Square Megahexes

[tbeard1999]

Originally Posted by JLV

Perhaps, but that was always so jarring visually that it tended to break the spirit of adventure so key to playing an RPG -- at least for my group. And besides, this is just such an elegant solution that allows you to retain the hex grid for facing and combat purposes. The squares you advocate always seemed to create facing problems and range arguments for a lot of the more...um..."lawyerly" players in the group (with apologies to Ty -- you know what I mean, Ty, "rules lawyers" who always want to argue about the meaning of footnote 32 on page 96 of D&D Players' Manual...)

No problem. The term is reasonably applied. I agree with you; there was something about staggered squares that bugged me and my players. I can't really explain it.

Another option - just a thought, really - would be to use a "hexagonal lattice" - what you'd get if you removed the hexes but left the center points (Ala Battlesuit, an early SJG effort).

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...attice.svg.png

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexagonal_lattice

The result is exactly the same regarding movement, but the hex grid isn't there to distract. Of course, it's unfamiliar and might create other issues. Dunno how to do megahexes though.

[JLV]

Originally Posted by tbeard1999

No problem. The term is reasonably applied. I agree with you; there was something about staggered squares that bugged me and my players. I can't really explain it.

Another option - just a thought, really - would be to use a "hexagonal lattice" - what you'd get if you removed the hexes but left the center points (Ala Battlesuit, an early SJG effort).

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...attice.svg.png

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexagonal_lattice

The result is exactly the same regarding movement, but the hex grid isn't there to distract. Of course, it's unfamiliar and might create other issues. Dunno how to do megahexes though.

Yeah, that's a viable approach if you find the lines too distracting. I always found it worked better with naval games, though... Possibly just due to personal prejudice.

There's a new wargame out (in the past year) that addresses World War II at the strategic level, and uses that system for land and air movement. I think it also uses megahexes to regulate naval movement. I'll try to see if I can remember (or find a link) so you can see how they did their map.

[Jim Kane]

Originally Posted by JLV

Yeah, that's a viable approach if you find the lines too distracting. I always found it worked better with naval games, though... Possibly just due to personal prejudice.

Spot-on JLV. One of our old favorites, which we still play occasionally, is a little known chestnut by 3M (later reprinted by AH), called: Regatta. It is a fantastic and innovative little sailboat racing game, and it uses this same type of lattice-work gird to control the movement of the sailboats on the board; though 3M (yes, the Scotch-Tape people) printed small "plus signs", as opposed to "dots"; which are easier on my eyes.

JK

[JLV]

I remember Regatta, though I haven't seen a copy since about 1972 or so. I think they used the little plus signs because that's an actual chart mark for naval charts...

The reason I think the dots don't work quite as well for non-naval games (again, just my personal opinion) is that terrain makes them quite difficult to see sometimes, and overall, the hex grid just seems to be more visible without being overly obtrusive compared to the other terrain in the hex.

I remember the story of how wargames moved to hexes instead of squares. I think it was Charles S. Roberts was asked to visit RAND corporation at one point in the early 1960's, because there was a major investigation going on as to how he'd come up with his Combat Results Tables for the early AH games (apparently the government thought he's somehow managed to steal a copy of the one they were using for high-level simulations, and found it hard to believe he's just made it up one evening; whereas they got approximately the same thing by spending thousands of dollars in research to determine statistical outcomes...). Anyway, while he was at RAND, he saw one of the boards they were using for one of their games and it was using a hexagonal grid pattern. From there, as they say, the rest was history...

[Jim Kane]

Originally Posted by JLV

I remember Regatta, though I haven't seen a copy since about 1972 or so. I think they used the little plus signs because that's an actual chart mark for naval charts...

I would suspect you are correct; but having never seen an actual Naval Chart myself, it would not surprise me. I do know however the "plus-signs" are easy to read, when compared to the dot-pattern in the link which was provided.

Originally Posted by JLV

I remember the story of how wargames moved to hexes instead of squares. I think it was Charles S. Roberts was asked to visit RAND corporation at one point in the early 1960's, because there was a major investigation going on as to how he'd come up with his Combat Results Tables for the early AH games (apparently the government thought he's somehow managed to steal a copy of the one they were using for high-level simulations, and found it hard to believe he's just made it up one evening; whereas they got approximately the same thing by spending thousands of dollars in research to determine statistical outcomes...). Anyway, while he was at RAND, he saw one of the boards they were using for one of their games and it was using a hexagonal grid pattern. From there, as they say, the rest was history...

I wouldn't know about that either, but it's a heck of a story! LOL! My first exposure to AH was with a auto racing game called: Le Mans. It didn't use hexes, but rectangles which fit the length of the car-tokens. It was originally published in 1961, and we somehow came into a copy in 1974, so I would have been about 10. Our first exposure to AH hexes would have been with either Tobruk or Panzer Blitz within just a year or so later. It was funny when we got a copy of Tactics II years later and saw the squares! LOL!

Anyway, when we got Melee in 1977, we slide right in with the hex movement, and loved the Megahexes (still do!)

JK

[JLV]

That story about how hexes came to be used in wargames was originally published in an early S&T magazine in an article titled "The History of Wargaming," in one of the classic little S&T "boxes" of side information that used to appear in their articles back in the day (and may still do so, for that matter). I want to say the issue number had to be in the 40s or lower, and I'm thinking it might even have been in an issue preceding #32 (which was my borther's and my first subscription issue).