Hexcrawl maps for players: What's best for gameplay, player's maps with or without hexes?

I’m putting together a hexcrawl setting for DnD 5e called Langden Mire. I want to give players a map so that they can orientate themselves and decide where to head to. The PCs will start in the fishing village of Cobham, where they will be tasked with finding a Green Hag who lives in the Mire and convincing her to brew up a cure for a sick child. Of course, the player’s map is incomplete and there are lots of other interesting locations for the PCs to discover.

One question I’ve been puzzling over is whether to make the hexcrawl mechanics explicit by including the hexes on the player’s map. The player’s map on the left has only a scale to indicate distance. The map on the right has 6-mile hexes overlaid as well. I can see pros and cons of both approaches. For example, The Alexandrian makes a cogent argument that the DM should hide the hexcrawl structure from the players

https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/17308/roleplaying-games/hexcrawl

so that players interact more with the game world rather than the hexcrawl abstraction. At the same time I wondered if some players would like to see the hex map so that they can make informed decisions about the game.

I thought I’d ask on reddit as to whether people preferred a player’s map with or without hexes. My expectation was that most people would not care too much, so I found the resulting discussion rather surprising. Roughly half of commenters had a strong preference for hexes and the other half had a strong preference for not having hexes. There was a smaller proportion of commenters who were happy with either.

There were strong arguments against hexes on the map since it reduced the player’s immersion by making the mechanics of the hexcrawl too apparent. There were also strong arguments for hexes on the player’s map, so that the players could make clearly informed decisions about what to do next. Personally, I’m agnostic as to whether to include hexes or not on a player’s map. I think that when I get around to running the hexcrawl I’ll simply ask my players what they prefer.

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