Do your players take time to deeply explore a hex or mostly just pass through them?

Thank you for not naming the video "The thing THEY don't tell you about maps," "I was wrong about maps!" or "Fantasy maps are broken!."  Also, good explanation.

One 6 mile hex is 2 skyrims. That's a great perspective for how much can be hidden in one.
A 6 mile hex has enough space for at least one adventure on its own.

Nice demonstration of why it used to be possible for two whole opposing armies to march right past each other without even realizing it. All you needed was a mountain or two in between.

Honestly, this is one of the most eye-opening and cool videos as a DM.

OMFG! As an airline pilot who routinely flies over the Cascades in WA and Canada (and a TTRPG cartographer), I can't tell you how many times I've argued this with my fellows. Terrain is not simple. We can simplify it and we should, but we can't assume it to be so. It needs to serve our game. It can be as simple or as complex as the adventure needs it to be.

I always took it as "video game map rules" where it was just a general pattern of "Hills" without having to specify where each hill is.

I chose 6 miles.  My thesis area in Utah was 6 miles north to south.  Actively mapping and carrying gear, I could do about 2-3 miles in, and back out in a day.  The terrain you show is much higher elevation and relief too.  Brutal 6 mile hex.

It is only every once in a while that you stumble into a person on the internet who has really genuine thoughts that challenge what you have assumed before, and by doing that, further your understanding of a subject. Just happened to me and i am very grateful for this, Sir. Thank you very much.

The rule of thumb for US Army dismounted tactical marches with combat loads (easily 50lbs or more) is ~12 miles a day for cross-country and ~19 miles for road marches. This can vary greatly depending on many environmental and mission factors, can be a lot less, but many units consider it a *bare minimum*, not a maximum. So 12 miles seems like a reasonable distance for a given setting.

A related idea for typical hex sizes is that the party is typically only going to travel along the more navigable routes; so they’d only experience the  vicinity of those routes, leaving almost all of the area unexplored.

For some additional perspective, people who regularly hike the Appalachian Trail (approx 2190 miles/3524 km in total) consider 8-12 miles (13-19 km) to be a comfortable day of walking

Speaking as someone who is about to start their first hex crawl campaign, your channel has been an invaluable source of information. Thank you for your effort and posting these videos! I look forward to more!

This made me want to run a really crunchy  hex crawl and also to just go hiking

When I was younger, I used to do boffer LARP in the Colorado mountains. This was often in the Heil Valley Ranch, which was then owned by the Heil brothers. (It's now a part of the Boulder County Park system.) For a multi-day game, we were mostly carrying around 20-30 lbs of stuff (water, snacks, props, weapons, ....) I was often carrying significantly more, because I was lugging 50m of climbing rope and more water than most people.

A typical day of gaming would be maybe 3-4 miles of hiking up and down the hills. The base there is around 5600' and the ridges are close to 7000' (MSL), and we would often have a combat encounter on a ridge, then a hike across the valley and another encounter on the opposite side of the valley, so we were probably climbing something like 2500' vertical during a day.

Note that these games were usually at the height of the summer, so highs around 90-95°F (but very dry).

All of which is to say that I have some practical experience.

My opinion: Traveling 6 miles across terrain like that would be a reasonable single day. At the end of the day, you would be tired, hot, and dehydrated. Exploring a 6-mile hex would probably take between one and two weeks (significantly more if you're trying to find something intentionally hidden). Even in the plains of western Kansas, traveling more than 12 miles would be quite strenuous in the absence of established trails or roads. "Flat" isn't flat in most places. There are gullies, streams, hills that look like nothing when you're driving past, sloughs, .... It's harder than most people think. With trails or roads, historical evidence indicates that 20 miles would be a reasonable distance for a fit man on foot. Even on quite flat terrain, a light exploration of an entire hex would probably take at least 2-3 days.

This video is something I needed. I fail to take how big 6 mile hexes truly are into account, when letting my characters move through the Auran Borderlands (ACKS II) far to quickly and with too little weight at times.

This is a good reminder that running games is a skill that takes time to hone.

Love the visual representation. It’s hard to realize that even some loosely packed trees or small incline can block so much line of sight!

Years of high adventure and hiking in scouts taught me ain't no way anyone with 40 pounds of gear is going to travel 24 miles in a day, WITH trails. 12 is entirely possible with breaks for lunch and some sort of activity/event where you can go day after day.

I've always been obsessed by this sort of thing. I actually draw pictures for my players to show them how the landscape looks to them.

Great breakdown! I think the TTRPG community needs periodic reminders about scale and travel. Exactly how much is packed into the smallest hex scale is astonishing.