Who cares, right? Well, your players will care if they travel a week north, a week east, and then travel home southwest because theyвЂ™re not actually going to get home. Instead itвЂ™s 30 degrees south of west, which is about 15 degrees off (or 60 degrees south, which is off 15 degrees the other way). So the next step is obvious: why not just make a hex map and not tell the players that theyвЂ™re on a hex map? Well, turns out thereвЂ™s a very good reason: On a hex map, southwest isnвЂ™t really southwest, or at least not without a lot of painful jiggering it isnвЂ™t.

Yes, you can make house navigation rules to shift the effectiveness back towards landmarks (basically add a big penalty to your navigation roll if youвЂ™re not using landmarks), but thatвЂ™s an extra layer of complexity. Hex maps (from the playerвЂ™s perspective) badly undermine that dynamic because itвЂ™s far easier to just say вЂњI travel a hex east, then a hex northeast, then a hex northвЂќ than to pretend you donвЂ™t have access to the convenience of hexes on your map. If I described a ridge they saw and they would point at their map and say вЂњhey, we must be hereвЂќ I would shrug and neither confirm nor deny. No hexes, no squares вЂ“ just an open terrain map вЂ¦ they would say вЂњmarch southwest into the woods for three miles, looking for a big treeвЂќ and then weвЂ™d check Wilderness Lore to see if they went anywhere close to where they intended. I want more of the feel of players navigating by landmark, finding points of interest and traveling from one to another because sight navigation is easier than heading directly to the end destination, similar to Ben RobbinsвЂ™ West Marches game ( see comment #7 here). Easy to scale the map up or down and put things roughly where they need to beД«UT, in my case I donвЂ™t actually want to RUN a game on a hex map from the playerвЂ™s point of view.Easy to judge density of points of interest, also due to the built in scale.Easy to judge distance due to the built in scale.There are three main advantages to overland mapping with a hex map, as I see it: But at least this time I think IвЂ™ve actually gotten somewhere with it: namely IвЂ™ve decided on an alternative to overland mapping with a hex map.

As usual, rather than actually prep, I find it much more useful and productive to agonize and fret over how exactly I should go about prepping until the desire to prep fades away.

Pathfinder hex map maker