Hex mapping

I usually just draw maps freehand, but somehow, as I sat down today to do a bit of mapping, the urge for hexes came upon me! A quick google search for hex paper later, I was disappointed to find that what I had in mind wasn't quite as easy as it at first seemed -- I couldn't find A4 size hex-gridded paper with a per-hex number anywhere!

On the way I did find some very useful websites, which I shall share for others on a similar mission:

• Some very nice pre-made PDFs of hexes and others, including grids with small hexes overlaid with larger ones: http://mojobob.com/roleplay/props/mapping.html
• An online gridded paper generator! Very cool, but unfortunately doesn't do numbered grids: http://incompetech.com/graphpaper/
• An inkscape extension for generating hex grids: http://www.lysator.liu.se/~perni/iboardgameexts/

I ended up using the latter, which is an extremely and easy to use flexible tool allowing you to generate hex grids exactly to your own specification. I'd really recommend it. One tip, for anyone who does use it: the default grids it generates include a dot in the middle of each hex (apparently some games require this). For D&D mapping this was unnecessary, but it took me a while to work out how to remove it (there's no option for that in the tool's dialogue box). The secret is that the tool actually generates four layers, one of which is the dots. So you can just delete that layer.

Here's the PDF of my hex paper anyway, so you can see what I ended up with.

Addendum: I just started filling in those hexes, probably for the first time in 20 years -- what a joy!