Tag Archives: Hexes

Swamp Adventures!

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I’m working on a series of short encounters that can be strung together into a campaign.  Each encounter will include 3-7 Battle Tiles and possibly miniatures. The first part takes place in Lizard Man infested swamps.  I’ve still have some work to do on the layers and sheet effects but these first attempts should give a general idea of what they will look like.  Now for the lizard men.

Made with Profantasy Software’s Character Artist 3

I’m hoping to get them printed on high quality gloss photo paper then mount them on 2mm greyboard so they will fit into the Black Hex Bases properly.  It is to bad that Character Artist does not provide the backs to the mini’s.

Hirst Arts diving into hexes

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We need your voice now!  Bruce Hirst from Hirst Arts Fantasy Architecture is asking if anyone would actually use 1″ hexes as most board games that are coming out are using 1.5 inch to 2 inch hexes.  I’ve been asking for years for him to delve into 1″ hexes as I stopped purchasing his moulds (I have a lot of them) when I got seriously into GURPS and was put off by the lack of hexes.  I think I’ve proven that hex dungeons work and I’ve done some work on overland and buildings with hex bases as well.

1.5″ Hex Mould Master Pieces

1.5″ Hex Floor Boards

So if you are interested in creating your own hex based terrain get over to the forums and let your voice be heard!  When Bruce was first experimenting with the “Hex Hills” he started out with 1″ but soon abandoned the idea.

1″ hex tile

You can read the thread for that HERE

7 inch Cave Battle Tiles

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I’m currently working on the caves and I’m not satisfied with how they currently look.

The problem is where the floor meets the walls.  Bevel won’t work because it is lighted.  So one Bevel will be darker than the other and then they cave walls won’t match when you rotate them.  Because it is six sides I can’t really do multiple walls and change the lighting dynamics.  Not only does that require an extreme amount of work (like crazy amount) it still will be a problem with some of the cavern options.

This is kind of what it is gong to look like.  Mind you I’ve added no detailing to the cave floor.  My focus is on the wall effects.  I want to offer the same background texture as the dungeon Battle Tiles that way they will match seamlessly.  I will make transition tiles as well.

As for professionally getting these printed I think I’m going to make them into A1 or A0 posters and hand cut and mount them myself.

New 7 inch Battle Tiles!

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I just finished transferring my latest batch of 7 inch Battle Tiles to pdf.  You can get them HERE

I’m far from done with these.  I noticed some of the form fillable content didn’t work so I need to go back and fix those and three tiles are off so I’m fixing those as well.  I’ve come up with a few more tile designs that I hope to get started on soon.

RPG Hexagon Battlegrid by PWORK Wargames

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RPG Hexagon Battlegrid by PWORK Wargames

Sometimes living in the UK makes it difficult to get RPG items compared to when I lived in the States.  One of those items is a Hex Grid Mat to use for GURPS.  The Chessex ones can cost up to £50.00 or more after shipping.  I’ve seen some others for £35.00 so I was getting frustrated at the lack of Battlemaps for GURPS.  There are many square mats out there for D&D and other games but they lack the functionality of the hex which I have always found better for tactical games.

I noticed that PWORK had a square mat for 21,00 € and I have purchased their products in the past so I contacted them and asked if they would design a hex grid mat that had the dimensions of 1in (25.4mm)  from flat to flat, and 1.15 in (29.33) from corner to corner per hex. They were more than happy to oblige for a small design fee and for less than £35.00 I now have the Hexagon Battlegrid currently speeding its way to me!

I will have it in my hands before the Dungeon Fantasy Box Set arrives which I’ve been told has been shipped to the European distributors.

 

Battle Tile Tokens

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To reduce the extremely large number of tiles I’m creating I’m adding tokens around the tiles.  It may use a bit more ink but it also allows you to get more out of your photo paper as well.  The tokens will allow you to place stairs, traps, treasure, etc. anywhere you want on your tiles.

Door Tokens

 These three style door tokens will allow you place your doors within any area on the tiles for the wider Vertical Corridors.  Carefully cut them out with a hobby knife using proper safety procedures and you can then either glue one side and fold in half on the grey dotted line or cut them in half and glue them on to thicker card. The backs of the tokens will have information on the type of door.  To make this easier and more customizable for those of you using the tiles all token pdf’s will be form fillable. Which means you can enter your own data. The center token in the picture above is how they will all look with blank data fields where as the other two is a representation of how they will look with the information inserted by the user.

Test it out on this pdf for yourself!  You will have to download the pdf, Google Docs won’t let you use the form features in the preview.

Because the Horizontal Corridors have to be slightly reduced in width I have created two types of door tokens for each door type. These also will have a form option on the reverse side.

Here are some of the options you can place from getting from one level to another.  I manipulated the pit images in photoshop.  The top one is a pit down to another corridor directly below it and the bottom one is just a deep pit.  I probably should have placed a skeleton on the bottom for scale. If you fold the pit symbols on the grey lines and glue the trap door parts together then glue the bottom (pitt symbol) to a piece of thick card you can have a pit tile with a working door!

Now to make sure that the pdf’s can be used by both A4 and 8.5″x11″ I’ve placed a red rectangle on my sheet representing the size of 8.5″ by 11″. This will make sure none of the pieces will be cut off due to size. Everyone will have to print them with no margins though.

I’d be interested to know what kind of tokens people would like to see.

My Thoughts on 4″ Hex Tiles

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Last time I discussed, in my own disorganised way, my thoughts on 7″ hex tiles.  Now I’m going to delve into the 4″ hex tile.  As I’ve stated a few times before the thought first came to me when I saw the Tabletop Hex Terrain Toolkit on Kickstarter. This is going to be a great tool for making some wonderful terrain for both RPG’s and Wargames.  However the scale is just slightly off for my tastes (as discussed here).  I may eventually redesign the tool for use with proper one inch horizontal hexes, until then I am making four inch tiles to use for my GURPS Dungeon Fantasy games.

The 4″ Tiles can only support single and double width corridors (1 hex = 3′) compared to the three widths in the 7″ tiles.  Also the number of connections is reduced dramatically to the four examples in the following image, compared to the 9 images for 7″ tiles.

Corridor options

Although there are fewer options I don’t think the four inch tiles are inferior to the seven inch.  The four inch tiles will certainly allow for more dense dungeons, and with a bit of thought and planning will be able to offer some very complex designs. Also you can make any Hex Dungeon look just like any Square dungeon.  All it takes is manipulating the width of the horizontal corridors. If the corridors are the same width they will not match up when a horizontal corridor attaches to a vertical corridor.  The horizontal corridor will be too wide.

Both horizontal and vertical corridors are the same width, the horizontal is too wide

The horizontal corridor is now slightly smaller than the vertical. H: 3.43, V: 3.9

I can live with this slight alteration as it now gives me more options when designing.  I can now have corridors that turn at 90° just like you would with a square tiled dungeon.

90° left hand turn

Single width corridors and room tiles, just a fraction of the possibilities

An example of what can be made 1 hex = 3′ (1 meter)

What I like from the example above is how at any given time the orientation of the dungeon can turn 60° giving the dungeon a more natural feel.  If you’re digging a dungeon why would you limit yourself to a grid? Also once you add the double width corridors your increasing your options and complexity.  I’ll be adding more as I have time.

I’ve got plans to make full 3D dungeons using the 4 inch tiles and plaster molds such as those you can get from Hirst Arts, Linka World, and 4bot Industries. The issue is I will have to make a lot of custom pieces and custom molds so I’m going to be shelving this project for the mean time.

I think switching from the 7″ to the 4″ tiles was the right choice for me. When I get time I will go ahead and place the 30+ 7″ colour tiles I’ve already made if anyone is interested in trying them out.  I’ll do the same for the 4″ but not until I get a large amount ready.

Pro

  • You can make dense dungeons without so many extra tiles
  • Easier to store
  • Can produce more random results
  • Easier to use “Fog of War” effect

Con

  • Only single and double wide corridors, no triple
  • No irregular/offset corridors
  • Floor textures may not align properly
  • Custom 3D parts

Profantasy Software

Mapping with Master Hexes

Hexomorfo System

Hirst Arts

4bot Industries

Tabletop Hex Terrain

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I just backed a kickstarter for MDF Jigs to make hex terrain with!  Each hex is 100mm Vertical Hex (point to point)

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1378063512/tabletop-hex-terrain-toolkit

 

dungeon-vert-hex

A mock of what a dungeon might look like using this system. Remember each of those hexes are 100mm vertical.

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I wasn’t sure if I was going to back it at first.  For GURPS I use 1″ (25.4mm) horizontal hexes and for this system it is 100mm vertically which allows for 25mm vertical hexes.  However I’ve decided that I’m not going to let it bother me as it looks so nice!  Here are the differences between the two.

hexjig-comparison

GURPS standard on the right side, Hex Terrain Tool Kit on the left side. 14.7485% decrease in size

It will mean that some miniature bases will overlap the hex.  However it looks so nice!

1a81f16d496b9eca058260af80ab9b6b_original 65fc5c7cf5b6748696599017bb38aec4_original

17c7d80daa194a078d175da29d4ec74c_original 17aee6e5218b3a4e79d4efd72b68fa2b_original 1e0fd2ae5d47d1a4618a3051472b72b4_original

Look how amazing that looks!  With the risers it would be really easy to place a dungeon underneath the ground and terrain on top!  They are expected to arrive in March which will give me two months before Dungeon Fantasy Powered by GURPS arrives in May!

Also I will be able to use these for my wargaming as well.