I worked on some maps over the holidays - relaxing stuff. First, I want my maps closer to black and white, for easy printing down the road. And since The Black City is using more real world geography for inspiration, I updated the archipelago map:
Here's a faded version with a hex overlay I'll use for island stocking. The scale is 1 hex = 24 miles.
The peninsula ridge where the ruined city and Viking camp is located gets lost at that scale, so I'll be building an area map (maybe 1 hex = 1 mile or 3 miles) that blows up the circled area in great detail for forays near the ruins:
All these maps were done in just a few hours with Campaign Cartographer; I'm not terribly good at it (yet) but it's a pretty powerful tool - I may start doing traditional hex maps and dungeons using it as well.
Here's a faded version with a hex overlay I'll use for island stocking. The scale is 1 hex = 24 miles.
The peninsula ridge where the ruined city and Viking camp is located gets lost at that scale, so I'll be building an area map (maybe 1 hex = 1 mile or 3 miles) that blows up the circled area in great detail for forays near the ruins:
All these maps were done in just a few hours with Campaign Cartographer; I'm not terribly good at it (yet) but it's a pretty powerful tool - I may start doing traditional hex maps and dungeons using it as well.
They're nice maps. For your area map, go for 3 mile hexes; roughly equals an hour's travel, is also roughly the limit of sight to the horizon, and is often a distance associated with a league (which can, of course, be smaller or longer, but 3 miles seems common). I like the black & white look too, nice and simple.
ReplyDeleteLove the maps!
ReplyDeleteI like that idea of 1 hex = 3 miles, that's sound advice Simon, and it's cool to have a reason to describe things in "leagues".
ReplyDeleteNice map!
ReplyDeleteIf you are not yet set on the 3 mile hex, you might want to check out this article (if you have not already): In Praise of the 6 Mile Hex. It sold me.
ReplyDeleteVery nice map! I didn't realise Svalbard was so large.
ReplyDeleteOn hex sizes, in my 1e Yggsburgh campaign I'm enjoying using the big Yggsburgh 'East Mark' area map which is a big map at 1 mile/hex (it's 34x50 miles), as EGG notes in the 1e DMG that's a nice size for territory development as you can place individual monster lairs, terrain et al.
Player version: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XQM5StK4G6M/TvXDJqlQT8I/AAAAAAAAAOc/kRJdF3Mw7Gw/s1600/The%2BEast%2BMark.jpg
For my own local area maps I normally use 2 miles to the hex recently, which for borderland areas allows reasonable density of villages and lets me cover a 30x50 mile area, same as the East Mark, on a single A4 page: http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-QP8rb_Xc63I/Tjj6qaesRpI/AAAAAAAAAJ4/ZOv2aVNwzGQ/s1600/Loudwater%2BArea%2B2m%2Bper%2Bhex.jpg
But for my Wilderlands 'Barbarian Altanis' game I've stuck with a big 15-mile-hex scale, IME it gives a 'Western' feel of wide open spaces, which works well if transport is rapid and the PCs move around a lot.