Monday, January 20, 2020

6-Mile Hexes

There has been discussion back and forth over map scale with many deciding that 6-mile hexes were superior. I happen to agree. A 6-mile hex has a ton of room for adventure can be seen by the 6-mile hex of New York City (that's a hex that is 6-miles from flat-side to flat-side (or 7-miles from point-to-point).

Live from New York
I'm not from NY and I've only been a few times but I think Manhattan being a popular tourist destination and because of the unique geography with the rivers outlining the island it makes an ideal example. Half of Manhattan fits comfortably with chunks of New Jersey and Queens. That's a lot of space.

Here's a second example a bit closer to home, San Francisco which also happens to have a nice geography for showing this scale. The whole thing doesn't fit into the 6-mile hex so I've included the overflow to help show things. Ever walked from one end of San Francisco to another, it's doable in a day, but it's a bit of a haul even cutting off some bits. Pro-tip, the cable car engineers often let younger folks jump on for free as long as you don't get on the first stop, there is a hitch however in that you may have to get off and help the engineer push when the car runs into one of the few spots between cables (at least they did in the 80s).


So all things considered I think 6-miles has enough space. So much so that a hex crawl that just gives one item seems a bit under-developed. I'd go with a hex should have minimum one item. The 1d8 chart below can help determine where the item is at any given time, if you roll an 8 toss a 1d6 to determine the which partial hex. Those subdivisions are 2-miles each (from flat to flat but it doesn't matter because where just trying to find the basic location of the cave where the Cthulu cultists are having their ceremony, we need to know if they are in Battery Park or Jersey (or a Pac Bell stadium or at For Point for that matter).
Roll 1d8 and maybe ean additional 1d6 to find out where things are

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