What it says on the tin: Why not use triangular grid maps instead of hexagonal ones? Players could move point to point instead of space to space (offering virtually the same movement options), you could put stuff in the triangles (players could encounter it from any corner), and I could think of a few ways to make a proximity based encounter table here.

1,2: North triangle.
3-12: Each of the other triangles in your "hex," in like fashion.
13: Move the center north out of your "hex" and roll 1d12.
14-18: Move the center each of the other directions and roll 1d12.
19, 20: Roll twice.

I'd probably just make a transparent template for this and lay it over the map, but the point is that every point the players could possibly occupy has a unique encounter table based on what's nearby and how far away it is. Also, rolling tells you where stuff came from and you can track it back to its origin and all that.

Good? Bad? Indifferent?

EDIT: An illustration:

Some game (might have been GURPS) used triangular tesselations for mapping planets. I think it used an icosahedron - i.e. a D20. Draw out the sides on a piece of paper draw in the continents, oceans, major islands etec. The cool part was you could then cut it out, fold it up, and create a 3D map of the world.

I'm not understanding the advantage to this that you are seeing over a square grid, an offset squared grid, or hexagonal lattic. If you could add a picture or sketch that would really help.

EDIT: Here's the idea.

That icosahedron idea looks pretty cool. Might work well for seafaring and such too.

There wouldn't be much advantage over a hex grid, and this would function somewhat similarly to one in practice. There's a small advantage of granularity in stocking them (maybe), and in having three possible positions interact with the contents of a space since you can do so from any corner (maybe). The random encounters by transparent overlay is kind of a separate idea, but it might work better with triangles than with other grid types (again, only maybe).

It kind of just came to me and I had to write it down somewhere. But also somewhere public on the off chance that this is just dumb.

I've added an illustration to the OP.

Ah! Buckminster Fuller's 'Dymaxion' map projection format lives!

Bucky's concept for maps has some advantages over the usual Mercator projection; there's less distortion of the land masses, for example.

http://www.bfi.org/about-fuller/big-ideas/dymaxion-world/dymaxion-map

- chirine

The illustration definitely helps.

This looks like what you are suggesting presumes you are already mapping in hexes and your template gives you triangular subdivisions of the existing hexagons.

• 1-12 locates an encounter or event in one of the six triangular regions inside the hex you are in.

• 13-18 locates an encounter or event in one of the adjacent hexes and you then roll to determine which of the six triangular regions inside the adjacent hex.

• 19-20 give you the chance for a double encounter or event and do something with the last two numbers on a D20.

I'd probably ignore the 19-20 result and instead roll three D6s in different colors - say red, white, and blue. In part because I have lots of D6s and in part because Honor+Intrigue (and before that Star Wars D6) has me on a D6 kick.

• Red Die: 1-4 encounter is in your current hex, 5-6 encounter is in an adjacent hex.

• White Die: 1-6 gives the location of triangular region of the hex for the encounter.

• Blue Die: only required if the result on the Red Die is a 5-6. In this case, the Blue Die gives the location of the adjacent hex and you use the result of the White Die to give the triangular region in the hex.

If you don't like rolling a die that may not give a result, i.e. the Blue Die if the Red Die result is 1-4, then you can always wait to roll the Blue Die until after you know the result of the Red Die...but I would find it faster to just roll all three at once.

Although I sometimes find less gaming paraphernalia is better than more, I can definitely see some people liking the template.

Quote from: chirine ba kal;802493Ah! Buckminster Fuller's 'Dymaxion' map projection format lives!

Oh sure Bucky popularized it, but did he put it in an RPG?  

Quote from: Bren;802498The illustration definitely helps.

This looks like what you are suggesting presumes you are already mapping in hexes and your template gives you triangular subdivisions of the existing hexagons.

• 1-12 locates an encounter or event in one of the six triangular regions inside the hex you are in.

• 13-18 locates an encounter or event in one of the adjacent hexes and you then roll to determine which of the six triangular regions inside the adjacent hex.

• 19-20 give you the chance for a double encounter or event and do something with the last two numbers on a D20.

I'd probably ignore the 19-20 result and instead roll three D6s in different colors - say red, white, and blue. In part because I have lots of D6s and in part because Honor+Intrigue (and before that Star Wars D6) has me on a D6 kick.

• Red Die: 1-4 encounter is in your current hex, 5-6 encounter is in an adjacent hex.

• White Die: 1-6 gives the location of triangular region of the hex for the encounter.

• Blue Die: only required if the result on the Red Die is a 5-6. In this case, the Blue Die gives the location of the adjacent hex and you use the result of the White Die to give the triangular region in the hex.

If you don't like rolling a die that may not give a result, i.e. the Blue Die if the Red Die result is 1-4, then you can always wait to roll the Blue Die until after you know the result of the Red Die...but I would find it faster to just roll all three at once.

Although I sometimes find less gaming paraphernalia is better than more, I can definitely see some people liking the template.

Yes and no on the hex map bit. You can be at the "corner" of a hex instead of its "center" and as a result have a different set of six triangles in your not-quite-a-hex.

I do like this rolling method, though. Results are similar too, though I'm a fan of double encounters (so you can run into traders+bandits or soldiers+bandits without having to write those out as unique encounters).

Quote from: beejazz;802507Yes and no on the hex map bit. You can be at the "corner" of a hex instead of its "center" and as a result have a different set of six triangles in your not-quite-a-hex.

So what you have is a hex map with marked hexes and a sort of ad-hoc hex formed by using the corner of a marked hex as a new center. Gotcha.

I like the possibility of multiple encounters as well. Either grouped together into one encounter or spaced out during the time in the hex so that the players can't just say "Well we had our encounter for today it's safe to take off our armor and go to sleep now." I also like the idea of seeing signs of an encounter (tracks, old camps, battle site, smoke from a fire, sounds of raucous singing, etc.) rather than the creatures themselves. There are a couple of good blogs that covered this idea. Here is one of them

So I’d add an additional die roll to cover an encounter being just sights and sounds, an actual creature(s), and multiple encounters (roll twice, thrice, etc.). Maybe something like roll 1D6-3. If the result is 0 or less you get sights and sounds only. Otherwise the total is the number of encounters you get.

Quote from: beejazz;802507Yes and no on the hex map bit. You can be at the "corner" of a hex instead of its "center" and as a result have a different set of six triangles in your not-quite-a-hex.

I have long preferred treating the vertices as the points between which characters travel on my wilderness map, because things like rivers and roads and edges of area terrain follow the edges and the interesting points are the intersections and transitions (e.g., where the road through clear terrain enters the dark forest, or traveling along the edge of the dark forest). You can always travel fully within terrain if areas are at least two spaces wide.

1. Traveller made extensive use of triangular regions for world maps. I think that TORG did as well.

2. Squares give 4 directions of movement (or 8 if you count diagonals, but each diagonal move ought to count as 1.4 squares) and hexes give 6 directions. Triangles would only give 3 directions. I guess it's not so bad if you make movement higher (since triangles are little chunks of hexes anyway) but seems like a lot of extra effort.

Like I said on the Hex map thread (at length ) just use a map... infinite direction choices and accurate movement....

The only reason to use hexes, grid, triangles, tesalated birds or any other grid is if you are playing a board game where you need to have rapid repetative movement around a map. Grids are great for that. Rpgs...not so much.

I realise I am in a minority of one on this topic

Quote from: finarvyn;8035661. Traveller made extensive use of triangular regions for world maps. I think that TORG did as well.

2. Squares give 4 directions of movement (or 8 if you count diagonals, but each diagonal move ought to count as 1.4 squares) and hexes give 6 directions. Triangles would only give 3 directions. I guess it's not so bad if you make movement higher (since triangles are little chunks of hexes anyway) but seems like a lot of extra effort.

I'll have to check out Traveller and TORG at some point then.

Triangles only offer three directions if players move center to center. If you move point to point, they offer six directions of movement same as hexes. The core of my idea was keying in spaces but moving on points, thus maximizing the odds that players could interact with the content in spaces (they can find it from any of three positions, rather than from one) and allowing a mixed-content "region" to pull encounters and the like from.

I'll probably shelve the idea pretty soon. It seems best for small maps with single-segment moves and every space keyed. Thing I'm working on at the moment includes abstracted domain management similar to Kingmaker or AER. It might call for a lot more empty space at the start, and movement granular enough to penalize.

Quote from: jibbajibba;803617Like I said on the Hex map thread (at length ) just use a map... infinite direction choices and accurate movement....

The only reason to use hexes, grid, triangles, tesalated birds or any other grid is if you are playing a board game where you need to have rapid repetative movement around a map. Grids are great for that. Rpgs...not so much.

I realise I am in a minority of one on this topic

I often run games out of my backpack or without much of a table. So my weapons of choice are usually computer paper or graph paper for myself, and TotM stuff for the players. The kind of precision that would call for a ruler usually doesn't really improve the game much for me.

That being said, the encounter-table-by-transparency thing would probably still work on a gridless map, if you wanted to give it a go.

Fine, if 6 freedoms is twice as many as you want; otherwise, I'd leave the hexes whole instead of splitting them into triangles. But it's just a matter of what suits your game.