There Is No Optimal Hex Size

27 Nov, 2025

Please forgive me for indulging in a bit of pedantry. I've been brewing up this post for a while -- a recent discussion on the Purple OSR server reminded me of it, but I'm posting mainly for my own desire to have this out there. It's fussy and nitpicky, not at all something that matters for actually running a good game, but I guess I find the nuances of cartographic abstraction to be pretty interesting.

The thrust of this post is that many of the popular posts about hex size for overland maps, while well-argued and entirely valid, contain unexamined assumptions about the game, play culture, or imagined setting.

To illustrate this, I have attempted to enumerate as many relevant considerations as I can think of:

1. What is the density of features in the imagined world? (Is it populous & highly developed like renaissance Northern Italy¹ or Southern China, or is it sparse &/or ruinous like medieval Russia or Middle Earth? Is it even important that the map depicts a verisimilitudinous world?)
2. Does gameplay operate at the same level of abstraction as the hex map? (Are hexes measuring sticks, or the overland equivalent of dungeon rooms? Is travel within a single hex elided or meaningful? Do hexes represent a fuzzy idea like "half a day's travel"?)
3. How do hexes interface with rules/procedures for overland travel? (Are there rules for getting lost? Do players need information about nearby hexes to make travel decisions? Do players interact with hexes at all, or are they GM-facing?)
4. What is your table's preferred ratio between navigation-related decisions & other decisions (i.e. those related to wandering encounters & points of interest)? (Do you dislike the idea of an "empty" or unkeyed hex? Are you open to having multi-feature hexes or do you prefer 1-feature:1-hex?)
5. What features count as a "point of interest" within the scope of the game/campaign? (Is a small village a point of interest? An abandoned house? A weirdly-shaped tree?)
6. How big is the campaign world?
7. What is your mapping surface like? (Hand-drawn on a sheet of paper? VTT? Printed poster?)
8. Are players drawing their own maps, reading from a handout/VTT map, or a hybrid?
9. Do you want terrain, roads, or mounts to affect travel speed?

They key is that all of these affect each other and many are highly specific to the tastes of a given table in a way that doesn't map neatly onto any particular class of game rules. Rather than fussing about realism or geometric ratios, we should probably focus on how our tables like to engage with overland travel & how we prefer to organize information when refereeing.

On a more constructive note, here's my $0.02 on how to pick a hex size for your map:

Do you need hexes at all? A pointcrawl might be better if:

• You prefer highly abstracted travel.
• You expect gameplay to be mostly constrained to pre-marked locations.
• Your table isn't very interested in detailed mapping or navigation-related challenges.
• You prefer to think in terms of relative distances & travel times.
• You want to emphasize the qualities of different routes.

Big Hexes (10 miles or greater) are appropriate if:

• Your setting has an epic scope (e.g. continents, big wars, empires, superheroes, etc.) & multi-week journeys are expected.
• You don't mind having multi-POI hexes where appropriate.
• You tend to elide travel & aren't worried about the granular effects of terrain, mounts, etc.
• Your region of interest is large and/or sparsely populated (e.g. plains, desert, ocean).
• You want to cut down on the number of navigation-related decisions between points of interest and/or are not ok with empty hexes.
• You are ok with players not being able to see into neighboring hexes.

Small Hexes (3 miles or less) are appropriate if:

• You like detailing small-scale features, individual NPCs, etc.
• You want to transition more fluidly between hexes & dungeon scale.
• You are mapping an area that is small and/or densely packed with points of interest (e.g. forest, mountains, small island, river valley).
• You want navigation to be a distinct part of gameplay such that players are frequently prompted about which hex to explore next.
• You are ok with empty hexes.
• You are ok with players being able to see into neighboring hexes (or beyond!).

If find yourself identifying with a mix from both lists, Medium Hexes (4, 5, 6, or 8 miles) are probably the way to go.