Black Blade Publishing hex pads

[GRWelsh]

Allan -- I notice that your Black Blade Publishing hex pads have a large hex broken up into medium hexes six across which are each in turn broken up into smaller hexes six across. That would be perfect if the large hex was 36 miles across as it would break down to 6 mile and 1 mile hexes -- which, incidentally, is the scale suggested in the D&D expert set that I started with! I've used that scale when mapping my own original campaign worlds. But for the World of Greyhawk, if the large hex is 30 miles it breaks down to 5 mile hexes that then break down into hexes 4400 feet across (a little over 4/5ths of a mile or more precisely 0.8333... miles). Do you have any hex pads with different breakdowns? If the large hex broke down into 6 across and the medium hexes broke down into 5 across that would be perfect for the Darlene map hexes.

[grodog]

Hi Gary—

We actually designed our hex pads to be cross-compatible with both Greyhawk and the Wilderlands of High Fantasy, in terms of the size of the hex grids themselves. And since the WL uses 5 mile hexes, six smaller hexes per larger hex was the easiest way to support both setting scales. That said, for scaling purposes, you can obviously set the scales to whatever you want.

We have had a number of folks ask about different size grids or a varying number of hexes per grid vs. our 6–and often to align to the six-mile hex—but I’ve never had anyone ask for a differing number of hexes in the grids—it’s not something we’ve considered before, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a hex sheet product with varying grid groupings.

There are custom hex sheet generators available online, so you should be able to create varied hex grids and print them at home, I think.

Allan.

[GRWelsh]

Allan -- What you say makes sense. The reason I was asking is because for a Darlene hex of 30 miles to be broken down into either 5 or 6 mile hexes and then broken down again into 1 mile hexes, you would need two different scales on the same sheet. It isn't that big of a deal, and they are very nice hex pads. But I was just thinking in terms of each big hex being a Darlene hex. Alternately, the medium hexes could be treated as the 30 mile Darlene hexes, with the big hex being a region to focus on. Then the reverse side could be a blow up of a small 5 mile hex since it is 25 hexes across each of those even smaller hexes could be 1/5 of a mile or 1056 feet. What I wanted to do was zero in on certain areas of the campaign so that I stay consistent in my descriptions of roads, rivers, bridges, traveling distances, etc.

[grodog]

Makes sense. I used the same math you did when drilling down using the three-layer campaign hex sheets: see grodog.blogspot.com/2023/01/why-greyhawk-in-2023.html for a larger scale and grodog.blogspot.com/2020/02/renovating-the-monastery-in-greyhawk-part-1.html for a smaller scale than the straight math.

Allan.