Similarly to my 'show me your dungeon' thread, let's have a look at your wilderness areas for fun and inspiration. Again, this is intended to be a West Marches style campaign...I'm running into severe difficulties in making the map navigable by landmark, which seems the only way to handle things in the WM way. The necessary density of stuff is difficult to front load. I may just take copious notes on my map as I improvise landmarks in play. If anyone wants to discuss ways to make a wilderness navigable when playing in a 'hard core' manner, that's be sweet.

I'm attaching my player's starting map. The scale is 1/4" = 1 mile. It's about 11 miles from Winterwall to Woodthorpe, as the crow flies. Being a starting area there's not too much cool stuff on this map, though there are certainly opportunities for adventure. Woodthorpe is an excuse to have a small village to be overrun by lycanthropes, for instance. The charred inn is a common meeting point for bandits and humanoid bands hoping to raid the outlying farms of Winterwall. Other sites have been edited out in photoshop for this to function as a starter map for players.

The larger map this is taken from is on an 18"x24" sheet of Strathmore 400 paper, which responds quite well to archival ink. If you pencil first, it's a very good idea to use soft lead, because the Strathmore paper will pick up a memory of any sharp and hard lead. Unfortunately, I don't have access to a large format scanner at the moment, or I'd show more.

Winterwall is a small and ineptly managed barony on the wrong side of a nearly impassable mountain range. All known civilization is to the east. Beyond the Cold Marsh and the Smallwood lie the really deep wilderness.



[edit] Yes, I know this is shamelessly cliche. I rip anything and everything off, left and right. The reason being: cliches work.

Nall Morrain (part of Praemal I customized, mixed stuff from Golarion, Glorantha, ToEE, Castle Whiterock and other sources)



The Seven Spires' full map.

Political map:



Detail of the 7S (including details from Ghostwalk):



Ptolus area in 431 IA (300 years or so before Ptolus as written):

A region near Viridistan in the Majestic Wilderlands. Each small hex is 1 league or 2.5 miles take one hour to cross on level terrain.

Damn guys. I need to step up my game a notch. or three.

Kinda crappy compared to the rest but I like it. I only wish I knew how to scale the image so it would fit on one screen.

[EDIT] This is a resized image. If you want the full version, left click on the image which should open a new window then save as.

I think that's why I use attachments.

I few pcs have helped me out.

Quote from: LordVreeg;418596I think that's why I use attachments.

I few pcs have helped me out.

Cool. How'd you make 'em?

Seanchai

However, Tim, a word of advice: the players map should be Wrong. Wrong Wrong. It should have stuff on it that doesn't. some of the marked rods should either be pure fantasy or degraded beyond use, for example. Furhtermore there should be stuff in the world that isn't on the maps. Swamps and sudden drop offs are nice for that.




Old Map is Old.

P.S. nice maps, y'all.

Two samples: One is a in-character map from my PbP Openquest game done in MS paint and meant to be hand drawn on the side of a waterskin in charcoal. It shows the location of what is supposed to be a lost monastery.

The other is an overland map of an area known as the "Leprosarium" for my Warrens of the Leper Queens supplement. It was done using Hexographer and is meant for DM use.

Both are for use in my MRQ2 / OQ setting "Moragne".

Quote from: Aos;418654However, Tim, a word of advice: the players map should be Wrong. Wrong Wrong. It should have stuff on it that doesn't. some of the marked rods should either be pure fantasy or degraded beyond use, for example. Furhtermore there should be stuff in the world that isn't on the maps. Swamps and sudden drop offs are nice for that.
P.S. nice maps, y'all.

Yes, you're absolutely right. This map only covers the areas of the campaign that are 'known' to civilization. Even then, there are lots of things left unmarked once you get outside of the farmland and towns. The players will never see another wilderness map from me...everything else will be generated through play by the players.

Love your map, Aos. Especially the liberal sprinkling of umlauts. |m|

Quote from: Tim;418819Yes, you're absolutely right. This map only covers the areas of the campaign that are 'known' to civilization. Even then, there are lots of things left unmarked once you get outside of the farmland and towns. The players will never see another wilderness map from me...everything else will be generated through play by the players.

Love your map, Aos. Especially the liberal sprinkling of umlauts. |m|

I misuse the umlauts for Sett.
There is a gazetteer that goes with the map. It can be accessed by clicking the link in my sig, which will take you to my blog. The gazetteer and some other junk can be found on the left hand side of the page under the heading "Resources."

The physical map for Gompan, my now-stalled RQ3 game, is here.

I am pretty sure I showed these somewhere before but I couldn't find
them here on theRPGsite, so here goes:

A campaign setting based on a published product, Gralfsee
(a city sourcebook from the time when the German market was full of
multi-statted, semi-professional supplements and modules).
I didn't like the original A4 map that came with the book so I redid it A1 size:



And because it was so much fun, I invented the eastern
part of the realm along with it. (Sorry for the blurry picture -
I took the photo ages ago and I can't access the original map.)



Several maps (and handouts) from different games and campaigns: (Here is a bigger, crisper version!)



The upper right map ("Taurainn") I did for my M20 booklet.
The central, Hârn-like city map is from a campaign I showed more
maps of in a previous map thread.

As you can see, I am quite enamored with Darlene's Greyhawk-style...
so much so that I redrew a big part of the Forgotten Realm map in that
style, incorporating names and locales from other products I intended
to use in the campaign. 4 of the 12 (or so) sheets I finished:

Quote from: Aos;418654However, Tim, a word of advice: the players map should be Wrong. Wrong Wrong.

Depending on the campaign I gave players only puzzle pieces of maps,
as seen in the lower row of the big photo above.
I left it to them to figure how they related to one another. The maps
had different scales, different oriantations, different map styles/icons,
and sometimes contradictory info. Only later, when the players stayed
a certain amount of time in the realm I would give them my "official"
map (assuming that they learned the lay of the land my then).

Wow, gorgeous work, Dirk!

If you have good scans of the Darlene-style FR maps, there are a LOT of people who would love to get a copy.