TheRPGSite

So growing up I really loved the mountains. Living in Colorado they are constantly in sight and I've spent a lot of time crawling around them.

The one take away impression above everything else is that mountains are big.

Huge, enormous, etc...

And I don't mean as a range (though that is true too) I meant individually.

They're massive. If I recall my geography correctly the "typical" mountain can be anywhere from 5-30 miles in length and 1-6 miles wide and many are larger.

A single mountain covers a hell of an area.

And yet on our hex maps mountains are depicted as a series of tiny peaks within a single hex.

This is unsatisfying to me. It LOOKS wrong even when I accept the abstraction.

On a map with 6-mile hexes mountains should typically be multihex affair. And even at larger scales mountains should look more... Mountainous.

Only on the largest scale maps does the typical series of peaks look right.

Has anyone played with different ways to depict mountains on hex maps? Particularly I'm interested in the smaller scale 6-10 mile hex size.

Quote from: Piestrio;631295So growing up I really loved the mountains. Living in Colorado they are constantly in sight and I've spent a lot of time crawling around them.

The one take away impression above everything else is that mountains are big.

Huge, enormous, etc...

And I don't mean as a range (though that is true too) I meant individually.

They're massive. If I recall my geography correctly the "typical" mountain can be anywhere from 5-30 miles in length and 1-6 miles wide and many are larger.

A single mountain covers a hell of an area.

And yet on our hex maps mountains are depicted as a series of tiny peaks within a single hex.

This is unsatisfying to me. It LOOKS wrong even when I accept the abstraction.

On a map with 6-mile hexes mountains should typically be multihex affair. And even at larger scales mountains should look more... Mountainous.

Only on the largest scale maps does the typical series of peaks look right.

Has anyone played with different ways to depict mountains on hex maps? Particularly I'm interested in the smaller scale 6-10 mile hex size.

I have a small range in the Daggerford region hexmap I use (the Illefarn mountains) - they're a very small range, so I've used a nice set of symbols with varied "peak" shapes in an attempt to actually describe shapes, as opposed to just "these are mountain hexes".  But I'll admit I'm not that familiar with the real scale of the bigger mountain ranges (I live in New England, haha), so this is a topic I'm interested in hearing more input on.

At smaller scales I use contour lines instead.

I'm mainly interested in the effect of mountains on map-scale movement, and the mechanics of mountain passes. E.g. what is it about the Khyber Pass, or the Cilician Gates, Thermopylae, etc. that effectively forces travel through a narrow area? How hard is it bypass a pass? What are the different effects for small parties vs. large groups going through mountains?

To look at many wargames, mountain ranges are often only effective barriers if they're defended. (I.e. classic rule is to increase defense values of units sitting on mountains; units move slower through mountains but usually aren't stopped completely.) This doesn't quite match historical accounts in many cases.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;631315I'm mainly interested in the effect of mountains on map-scale movement, and the mechanics of mountain passes. E.g. what is it about the Khyber Pass, or the Cilician Gates, Thermopylae, etc. that effectively forces travel through a narrow area? How hard is it bypass a pass? What are the different effects for small parties vs. large groups going through mountains?

To look at many wargames, mountain ranges are often only effective barriers if they're defended. (I.e. classic rule is to increase defense values of units sitting on mountains; units move slower through mountains but usually aren't stopped completely.) This doesn't quite match historical accounts in many cases.

Travel outside of passes is often impossible and always difficult. Mountains are effective barriers all by themselves.

A more accurate depiction of mountains would also let us see and use vallies and passes better as well.

I like the treatment used in (for a couple examples) OA1 Sword of the Daimyo and S4 The Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, where you have mountain passes explicitly drawn out, the assumption being that THOSE are where you get to use your "mountain movement rate".  Crossing without a pass would, in my game, be a very different prospect (time to get out the WSG, boys!).

Quote from: Piestrio;631295Has anyone played with different ways to depict mountains on hex maps? Particularly I'm interested in the smaller scale 6-10 mile hex size.

Here is how I do it in one of my campaigns (spoilered in case Premier is reading this):

Spoiler

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v198/Melan/ammertaldetail_zps35145ae1.jpg)

Kinda time-consuming to do it digitally, but absolutely worth it. This is 2 Helvetian Stunde (~10 km) per hex.

Quote from: Melan;631333Here is how I do it in one of my campaigns (spoilered in case Premier is reading this):

Spoiler

(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v198/Melan/ammertaldetail_zps35145ae1.jpg)

Kinda time-consuming to do it digitally, but absolutely worth it. This is 2 Helvetian Stunde (~10 km) per hex.

Thats really cool!

What's the scale?

Thanks.

Quote from: Piestrio;631336Thats really cool!

What's the scale?

Thanks.

"This is 2 Helvetian Stunde (~10 km) per hex." (e.g. a bit more than 6 miles per hex).

I think drawing them as small peaks is just a convenient shorthand more than anything, but I do notice it does also impact how I imagine the landscape. I have been spending a lot of time on google earth and looking at some of the more toppgraphical maps in my historical atlas lately. It really gives you an appreciation for how land is shaped and impacts travel and trade. Most of my life I've lived north of boston where its mostly rocky drumlins, but I spent five years as a kid not far from mountains in southern california. You could always see them int he distance from our house, and I share your sense of their size. In fact one of the places I have been checking out on google earth is the town I used to live in in California, to see how much the landscape actually matches my impression of it as a kid.

... and don't get me started on oceans and seas! There's no continuous lapping of waves, cresting whitecaps, or believable undertows or gyres!

:p

(Because someone had to take the piss out of this at some point.)

Quote from: Opaopajr;631344... and don't get me started on oceans and seas! There's no continuous lapping of waves, cresting whitecaps, or believable undertows or gyres!

When travelling, I tend to avoid the part with the giant octopus. You know, just in case.

Quote from: Benoist;631339"This is 2 Helvetian Stunde (~10 km) per hex." (e.g. a bit more than 6 miles per hex).

Oh sure! Reading!

Pfffft.

I just draw out a map normally in the style of Lone Wolf or Greyhawk the wizard and overlay hexes on it.

Quote from: Piestrio;631295If I recall my geography correctly the "typical" mountain can be anywhere from 5-30 miles in length and 1-6 miles wide and many are larger.

A single mountain covers a hell of an area.

That's not really accurate. I've dicked around on Google Earth quite a lot, and most mountains are much smaller. Size varies enormously of course. A large volcano springing up from a plain, like Fuji or Kilimanjaro, may have a base of 20-30 kilometres, but these are very much the exception. Most mountain ranges are in chains of ridges and while a section of the chain might indeed be your 1-6 miles by 5-30 miles, within that there will several or indeed many peaks.

I've stood on the coast at Kaikoura in New Zealand. Rising almost from the shore are the Seaward Kaikouras, large and rugged mountains reaching almost 3000m. Behind them is a large valley and on the other side are the equally majestic Inland Kaikouras. From the shore to the far side of the Inland Kaikouras is only 30km or so, encompassing coastal plain, two mountain ranges and and the valley between them. In that 30km "hex" there are dozens or hundreds of peaks and untold nooks and crannies.

Quote from: Killfuck Soulshitter;631397That's not really accurate. I've dicked around on Google Earth quite a lot, and most mountains are much smaller. Size varies enormously of course. A large volcano springing up from a plain, like Fuji or Kilimanjaro, may have a base of 20-30 kilometres, but these are very much the exception. Most mountain ranges are in chains of ridges and while a section of the chain might indeed be your 1-6 miles by 5-30 miles, within that there will several or indeed many peaks.

I've stood on the coast at Kaikoura in New Zealand. Rising almost from the shore are the Seaward Kaikouras, large and rugged mountains reaching almost 3000m. Behind them is a large valley and on the other side are the equally majestic Inland Kaikouras. From the shore to the far side of the Inland Kaikouras is only 30km or so, encompassing coastal plain, two mountain ranges and and the valley between them. In that 30km "hex" there are dozens or hundreds of peaks and untold nooks and crannies.

I think we're probably just having a nomenclature problem because I don't disagree with anything you said.

Also it could be different perspectives and experiences. In Colorado at least we would refer to this as "a mountain":

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/dd/Mount_Elbert_and_horses.jpg/640px-Mount_Elbert_and_horses.jpg)

Quote from: Piestrio;631401I think we're probably just having a nomenclature problem because I don't disagree with anything you said.

Also it could be different perspectives and experiences. In Colorado at least we would refer to this as "a mountain":

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/dd/Mount_Elbert_and_horses.jpg/640px-Mount_Elbert_and_horses.jpg)

Yep, I'd call that a mountain, too! Kind of an isolated one. At a guess, it fits your definition of 3-5 miles by 1-2. Perfect to represent as a single peak in a six-mile hex.
But most of these mountains come in chains, and I don't have a problem with a 6 or 10 mile hex having an icon with a few peaks on it.
Anyway, not disagreeing with you, except that it's never struck me that hexes represent mountains poorly. They're just a visual shorthand anyway.

It'd be a really cool program that could "Google Earth" a fictional world: take in mapping data and generate a 3-D environment from it.

That'd be the shit for generating images of towns, streets, whatever.

(Computer rendered images, like in WoW, mind, not photo-realistic.)

I know there's no money in RPG's, so it'll never be made. Still, it would be cool.

I have some experience converting topographical maps to hex maps so I have run into similar concerns.

According to the 1:250K Leadville, Co Topo map from the USGS, Mt. Elbert looks to be 7 miles east to west and 5 miles north to south, almost perfectly fitting inside a single hex. But the problem really is that most of the other mountains are smaller so a 6 mile hex wont be able to show the little valleys and dells. For example, using the same map, the Sawatch Range and Williams Mountains to the west would just show up as a big 20 x 20 mile splotch of mountain hexes. And that is just the snow-covered mountains. Almost everything enclosed by 82, 24, and 70/6 would show as mountain hexes because there is very little that comes close to being 5 or 6 miles wide. That's almost 30 x 60 miles of just mountain hexes.

Edit: To be clear, inside that area there would be almost no valleys wide enough to show as their own hexes.

So my response to the problem has been to create both a hex map for determining both travel times and encounters and then scan the topo map with the same scale hex transparency so that I can accurately describe any given hex.

The cool thing about my system is that when I properly crop a 1:250k map and print it out on a single letter-sized page, the scale works out that 1/2 inch hexes (side-to-side) equal 5 miles.

For the above post, I d/l the map from this link
http://www.pickatrail.com/.../topo_map/1x2/leadville_co.html (http://www.pickatrail.com/sun/l/america/topo_map/1x2/leadville_co.html)

Quote from: JasperAK;631410So my response to the problem has been to create both a hex map for determining both travel times and encounters and then scan the topo map with the same scale hex transparency so that I can accurately describe any given hex.

The cool thing about my system is that when I properly crop a 1:250k map and print it out on a single letter-sized page, the scale works out that 1/2 inch hexes (side-to-side) equal 5 miles.

For the above post, I d/l the map from this link
http://www.pickatrail.com/.../topo_map/1x2/leadville_co.html (http://www.pickatrail.com/sun/l/america/topo_map/1x2/leadville_co.html)

That's a very good idea.

I'm reminded of the hex transparencies that TSR included in a few of their 2e era box sets.

Does anyone know of a relatively simple way to make topo maps? Obviously for most games you don't need nearly the information density of a standard topo map.

Any programs?

Quote from: Piestrio;631401In Colorado at least we would refer to this as "a mountain":

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/dd/Mount_Elbert_and_horses.jpg/640px-Mount_Elbert_and_horses.jpg)

Slightly off topic, but germane to the subject matter. Looking at that photo makes me appreciate how important local knowledge should be to hexcrawls. Seeing that mountain for the first time I have no idea where or how to approach it if I wanted to travel through it.

Quote from: Piestrio;631411That's a very good idea.

I'm reminded of the hex transparencies that TSR included in a few of their 2e era box sets.

Does anyone know of a relatively simple way to make topo maps? Obviously for most games you don't need nearly the information density of a standard topo map.

Any programs?

If you use color it can be very easy to make a make that shows elevation and other geographic features. The original Ravenloft boxed set if this uing a clear hex overlay and I found it a lot more useful (though less pretty) than the later maps.

Quote from: Piestrio;631411Does anyone know of a relatively simple way to make topo maps? Obviously for most games you don't need nearly the information density of a standard topo map.

Any programs?

There is a program called Wilbur (http://www.ridgenet.net/~jslayton/wilbur.html) that generates maps from either DEMs or height-fields. You can create a height-field in some way, fill in sea level in Wilbur, and export an image to import into one of the cartographer apps floating around to make your map. Haven't used it in a while, but I seem to remember you could create colored topos in it, which you could export to something like The GIMP to use edge detect tools to create topo lines to superimpose on the terrain map.

There's also a program called Terragen. I don't have the new version, which I believe costs quite a bit of money, but years ago, a lot of people used height-fields exported from Wilbur in Terragen to make 3d *photorealistic* images of mountains. It didn't do trees, buildings, etc. I understand the new one does.

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;631406It'd be a really cool program that could "Google Earth" a fictional world: take in mapping data and generate a 3-D environment from it.

That'd be the shit for generating images of towns, streets, whatever.

(Computer rendered images, like in WoW, mind, not photo-realistic.)

I know there's no money in RPG's, so it'll never be made. Still, it would be cool.

Use Fractal Terrains 3 to build the world, export it into Google Earth.

Ginormous Picture to follow

Spoiler

(http://forum.profantasy.com/extensions/InlineImages/image.php?AttachmentID=340)

Doesn't have to be FT3, lots of programs can create the type of file you need.

Quote from: CRKrueger;631561Use Fractal Terrains 3 to build the world, export it into Google Earth.

My mind.

She.

Is.

Blown.

Somebody help me. I'm old and I'm living in the future.

(Any chance of a tutorial? Or linkage to one?)

Quote from: Daddy Warpig;631406It'd be a really cool program that could "Google Earth" a fictional world: take in mapping data and generate a 3-D environment from it.

That'd be the shit for generating images of towns, streets, whatever.

http://www.dereglobus.org/

Aventuria, the setting of Das Schwarze Auge, Google-Earth-ified.

Quote from: CRKrueger;631561Use Fractal Terrains 3 to build the world, export it into Google Earth.

Ginormous Picture to follow

Spoiler

(http://forum.profantasy.com/extensions/InlineImages/image.php?AttachmentID=340)

Doesn't have to be FT3, lots of programs can create the type of file you need.

:jaw-dropping:

It's...beautiful...

In regards to the OP, I find topographical maps tedious to make and hard to keep consistent when making adjoining maps. In addition they are more difficult to use when trying to adjudicate movement rates as you have to use some contour crossing rule to figure when to apply movement penalties.

For me the ideal compromise is what I call the harn style maps. Where terrain is represented by a see through b/w fill and vegetation is represented by color. Like this map I drew for a section of the Majestic Wilderlands.

(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_mFjy4EWzmtg/S2JmRso-NEI/AAAAAAAAAuI/9W0k5mpWaIU/s320/Region,+Gormmah+Sm.jpg)
Click here for a larger image (http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_mFjy4EWzmtg/S2JmRso-NEI/AAAAAAAAAuI/9W0k5mpWaIU/s1600/Region,+Gormmah+Sm.jpg)

The scale of the small hexes is 2.5 miles the large hexes is 12.5 miles. On level terrain you can walk a small hex in an hour.

It quick to draw over large areas, easy to adjudicate, accurate and I feel looks good as well.  The only downside is making sure that if you use software to draw your map is making sure it supports transparent fills.

To handdraw this you draw the terrain fill first and then color in the vegetation.


(http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_mFjy4EWzmtg/SOwp7dPny0I/AAAAAAAAALQ/O56ARhTWjhE/s400/Local+Antil+Map.jpg)

Link to Larger Image (http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_mFjy4EWzmtg/SOwp7dPny0I/AAAAAAAAALQ/O56ARhTWjhE/s1600/Local+Antil+Map.jpg)

The scale is 12.5 miles per hex or 5 leagues or 5 hours of walking across level terrain.

Quote from: estar;631607In regards to the OP, I fine topographical maps tedious to make and hard to keep consistent when making adjoining maps. In addition they are more difficult to use when trying to adjudicate movement rates as you have to use some contour crossing rule to figure when to apply movement penalties.

For me the ideal compromise is what I call the harn style maps. Where terrain is represented by a see through b/w fill and vegetation is represented by color. Like this map I drew for a section of the Majestic Wilderlands.

When I was doing demo maps for each of the random hexcrawl tools I was reviewing on my blog, I was thinking, "Man, these standard terrain hexes just don't work right. The color just needs to be separate from the symbols."

Now I know the style of map I wanted exists.

Sorry, but I like my old TSR-gazetteer hex maps.

RPGPundit

I've always done TSR-style hexmaps at 6 miles/hex scale with passes and individual high peaks marked as necessary. Worked for me.