, of course.

In a continuation of the "world as dungeon" theme, allowing population of wilderness by breaking it down into discrete areas, I'm trying to figure out a way to map urban areas in a similarly convenient fashion as we do dungeons (square grids, broken down further into discrete and numbered rooms and corridors) and wildernesses (hex maps with numbered hexes). The best I've come up with is just to use square grids, but a 90 degree angle city feels artificial in a way that hexmapped wilderness and gridded dungeons don't.

Any ideas on how to conveniently map urban areas without resorting to vector-based mapping, which is notoriously fiddly and carries the same location population problems of a gridless wilderness map?

 

[Steverooo]

I always use square-gridded graph paper for any type of map. Everybody knows that "Hex Paper" was invented to have something else to sell gamers! I can tell N, E, S, W from the sides, and NE, SE, SW, and NW from the corners. It's also even easier to locate X, Y coordinates on a graph than hex grids.

 

[TheAuldGrump]

It depends on scale - for continent and nation sized maps no grid. For the maps of the immediate campaign area hex grids.Player maps, no grid.

The Auld Grump

 

[jester47]

Any ideas on how to conveniently map urban areas without resorting to vector-based mapping, which is notoriously fiddly and carries the same location population problems of a gridless wilderness map?

Triange grids would work for cities and towns. If you look at a lot of Medieval cities, there ussually is a lot of trig to them. A triange grid would allow you to draw curvy streets and straight ones. Heck, might use that for mapping Dungeons now that I think about it...

Aaron

 

[jester47]

Generally, I would prefer the map that I give the players to not to have any grids on it except maybe a coordinate grid. Like saying A6 contians the city of Asics. If they want to go to Ad'idas which is in B2, they will have to plot a course using a ruler and such. but as a DM I would like a version of the map that has hexes just becuase it is easier to do movement and encounters with such. Also helps me keep track of where I put stuff in the world.

Aaron.

 

[jmucchiello]

Any ideas on how to conveniently map urban areas without resorting to vector-based mapping, which is notoriously fiddly and carries the same location population problems of a gridless wilderness map?

Name the streets, number the buildings. Simple.

Most real cities have districts. Number important buildings within each district.

 

[MerricB]

Interesting to see some square votes.

One of the annoying things about hexes is this feature:

"We go north".

"You can't. North-east or north-west?"

"Huh? The Pole star is there. We go north!"

"Uh... guys, the map has hexes!"

"So, we'll fall into the gap between hexes? Cool! We go north!"

"You fall through to china..."

Cheers!