Critique this region hex map I'm working on?

[Shipyard Locked]

Who wants to mercilessly flay this D&D region hex map I'm working on?

 

[CRKrueger]

1. What font is that, looks like the original Macintosh.
2. Pillar Waste?
3. If you care about that sort of thing, this part...

...seems like a river violation.

 

[Shipyard Locked]

1. What font is that, looks like the original Macintosh.

It's 'system' which comes default with MS Paint. I appreciate it because it is resistant to resolution changes and visual distortions.

2. Pillar Waste?

A fictional terrain type I'm tooling around with. Stone spikes the size of sequoias, clustered together in rocky wastelands.

Not sure if it's interesting enough though. It would basically function like a dried up forest, ideal for barbarian tribes to hide among and eke out a harsh living. Maybe I need something more fantastical...

3. If you care about that sort of thing, this part...

...seems like a river violation.

In what way? Rivers are definitely not my strong suit. I figured it's actually two different rivers, one flowing from those mountains in the south and branching two ways to connect in the west with the river that flows from the lake in the north. I'm tempted to label the northern region some kind of delta.

 

[TristramEvans]

could use a dash of colour ;)

 

[The Butcher]

Keyed hexes are nicely spread out (though I'm strongly tempted to do what Alex Macris calls "dynamic encounter placement" in my next sandbox game) and evocatively named.

The physical terrain does look sort of all over the place at a glance. May I be so bold as to suggest Rob Conley's magnum opus?

 

[Shipyard Locked]

could use a dash of colour ;)

Easier to print this way though. Maybe later.

The physical terrain does look sort of all over the place at a glance.

It's the forests and the bends in the rivers, isn't it?

 

[Kalex]

I'd do 6 mile hexes for region. Standing at ground level on a flat plain, the horizon is about 3 miles away. That means that the terrain symbol for a hex holds true for the whole hex and you have to move past the middle point of a hex to get a glimpse of the terrain in the next hex.

Benoist could probably do a better job explaining that I can.

 

[Benoist]

Yeah the original scale of Outdoors Survival was 5 miles an hex and carried over into AD&D by osmosis, but I agree with the consensus that emerged from the OSR and made 6 miles an hex a standard. When you are standing on a flat surface with a flat horizon before you, you can see about 3 miles away. So in terms of abstraction a 6-mile hex makes sense. You are standing in the middle of the hex and that's what you see, the general abstract nature of the terrain immediately around you.

Now if you have tall mountains and other things going on far away on the horizon, that also means you can see those features from a distance. I generally indicate these prominent features as well when the party explores the Wilderness.

 

[Shipyard Locked]

I'm nervous about reducing the hex size to 6 because the two functional cities (#2 and #5) have been skirmishing for years and are gearing up for another war. That would reduce the distance between them from 160 miles to 120 if they go through the mountain pass, and that's not including the unmarked multitude of villages that spread out around each one.

5e (the ruleset I'm most likely to use for this) defaults to humans on foot covering about 24 miles in a day, so with 6 mile hexes they could have troops at each other's doors in about 5 days.

Should I worry about that?

 

[Kalex]

I wouldn't. Besides armies move only as fast as their slowest component, must pitch and strike camp each day, and like to secure supply lines as much as possible. No army is going from one city to the next without a weeks long campaign intervening I'd think.

 

[Benoist]

Yeah an army will move much much more slowly than a couple of guys on foot walking on their own with moderately heavy gear. The army will only be as fast as it's slowest components. As to whether that should worry you or not, that entirely depends what you have in my for your game, and what you want the set up to achieve in that context.

 

[Shipyard Locked]

Alright, I'll modify the hex scale.

Anyone have a suggested fantastic terrain to replace the pillar wastes? Ideally still "badlands, but with a twist"?

 

[Benoist]

I'm not trying to suggest you *should* change the scale to be clear. You could just live with your initial scale and it'd be fine, really.

Just explaining the logic behind the 6-mile hex and why I like it/use it as my default for regional maps.

 

[opaopajr]

Water basics bug me here.

Where's the rain shadow in the center mts? Where are hills when you don't want to suggest high altitudes, snow packs, and rain shadows? Why are rivers reaching out to other rivers and splitting their streams (instead of meandering floodplains & oxbows)? River violations?...

I think a basic geography course is a fantastic investment on environmental features probability. Then, when you want exceptions, it gives you a more informed reference point to follow the ramifications.

 

[Shipyard Locked]

Water basics bug me here.

Where's the rain shadow in the center mts? Where are hills when you don't want to suggest high altitudes, snow packs, and rain shadows? Why are rivers reaching out to other rivers and splitting their streams (instead of meandering floodplains & oxbows)? River violations?...

I think a basic geography course is a fantastic investment on environmental features probability. Then, when you want exceptions, it gives you a more informed reference point to follow the ramifications.

Darn, looks like I've got some homework to do. :p

So, rain shadow *googles a bit* I guess I need to figure out wind patterns then? Should it just come in from that ocean to the left?

I skipped listing hills on this because I figured plains sort of covered them if one assumes anything near the mountains is, er, 'hillier' than the rest. I was worried things were visually cluttered as is. Wrong move?

I didn't figure the rivers as splitting each other but merging before hitting the ocean. Part of the problem is the direction of the water flow is in my head because it's hard to show that on a hex map, especially without detailed topography cues. Naturally they all go downhill, it's just that downhill sometimes leads to more downhill in another direction... right?

 

[opaopajr]

Wind direction, assuming Earth standard, is pretty easy once you underwtand climate bands and latitude of your world. It's really a great investment to do a basic geography/geology course (possibly free online from your local library). Because with a sample of one we cannot say anything for 100% surety throughout the universe, BUT it gives a solid grounding for coherency for those who have a passing familiariety with Earth's fluctuating systems. Also, it gives you strength in finding exciting plausibilities for "coherency exceptions" on your map -- such as "this split river is due to converging upon a massive natural spring on a flat alluvial plain, splitting and oxbows is common like a massive river delta."

 

[Shipyard Locked]

Alright, I'll start by reducing river splits and moving the forests around the mountains a bit.

 

[Necrozius]

I like the idea of the Pillar Wastes. Especially if they are petrified trees, giant bones or weird hollow structures from an ancient, long forgotten civilisation. If they've been there for ages, you could have some very interesting creatures living there: a whole ecology around these structures.

Perhaps they extend into the earth as far down as they reach up above...

 

[Shipyard Locked]

Perhaps they extend into the earth as far down as they reach up above...

Oooh, now we're cooking with gas! If they're hollow too it will help to distinguish the place from a mere forest.

And hey, if I figure out a justification for filling them with sand...

 

[Shipyard Locked]

Current version. Thoughts?

 

[opaopajr]

Better.

Sandwich criticism!

Good.
I can deduce a rainshadow on the central mountains!
I can also deduce an opposite rainshadow on the bottom mountains!
18 hex by 6 mile/hex = 108 mile central corridor. I deduce a climatic band of high-moisture eastern jet stream slamming into a mountain funnel ending in the "Pillar Wastes." (it would explain the lake in the middle as its own locked basin collecting the last of high rising air.)

Bad/Confused.
River from 9. Ultimecia to SC. Trap City of Sayerclay... baffled why it doesn't spill into the nearby MASSIVE swamp of TH. Three Helm Palace. It'd be OK if separate river from SC. Sayerclay originated from those mountains and left the map to the right.
River MS. Muttscline to 8. Templethove Town still baffles. Maybe those are two lakes near 8. Templethove and the topographical drop off is so severe it creates a massive delta by MS. Muttscline? Something like one of the 5 sacred Indian rivers (i.e. Ganga) that sharply leave the Himalayas down to the Sunderbans?
City of Augustermain 2. hex confuses me. That is one hell of a sharp rise in under 3 miles to cut it off from the ocean, which gets to my next issue...
Nowhere near enough cities at the mouth of rivers, river mergers, or similar loci. 2. Augustermain should be at the mouth, another city needs to be at the end of river FH. Ruins of Far Hope by 6. Meetlicum. 4. Freujhal makes more sense at the lake, etc.

Good again.
A funneled moisture rich jet stream slamming into "Pillar Wastes" of Madness! does leave room for air moving above or below the wastes, and now the Forest Plateau makes a bit more sense...
Forests, Lakes, and Swamps everywhere in the center make a bit more sense, assuming a corrugated, undulating hill/mtn landscape (like the Appalachian Mts.).

OK. Less about the Ruins, more about the Cities and roads that interconnect them, please!

 

[CRKrueger]

The thing to also remember about "river violations" is that come up with general geographical rule of thumb and somewhere there will be an exception. The only thing that matters is water flows downhill. However, while doing that, things need to merge more like the two tops of a Y coming into the bottom, and less right angles or worse.

Cataclysms, Gods, terraforming by aliens in prehistory...there's a hundred reasons why this planet wasn't formed like earth before you get to all the ways it could have been fundamentally changed. It's always good to have someone with good instinctive knowledge of geology and world-making go over the map, but you don't need to make everything perfect.

"Whoa, there's no rainshadow for this mountain..."
"Yeah, that's odd, isn't it?"

Could be people on both sides of the mountain pray to the Mountain God, so they get rain. People write hundreds of pages speaking to how magic works and has effects on their settings, but tend to forget the effects of the Gods.
"Why is it raining only on this side of the valley?"
"Because Crom tests us to make us stronger."
That can be a 100% true statement.

Of course, you're specifically asking people to tear the map apart, so that's fine, just keep your actual world in mind as much or even more than you do Earth. Because...your world isn't Earth. ;)

 

[Shipyard Locked]

OK, new version with some changes to try and account for of OpaopaJr commentary, but first some responses:

River MS. Muttscline to 8. Templethove Town still baffles. Maybe those are two lakes near 8. Templethove and the topographical drop off is so severe it creates a massive delta by MS. Muttscline?

Yes, that's the intent.

OK. Less about the Ruins, more about the Cities and roads that interconnect them, please!

Err, how do I do roads legibly on a black and white hex map? :oops:

For everything else, I default to CRKrueger's "Fantasy world bitch, I'm hand-wavin' away this sucka!"

 

[CRKrueger]

For everything else, I default to CRKrueger's "Fantasy world bitch, I'm hand-wavin' away this sucka!"

Heh, not quite hand-waving, for stuff that's downright odd you should have a reason (or at least pretend you do ). It's just ok to have some weirdness in the world itself, especially if in the history there has been cataclysms, godwars, etc.

 

[opaopajr]

However, a little Deus Ex Machina goes a very long way, even more so than oregano. So... just be aware.

Look at Dragonlance's world of ruin and comparing it to other famous setting maps, even Dragonlance's own world before the cataclysm. It felt less evocative, and in turn less memorable, because it looked like reality in a blender without rhyme or reason. Similarly 4e Forgotten Realms map was similarly a forgettable hodgepodge of agglutinated crap. And pre-4e FR Fearûn, as memorable as it was, was not what I would call the most coherent (to us) geography, replete as it was with so much "and magic/gods did it!" scars upon the land.

Like any game's ethereal dreamlands, there is such a thing as incoherent and unrelatable. Keep that forefront of your design mind. Prime material planes should focus on a material basis at the very least.

 

[Shipyard Locked]

Fair enough.
What did you think of the latest round of changes? And how would you draw roads readably?

 

[opaopajr]

Sorta wish lands North of Templethove extended off the map. Also if the mts did sorta the same (or there was a way of designating super tall mts). That way you get the suggestion of torrential downpour.

Further, about roads, if the lands North of Templethove are suggested, it means that perhaps there's no natural inlet to that Northern bay ending in massive swamp. That makes mountain pass crossings all the more precious. So for roads: think like a merchant. Or better: think like a warlord needing to supply towns, forts, and spots of civilization.

Next, assume all rivers on your map are boat navigable (otherwise people wouldn't bother demarcating them; raftable creeks are not worth marking, let alone fighting for... much,). Rivers are roads of mass shipping at the cheapest -- they are worth killing for. Whatever ends up your desmesnes (aha, sorry, "domains") note where people's conflict about river highway access.

Finally note where river highways lack connection to important nodes of civilization power. If you cannot connect by water, you connect by land. This all assumes cheapest, highest volume transport goes according to Earth standard: water>land>air.

 

[Shipyard Locked]

Thank you.

 

[Baulderstone]

I'm not going to weigh in on map design, but since it came up earlier, here is a good explanation of why 6 mile hexes are cool. That doesn't even mention the bonus in D&D B/X that daily movement is 18 mile. An even three hexes.