Explore the map

A map that arrives while you walk it

A drawn map is a promise about what is out there, which is useful and also a little dull: everything on it was decided before anybody set off. A map that arrives one tile at a time is a different experience. Nobody at the table knows what is over the hill, including the person running the game, and the next decision is genuinely a decision rather than a route.

Each tile gives two things: a place and something that happened getting there. The pairing is what makes it feel like travel rather than a list. A hill fort long abandoned is a location; a hill fort long abandoned, reached after a bridge was out and the ford was deep, is an afternoon.

Why the tiles have to touch

The adjacency rule is the only rule here and it is the one doing the work. Without it, a grid is a set of scratch cards and the order means nothing. With it, the map has an edge, and every choice is about which direction to push that edge. It also means a group that wants to go back the way they came can, because the tiles they have opened stay open.

The exception is worth having, though. A party that splits up, or a game where somebody has a map already, wants to open a tile on the far side, and turning the rule off for a moment is easier than inventing a reason why they cannot.

In a geography lesson

Rewrite the places as landforms and the events as things that happen to travellers, and the same machine is a lesson about terrain: a class explores outwards from a starting square, records what they find, and ends up with a map they have to make sense of. The trail underneath is the record they write from.

For a board you paint yourself rather than one that arrives a tile at a time, the hex board is the page, and the fog of war hides a board you have already made until the players uncover it. For anything the journey asks you to roll, the dice pool is next door.

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