How I Detail Hexmaps

 Innovation from Inspiration, or something along those lines.

Before Kill Team devoured my free hours I had been spending some time on and off with a new style of hexmap creation. Broadly, it follows my previous method, but with layers. Doing this lets me change the map scale in fun ways, like here where I am able to move it from 1-mile hexes to purely 6-mile:

Of course, I did forget to make two separate layers for settlements, so the 1-mile villages are visible on the same scale as the 6-mile towns and cities which does somewhat clutter the intended effect. Experimentation tends to have a few hiccups in the name of progress.

This is what it looks like in GIMP, I really appreciate how easy it is to toggle different layers on and off. The paint bucket is somewhat more finnicky to use however, which is why colour shades vary less or more than what I really wanted. Now, do you see the option for "6mileColor"?

This is a political map! I have moved beyond simply making terrain and into the realm of intrigue and backstabbing. The process to make this level was taken from Skerples' OSR fast mapping technique, but I did not stick too closely since I am working at a different map scale and with some preexisting terrain ideas. The light/heavy forests, medium green and dark green respectively, did come out in interesting shapes as a result of this system. The political scale is smaller than Skerples' version, but I take this to be the result of a more Italy-like fragmentation of city states than a discrepancy. Compared to just working out the borders by feel I think I did enjoy this more, as unexpected results open pathways for fun. It is the sort of thing I would want to run once or twice more on different maps before committing though, to get a feel for any quirks or ways to make it produce consistently interesting results.

The reason that villages and 1-mile detail only dot a small part of the map is because I decided to only detail what I would consider the starting 7 hexes, with the idea that I could expand quickly outwards using the same generation method between sessions. This is not something I have tried before, but the concept does interest me. For that to happen I would first need to wrangle a group, but since I already have an in-person Pathfinder game where I play and am not in the mood to deal with Online gaming that will have to wait for some time. Time which I should use to practice this even more. For one, a river layer would definitely help. And what about a topography viewer like in Dwarf Fortress? Imagine the implications for sightline gameplay! And it certainly would have no effect on my sanity, to detail 1-mile topography across thousands of hexes. None whatsoever.