Hexcrawling

[Rollinhand]

You can find a nice couple of hexcrawls in the download section of this blog http://matt-landofnod.blogspot.co.uk/
And a nice wilderness adventure called Gone Fishin (not hex based) here http://www.pfoorumi.net/beernbarbarians/
Enjoy

[shadowmane]

I've been doing some research today on units of measure in the English System. It turns out that 1 inch is equal to 3 barleycorns set end to end. Going up from there, 12 inches equal a foot. 3 feet equal a yard. 6 feet equal a fathom (this is fingertip to fingertip with your arms outstretched). One chain equals 11 fathoms. A furlong was 10 chains. And a mile was 8 furlongs.

So, if that wasn't confusing enough, lets put this into action on a grid. First, lets take the square grids used in dungeoncrawls. If you make 1 square equal to 1 fathom, you set your system up immediately to adjust to the English System (this isn't the Imperial System, which came later, but the Anglo-Saxon system).

Now, applying this to a hexcrawl, you make your smallest hex equal to one fathom, just like in the dungeon. Therefore, a town would be set up on a grid of one fathom (six foot) hexes. This makes each hex the space one character would realisticly occupy at any given time.

The next hex size up would be a hex with a 10 hexes grid contained in it, equal to 1 furlong. The next hex size up would be a hex with an 8 hex grid contained in it equal to a mile. Finally, you would have the a hex with a 6 hex grid in it equal to the 6 mile hex used in a lot of hexcrawls (interestingly, a league is 3 miles, which would make each hex two leagues... unless you made each hex a league, which would create a different measurement going upward and possibly downward).

So what's the point?

The point is, if you are going to immerse yourself into the medieval world, you need to go with medieval systems of measurement. If you are in France, find their system of measure and use that. Germany had theirs too. So did Italy. The metric system didn't even exist until the very end of the 18th century. It is NOT a medieval system.

Furthermore, with hexes, using multiples of 3 makes sense, given you're using a 6 sided polygon. Since 2.5 miles is about the extent of what someone can see at ground level on unobstructed plains, the 6 mile hex needs to be the base of the system. So if we want to break the 6 mile hex down, it makes sense to do it according to the measurement system based around the mile of 5280 feet. All based on the kernel of barley.

If you use 4 to 1 hex paper (that's four hexes within a hex... attached is a document I have downloaded with the hex ratio I have in mind), that would be two furlongs per hex. You can do interesting breakdowns using chains, or rods, or acres. I do, personally, like the idea of using the fathom if one is to use a battlemat.

One additional piece of information here for those on the metric system. 1 furlong is equal to 201.168 meters. 5 furlongs are equal to 1 km.