Honey, I Shrunk the Party

This is an idea for a hex or grid on the Crowfield map, somewhere in the Dreadwood.

The area was once the domain of a druid named Ælfride. She cast a spell of protection on her lands. Even though she is long gone, the effects of the spell remain.

The effect is quite simple. Any being (and all their gear, etc) entering the land after the spell was cast shrinks to 1/12th their size while in the region with no saving throw allowed. Thus a 6-foot tall fighter, will shrink down to 6 inches. The tricky part, though, is that the change happens gradually over the course of a quarter-mile or so. Because of this, the characters will be unaware that they're shrinking and instead think that they're entering an area filled with giant flora and fauna.

The spell reverses itself when the players leave the hex. The party suffers no ill effects, and is unaware that it happened to them.

Why is this tricky? Because until the players figure it out, it will severely mess with their mapping. The main play map of the area will be 5 miles per hex (or grid, I haven't decided yet). That means it takes about 2 hours to travel from one hex to the next. But while shrunken, 5 miles of the Giant Land will feel link 60 miles to the characters. Instead of taking 2 hours to cross, it will take 24 hours. Assuming that a party only travels for 8 hours a day, they'll spend 3 days in that hex!

Maybe a picture will help:

The hex marked with the dotted triangle is the "giant hex." If the party starts at hex "A" and travels in a straight line to hex "D," the journey will start normal. As they move into the "giant hex" though, I'll say "you notice that the vegetation around you is larger than normal. After another hour it's huge... you are confronted with a dandelion as tell as a man!" As mentioned above, this one hex will take 24 hours of travel time, and I'll present every two hour block as them entering a new hex. In fact, I'll probably use a map like this to represent that one hex:

On the other hand, if the party travels from "A" to "B" to "C" to "D" then the whole trip would only take 6 hours, even though it was "longer."

From a map making perspective, this should really confuse them. "It takes 3 days to travel from A to D."

Of course, any encounters in the hex will be "giant" bees and "giant" rats, etc. From the player's point of view, they are in a weird "Land of the Giants" until they figure it out.

It's just an idea.

Follow up: The next post contains my responses to some comments that I've received about this post.