[Urbis] Maps of the Cold Frontier, Part I

For a hexcrawl campaign you need, of course, a hex map which the PCs can explore. Basic hexes from the Pathfinder Sandbox Exploration Rules are 12 miles from corner to corner, and roughly 10 miles from side to side. For the generation of the hexes I have used an online hex grid generator, with the following settings:

• Hex radius: 1 inch
• Grid columns: 8
• Grid rows: 11
• Grid color: #000000
• Enable labels: yes
• Label format: %x,%y
• Label color: #999999
• Enable guides: yes
• Guide color: #000000

which gives me a hex grid 8 hexes wide and 11 hexes deep, with small dots that mark the center of the hex and numbers representing hex coordinates. This is large enough for a region that's about 50 miles wide and 110 miles deep - plenty of space for exploration for the first campaign arcs.

I envision a rugged coastline with forest-covered mountains and plenty of islands, a long river with the trading outpost at its mouth and extensive canyons further north, and plenty of hills, marshes, and even a volcano or two. After some doodling, this is what I came up with:

The trade outpost the PCs start in is hex (4,9). The volcanoes are in hexes (7,4) and (7,10). The green-yellow hexes in the middle of the sketch are the marshlands. The brown lines surrounding the river in the upper half of the sketch are supposed to represent the canyons - many ruins of Ancient Native settlements will be found there.

While I will come up with a nicer version of this map at some point in the future, this will do for the moment. Now I will have to fill it with details the PCs can discover.


To be continued...