Allright Veeky Forums the great debate

I've tried with both. Most games are set up for squares.

Octagons with squares in every corner.

Hexes are objectively better but are also for nerds

>Not using superior Japanese abstract battle maps
Gaijin pleb wwwwwww

>abstract
It's just two areas with objects around. It's simple, but not really abstract.

>Not using a fish tank filled with glycerol to simulate 3D movement
Pleb

That literally the exact definition of abstract.

This. Square are, in every way, much easier to work with than hexes.

Squaragons.

Neither. Use a tape measure.

THIS

Tiled octagons.

Theatre of the mind

>Tiled
Get your magical realm out of here

I use a whiteboard to determine where everyone is at the start of combat and its all free form from there

Squares for dungeons hexagons for wilderness.

Freestanding terrain, miniatures and a ruler.

Lizards.

GURPS, so hexes

so hexes but broken up

Hexes.

Squares are for squares.

whatever the game uses for whatever game,but as a point of preference, if the game allows 8 directions of movement, and doesn't use 2 moves for a diagonal, squares are just fine.

This is a bitch to do all the time, and would best be saved for when no other method works... or if there is a good digital program for it, there was one game I played, makai kingdom, and honestly I enjoyed that system more then I have any other for srpg's

Each lizard touches six other lizards. Mechanically, they're no different from hexes.

Squares can do everything hexes can and more, but hexes are more aesthetically pleasing in general.

It's literally not.

So it's the superior mat choice.

I use triangles

Hexes with isometric view. Once I saw buildings drawed like that on a hex map and it worked pretty well.

Hexes for outdoors, squares for buildings, theater of the mind when the situation is simple enough that it doesn't matter.

Triangle master race, reporting in. 2D tiling shape's Gods among men.

Squaragon

I map out my dungeons with graph paper, so squares are easiest to use for me. I like hexes more, but it has too small an effect on gameplay to bother translating or buying the more expensive hex graph paper.

It is an abstraction of a more complicated situation. It is the general idea of how a battle would look like. As such, it is abstract.
Get bent.

Hexes. The only downside is they don't fit neatly against walls, but that's easy enough to work around.

It’s hip to be square

Squares. Hexes are better if the tile-movement is the primary way to understand the scene, but I use measurements of distance, and it is much quicker to figure out how far everything is on a square grid than on a hex grid.

What do you think abstract means?

I use this but I really need a list of random objects
Trying to come up with objects on the fly has had me and my players just reusing the same shit too much

So many chandeliers and rocks

Heptagons.

What? That's not what the user said.

It doesn't mean "two areas with objects around"

> not using 4+ dimensions when mapping...
Do you even space/time distort?

Pentagons

Underrated post

>Squares can do everything hexes can
Not keep distances between diagonal directions consistent.

That looks retarded but the cool kind of retarded.

Hexagons are just better for movement purposes. Wargames lean towards them for a reason. If you really don't care then just go with squares.

Ah, but hexagons cannot be seamlessy extended to n-dimentional tesellations with a single shape, unlike triangles and squares.

Wait, hexagons do tessellate unless I'm misunderstanding what you're trying to say.

My feelings on the matter are clear.

That is actually pretty neat. I'd play on it.

I'd play on it but I can't think how....
I can imagine it being great for a game where you have to cross the room by dancing the waltz.

(Away I go to write a dance centric dungeon crawler.)

>Allright Veeky Forums the great debate.
>Hexagon or Square?
Depends on a few factors, largely the scale of the map, the degree of detail, the type of terrain, and the type of game.

Hexes more closely imitate real distance, and are usually best when portraying units that travel in vectors at a real-world speed. IE: an army traveling across a country measured at a speed of such-and-such per hour, or a caravan crossing a desert at so many miles per day.

When you working on the scale of a building as opposed to a country, squares are generally more useful, especially since rooms are almost always square themselves. You get some whackiness if your characters can only move a certain number of squares per round, since you're usually either working in Manhattan distance (in which case your character is slower than normal when traveling diagonally) or not (in which case your character is faster traveling diagonally). This might not be a real problem, per se, but it kinda fucks with immersion.

Speaking of "Manhattan distance," squares are almost unequivocally preferable when dealing with modern cityscapes.

Hexes for tacticool
No grid for narrative driven
Squares for simplicity

Yes, hexagons tessellate... In 2D

In 3D, there's no equivalent of a regular hexagon, unlike the square (cube), and the triangle (tetrahedron, also octahedron [somewhat]).

In 4D, the square and cube still have an equivalent, the tesseract, the triangle and tetrahedron have the 4-simplex and other 2 figures, while the octahedron has the 16-cell.

In 5 dimensions, the square, cube and tesseract still have an equivalent, the triangles have the 5-simplex and there's a figure related to the 120-cell (a 4D thingie made of tetrahedrons)

In 6 dimensions the same happens, in 7 dimensions it continues, and so on and so forth forever.

Of all this, there happens to be a curious coincidence. You can make tilings with squares. You can make tilings with cubes. You can make tilings with tesseracts. You can make tilings with the n-dimensional squares for any euclidian space of n dimensions.

Hexagons cannot even be properly extended to 3D

Square but diagonal movement and measurement count as two.

Square but each square costs base 2 points, diagonal costs 3 points.

Then so are squares.

What am I looking at here? Reverse search is not helpful

I...

...please don't tell me I messed up the math somewhere, that would be embarrasing.

I play a lot of BattleTech, and it uses hexes, so I- oh, huh, beat me to the joke. Fuck. Well, hexes are still awesome, so that's cool.

For RPGs, I generally don't use battlemaps at all, they're too much damn trouble to build and cart around. If I do though, it's in squares, since most games are in squares and converting everything to hexes on top of making battlemaps is a MASSIVE pain in my ass and I don't have the energy in the day to do all that shit.

Yeah, neither do squares though (when doing circular rooms)

Both their weaknesses, none of their strengths.

I didn't know 7th dimensional beings browsed Veeky Forums

You never know when you need to divide an n-dimensional space into infinite equal sections without leaving any space left.

Besides, I happen to know that 3D beings browse Veeky Forums, and hexagons are still inadequate to work on that space, as opposed to cubes.

I'm sorry, I can't give the (you) 's you deserve, but the smart and handsome anons you suggest:
Squares for indoors, Hexagons for outdoors and wilderness. That's what's best.

I sometimes use hexes to denote baronies on the campaign map.

Otherwise - neither.
Real Move (TM) for the win!

But nobody uses cubes either. Most just choose to ignore the 3d aspect of combat and put things on a flat plane. Even games set in space they use flat surfaces.

Ryuutama

Depends on the setting and what the fuck I'm doing with it. Have a problem with that?

GOOD.

The sooner you realize my games have nothing to do with your retardation the better I'll feel about it.

Pros:
>Best method of meassuring
>Instantly eliminates all discussion if done right
Cons:
>You're going to want to do it all the time
>There is no way a non heavily tactical player or DM can do this without wasting time and looking like a massive autist for wanting to have everything in the exact position
>No, you can't get around this by using lasers although they are rad as fuck.

>Hey, user, what do you prefer? Coke or Pepsi?
>DEPENDS ON WHAT I FEEL LIKE DRINKING, FAGGOT, GOT A PROBLEM WITH IT
dude
relax

Also, Holograms or light measured in concentric circles, cover meassured in shadows cast from small flashlights. It's a bitch to set, but it works fast as fuck, and gives you complete control of the battlefield.

Top is ryuutama battlefield. Front area can melee attack only front area unless it's empty. iirc back area can shoot to either enemy front or back. You can swap areas to heal up and such. Hroup comes up with objects to populate battlefield, objects give you +1 if you include them in your action description. Also initiative is AC.

Bottom is shinobigami
Every round players chose "Plot number" in secret (It's PvP game) - it acts as you initiative and you SP for ability use. But if you don't roll your action resolution (2d6) above your Plot number, you are fucked. Abilities have range: melee is usually 1 ranged 2-3, group ~4, so if you are too "far" on the plot number you can't attack.

Gotta get my vote in.
for DnD it is most simple, easy, and fun to use squares. No reason or real benefits to hexes in a table top.

...

Shitty designer/programmer here:

Would it butthurt the wargamers too much if I did squares instead of hexes? Would it matter that much?

...shut up I'm having a hard time with hex programming in the back end and the html frontend...

>...shut up I'm having a hard time with hex programming
There's a really neat trick I read about a couple of years back, when I was into game jams. Rather than viewing a hex grid as a rectangular grid with a "zigzag" added, you can look at it as a slice through a 3D volume (x+y+z=0). The best description I've found is here:
redblobgames.com/grids/hexagons/

It's mostly the matter of "Okay, so how to I figure out neighbors so I can calculate distance and automagic spreading of population units" on the back end, and "Jesus christ how the frickle frackle do I do dynamic/procedural hexmap in HTML" on the front end.

Like, I even know how to store the buggers in the DB; normal columns and rows.

I suppose I could give it another shot sometime, but I've been thrown back to square one and scribblings on how to turn all the ideas I have into a working cohesive whole.

Of course, I am trying to mix Paradox Interactive mechanics with Dawn of Worlds while allowing for player-created and dynamic cultures/resources/civilizations/races, so it may just be a tad bit ambitious.

Just read the link. Bookmarked. Holy bejesus some of those examples are simple as balls.

fuck off

user, teach us your ways.

>Hexes for tacticool
>No grid for narrative driven
>Squares for simplicity

triangles for....?

That's a really good resource. Thanks user.

please explain to an idiot trying to devise a mass combat system what's the difference between tacticool hexes and simplicity squares

The center of each hex is equidistant to the center of each adjacent hex. If you consider the 8 neighboring squares of a square grid, the diagonals have you covering more ground.

Which is why in 3.5/Path/4E DnD, every other diagonal counts as 10 feet/2 squares, instead of just one.

Yes, i got the basic geometric differences between hexes and squares, the thing I don't know, mostly for lack of experience, is which field are they best employed at.
For example, is there a scale where is better to use hexes, or squares? A particular situation? One is ALWAYS better than the other? And so on.

Thanks for answering though.

hexes are weird in buildings, sicne they don't fit the walls perfectly. Other then that it's just preference i think.

Dude. Just read the thread.

>Hexagon or Square?
Both sucks.

True distance measurement is the only proper way to go and gives you greatest freedom.