Considering the standard 5 Mile Hex for TFT

[Jim Kane]

Originally Posted by Chris Rice

1 hex Jim. I told you I was lazy!

So, wait a second, let me get in the picture here... are you saying that in your game, an adventure party travels one hex per day on a paved "Roman Road" across flat open country, *and*, also travels one hex per day on say on a foot path through light woods, or across a hard barren desert, or over gently-rolling grassy hills? But you do adjust for rough mountainous terrain (highlands) and swamp (lowlands) at 2 days per hex, and possibly incredibly thick jungle or arctic wastelands at 3 days per hex?

Am I understanding your system correctly Chris?

If that is the case, how many miles across is a single hex on your map?

JK

[Chris Rice]

Originally Posted by Jim Kane

So, wait a second, let me get in the picture here... are you saying that in your game, an adventure party travels one hex per day on a paved "Roman Road" across flat open country, *and*, also travels one hex per day on say on a foot path through light woods, or across a hard barren desert, or over gently-rolling grassy hills? But you do adjust for rough mountainous terrain (highlands) and swamp (lowlands) at 2 days per hex, and possibly incredibly thick jungle or arctic wastelands at 3 days per hex?

Am I understanding your system correctly Chris?

If that is the case, how many miles across is a single hex on your map?

JK

I thinking calling it a system is doing it too much credit Jim. It's simply an easy way for me to gauge roughly how far a party would travel in a day. I don't agonise over whether they're travelling on a well paved road or on a track, unless the weather intervenes. For me, overland travel is less part of the "game" than the "story" and I don't need detailed rules for it. If you want it to be more of a game then you will need more detailed rules and they will need to take into account the weather as that's often as important as the terrain. Then you'll need to take into account whether the travellers are experienced walkers or riders, how encumbered they are, the climate, etc. I'm not usually bothered with that level of detail unless I've built it into the story.

[Jim Kane]

Originally Posted by Chris Rice

Then you'll need to take into account whether the travellers are experienced walkers or riders, how encumbered they are, the climate, etc. I'm not usually bothered with that level of detail unless I've built it into the story.

That's right Chris, we do the weather, time, temperature, and also available water, foragable food, and animals to hunt, sociopolitical spheres of influence etc. all the super-detail stuff, with encumbrance and resource management playing a huge part of the strategy of getting the party to the destination, being the target labyrinth.

Okay Chris, I see what you are doing, your map is a colorful way to tell the general story of getting from A to B; but you are *not* playing the TFT version of Avalon Hill's Outdoor Survival game.

I get you Mate.

JK

[Terquem]

Hahahah - I still have a complete copy of that game, it is so hard to play.

[Jim Kane]

Here an interesting bit many people know, but some do not: With '74 D&D, you were told you also needed the Chainmail rules from Guidon Games, *and* Avalon Hill's Outdoor Survival in order to play D&D - 3 little booklets at $10 from TSR, plus 2 other games from other companies to buy in order play.

JK

[The Wyzard]

My personal view is that overland travel should be as abstract and board-gamey as possible. Knowing exactly how wide a hex is in the fictional game-world is not as useful as extremely clear and game-worthy procedures for figuring out how long it takes you to get from the Desert of Disaster to Crystal City, how much in the way of supplies is required, and how many misadventures must be suffered through during the journey.

Like honestly something like "one blue wooden cube of supplies costs XXX gold pieces and is enough for one man and his horse for a week of travel (or each fractional part thereof), and it takes such-and-such amount of baggage train to carry more than one" would be great for my purposes.

"A figure on foot gets three units of movement per day. A mounted figure gets four, but for each day that the "extra" unit of movement is used, the player must roll 1d6. On a 6, the horse becomes exhausted and no longer provides the benefit until it has had an opportunity to rest for a period of XXX days."

Etc.

[Terquem]

Well those are good points W

Some other folk like the verisimilitude that arises when a GM can say

"It is seventy three miles from Watchpoint to Bayfield, but the way is not easy. You must travel for eight miles across a marshland, or go around, adding seventeen miles to the journey. But then for forty miles it is pleasant rolling hills, the sky is clear and there are few trees to block your view of the horizon in each direction so your chance of getting lost is small. After that you will come to the edge of the great Elmwood, a forest that stretches for sixty miles in each direction, there is no way around. You must find the old Galintair road. It is marked with stone cairns as high as a man. It was once the most traveled road in the country. This road, still showing paved bricks in many places, winds through the forest for twenty miles until it comes to the great Darenhall Bridge. A once might dwarven citadel built into a natural stone bridge that crosses the river Korv, flowing at the bottom of the great Korv Rift, a gorge three hundred feet deep. Do not enter the Darenhall, it is a cursed place, but once you have found it, turn to the west and follow the southern rim of the gorge for five miles. This will bring you to the great sea walls of Falls Harbor, and the magnificent city of Bayfield.


Now, some games will be like this

You travel the distance in five days and arrive at the Bayfield Sollorun Inn

Other games will be like this

You travel for three miles, roll two six sided dice and tell me the lower roll of the two...

[ak_aramis]

Originally Posted by Jim Kane

The *why* behind the 5-mile hex (or 6-mile hex in some cases) being the accepted standard for so many FRPG products is simply because:

It's not a widely accepted standard, tho'.

Most old D&D BX/BECMI used 6 or 24 mile hexes (Cook Expert, X54)(Mentzer Expert, 28) In practice, most were 24.
Cyclopedia suggests 8 and 24 (Cyclopedia, 87)
Most of the Gazetteer line use 24 miles/hex, as do most of the mappers redoing the maps for consistency on the mystara fansite.

D&D 5e uses 1, 6, and 60 mile hexes. (DMG, 14)

AD&D 1E, the DMG suggests "20 or 40 miles per hex", and a 1:5 expansion for the local hex - either by 5 units to the edge (thus about 9 across) or 5 units edge to edge. Which gives 2, 2 2/9,4, 4 4/9, or 8 miles to the subhex. (DMG, 47)

The One Ring uses 10 mile hexes.

Pathfinder doesn't specify map distances per hex

And outdoor survival uses 5 km.

Traveller (prior to T5) uses a scale varying by world size for official maps. Local maps are usually provided with a scale bar, and it varies a lot.

Originally Posted by Terquem

A hex, of any size, is an “overlay” tool which can be used to count distances on a map

Any map (all maps) are created at a given scale

Scales are not universal or necessarily conventional

Many games do specify miles per hex; what they don't specify is the ground scale at which those hexes are rendered. Many games also use a standard ground scale within their products, because quite a few games tie mechanics to hexes. In BX/BECMI/Cyclopedia, the 24 mile hex is the definitional unit used for the dominion rules, for example.

GURPS specifies a distance per hex on the tactical scale, but doesn't actually prescribe a visual scale for the tactical map; the hex is a fundamental unit of measurement. (official maps from SJG all seem to use the same visual scale.)

D&D 5 specifies a tactical scale of 5' per square, and 1, 6, and 60 as the standard sizes for hexes - without specifying the actual ratio for scaling - in no small part because most use of the maps is based upon counting the hexes, NOT measuring with a ruler.

Really, you're just as off base in this case as Jim. Just in the other direction.
The hexagons used in the various One Ring maps don't have a consistent visual scale, but the GM's versions are always mapped in 10mi hexes. Why? Because you count the hexes, not break out a ruler, unless you're a map-nerd.

Likewise, the standard USGS scales are pretty much immaterial to the choice of miles-per-hex. The size of hex determines the visual scale of the map, not the visual scale determining the hex dimensions, in most RPG mapping.

Likewise, most GM's hexpaper is whatever size it is - tho' the tech savvy can get whatever size they want, at least if they can afford to have it printed out.

16mm hexes (flat to flat) are an industry standard for wargaming; 1" and 1.25" are both standards in game publications, tho' 1/4" is used in a lot of illustrations, and SJG used 1/5" for GAD1.

Me? I do D&D at 5':12.5mm - not quite 1/2" - because my 10mm cubes fit nicely in them, and it's close enough to 1:150 for me. I use 8 or 10 mile hexes when I draw my maps, and then simply adjust the size of hexagon to fit my map to 1 or 2 sheets of paper. (My Fantasy Hero campaign map is 100 nm per inch, and ungridded.) I do TOR at 10mi/hex - because that's what the maps are done it.

[guymc]

MAP SCALES
Combat map hex 4 feet
Megahex/Labyrinth map hex 3 yards
Village map hex 10 yards
Town map hex 30 yards
City map hex 100 yards
County map hex 300 yards
Barony map hex 900 yards
Duchy map hex 1.5 miles
Province map hex 5 miles

These are the map scales specified in In The Labyrinth, and that's pretty much what I am working with so far for material we are publishing. Like some of you, Steve's intent here was to use a consistent scale that's easy to remember. Each larger scale is approximately 3x the previous one -- but then rounded to an easy-to-visualize and remember approximation.

Thus:
Labyrinth scale: 1 hex = 3 yards (9 feet), not 1 hex = 12 feet.
Village scale: 1 hex = 10 yards, not 12 yards
Town scale: 1 hex = 30 yards, not 36 yards
City scale: 1 hex = 100 yards, not 108 yards
County scale: 1 hex = 300 yards, not 364 yards
Barony scale: 1 hex = 900 yards, not 1092 yards
Duchy scale: 1 hex = 1.5 miles, not 1.86 miles
Province map scale is 1 hex - 5 miles, not 1 hex = 5.58 miles

You can carry it up from there as necessary, with each higher scale level being approximately 3x the one before.
1 hex = 15 miles (not 16.66 miles)
1 hex = 50 miles (not 49.98 miles)
1 hex = 150 miles (not 148.36 miles)
1 hex = 500 miles (not 470.8 miles)
...and so forth.

That largest scale is very roughly how far it is from Indianapolis (Gen Con's current home) to Milwaukee (Gen Con's previous home). Of course, much larger scales are needed if you were going to map Cidri -- it is a BIG place, much larger than Earth. But anything beyond that is farther than most Cidrians will ever venture - except perhaps by Gate.

Thus, at the Province map scale (what I seem to be using most for party travel), ITL shows the following:

4 hexes/day (normal road travel on foot or by horse)
3 hexes/day (secondary roads)
2 hexes/day (minor roads, open country, light woods)
1 hex/day (rough terrain, heavy woods)
2 days/hex (swamp, mountains)

ITL also specifies travel speeds for small, moderate and large size flying creatures, as well as water travel via rivers (based on the riverboats of Dran -- mileage may vary depending on the type of boat or conditions).

[Terquem]

I guess I just don't understand and I am "off base" because how can you draw a room and say that from one wall to the opposite wall it is three hexes, and say that those hexes are 4 feet across, then draw another map of the same room shown at a different scale that has one hex fit between the walls and that hex is 9 feet across and say that that one hex is equal to three of the other hexes

you are literally saying 9=12

I don't want to start an argument, because I am just a "map nerd"

but making objects fit on a map is important to me.