Hex vs Square

[Duringar]

Just curious as to why GURPS uses hex maps as opposed to square. I've not yet found a reason in the rules. I could be glossing over it.
Looking for an "offical" answer/reason.

Thank you in advance.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Duringar

Just curious as to why GURPS uses hex maps as opposed to square. I've not yet found a reason in the rules. I could be glossing over it.
Looking for an "offical" answer/reason.

Thank you in advance.

I'd imagine that the true answer is that, way back when Steve Jackson was designing what would eventually become GURPS (looking at Wikipedia, looks like the earliest precursor was Melee, which shortly thereafter evolved into The Fantasy Trip), he weighed the pro's and con's of hexes vs squares, and decided he preferred hexes. You'd need to ask Steve himself why he had this preference.

[whswhs]

The big difference between hexes and squares, geometrically, is that a square is surrounded by eight other squares. Four of them are at its sides; the other four are beyond its corners. If the distance to a side square is 1, the distance to a corner square is ~1.4. Dealing with that takes calculation. Or if you simplify to counting, you can either count "one" for the side square and "two" for going on to the corner square, which is too much, or just count "one" for skipping directly to the corner square, which is too little. Either way, movement is distorted.

With a hex, however, there are six nearest neighbors, and all of them are the same distance. You can handle ranges and movement by counting with significantly less error. I believe that's a major reason that many wargames have used hex grids, since long before the earliest edition of D&D.

[Stormcrow]

My answer isn't official, but I'm sure it's the original reason: no regular polygon with more sides than the hexagon can be perfectly tesselated. The more sides, the more equal direction changes are possible. Sixty-degree turns is more fine-tuned than ninety-degree turns, so hexagons more accurately represent real movement than squares do.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Duringar

Just curious as to why GURPS uses hex maps as opposed to square. I've not yet found a reason in the rules. I could be glossing over it.
Looking for an "offical" answer/reason.

Thank you in advance.

Actually I do know a little about that. I was into the tabletop wargames back when that was a thing (before computers that is). I read a little of the designers notes including some material by James Dunnigan. Now if I get it right hexes allow more flexible movement permitting oblique moves (moves other than straight forward, rearward, or to the flank). More important, for oblique moves can be handled by the corners is that corner to corner moves are artificially longer, that is a move slightly inclined to right or left that would be equal to a similar move in real life is longer than it should be.

While Gurps seems to be more about personal combat than dozens of units on the same board there is some relevance here. For instance according to a HEMA scholar I read, with the rapier and small sword most of the moves will be adjusting measure (distance between combatants) while with a broadsword or side sword (a town sword that has less weight than a military one but enough to render the edge a viable stroke) there is more circularity. I did not notice that watching Mariel Zaguinis fights on YouTube but Olympic fencing was never much like the real thing. She should have been circling more as a fencing sabre is roughly equiv to a side sword, but then she should not have had such short bouts. Obviously a gold medalist knows her own sport but that just means it is flawed as a simulation. Of course the only true simulation would be actually trying to kill each other but the Olympic version has a lot of unnecessary artificiality.

Anyway to return to subject, suppose Gurps is trying to roleplay a swordfight. A rapier will have all moves forward or backward and that will be just as easily done with squares. A side sword has to be able to make inclined moves to simulate trying to flank the other parties guard and remain in position both for the cut and the thrust. To simulate that it needs to have a more subtle and accurate device for simulating moves.

[tbone]

Originally Posted by Duringar

Just curious as to why GURPS uses hex maps as opposed to square.

I don't have knowledge about the history, but if you're interested in the hex-vs-square question in general, there's a thread here: http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=174169

I long gamed on an erasable staggered square battlemap. Sort of a best-of-both worlds method for me: hex-like movement, plus ease of mapping rectangular structures. (Although the hex-like movement is a little distorted in the diagonals; true hex-like movement requires a staggered not-quite-square-rectangles map.)

[Curmudgeon]

Originally Posted by Duringar

Just curious as to why GURPS uses hex maps as opposed to square. I've not yet found a reason in the rules. I could be glossing over it.
Looking for an "offical" answer/reason.

Thank you in advance.

There isn't necessarily an "official" answer, but there is a historical one. Steve Jackson's first game was Micro-Game 1: Ogre for Metagaming, a producer of wargames, and at that time there were vanishingly few board wargames that didn't use hexes to regulate map movement. Metagaming specifically used "SPI hex system," in all their wargames, not just the Micro-game line, so Steve Jackson was likely under contractual obligation to use that grid system for the games he submitted to Metagaming. IIRC, according to The Space Gamer, which was Metagaming's house magazine until Steve Jackson bought it, Steve was sixteen years old when Metagaming bought the rights to Ogre, so he wasn't in the best position to buck Metagaming, if he even wanted to. (The SPI hex system gave each hex a four digit number of first two indicating the column and the last two the row, IIRC; it's been a five decades. Anyone could use their system as long as it was SPI was acknowledged as creating the system.]

As for why wargames went with hexes rather squares: Avalon Hill of Baltimore's first wargame, Tactics II did use squares but it was their only wargame to do so. The problem was one of geometry. If you moved orthogonally, your counter moved 1 square for each square moved. But you weren't restricted to orthogonal movement, you could move your counter diagonally as well. If you moved diagonally then with each square's movement, you were moving one square right or left anf one square forward or back. Using the Pythagorean Theorem to find the hypotenuse of your one square by one square movement, it wasn't as bad as getting two squares distance for one square of movement, but it was bad enough, since you were gaining a little less than 1.5 squares of distance for each square of diagonal movement.

There were a few wargames that tried to remedy the problem by using offset squares (or staggered), but by the late 1950s, early 1970-s everyone, not just the two biggest wargaming companies had come to the conclusion that hex movement, the other main grid possible did a better job of equalizing the distance moved regardless of the direction of movement, though movement looked strange as the unit "wiggled" in its straight line movement if it went "against the grain" of the grid, but that was deemed an acceptable tradeoff. [Nobody that I'm aware of ever used a grid of equilateral triangles but if you can make a grid of hexes, you can also break each hex of that grid down into six equilateral triangles.] There were other novel attempts to regulate board wargame movement from time to time, such as Gamma Two Games regional movement, but hexes remained the preferred system for grid movement.

Steve Jackson designed four micro-games Ogre, Melee, Wizard and G.E.V.; and The Fantasy Trip consisting of Advanced Melee, Advanced Wizard and In the Labyrinth for Metagaming before they had their falling out, which would lead Steve to start his own company, Steve Jackson Games.

One of the first games from SJG was Car Wars which did use a square grid, but also required the use of a piece called the Turning Key to regulate movement involving rapid turns. For GURPS, he went back to using a hex grid.

[mlangsdorf]

Steve Jackson figured that facing was more readily handled with hexes than squares. Also, using hexes saves you from weird math when dealing with foes that are not directly in front or beside you: if someone is 17 hexes away, that's roughly 17 yards, regardless of position, but there's a difference between someone who is 17 squares ahead and 0 squares to the left or right and and someone who is 8 squares to the right and 7 squares ahead.

Converting GURPS to use squares is modestly complicated. The two most important diagrams are the reach diagram on B 388 and the line of sight diagram on B 389. Once you have those resolved, most everything else should fall through.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Curmudgeon

There isn't necessarily an "official" answer, but there is a historical one. Steve Jackson's first game was Micro-Game 1: Ogre for Metagaming, a producer of wargames, and at that time there were vanishingly few board wargames that didn't use hexes to regulate map movement. Indeed, Ogre specifically used "SPI hex system" hexes. (The SPI hex system gave each hex a four digit number of first two indicating the column and the last two the row, IIRC; it's been a five decades. Anyone could use their system as long as it was SPI was acknowledged as creating the system.]

As for why wargames went with hexes rather squares: Avalon Hill of Baltimore's first wargame, Tactics II did use squares but it was their only wargame to do so. The problem was one of geometry. If you moved orthogonally, your counter moved 1 square for each square moved. But you weren't restricted to orthogonal movement, you could move your counter diagonally as well. If you moved diagonally then with each square's movement, you were moving one square right or left anf one square forward or back. Using the Pythagorean Theorem to find the hypotenuse of your one square by one square movement, it wasn't as bad as getting two squares distance for one square of movement, but it was bad enough, since you were gaining a little less than 1.5 squares of distance for each square of diagonal movement.

There were a few wargames that tried to remedy the problem by using offset squares (or staggered), but by the late 1950s, early 1970-s everyone, not just the two biggest wargaming companies had come to the conclusion that hex movement, the other main grid possible did a better job of equalizing the distance moved regardless of the direction of movement, though movement looked strange as the unit "wiggled" in its straight line movement if it went "against the grain" of the grid, but that was deemed an acceptable tradeoff. [Nobody that I'm aware of ever used a grid of equilateral triangles but if you can make a grid of hexes, you can also break each hex of that grid down into six equilateral triangles.] There were other novel attempts to regulate board wargame movement from time to time, such as Gamma Two Games regional movement, but hexes remained the preferred system for grid movement.

Steve Jackson designed four micro-games Ogre, Melee, Wizard and G.E.V.; and The Fantasy Trip consisting of Advanced Melee, Advanced Wizard and In the Labyrinth for Metagaming before they had their falling out, which would lead Steve to start his own company, Steve Jackson Games.

One of the first games from SJG was Car Wars which did use a square grid, but also required the use of a piece called the Turning Key to regulate movement involving rapid turns. For GURPS, he went back to using a hex grid.

Despite the name Tactics II is mostly a strategic game. Much of the problems can be compensated by zig-zagging (this distorts terrain effects which are fairly simple anyway).

I experimented with a few subtleties like adding range of command control, and some terrain rules like adding defense for urban terrain. I never was satisfied with what I got. It was a more interesting game than might appear and it's very artificiality meant you are not wedded to historical precedent.

[sir_pudding]

Notably very few square grid games have facing.