wilderness (pointcrawls vs hexcrawls vs squarecrawls)

On my last sessions I had not hexed paper and I had no patience to draw a map hex by hex, so I made a bunch of vertical and horizontal lines and used a square grid instead.

Its not the first time I do it, and while I like the aesthetics of hexes, the truth is that squares do fine. You can assume the same size for them as you would with hexes (6 miles as the standard set by this post). You can move horizontally or vertically, but not diagonally (that takes 2 moves). It might not make much sense a priori, but hexes are not realistic either, they are a different form of abstraction. And as a gaming abstraction they work just as fine. Maybe more, as the players can verbalize their movements better in the case you don't want to share your map with them. North! South! East! West! 

I also tested something for simplifying movement that I wanted to use, which I liked a lot and will probably stay on the game:

Movement rules: 

clear terrain/road: 3 hexes (or squares, of course)/day, or 4 if using a horse.

forest: 2 hexes/day

mountain pass: 1 hex/day

* Players can use the night's rest to travel 1 extra hex instead, if there is enough visibility to allow it; but penalties for not resting might appear

* Weather conditions such as a storm will reduce the hexes travelled by one, and might increase the chance of getting lost.

* Characters who are encumbered also reduce the travelling speed by one, and if this takes your travelling speed below 1, its up to the GM to decide if it becomes 1, becomes impossible or has a X in 6 chance of being fruitful (a fail indicates that you must rest before you finish walking the hex)

* One encounter roll per day travelled, and another one for each night passed. 

Today I have also read this and this other classic links about pointcrawls and got me thinking: Hexes and squares are just 6 and 4 path-nodes after all. Why not switch to pointcrawls and embrace a new abstraction? Well, I am studying the pros and cons of the idea, and from the top of my head, here is a list of them:

* Pointcrawls dont have to be "one location away is one step", which was my main concern. Roads can be segmented on any number of steps, as Chris Kutalik points in the first link, and every road have its own chart of dangers. You will have to sleep on the ground still in a random forgotten place sometimes.

* Getting lost can still be portrayed, it might actually be easier. If the PCs get lost, they automatically end up in another "road" that starts at their last "node", at the same segment of distance. For example:

If you are at the red dot, travelling from B to C, when you get lost, you are randomly "teleported" to any of the yellow dots. If there is a terrain type associated with that road point, GM will tell you and you will or won't be able to determine if you are lost by that description. 

* Hexcrawls fail to portray impassable barriers of smaller granularity of 6 miles. If confronted by a mountain range, it will always be passable, even if with a small travelling speed. Pointcrawls on the other hand are designed for thriving with impassable barriers. Sea, Mountains, etc. 

* Pointcrawls are faster to draw. They don't have to even be scaled in the map, as the roads take care of that, so they lend much better to make maps "artistic" (see picture below).

from The Road to El Dorado

* Though it is true that a too linear pointcrawl (see picture above) removes the players agency, one with enough bifurcations or nodes prevents this completely. "A hex is just a node with 6 paths after all", as we said earlier. 

* New paths between two nodes can be unlocked during the game, which cannot be done on a hexcrawl easily (it is hard to make an area "secret" or "locked" naturally). For example, new ways can be found just as you would a secret door (you find it on a 2 in 6 by spending time searching for the trail), maybe they are found after you have been lost in there (recovering from a "get lost" roll makes you find a shortcut through the woods), attempting something that wasnt plannned (players decide to sail down a river, and at its base they find a way that goes upwards, to where they came. This one is used a lot on old Lucas Arts adventure games) or doing something in game that unlocks the path (if you help the kobolds build that tunnel, you connect the city + the sea under the mountain)

* A pointcrawl can be drawn over a preexisting, not-gridded map by deciding its points of interest. This can also visually guide you into how does the area look, or which kind/frequency of encounters does it have. For example, in this map below you can adjust encounters depending on which terrain the roads are crossing at that point.

credits: Arlin Ortiz

Of course, I'm not saying that any of this approaches are objectivelly better. All are equally valid, and one can take the one that likes best at anytime. But I think that these are enough points to prove that there is no reason to be fundamentalistic about hex-based grids, neither to say that the other approaches lack gameability. And you, dear reader, what is your personal experience? have you used this, freeform maps or any other alternative to hexes? Whats your preferred choice?