The Better Parts of Earth for Hexmaps

For some reason, we all like to see real-life places covered in hexmaps. Because the six-mile hex can contain so much, it can be easy to assume that you can fit something like the USA or the continent of Europe in a large but reasonable-size hexmap. But if you've ever looked into this, you'll find that inclination is wrong. Six-mile hexes contain a lot, but the Earth has a lot a lot a lot of ground to cover, and if, like the dedicated Idraluna Archives you make hexmaps at this scale for much of the Earth, you'll find that a lot of regions are just vast swathes of hundreds of hexes of tundra or desert or something, not very dynamic or interesting.

So I'm taking the liberty of going through all Idraluna Archive's maps and pointing out the ones I think might be best inspiration for a hexmap for a campaign or wargame. The maps Thomas provides are all kind of low-resolution, so I think it's more likely you'd want to use them as direct and detailed inspiration for your own more gameplay-focused take with your own system's needs. Go 75% real-life topography, 25% Outdoor Survival chunkiness and contrived routing challenges.

So, without further ado, the maps I think have a pleasing mixture of terrain, routing choice, and inspiring beauty:

Africa

Nigeria, especially the southern half.

Upper Nile

West Africa

African Great Lakes

African Great Lakes. Look at those swirling biomes and convenient water routes.

Asia

Dzungaria (#1 for mountain pass-centric games)

Fertile Crescent, avoiding the swell of Arabia (which is always done dirty by hexmaps)

Manchura

honorable mention to Borneo for if you need a generic island hexmap.

Dzungaria. Plenty of choke points for a creative DM to put some dragon den or humanoid city in.

Europe

Iberia (#1 for generic European fantasy games)

South Central Europe

Anatolia

Iberia. Some hard barriers, some softer ones. Good mixture of wide homogenous zones with more varied ones.

North America

New England
Central Mexico
Great Plains (more homogenous but still has variety)

New England. Simple but pleasing. Mountains you can try to route around.

Oceania

Tasmania

Tasmania. There weren't a lot of maps for Oceania, but this one is okay.

Oceans

None

South America

South American Pampas

East Brazil

Mato Grosso (#1 for heavily forested games)

East Brazil. Lovely mix in the east there.

There it is, the cream of 118+ maps. If I had to pick one to run a game for, I might pick Iberia, especially if gameplay would only occur in a smaller section; or the African Great Lakes, especially if long-distance travel would come up a lot. Such realistic scales are unfortunately a bit too big for most campaign purposes, but you can always take the juiciest section from the quivering whole, or reproduce the whole map at a different scale. Thanks again to Idraluna Archives for going through the work of making hexmaps for so much of the Earth. Very interesting stuff.