Campaign Map

[Gambit37]

I was playing around in PhotoShop yesterday and created this map. Thought I'd share (Click for larger).

I transferred all my work from my two RTC projects, "BloodBane Rising" and "Maze of Zagor", into DSB. I'm currently trying to work out DSB well enough to build something from those two old projects. This map is for the DSB campaign -- if I ever find the time to build it!

Wish I could make money from doing this sort of thing -- way more fun than web design!

[oh_brother]

That looks great, even the "folds" in the paper!

Good luck with finding time to finsih, I would love to play a DM game with a proper campaign feel. Actually I am planning to get through the back catalogue of RTC games I have yet to try (i.e. all of them)...maybe DSB next!

[linflas]

nice ! very Lonewolf !
I would have added a few cracks and burns on the edges

[Jan]

Wow, this is fantastic! Excellent! Brilliant! Very realistic!

Well, may I have a question or two? Is there some sort of a man-made channel on the river flowing through The Shroud? I can well imagine this as the wood / timber / charcoal could be easily transported from The Shrouds to Poltarion with this canal. But otherwise the connection between Throne and The Spew would be possible but very unusual.

And then the river flowing through Khung behaves somewhat... unusually... it sort of divides and the two rivers flow to Lanten and Fethand respectively, and the right one divides at Fethand again. Although it's theoretically possible in a flat terrain / marshes (various river deltas etc.), it's quite unusual, especially on a larger scale.

Where's the map scale, anyway? And the names of the rivers?

But, meh, I'm just nitpicking, the map is excellent!

I would have added a few cracks and burns on the edges

Alright, alright, just be careful!

[Gambit37]

Jan, you're assuming it behaves like Earth I can do what I want, it's my world, mine! **Mwa ha ha ha**

But yeah you're right, I didn't think too hard about the actual geography. Might revise it based on your excellent observations. As for names, I made most of them up as I went along, took a few minutes. Except for Kirsut, The Shroud and Nira Prime which have been in my background docs since I started thinking about a custom RTC game many years ago...! Most of the names are deliberately silly. Weava and Spand were originally Wanka and Spank, but I thought maybe that was a little *too* silly.

@Linflas: There are burns at the edges, but they are hidden by the quick-and-dirty border I added for display purposes

[Gambit37]

Also, I actually started with a full colour version, but decided I didn't like it:

[linflas]

whoa

[Jan]

The full colour map looks great too but I like the old-looking one better.

But hey, I could punis... ASK one of my students to make a 3D model of your map.

As students we had to make a model of an island of plaster... but it was 15 years ago... oh, memories.

[Gambit37]

You asked about scale. It's a very good question.... I don't know.

In the context of a playable DM type game, the scale would have to be tiny. Just a few miles between each town. But that doesn't make sense in terms of my story.

A more realistic scale would be something like 500 miles between Kirsut (bottom left) and Nira Prime (top right, the ultimate goal). This would put a travelling campaign at around 2-3 weeks to get from one to the other, assuming an average speed of 35 miles a day, and allowing for longer rests, diversions, etc. Of course, to simulate that in a real time game would be impossible, so in terms of a campaign, I'd split it into chapters, with choices to be made at key points for choosing different paths.

Then the DM style gameplay would have to imaginatively represent something much bigger. So for example, if one whole chapter was traversing The Shroud, that would actually take about 10 days of real time. You wouldn't want to spend more than a few hours of game time in there, so that game time would have to simply represent a much longer journey.

I wonder if DSB could handle episodic content? IE, one game per chapter, then import your party to the next chapter...

[Jan]

assuming an average speed of 35 miles a day

As the crow flies? Not on your best day, pal. Divide it by two. Even Chuck Norris couldn't do that. Nor the Royal Marines yomping on their best day. Nor the South African / Rhodesian Scouts in the days of the Bush war.

With all the equipment, possible diversions, quests, fights etc. you would sustain 25 miles a day on a road / path at maximum and 15 or 20 miles in a terrain. This could mean something like 10 to 20 miles as the crow flies at maximum, depending, of course, on your occupation, terrain, weather, weight carried, days travelled, diversions etc. And these are rather optimistic figures.

Of course, for a short period of time, in certain situations, you could walk / run / yomp faster, but in an unstastainable manner. Or you're a superhuman.

[beowuuf]

nice ! very Lonewolf !

I thought that too :p Very cool! Hmm, I like the colour map as a map of the place, but the parchment map is definitely the better atmospheric one

[Gambit37]

@Jan: Yeah, you're right. Not sure where I got 35 miles a day from!OK, so let's say Kirsut -> Nira Prime (the ultimate goal of the trek) would actually take 4-5 weeks, rather than 2. It's still an unacceptably massive distance for a DM type game. I'd manage it by simply creating small DM scenarios and linking them with fullscreen scene-setting choices to take paths that then describe "you travel for several days..." that sort of thing.

(That said, some people have done Land's End --> John O'Groats in a month and that's 840 miles or so)

@Beo & Linflas: Thanks, yeah I was going for a Lone Wolf vibe. I used these brushes for the terrain and towns:
http://starraven.deviantart.com/art/Ske ... -198264358

[ian_scho]

Great work, Gambit. Love it.
I agree to Jan's initial observation that the continuous water channel is a bit strange.

[Gambit37]

I updated the map to correct some of the apparent geography issues. Works better now?

[Jan]

Excellent! Very well done indeed!

So there are actually two rivers flowing out of the mountains of Vendri - one to the southeast and one to the northwest? Perhaps you could move the title "Vendri" slightly to the left so that it doesn't overlap with the river line (the river flowing between E and N). Also, do you have means to change the thickness of the river lines (so that the line is thinner at the spring and thicker at the mouth)?

And I'd still like to hear the explanation for the river dividing at Fethand. Is it because of low terrain / marshes? If yes, it's possible (there are actually some marshes between Poltarion and Merival) but you have to realise that marshes and swamps are usually very unhealthy places so people are unlikely to found large cities there (without some drainage works etc.). So actually Poltarion would likely be a very unhealthy city with quite a high mortality. The same applies to Spand. It's apparently within a river delta and this would be a very unfavourable position. In reality Spand would lie further to the northwest (say in the bend of the river - like Lanten which is very well positioned) at a river ford and a road between Palisade Prime and Joyhaven.

[Gambit37]

I should know better than post flawed maps in front of a Geography professor

I like that you say Poltarion is an unhealthy city -- that actually fits in with my rough ideas of the place. I think I'll keep it there. Spand on the other hand has some very unique features which explain why it's where it is -- I just haven't worked 'em out yet.

In reality, I just wanted a very quick visual of the area I'm working in, to work out how a campaign might play out, and how the party might choose different routes between KIirsut and Nira. It's for a DM style game after all, and since there's unlikely to be any actual gameplay in most of the cities and towns, it doesn't really matter whether they have a realistic background or not...

[Jan]

Alright, alright, I'm giving you grade C in geography and now go and study something else.

No, I'm just joking, I understand your explanation and I do like your map a lot. Just move the Vendri title to the left a little, or you get D.

[PetriH]

Well done, Gambit! The map is awesome!

[Gambit37]

Thanks If you like fantasy maps, check out this guys work, some of it's really beautiful:

http://fantasticmaps.wordpress.com/
http://fantasticmaps.wordpress.com/2012 ... -illfrost/

[Gambit37]

Slightly related to the geography discussions above, I was looking at the full Magnamund map (the lands of Lone Wolf) and only for the first time realised that some of the geography is pretty weird:
http://outspaced.fightingfantasy.org/Ho ... namund.png

The distance between the frozen wastes of Kalte and the deserts of Vassagonia is not very far at all!For example, Ljuk in Kalte, to Barrakeesh in Vassgonia is about 1000 miles, which does not seem far enough for such a difference in temperature, unless their sun is at a very oblique angle to the surface of the planet? The arrangement of the three main deserts also seems odd...

There are plenty of other weird things on this map too... I wonder if Joe Dever ever realised some of it is nonsense, or if he gets around it by making up his own geography rules

[beowuuf]

Isn't it only @2000 miles between Arizona and the colder Canadian territories?


Out of interest, what are some other weird things?

[Gambit37]

It could be 2000 miles, I didn't look Perhaps my own geo. knowledge of Earth isn't as good as I thought it was!

One weird thing is Chasm of Gorgoron, s/e of Dessi mountains -- just doesn't seem possible so close to the coasts?

That said, I don't remember any details of this stuff from the books, and I only ever got to book 12 anyway, so it's probably all explained somewhere that I don't know about...

[Jan]

You just can't take these things too seriously... look at the "mono-climate" planets in Star Wars. Even the Lord of the Rings is weird geographically.

The climate, especially "along" the coast (and with "along" I mean many hundreds of miles), is largely influenced also by prevailing winds and ocean currents. With unlikely, extraordinary, but still possible combinations of these two you can explain basically anything. But, of course, as Gambit says, the whole map doesn't make much sense from a geographical perspective. The sudden borders between individual climate / landscape types, distinction between mountains and "everything else" (you either have forests or mountains), the "uniform" countries etc. simply are not realistic.

I wonder: did Joe Dever create the map (I mean "his world") at the beginning / in one go / from a scratch; or did he made it step-by-step as he was writing the books and sending LW to different directions? I guess the later option is more likely and this would explain all these inconsistencies. You just can't send LW for a 5.000 miles voyage to get to a desert or to a world of ice - you must have both behind a corner.

[Jan]

One weird thing is Chasm of Gorgoron, s/e of Dessi mountains -- just doesn't seem possible so close to the coasts?

No problem with that one. If it's a rift, it can be practically anywhere depending on geology / plate tectonics.

The climate issues you mentioned earlier are more serious, together with, for instance, the disposition of mountains which makes no sense either.

[beowuuf]

The Gorgoron was a powerful creature that the Elder Magi could not defeat - though somehow Banedon could, as the Left Handed Magic was different and the Gorgoron was not immune. And that earned him his links with the Elder Magi. And his flying ship! Anyway, it could be the chasm was formed by the creature, not by nature. Or it was already there, and the creature just lived there.

Remmeber, you are dealing with a supernatural world where Dragons existed first and blew the place apart in a war too



And JD did create the world during his D&D days and release the Magnamund companion with the world detail reasonably early in to the book's run. So I think he had a fair idea of the history and georgraphy before the books started.


I'm interested to know if that is the whole of Magnamund, or just the known section. It could be southern magnamund is just beyond the equator, since we never see the second polar region. I know there are chains of islands aroudn the outside called the voids.


Also, interesting to think that the world mass is basically in pangea stages, while - due to godly interference and population - the history of the world is only about 10,000 years

[Jan]

due to godly interference

I guess this explains it all.

I'm interested to know if that is the whole of Magnamund, or just the known section.

Also, interesting to think that the world mass is basically in pangea stages

This is a very important question to ask (together with the size of the planet, axial tilt, speed and direction of rotation etc.). Having one huge continent with the rest of the planet covered with oceans would lead to very extreme / severe climate on the continent.

Anyway, I don't think it's worth speculating about it. Obviously, JD made the map just for fun and gaming purposes and didn't care about scientific rules. It doesn't really matter, of course. It's just a fantasy.

[Gambit37]

I know it's fantasy and shouldn't be taken seriously; doesn't stop my imaginative curiosity though!

@Beo: I didn't know about the Dragon thing in Magnamund. I've probably read it before, but have forgotten all those details! Where is this documented?

[beowuuf]

Check out the Project Aon main website, they have the Magnamund Companion in pdf form to browse through as one of the main links in the books section.

The history of the world is near the start, along with the magnamund map and the general shift of the various races in to Magnamund.

[Zyx]

I didn't look at the map, but the proximity between ice and desert is not impossible, since a desert can be caused by a lack of usable water (salted or toxic soil, natural barriers impeding wet winds or clouds to reach the area, dry winds who evaporate the water, etc.) Also, a cold area can be due to a maritime current coming from the poles, etc.

[cowsmanaut]

you should look at this before deciding the adjacency of desert to frost lands or even this

I should note that, here in BC, we have the ability to go hiking in lush forrest, suntan beside and swim in a warm lake, and then go skiing.. all in the same day.. altitude and such certainly helps.