A question of scale

So, I finally sat down in earnest and started working on my Yeomanry campaign. First off, I poked around with Return to the Keep and In Search of the Unknown a little. I have decided that the connecting tunnel mentioned between the Caves of Chaos and Quasqueton exists, but I have decided that it runs through lots of natural caverns, which housed other bugaboos, who have prevented said tunnel from being used very much. I'm also going to use these caverns to explain just what happened to the two heroes from B1.

I've also been doing some wilderness mapping, but here's my hitch.... I'm using the Living Greyhawk metaorg map of the Yeomanry as my guide (minus the location of Slerotin's tunnel and Dark Gate... these don't exist). Each of the hexes on this map is said to equal 30 miles. I started mapping by drawing a gigantic blown-up approximation of the starting hex (where I am placing the Keep, the Caves, Quasqueton and a small starting town), but I'm having trouble with my scale. I'm using a numbered hex map to represent the larger hex, but I can't wrap my head around the scale. Is 1 hex = 30 miles mean 30 SQUARE miles? Or that each hex is 30 miles North to South in distance? Right now, I have it so that, if I assume that each large hex is 30 miles N-S, then my smaller hexes are each about 1.25 miles. I went with that, but then I kind realized... I think this is WAY wrong, because it makes that hex HUGE. BUT, if I consider 1 hex = 30 SQUARE miles... then that doesn't leave a hell of alot of room in each hex for extras.

My original plan was to map out about 8 of the larger hexes in detail, and use that as a "sandbox" for my game. But now, I'm not so sure. Anyone got any advice?

(Cross-posted to the CANONFIRE site, for help from the 'Hawkers. 8)

My Own Private Appendix

If everyone else is doing it, why can't I?

My own version of the famed Appendix N

* JRR Tolkien's THE HOBBIT and LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy
* Weis and Hickman's DRAGONLANCE CHRONICLES trology and "Test of the Twins" trilogy
* TSR "Endless Quest" books, esp. RETURN TO BROOKMERE and DUNGEON OF DREAD
* Stephen King's THE STAND and SALEM'S LOT
* Homer's THE ODYSSEY
* Milton's PARADISE LOST
* Leiber's Fafhnard and the Grey Mouser novels, esp. SWORDS AGAINST DEVILTRY
* Terry Brooks' Shannara books, especially WISHSONG OF SHANNAR and THE SWORD OF SHANNARA
* H.P. Lovecraft
* Robert E. Howard
* Miyamoto Musashi's THE BOOK OF FIVE RINGS
* William Gibson, especially IDORU, BURNING CHROME, ALL TOMORROW'S PARTIES and SPOOK COUNTRY
* Norman Spinrad's LITTLE HEROES, DEUS EX and BUG JACK BARRON
* George Alec Effinger, esp. his Marid Audran novels
* Bruce Sterling, esp. HEAVY WEATHER and ISLANDS IN THE NET
* Brian Daley's Han Solo novels, esp. HAN SOLO AT STAR'S END
* Timothy Zahn's Thrawn Trilogy of STAR WARS novels, esp. HEIR TO THE EMPIRE
* Michael Stackpole's X-WING: ROGUE SQUADRON novels
* Robert Anton Shea's THE ILLUMINATUS TRILOGY
* Neil Gaiman, esp. AMERICAN GODS, ANASI BOYS, SMOKE & MIRRORS and FRAGILE THINGS
* the original STAR WARS trilogy of movies
* BLADE RUNNER
* TRON
* STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN
* STAR TREK VI: THE UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY
* Monty Python and the Holy Grail
* ROBIN HOOD, PRINCE OF THIEVES
* Disney's ALADDIN and BEAUTY AND THE BEAST
* GOODFELLAS
* the original BATTLESTAR GALACTICA tv series
* MILLENNIUM tv series
* THE X-FILES tv series
* LOST tv series
* THE PRETENDER tv series, esp. the first two seasons
* DARK SKIES tv series
* the first season of DARK ANGEL tv series
* Toho GODZILLA movies
* Kurosawa's THE SEVEN SAMURAI, THE HIDDEN FORTRESS and RAN
* BRAVEHEART
* MONGOL
* BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF
* the ILLUMINATI game
* the ARKHAM HORROR boardgame
* Queensryche's OPERATION: MINDCRIME and RAGE FOR ORDER albums
* Front Line Assembly's TACTICAL NEURAL IMPLANT album, esp. the video for "Gun"
* KMFDM's ANGST, NIHIL and XTORT albums
* Radiohead's THE BENDS and OK COMPUTER albums
* NIN's BROKEN and THE DOWNWARD SPIRAL albums
* Pop Will Eat Itself's DOS DEDOS, MIS AMIGOS album
* the art of M.C. Escher
* the art of H.R. Giger
* Chris Claremont and John Byrne's run on THE UNCANNY X-MEN, esp. "Days of Future Past"
* Mike Grell's run on GREEN ARROW, and JON SABLE, FREELANCE
* Mark Waid and Alex Ross's KINGDOM COME
* Chris Claremont and Frank Miller's original WOLVERINE mini-series
* Marvel's old STAR WARS, SHOGUN WARRIORS and GODZILLA comics

Examining XPs

So, as part of my home rules, I was doing some number crunching today with XPs. As I've said before, I'm thinking of making a single XP table, much like there is in 3E. So, I sat down tonight and crunched the numbers, through 20th level. What did I find? MAN, there's some WHACKY XP requirements for levels in 2ed. For instance, clerics and druids (which are, more or less, a specialty cleric), are pretty much on a parallel until you hit 6th level. Then, things start going whacky. It suddenly becomes AWFULLY expensive to be a cleric - to the point where, by 12th level, you could have 3-12th LEVEL DRUIDS for the XP cost of 1-12th LEVEL CLERIC. However, things swing back in line pretty quick, as within 2 levels, Druids have made up that gap, and within 3 levels, you could now have 2-15th level clerics for the cost of 1-15th level druid. Plus, druids kinda get screwed once they get to Heirophant levels, where their numbers go WAY out of line. Also, thieves are cheap in every sense of the word.

I did some averages for all classes, core classes, and alternate classes (considering paladin, ranger, druid, bard, and monk and assassin from THE SCARLET BROTHERHOOD as alternate classes), and got some interesting results. It's actually CHEAPER, on average, to be a "specialty" class until 13th level. Then, the XP creep finally catches up with you. All in all, druids and thieves REALLY screw any attempts at averaging out an XP table, because druids are unnaturally cheap at early levels, and thieves are just plain cheap. You would think, if you were going to use the XP for gold rule, that thieves should maybe be MORE expensive, since they would benefit from this the most.

For instance, at 40,000 XP, you could have a 6th level fighter, paladin or ranger, well on their way to 7th level, about one and a half 6th level clerics or monks (1 cleric/monk who is a little short of 7th level, or a 6th level cleric/monk and a 5th level assistant), two 6th level druids (or a 7th level druid nearing next level), one 6th level wizard, or two 6th level thieves, bards or assassins (or one 7th level thie/bard/assassin). At 1,000,000 XP, you could have a 12th level fighter, an 11th level ranger or paladin very near to leveling up, a 12th level cleric or monk, THREE 12th LEVEL DRUIDS (or one druid halfway between 13th and 14th level), a 12th level wizard close to leveling up, or TWO 12th LEVEL THIEVES AND AN 11th LEVEL THIEF (or one thief just under 15th level). Just think... you could have 3 TIMES THE AVAILABLE SPELLS by having three 12th level druids, or THREE BACKSTABBING MACHINES by having three high level thieves. It seems a little... unfair.

For some reason, thieves and druids are WAY out of line here.

The thing I found the most is how odd it is that the XP tables start out as routinely doubling for most classes, but then at some point,it simply become adding a set amount on top of the previous level. In a way, it encourages outrageously high level characters, because when you reach the top level, it starts to plateau, instead of an even exponential increase (is it even an exponential increase? I teach English, not math).