In a previous series of posts I described how to write a hex crawl campaign, up to the point of starting the first session. I purposely left out talking about the scale of your hex map, as I was debating the subject myself. For a long time I agreed with what many blogs say, that the 6 mile hex is superior to the others. There are a few reasons that I used this scale, like that at sea level the human eye can see ~3 miles meaning from the middle of the hex you can see to its edge if you had a clear line of sight. Another good reason to use 6 mile hexes is that B/X movement rates correlate nicely to miles per day according to the following table from the book, but the issue is that with a little thought these reasons fall apart.
Move per Turn Miles/Day
30' 6
60' 12
90' 18
120' 24
150' 30
180' 36
240' 48
Sure, we can see about 3 miles over flat ground. But how often will you be high enough to really see that far over terrain? How often does long line of sight really matter at the table? If you're using B/X movement to miles, 6 is the highest common denominator, but what if the party doesn't travel the full distance today? If an unencumbered party travels 20 miles then decides to rest in a cove you described as they passed, where are they on the hex map now? Do you go back to marking a map with tiny Xs for where the party is today? If you start looking into historical movements, it gets even worse. Roman foot soldiers, on well kept roads, marched 15-20 miles a day. Horses can travel around 32 miles a day, while ox drawn carts can only go about 10.
The point of dividing a map up into hexes or grids is to make tracking movement easier. This is why board games come with hexes or grids to move your tokens and not a compass and protractor. Another issue with a 6 mile hex is that they are HUGE. You can find many other blog posts on this, so I won't rehash that topic again. After musing over all of this I wanted more answers, so I turned to Tim Kask, First employee of TSR and one of the last surviving "Old guys" from the time. Mr.Kask does a weekly video series on youtube and takes questions from the comments.
I asked the question "When using a hex map various editions of D&D recommend everything from 1 mile per hex up to 24 miles or more! I've long used a 6 mile hex but lately research into movements of armies has me considering a 1 mile scale for more precise tracking. What is your experience and opinions on hex maps and the scale they use?" His response was as follows, paraphrased;
"Well like [with] graph paper, how big an area are you going to represent? I have graph paper that is enormous.... I've had it for years and years and... it's small squares so you could plot out a mega city or a mega dungeon on it. I wouldn't use it unless I was going to do something really big like that.
[S]ame thing with how I'd scale my hexes.... It would be [about]... how many rolls for random monsters [and] how much stuff do you want them to explore.... I think you should be flexible in... your scaling so that you can get what you're going for on the fewest pieces or the smallest piece of paper possible but that's just that's my ethic.... I had great big fold-out maps back in the day and oh what a pain, what a pain when I could have used a smaller scale and had half as many.
But when you're tracking armies in a campaign where you're maneuvering armies against each other, I would definitely not use anything more than about a [two mile to a hex scale] because you want you want to be able to... show where your units are not just where your army is.... [S]cale shouldn't be a hang up, scale should be whatever works for you most conveniently and... it's a balance.... If you want to track armies on a one mile... scale do it, by all means do it."
As usual when I ask Mr.Kask a question, He gives a great answer. Keep in mind how the rules change when messing with scale, random encounters per hex is a bigger issue when a day's travel is one hex vs four. Having experienced trying to make giant maps work he recommends using a better scale for the map you're trying to make so that it is easier to use at the table. The one thing he said that really helped me come to a conclusion was "show where your units are not just where your army is". I don't want to just know where the party is, I want to track where the characters are. I want a more specific location than a 6 mile hex gives.
I can't really end this post with a definite answer on what the best scale is. The topic is still bouncing around my head and until I try a different scale I won't have the experience to give advice, but I can say that I'll be trying a two mile scale in my next game. Keep a lookout for the play report on that!
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