Chris Crawford on Game Design

To Hell with Grids

At that time, wargame designers were wasting a lot of breath arguing over the relative merits of hexgrids and rectgrids. (See Chapter 13 “Tanktics,” for an explanation of hexgrids.) The rectgrid was better suited to the computer, but traditional boardgames had always used hexgrids. Some wargame designers sneered that wargames with rectgrids were not the genuine article; real wargamers played with hexgrids. I had started off using hexgrids in my very first computer game design (Tanktics), but had shifted to rectgrids for Eastern Front (1941) and was convinced of their greater utility. However, I tired of the whole stale debate. Why should we have any grids? It seemed rather silly to have military units hopping across terrain ...