Size of areas in a Fantasy Game

[Sturmcrow]

I am running an exploration Sandbox style game (ala West Marches) for 4E.

My problem is I am not sure how large to make the zones/regions on the map I am using. I am breaking down the areas by terrain and level range but I am at a loss for how big they should be.

I am using Graph paper with 10 boxes per inch so the scale should be easy to create.

Any thoughts?

[Knaight]

I'd recommend going to Google Maps or similar, finding a real natural area, and basing sizes of different biomes on that.

[nedz]

Google maps is cool, but this might be a better resource.

[Yora]

Depends on what every segment of the map is supposed to represent.
What makes one area to be broken down in two or three segments?

[Hylas]

Typically it's about 3 squares/hexes per day of travel. So if the party can travel 12 miles in a day on a road then each square should be 4 miles across. This allows for "one interesting thing" per square if you desire. These can be randomly generated, predetermined, or a mixture of both.

If there's bad weather or if they're going off the road then it's 2 squares a day. If they're going off the road AND there's bad weather then it's 1 square a day.

Feel free to adjust this as desired. Maybe you want a more detailed map or the adventurers can travel 20 miles in a day. Then you can do 2 mile squares and they can travel 10 squares a day. This might be a little too detailed but you get the idea.

EDIT: Most people hate the notion of "only 12 miles in a day" but it's my experience that most adventurers like to go hunting, or have to investigate everything they see (this tree has 4 branches you say? I take a 20 to search it!), or just generally run around in circles. Most of them aren't concerned with how long it takes to do things so 12 miles fits the absent minded lazy and generally unorganized adventuring group quite well. A well run army will obviously be able to travel further.

[Sturmcrow]

Depends on what every segment of the map is supposed to represent.
What makes one area to be broken down in two or three segments?

Not sure I understand your question.

Breaking zones down by level range and terrain so one area would be hills and 1-3, another would be light forest and 1-3, the third would be swamp and 1-3. Then we might have hills/canyons and 4-6, heavy forest and 4-6, then forest/swamp and 4-6. Large enough areas to have multiple interesting locations (since the point of this campaign is location based) and not have the locations necessarily on top of each other. I hate to use this as an example but:

http://www.wowwiki.com/Tirisfal_Glad...p-Tirisfal.jpg

[Yora]

In that case you should probably working at a scale where you can clearly see the borders between forests, grasslands, mountain ranges, swaplands, plains, and so on. Each unit would have roughly the same type of landscape over all of its area and be able to form an ecosystem that could be more or less self contained, regardless of what kind of terrain you find in each of the bordering units.

Areas of 50km x 50 km probably should be the minimum size for every unit of landscape, maybe even 100km x 100km. For larger mountain ranges or steppes, you could have them spread over a number of those units.

At 50 km, traveling through one such square would take about two days of travel on a road, when you would use the speeds from D&D for example.

[SowZ]

Typically it's about 3 squares/hexes per day of travel. So if the party can travel 12 miles in a day on a road then each square should be 4 miles across. This allows for "one interesting thing" per square if you desire. These can be randomly generated, predetermined, or a mixture of both.

If there's bad weather or if they're going off the road then it's 2 squares a day. If they're going off the road AND there's bad weather then it's 1 square a day.

Feel free to adjust this as desired. Maybe you want a more detailed map or the adventurers can travel 20 miles in a day. Then you can do 2 mile squares and they can travel 10 squares a day. This might be a little too detailed but you get the idea.

EDIT: Most people hate the notion of "only 12 miles in a day" but it's my experience that most adventurers like to go hunting, or have to investigate everything they see (this tree has 4 branches you say? I take a 20 to search it!), or just generally run around in circles. Most of them aren't concerned with how long it takes to do things so 12 miles fits the absent minded lazy and generally unorganized adventuring group quite well. A well run army will obviously be able to travel further.

I'd do this, but bump the increments up to 5 miles each. Partially because players are less apt to argue with 15 miles/day and it is easy enough to do four squares if the party really hoofs it, (add an additional two squares per day for a mounted party, too,) but MOSTLY because increments of five are easier to calculate.