Picking a scale
A hex map works best when a hex is a unit of time as well as distance. The free D&D rules (the 2014 Basic Rules and the 2024 Free Rules) both give three travel paces for 8 hours of travel a day: fast (4 miles an hour, 30 a day), normal (3 miles an hour, 24 a day) and slow (2 miles an hour, 18 a day). Terrain is where the editions differ. Under the 2014 rules, difficult terrain such as dense forests, deep swamps or steep mountains halves the distance. The 2024 rules instead give each terrain a maximum pace: normal in forest and hills, slow in mountains and swamps, fast on grassland, and a good road raises it one step. So:
- 1-mile hexes show a valley, a town and its farms, or a small island in detail: a normal day’s travel is 24 hexes.
- 6-mile hexes suit a region or a small kingdom: 4 hexes a day at a normal pace. In a dense forest that drops to 2 under the 2014 rules, while the 2024 rules keep a normal pace in forest (4 hexes) and cap swamps and mountains at slow (3 hexes).
- On a Letter page of ½-inch hexes (17 columns of 20), 6-mile hexes cover roughly 90 miles east to west and 120 miles north to south, about four to five days’ travel on foot.
Other systems use other speeds, but the idea is the same: pick the hex size that makes your party’s daily distance a whole number of hexes.
Drawing the map
Sketch coastlines and mountain ranges first, then fill each hex with one main terrain: a few tree symbols for forest, carets for hills, tufts for grassland. Run rivers along hex edges or through the middle of hexes, but keep to one style for the whole map. A common convention is to number each hex by column and row (0101, 0102…), so notes and random encounter tables can refer to them.
For keeping track of travel, a pencil dot per day in the hex where the party camps doubles as a record of the journey. Print Pages 2 or more to get a stack for different regions at the same scale, and write the scale in Title so every sheet carries it.
Related sheets
Square battle grids and dungeon maps work on the plain graph paper generator with 1-inch or ¼-inch squares. For 3D buildings and isometric dungeon art, try isometric graph paper.
How this page sets up the sheet
- Hexagon, flat-topped hexagons in columns.
- In inches: 1/2 in (12.7 mm) hexagons, measured across the flat sides, 2 per inch.
- In millimetres: 1 cm (0.394 in) hexagons, measured across the flat sides, 1 per cm.
It opens in inches in the US and other countries that use Letter paper, and in millimetres everywhere else (or in whichever unit you last used on this site). The paper size follows your browser too: Letter in the US, A4 elsewhere. Everything stays editable. Your own page settings, such as margins, are remembered for next time; the grid itself always opens as set up here. To start from a blank setup, use the graph paper generator.