Update and WIP

 

 

 Well, it certainly has been eventful, this year. Shortly after my last post, far too long ago, some things changed at work and I was "promoted" with many more responsibilities and no real authority.

The result has been that instead of the usual 9 to 10 hour work day, I've been working 12 to 14 hours a day regularly, essentially doing two jobs and getting paid for the cheaper one.

However, my employer did kick in the cost for additional college courses in the way of training and the job I am primarily performing is an experience you just cannot buy, but have to be assigned in order to gain it.

So, while exhausted on nearly every level, I am benefiting, in the long run.

Yet, this has not prevented me from continuing to work on what has turned out to be a nearly decade long project for my Imagi-Nations world.

One of the bigger issues that one tackles in design is how to represent the map of the areas; how to show but also USE the map for both storytelling and war gaming. Many RPGers and wargame grognards use hex maps, others prefer maps with squares, and still others use realistic maps and measure distances to points on the map with a ruler.

While each of these means have their pros and cons, I've always preferred a world map or regional map which areas depict an expected war game terrain suitable for the world map terrain shown. For example, if my hex map shows woods in a hex, then I expect that when war gaming in that hex, most of the map is wooded.

This is great and usually works just fine. Except, I do not war game on a table shaped like a hex and while I do own some Hexon hex terrain, the 100mm hexes are not great for larger scale games. I think they will work for some miniatures up to 15mm, but even then, the basing may make this unwieldy.

So, I decided to marry hexes and squares as shown below. The hex is roughly 10 miles or 5 "leagues" (in my world a league is only 2 miles in length, not 3) flat to flat, representing roughly a county in size. Each hex on the world map then has a large square-ish rectangle within it, wherein the terrain within the hex is depicted. 

This large rectangle is further divided by 20 smaller squares, each roughly one league in length from side to side, but the area of each of these squares is more of an approximation of 1/20th of the area of the hex itself. 

Similarly, each of the 20 squares is divided into 9 smaller squares, each being about 2/3 mile square. 

Doing the math: 1 hex of 10 miles flat to flat has an area of 259.8 miles; 1 "league" square is roughly 4 square miles in area, and the smallest square has an area of just over 4/10ths of a square mile.

This means that on my 6'x4' game table, I can have a war game area of 2 miles by 1 and 1/3 mile and every inch on the table would be about equal to 50 yards in distance.

Since it is all a rough representation, I can use base sizes of 40mm, 50mm, or 60mm, depending upon the game system, and they can be said to occupy about 100 yards of frontage.

Of course, I can scale up or down from there, but this gives me something to work from, as I have armies of miniatures 2mm-32mm in size.

Also, keeping the war game area in squares helps me use most any variation of The Portable Wargame and have it scale properly to my map.

As I lack a proper drawing program, I had to mash up an example in MS Word, which was not ideal.

Yes, it is not exactly ideal, or but it works as an approximation. Were I truly gifted as a graphic artist, I'd have this image more proper, in that the rectangle would be fully square as would every other square within it.However, with this in place, I have something to use, moving forward, as I play my solo games  using my Imagi-Nations maps.

I am still thinking through the ramifications of my last post in that I am considering some other shifts here and there, which would require changes to the types and values of the modifiers. I am also looking at another series of outcomes that fit better to with the objective of the design.