Using square grid tactical maps

[Joe]

Originally Posted by dripton

Did you use hex tiles?

Please say yes! Otherwise, you know we're going to be hassling you to rip up the new tiles and start again...

[Bruno]

I'm afraid they're 13.5" granite patterned ceramic square tiles in "tobacco". I was vetoed.

[Joe]

Crushing news! My condolences...

[hackbarth]

I wrote a simple guide for using square grids in GURPS, with diagrams:GURPS Squared

[Joe]

Originally Posted by hackbarth

I wrote a simple guide for using square grids in GURPS, with diagrams:GURPS Squared

I like these rules a lot, hackbarth - they seem quite workable to me. As you say, ranged attacks are more of a problem, but not an insurmountable problem.

Partly inspired by the discussion in this thread, I just posted, on my blog, some photos and discussion of my custom-made hex-boards for playing GURPS Dungeon Fantasy. Just in case anyone's interested.

Which is just to say, yes, you can adjust the rules in order to use a square grid, and that allows you to use all the existing fancy 3D dungeon terrain - or you can just stick with hexes and make your own dungeon terrain.

I'm not sure the latter route is necessarily the better one, but it does have the advantage of giving you an excuse to embark on a really fun GURPS-related craft project...

[borithan]

Originally Posted by Proteus

GURPS often ends up with a figure scale (1" to 6 feet) noticeably different from its ground scale (1" to 3 feet).

Figure scale being out of kilter with ground scale is nothing new in gaming, it is just normally figures are bigger than what they represent, rather than too small. For some reason I find it more irritating than the other way round (Dark Heresy has a similar issue).

Really, we should be using 15mm hex grids which, with 30mm(-ish) modern fantasy figures, would come out about right.

Problem there is that most figures come with a base roughly the size of the figure they support, meaning heroic 28mm miniatures normally come with ~1inch bases. Smaller than that and you often get stability issues. As this rule seems to hold up quite well across all scales (20mm/1:72 aside, and usually they have to be based on something bigger as the integral bases are usually too small and the figures often fall over) changing the scale used doesn't fix the issue.

Of course, if they are using card with a plastic base the stability issue will be less of an issue (excepting for the fact that ~2 inch tall card stand ups might get in the way a lot).