Maps - Hex vs Square

[Mechanize]

Why are hex maps not used more often? They make more sense in all combat aspects. They solve the annoyance issue with counting one and a half diagonal squares for spell areas in 3.5, vs the square 4e square fireball simplification. They are more realistic because there is no way in hell 8 people are swinging great swords at 1 person at the same time without hitting eachother. Even 6 is pushing it.

The only issue I have read is that people don't like buildings and dungeons... straight lines. I actually think buildings on hex look better because they have a 3d look due to the slanted drawings.

So what is the obsession with square maps?

I am in the process of creating my own gaming system. This isn't just out of boredom. I actually want people to enjoy it. Logic tells me to create the system based on a Hex grid, but if everyone else hates it, then there is no point. Opinions?

[Ashtagon]

Squared paper is traditionally easier to purchase than hexed paper.

[Mechanize]

Squared paper is traditionally easier to purchase than hexed paper.

Do you just mean as far as grid paper goes or do you mean the hex dry erase battle maps?

[Ashtagon]

Do you just mean as far as grid paper goes or do you mean the hex dry erase battle maps?

I mean paper. With lines printed on it.

I suppose you can dry erase it with one of these.

[Mechanize]

I mean paper. With lines printed on it.

I suppose you can dry erase it with one of these.

I can't see availability, or lack there of, of something so simple being the issue. I could photoshop a hex grid in no time and print it out. I've seen dry erase hex battle maps, though I am unsure of the rarity of those. I think the issue is that D&D uses squares, so that is what people are used to. Though I thought original D&D used hex. I wonder why they switched?

[navar100]

Real world street blocks are in squares, at least in the U.S. They are easier for people to conceptualize. When a real world street area is not a square (circle, triangle) its uniqueness stands out.

[hymer]

Hexes make at least as little sense as squares. The 1½ cost for diagonal movement is decently accurate. Hex movement will often have you moving like a headless chicken.
Eight people can't attack one guy? Those squares are supposed to be five feet on each side. They're huge! There's plenty of space. Your problem there is with the simplification of swinging large weapons when your fighting space is only 5', not with squares as such. The 'realism' is lost anyway when one guy isn't dead long before the other eight have him surrounded.

Don't get me wrong, if you like hexes, go ahead and use them. But they're not inherently superior to squares in my view.

[Mechanize]

Real world street blocks are in squares, at least in the U.S. They are easier for people to conceptualize. When a real world street area is not a square (circle, triangle) its uniqueness stands out.

You can still draw streets and buildings on hex, you just follow the lines... your drawings have more of a 3d look to them actually. I dunno, maybe I was a bee in a passed life, nothing looks odd at all to me about hex. It actually looks better to me.

[Edge of Dreams]

I have a wet-erase roll-up battle map with squares on one side and hexes on the other. I use squares for most man-made areas (buildings, city streets, etc.) and hexes for most natural, outdoor, or underground areas. I'm also using hexes right now for a dwarf-built dungeon, specifically because the place has a ton of curved and circular rooms, with pretty much no straight hallways at all.

[Mechanize]

Hexes make at least as little sense as squares. The 1½ cost for diagonal movement is decently accurate. Hex movement will often have you moving like a headless chicken.
Eight people can't attack one guy? Those squares are supposed to be five feet on each side. They're huge! There's plenty of space. Your problem there is with the simplification of swinging large weapons when your fighting space is only 5', not with squares as such. The 'realism' is lost anyway when one guy isn't dead long before the other eight have him surrounded.

Don't get me wrong, if you like hexes, go ahead and use them. But they're not inherently superior to squares in my view.

I never said using 1.5 squares for diagonal isn't acurate, I said its annoying. It's a pain especially when doing area of effect. I already hate that it takes 10-15 minutes to get through 1 round of combat... counting 1.5 squares just makes it worse that is all.

And how do squares have you running around like a headless chicken any less? People count their 6 squares carefully, moving in all sorts of weird directions, to avoid AoOs. Moving on hex isn't any harder, it just looks different so people are not used to it. You count X squares in any direction, simple.

I could get into a very long winded arguement about how wrong you are regarding 5ft squares and who can hit who but I won't. My problem isn't the simplification of swinging large weapons, its actual personal experience, and it covers just about every weapon.

I'm only arguing with you because you say that neither choice is superior but back it up with flawed opinions. :(

[Ashtagon]

I can't see availability, or lack there of, of something so simple being the issue. I could photoshop a hex grid in no time and print it out. I've seen dry erase hex battle maps, though I am unsure of the rarity of those. I think the issue is that D&D uses squares, so that is what people are used to. Though I thought original D&D used hex. I wonder why they switched?

D&D is older than photoshop and home printing.

[Synovia]

Eight people can't attack one guy? Those squares are supposed to be five feet on each side. They're huge! There's plenty of space. Your problem there is with the simplification of swinging large weapons when your fighting space is only 5', not with squares as such. The 'realism' is lost anyway when one guy isn't dead long before the other eight have him surrounded.

Right. Look at a football field, specifically the offensive and defensive lines, and see how many people you can fit in a small area. A 3x3 block is 225 sq ft. Its plenty to fit 8 people in.

[Geostationary]

Also, keep in mind that hexes are a pain to draw compared to squares, where you can botch the proportions and still get something useable. Grids are also faster to draw on the spot than hexes.

[Mechanize]

Also, keep in mind that hexes are a pain to draw compared to squares, where you can botch the proportions and still get something useable. Grids are also faster to draw on the spot than hexes.

This is true.

[Mechanize]

Right. Look at a football field, specifically the offensive and defensive lines, and see how many people you can fit in a small area. A 3x3 block is 225 sq ft. Its plenty to fit 8 people in.

Never said you can't fit 8 people in a 15ftx15ft space. I said 8 people can't surround one person without hitting eachother, or tripping over eachother for that matter.

You guys can theorize and fantasize all you want about how many hot and sweaty men you can fit into a small area while they swing their sticks at eachother but I suggest you get out there and actually try it. Its hard enough empty hand, and damned near impossible with weapons.

[Synovia]

Never said you can't fit 8 people in a 15ftx15ft space. I said 8 people can't surround one person without hitting eachother, or tripping over eachother for that matter.

Sure they can.

And it gets real friggen tough for that guy in the middle. Ever seen the scene in like every movie ever where the whole bunch of guys with spears surround the hero and he basically just has to throw up his hands? Thats what is happening.

[cucchulainnn]

i can't speak for why graph paper is still popular but i can speak to why it was used. my only guess is inertia. people have become accustomed to it.

i started playing back at around 1979 or so. i played from 79 or so until about 97 or so and didn't play again until a few years ago so i've missed a lot and a few editions.

back in the day, you could get graph paper almost any where. on the other hand hex paper was a specialty item. the only places that me and my friends knew of where the big gaming stores like the complete strategist or coliseum books or some place like that. (this is new york city hardly a backwoods area.) you could probably also get it as places that sold drafting supplies but i'm not sure. also there was the price difference. in that for 75 cents you could get a 100 page pad of graph paper or take a subway ride (60 cents for the carfare and an easy hour each way) and for the same 75 cents get 5 pages of hex. of course 75 cents doesn't sound like much now but consider that a slice of pizza cost 55 and a bottle of soda was quarter. again you could get graph paper any place that sold loose leaf paper almost every grocery stores, pharmacies and 5 and dime stores (now a days they are 99cent stores). extremely common is an understatement. i went back to school in 97, college, at that time hex paper was still uncommon, printing it your self was to expensive. but your right now it is cheap and easy to print your own.

the only game i remember using hexes where the old avalon hill games. which came with printed boards. i think judges guild used to do things on hex paper too. but i'm not sure. that and some times it was used for out door maps by some after market companies, such as role aids.

for a dungeon crawl with players mapping it is almost perfectly suited. we used to play with each square as 5 feet and hallways being either 5 or ten feet wide. making is easy for the DM to describe and players to map. this was so common that is was the assumed format.

for instance. the DM describes;
your party is standing in a five foot wide hallway, there are two doors one on either side. the left hand door is ten feet in and the right hand side one is 15. the hall is twenty five feet long and then makes a right hand turn at the end.

the mapping player interprets it as. the hall is one square wide and 5 long turning on the 5th, one door is 2 squares in, the other is 3. no fuss, no muss.

the players end up with a fairly accurate map with graph paper where as with hex paper i can easily see it turning into a mess.

for the older games graph worked extremely well, enough for there to be no reason to fix what ain't broken for newer games i have no idea if it makes a difference and defer to those with more current knowledge.

as far as area of effect spells such as cone of cold or fire ball, it was never a big deal. it was a non-issue. so insignificant we didn't give it any thought and i still don't. we didn't use mini's and battle maps for combat, we kept every thing in our head going off descriptions and estimates. actually that is not entire true, for war gaming we used mini's. out side of avalon hill games thing where measured with tape measures and or rulers.

[Mechanize]

Sure they can.

And it gets real friggen tough for that guy in the middle. Ever seen the scene in like every movie ever where the whole bunch of guys with spears surround the hero and he basically just has to throw up his hands? Thats what is happening.

The difference here friend is that your theories use movies as support, my facts use every day occurence as support. I am a combat instructor lol. Your spear argument is actually about the only viable one so far. It is the only weapon (any long range thrusting weapon) you could viably get an 8 man surround on without there being much of an issue with "friendly fire"

Just for the record, the reason I am getting so "realistic" with all of this is that I am actually attempting to build a system that uses very realistic mechanics.

[Mechanize]

we didn't use mini's and battle maps for combat, we kept every thing in our head going off descriptions and estimates.

I miss those days. I've grown to despise the battle grid lol.

[Synovia]

The difference here friend is that your theories use movies as support, my facts use every day occurence as support. I am a combat instructor lol. Your spear argument is actually about the only viable one so far. It is the only weapon (any long range thrusting weapon) you could viably get an 8 man surround on without there being much of an issue with "friendly fire"

Just for the record, the reason I am getting so "realistic" with all of this is that I am actually attempting to build a system that uses very realistic mechanics.

There aren't dragons in the real world. People can't jump 60 feet in the real world.

We're not trying to model the real world.

And I never said there wasn't an issue of friendly fire. Nice strawman though.

I miss those days. I've grown to despise the battle grid lol.

And I despise "theater of the mind" combat. I like to know whether or not the enemy is close enough to me to hit. I like to have consequences to poor movement. I like having tactical and strategic play.

[ArcturusV]

The other game that used Hexes for everything, least from the era you were reminiscing about, was Star Fleet Battles. But that was never a hugely popular game. Still going though. Still fun.

And of course in older DnD they also used Hex maps for Outdoors, and Squares for Indoors. So I'm not sure if it was necessarily inertia so much. There had to have been something in the minds of guys who wrote adventures and such that Hexes were superior in some way for dealing with open terrain (While Squares were easy for interior and closed off terrain).

I dunno. Between stuff like Avalon Hill Games, SFB, and other wargames I never really had a problem using Hexes. It gives a bit of tactical advantage as you can travel in a direction X number of hexes and take different routes, all in the same X hexes and end in the same spot. Though you can also do that in 4th Edition DnD with the Square Simplification. But otherwise you can't really do that on a square grid map. I suppose that's the downside to it. If you want only ONE way to be the direct line, then you go Square. If you want to be able to go routes A, B, or C, and end up in the same hex D with the same movement cost, then you go Hex.

[AttilaTheGeek]

we didn't use mini's and battle maps for combat, we kept every thing in our head going off descriptions and estimates.

We used to do this in my group, until stuff like this started happening:

Rogue: "I said I walked behind the guy! Why don't I get sneak attack?"
DM: "The hallway's only 5 feet wide! You can't have walked past him."
Rogue: "All you said was that it was a 'thin hallway', but I'm not even in it! I'm in the room next to it."
Wizard: "I thought he was in the room with us, and that I could Fireball him?"
Rogue: "Yeah, sure. Improved Evasion says go for it."
Rest of the party: "NO DON'T SHOOT"
DM: "But he's been in the hallway this entire time."
Entire party: "Wait, what?"

And now we use battlegrids to eliminate the confusion.

[ArcturusV]

Also my problem with running games on Skype. Least DnD that makes heavy use of map and specific positioning (Compared to say, RIFTS, where typically it doesn't matter in my experience). Every turn ends up starting off with my players playing 20 questions with me on exact particulars of positioning (Even though I already described it) just because they are paranoid of those mistakes.

[FreakyCheeseMan]

A while ago I decided that all buildings in my world are built as hexagons, rather than rectangles. I'm pretty happy with that decision.

[valadil]

I like hex for outdoor and dungeon areas. Hate it for indoor. I want my buildings to look like buildings. I could see the thinking outside the box solution of square buildings with a rhombus as working, but it just feels wrong.

[Raimun]

Three things:

People generally want to be able to walk in straight lines.

Area of effect is a non-issue. Squares work just as fine. You can even use templates.

D&D-rules expect that the combat is fought on squares. It would be a different thing in a mecha game or whatever.

[Mechanize]

There aren't dragons in the real world. People can't jump 60 feet in the real world.

We're not trying to model the real world.

And I never said there wasn't an issue of friendly fire. Nice strawman though.

I said that I am attempting to create more realistic mechanics so giving me unrealistic opinions isn't really helping me. Thanks though.

[jindra34]

Raimun the straight line thing is actually pretty stupid reason. In a square grid there are 4 quick and easy, and 4 simple straight line motions, with everything else requiring breaking up to figure the distance. With hex grid there are twelve quick and easy straight lines and every other line is simply counting the number of hexes crossed, which ends up being easier.

[Mechanize]

Here is the story...

As I said, my goals are realistic combat mechanics. So, with that said...

Despite what many may think, short of everyone wielding 10ft thrusting weapons, you cannot effectively put 8 men on 1 target. So, working with the square grid I decided that I would use an old tactics video game model where 5ft reach melee could only hit the 4 adjacent squares where 10ft weapons could hit corners and 2 squares away north east south west. The problem then lied in the fact that now, area effects would be diamond shape, and those are a pain in the ass to count and I am attempting to keep things simple. I don't want people counting squares by halves. The 4e everything is square idea is fine, except that it doesn't match with my rule of 4 man on 1 with 5ft weapons...

So that got me thinking about the hex, it seems to solve my issue wonderfully. 6 man surround is a little more realistic than 8, though id still prefer 4, and area of effects are round and simple. My issue is that I never used one so am weary and unsure what I am getting myself into. A part of me wonders why they are not used more often.

[Stubbazubba]

Hexes are a lot more work to produce by hand. Other than that, I find them superior in pretty much every way.