I've been thinking of hexes in abstract terms, but I think something more complete would be useful.
I default to the proverbial "6-mile hex" describe here.
Apparently, the area is about 31 square miles (correct me if I'm wrong).
This is bigger than Manhattan (23 square miles).
The Isle of Wight would cover about 2 hexes.
Siena - plus about 20 towns and monasteries - would cover one hex.
The City of London, within the walls, is HALF a square mile - so it covers about 1/60 of the hex.
Notice how thin the Thames would look in a six-mile hex map! It is about 0,16 miles wide near London.
Rivers such as the Danube, Rhine, and Mississippi have an average width of less than one mile.
In short, this means that crossing an hex will not necessarily allow you to see every relevant site. In the plains you are likely to see the entire hex in a clear day, so a village is not difficult to find - especially because there are roads etc. But the village is not hard to AVOID, either.
Anyway, there is no way you can picture every village in a six-mile hex (which I used to do - I marked the hex with a small house).
At this level of detail, it would be better to use 3-mile hexes, which are four times smaller than the original hex - and have their own advantages.
A 3-mile hex is enough for a village with countryside, or maybe a very large city surrounded by 4-6 hexes of countryside and villages.
In a 1-mile hex, river thickness may start to vary in the map (and maybe even change from season to season).
Traveling becomes less abstract - you do not cross "the mountains", but choose specific paths.
This is probably too much detail for me. Too much choice with little consequence. I'll stick to 6-mile hexes for now.
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Additional reading:
http://steamtunnel.blogspot.com/2009/12/in-praise-of-6-mile-hex.html
http://steamtunnel.blogspot.com/2018/09/the-ergonomic-3-mile-hex.html
https://coinsandscrolls.blogspot.com/2019/06/osr-sienas-6-mile-hex.html?m=1
https://coinsandscrolls.blogspot.com/2017/07/osr-fast-mapping-part-3-barony-terrain.html
https://silverarmpress.com/down-with-the-6-mile-hex-a-modest-proposal/
https://ruprechtsrpg.blogspot.com/2020/01/6-mile-hexes.html
https://the-robgoblin.blogspot.com/2024/04/it-takes-village-to-stock-hex.html
I had a post on 6-mile hexes a few years ago. I placed 6-mile hexes over a map of Manhattan and San Francisco to provide scale.
ReplyDeletehttps://ruprechtsrpg.blogspot.com/2020/01/6-mile-hexes.html
Great post, added to the list!
DeleteThe '6 mile hex, one feature per hex' approach to wilderness design is another of the design ideas that spring from D&D being a Western. It's just too sparse for a mediaeval European setting. A 6-mile hex centred on my town holds three villages, a couple of castles (all ruined), a two Roman encampments and at least one hillfort. To say nothing of all the farms, bridges , rivers, and so forth. You could run an entire campaign within one 6-mile hex.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely!
DeleteI've expanded some of these thoughts here: https://the-robgoblin.blogspot.com/2024/04/it-takes-village-to-stock-hex.html
DeleteGreat stuff, added to the list!
DeleteI had the luck to be in Siena last week thinking on just this topic - one thing that struck me was that there is a lot of vertical relief in that city - strictly should we be considering our 'hexful of adventure' in a surface area way? So flatter is less dense and more vertical (valleys, streets) is more dense...? Do not know how that translates to encounter tables but as you say, Tuscany is much tighter around you than 'one thing per six miles'.
ReplyDeleteYes, medieval Europe is much more populated than the "frontier USA" imagined in OD&D. I'd favor some balance between the two.
DeleteWarhammer Fantasy RPG 1st edition had some nice info on this topic (kind of), discussing the number of outlying villages and farms that would surround a city. It even uses hexes, although they are much bigger than 6 miles. If I pull it off my shelf, here it is:
ReplyDelete"... Zone 1 extends in a 20-mile radius around each city, and contains villages and farms that are directly dependent on the city for markets, protection and so on. Each of these locations can be reached on foot in a day or less. Zone 2 extends a further 30 miles beyond Zone 1. This area contains isolated farmsteads, tiny hamlets and so on, but is mostly uncultivated... Zone 3 is where any small towns that exist will be found. If towns are present, each will have its own subzone of villages and farms, which are proportionally smaller..."
Then it goes on to give guidelines for randomly generating these towns, villages and farms in the various Zones. This is of course for settled areas within the Empire. If your hexmap is out in the wilderness (as it should be!) then it might be okay to mark every single settlement on the map, since there won't be very many at all.
For now, I marked big towns in a very scarcely-populated areas. Never stopped to think of small villages.
DeleteUsing 6-mile hexes, I am thinking that "you found a small village" is an appropriate encounter even for an hex you already crossed!
Assuming that the distance is side to side, a 6-mile hex is almost 47 square miles.
ReplyDeleteThe more usual assumption is that it's 6 miles across flats, making it 31 square miles.
DeleteSee the original post for the size of the hexagon; 31 square miles is the answer, apparently.
Deletehttp://steamtunnel.blogspot.com/2009/12/in-praise-of-6-mile-hex.html
A 6-mile hex is 23.38 square miles. Right?
ReplyDeletehttps://www.google.com/search?q=area+of+a+hexagon
side-length of 3 miles?
I don't think so, see the original post. The side-length is about 3.49 miles.
Deletehttp://steamtunnel.blogspot.com/2009/12/in-praise-of-6-mile-hex.html
I must admit your conclusion surprised me. I thought you were on your way to a very compelling case for the 3 mile hex.
ReplyDeleteI tried the 6-mile hex in practice and I think more detail than that might be too much. But I might try 3-mile in the future.
Delete