Game-world size of hexes

[Steve Plambeck]

Originally Posted by David Bofinger

Look at a one-hex tunnel, 90 degrees misaligned from the orientation that would fit the grid neatly: the tunnel is one hex, then two half-hexes, then one hex...

There is a much easier way to look at it and draw any one-hex wide tunnel or path that's perpendicular to the "grain" of the grid. Just let the line of (whole) hexes weave. It is still one hex wide at any point, just as a tunnel that ran with the grain would be. It takes the same amount of MA to move the same number of hexes. Just think of that apparent weave as the optical illusion you get peering into that other universe from ours :) To the players it looks like a zig-zag path, but to the characters it looks like a perfectly straight line. To them, it has to be a straight line, because there is no shorter distance they can move from one end of the tunnel to the other except through each hex. If it takes 10 MA to move 10 hexes down the path, and there's no shorter move to accomplish it, then it must geometrically speaking be a straight line even when the god looking down from above thinks it looks wavy.

Originally Posted by Shostak

The half-hexes in Steve Plambeck's tiles don't bother me. You can simply rule that they are off-limits, as he does recommends in the notes, or that they are fair to move through, as you prefer. Either way, they don't bother me, and the architecture they create on a table are easily understood as the kinds of rectilinear spaces we tend to be familiar with.

Thanks for the mention Shostak. If anyone here would like a free copy of that, just send me a PM with an e-mail address and I'll send it to you -- the tile set/book is a pdf.