Revisiting Points of Light as a Setting Ideal

My crew jumped into 4th Edition hard when it came out.  While the best thing that came out of our 4E experience was a greater appreciation for Classic D&D (BX), 1E AD&D, and the OSR movement, the non-mechanical aspects of 4E were actually well-executed, particularly the world-building.  My favorite conceit from the 4E time period was the metaphor "points of light" as a descriptor for the default type of campaign setting the designers envisioned.

4E introduced a new world (eventually called Nerath) and a default starting area called the Nentir Vale.  The premise of a points of light setting is that the world is fallen; civilized people now live in small, isolated settlements (the points of light) scattered across a dark and dangerous world.  The areas between the points of light involve dangerous stretches of wilderness, marauded by humanoids, bandits, and monsters.  Scattered ruins of prior civilizations and failed attempts to quell the wilds dot the landscape.  It's a far cry from the heavily civilized settings like Forgotten Realms or Eberron.

In fact, "points of light" as a setting metaphor has more in common with Middle Earth.  Tolkien's world is sparsely populated, there are very few settlements on the map, and journeys consist of leaving a sheltered area like the Shire or Rivendell and covering huge expanses of wilderness to reach the next settlement.

The other aspect of points of light that resonates with me is it's embrace of "the American West" as a paradigm for society and mobility.  Small groups of heroes traveling vast landscapes, dishing out frontier justice and following a loose code of honor, is part of 19th century gunslinger folklore or the ideals of the knight-errant from Medieval romances.  D&D embraces social mobility through heroic action (and recovering vast sums of gold) which aligns with the ideals of the Western and American mythology, unlike a historical game or European feudal simulator.

With that in mind, here are a pair of area maps for the setting I've been working on, The Midlands.  I still have to name mountain ranges and some natural features, but they're pretty far along.  (You can see the development of the underlying world and larger area maps from last week's posts). The Midlands consists of 7 or so small "kingdoms" dotted up and down a large valley between two sets of highlands.  To the North, the Scandians and Greats have invaded, carving out their own frontier settlements at places like Slaghold, or Jernrike.  Each hex on the map is 24 miles, so there are many days of travel between major settlements, going for that sparsely populated "Middle Earth" feel.  Original Greyhawk was similarly presented, with sparse settlements depicted with giant hexes (30 miles per hex).

The Midlands, no hexes

The Midlands, 24 miles per hex

Now that all of the broader foundations are in place (the world, the continent, the region maps) I'm going to zoom in to the area of Bernia and Harrowdale and build out a smaller scale hex map (maybe 6 or 8 miles per hex) ready for use as a sandbox.  Will be back soon.

Quick Map Update - A Globe for Erda

I figured there would be a straightforward way to apply naturalistic looking textures to a fractal world (including applying a cloud overlay with some wispy "NASA style" clouds).  The versions from the previous post (Maps Galore) prioritize bright colors to support shaping the land and altitudes.

Here is an update of the globe with a bit of this "naturalistic" treatment:

Overall I'm happy with the results for a first foray into fractal mapping and this style of building the physical world.  Next up is creating a large area map for the Midlands area, and then a smaller area hex map for adventuring purposes.

Maps Galore - Fractals and World Maps

Most holidays I poke fun at my wife for making hosting guests harder than it needs to be.  She'll demand to do things "the right way", which usually means cooking gigantic dishes from scratch.  Not quite growing your own wheat in the backyard for a season and milling it to make your own homemade flour, but it's usually close to that; we've grown our own pumpkins in the garden for pumpkin pies.  There were many years of trying to make pumpernickel rolls from scratch.  We discovered a nearby Amish market last year and holiday cooking has never been better.  The Amish are spectacular bakers.

So it is with some chagrin I must to confess how I became distracted when I sat down to make a map for Erda.  Somehow "sketching an area map for my new campaign" devolved into "Gee, I should learn various fractal mapping softwares and create a full fractal world, with climate, wind patterns, ocean currents, and naturalistic erosion".  So that's where I've been hiding out a couple of weeks.

I've owned a piece of fractal mapping software for a while, "Fractal Terrains" (FT3) that's part of the Campaign Cartographer suite (CC3).  I hadn't used Campaign Cartographer in a few years, so I needed to dust it off and re-acclimate - it's a powerful CAD-style drawing platform, but the learning curve is real.  My mapping journey took me into fractal world building, leveraging a free fractal tool called "Wilbur" to apply naturalistic erosion and generating rivers on a fractal world, and ultimately importing maps back into CC3 for finishing.  (There are tutorials out there, and the various online cartographer groups with the pros are filled with helpful folks, so it's not like I could've done this without the wisdom of actual experts).

Onward to the maps.  First up, here's the actual fractal world itself after development in Fractal Terrains, erosion in Wilbur, and then brought back into Fractal Terrains to add rivers:

Erda in Fractal Terrains

Here's the same map but switched from an equidistant rectangular projection to a globe, shifted to view the main continent that's acting as my equivalent to fantasy Europe.  (I love the globe view, I should do a version with "earth-like" coloring and some wispy clouds).

Erda Globe View

Below is the same map after some treatment in Campaign Cartographer.  This is very much a working version, as I still need to name the continents and oceans, make sure the rivers carry over, add arrows for currents and prevailing winds, that kind of stuff.  The jpg export isn't a good resolution.  Anyway, I'll be working on the CC3 version during the week to add those elements (names, currents, winds).

Work in progress - the Fractal Map in Campaign Cartographer

Here is a zoom on the starting continent in the northwest corner (created in Fractal Terrains).

Northwest Erda

...And below is an actual "fantasy version" of this section that I could use as a world map to start writing about the game world.  I'd have to check scale, but the continent is fairly massive - probably 50 miles to the hex like the original World of Greyhawk.  This would be akin to a parchment world map the players could have as a starting handout about their "Known World".  As I add notes about the places, I'll circle back to the map and put in major cities.  The starting area will be a zoomed in version of the area called the Midlands, at a reasonable hex scale (6 or 8 miles per hex or thereabouts).

Erda - The Known World

The Midlands are a chaotic collection of small holds and warring kingdoms, something like Dark Ages Britain at or before the time of Alfred the Great - Mercia, Wessex, Anglia, Northumbria - the area map will have all those types of small kingdoms mapped out.  There have been Northmen invasions, and areas carved out from the coast reminiscent of the Danelaw from real-world history.  Seems like a cool area and time period to give the D&D treatment, add lots of fantasy and magic, with plenty of strife and threats of invasion.  The megadungeon, Harrowdale, is on the western moors of the Midlands.  Beyond the western hills is the Gloaming, a region of misty highlands and kings of the old folk.  The Gloaming is Celtic / Irish / Gaelic in flavor - a place of druids and faiths that predate the church.

Heading east is the sprawling empire of Caronia.  I've had it titled this way in one of my notebooks since last year - but I may need to rename it depending on what happens with this scary carona virus!  As it stands now, Caronia is a sprawling homage to Charlemagne and the Holy Roman Empire.  The Great March is a military zone manned by border nobles of Caronia and mercenaries of The Folk, the barbarians and woodmen of the southeastern vales (including Grossval).

The southern coast of the continent is home to the principalities of Aurum and the theocracy of Topaz, inheritors to civilization after old Valorum fell in the magical apocalypse that reconnected the magic worlds and allowed fresh invasions from Jotunheim and Niflheim, creating the current dark age.  Beyond Valorum (and off the map to the south) the lands turn dry and desert and we find the ruins of antiquity.

Above the whale road are Scandia and Greatland, the two nordic realms of the setting.  Invasions of giants and dragons from the west have made the northern cultures tough and fatalistic in the face of ever colder winters and darker nights.  A culture of "vikings" has developed, with sea-faring reavers attacking softer targets from Aurum all the way along the whale road to Caronia.  North of the Calden Sea is Thule, where I'll place the Black City when I work on a 5E update to that one.  So far my kids have been pushing me to build out Harrowdale rather than revisiting the Black City first, but we'll see what the rest of the player group says.

Anyway, this what I've been doing instead of writing blog posts for a week or two.  I've been on a map-bender!

New Delve Maps for Taenarum - areas 1.2 and 1.3

Here are some maps from past two week's dungeon adventures.  I've been working in a "dungeon delve" format to keep things sized for a single night of play.  Here I've annotated the maps with the main encounter in each area.

Area 1.2, Vermin Caves, is the lair of a Mushroom Dryad - a winsome fey with mottled grey skin, a gossamer dress, and various abilities over mushrooms and beasts.  For instance, she cultivated fragrant mushrooms in area 2 to draw in rats, rodents, and small mammals to keep her giant snakes fed; she had enslaved beasts in her lair, covered in mushrooms and under spore-effected mind control.  The players didn't make it far enough into this delve to meet the mushroom dryad, but this isn't the only one in Taenarum; I see the generic "dryad" as a signature nymph for a Greek setting, and the mushroom dryad combines allure, toxicity, and rot, in a disturbing way.  Plus, they live in caves.

Area 1.3 is the lair of the first eidolon of Hades, the Lord of Bones.  The area has mustering rooms with dormant skeletal soldiers awaiting activation; a rendering site where corpses are stripped to the bones by flesh eating scarabs; it has the Arch of Greed, a trapped hall that compels adventurers to ignore their defenses and focus on a wealthy treasure; a final area is the boss fight with the Lord of Bones.

I've been enjoying a book called 5th Edition Foes (5EF) from the Frog Gods - it features a blend of Fiend Folio updates and new monsters, all in 5E terms.  I'm basing some of the exotic undead "lords" in Taenarum on monsters from that book.  I used the 5EF "bone collector" as the starting point for the Lord of Bones used here.  The Lord of Bones fight included a handful of misshapen skeletons, and some pit traps that drop victims into a small warren beneath the floor where the Lord of Bones can stalk a victim for flaying.

Beedo's Workshop - The Entrance Area in Taenarum

Here are my game notes from the first mini dungeon - a glance behind the curtain into Beedo's workshop.  My approach to Taenarum 2.0 is to create a megadungeon assembled from little mini dungeons like this one.  There are a number of characteristics I'm targeting by assembling the dungeon from mini areas:  they're very modular; easy to sketch, map, and write; each one can fit into a single night of play (important!); each mini dungeon is themed to create a lot of variety from place to place.  There are story points, quests, and other connectors between mini dungeons, as well as quests and rumors in town pointing to them.

Since this is an entrance area, this one is sparse and mostly empty.  You can read the player's side of things in the first two game reports:

Game Report 1
Game Report 2

I took a few minutes to polish my notes to make them sensible for the blog - my play notes are usually just sentence fragments and jotted phrases.  It's a lot more work to make notes readable versus providing enough fragments and memory joggers to run the game!

Area 1.1
=========

1.  Entrance
-------------
A blemish on the nearby wall on the main road belies the presence of a permanent magic mouth, with ghoulish black teeth.  A decorative arch identifies this area as a dungeon entrance.

When approached, the mouth triggers and speaks:

Eidelon and key rewards
with treasures from the death god's hoards;
In order to conclude the quests,
You'll need to find the seven chests.

Welcome to the Underworld.  May you find what you seek.  Muhahaha.

The laughter then echoes through the halls (good time for a wandering monster check).

2.  Graffiti Room
------------------
There's a trip wire set up in the passage right before the room - it's attached to bangles of metal in the room that chime and alert the bandits.  The smell of a cookfire drifts from the north passage.  The room holds rubble from smashed statues (wings and bones - winged deaths).  There is graffiti on the walls (mostly written in charcoal or chalk).

Diodoros sleeps with the fishes.
Spartans rule, Athenians drool.
Pythios pwns you.
For a good time, ask to dance with Melantha.
If you find my head, let me know.  --Orpheus.
Don't eat the pomegranates.

3.  Bandit Camp
---------------
A group of 5 bandits camp here - 1 is on watch and listens for the chimes.  There's a cookfire, basic supplies, some firewood.  They have incidental treasure.  If alerted, 2 flank the hallway with spears to ambush anyone entering the room, the rest retreat to the corners with bows to shoot at the entrance.

4.  Bandit Captain
-------------------
Tobias, the Bandit Captain (use CR 2 bandit captain stats).  He's handsome, with silky hair, but he's terribly unlucky and curses the fates - he lost his love to the book of blessings and curses, and now forces captured adventurers to 'roll the dice'.  He's willing to spare spare anyone that takes on the Triad (room 7).

The room is lit from a pilfered soul gem (in the place of a torch).  He has a bed, trunk, gear, writing table, wine and cheese - some back story of his lost love is scrawled in a diary.  There's a potion of healing and 125gp in art objects in the room.

5.  Abandoned Camp
-------------------
The room has the remains of an old campfire, some discarded gear, and another ruined death statue.  Old basket with a treasure map stuck in the side of a discarded basket (it shows areas 1.2.4 and the wall cache there).

More Graffiti:
She can see you.  Don't look.
I left my harp in Sam Clam's Disco.
The Lord of Bones guards the first box.
Cylons look like people, but only 7 are known.
These are not the droids druids you're looking for (added by the players)

6.  Big Stone Head
-------------------
A monstrous stone head fills a ten foot space here.  Any time the head is disturbed, on a 1-2 out of 6 the nose exhales a Fear gas.  Carved into the forehead is a piece of text in the Olympian language of the gods and primordials, the word "Forsaken".  If anyone speaks Olympian in the presence of the head, it spits out an enchanted soul gem (empty) - once (see the notes on soul gems).

The head is covered in runes (arcana to decipher) - the writing is god script and implies the head came from the Titanomachy, the legendary war against the Titans.  It's a reminder that many of the Titans are imprisoned by Hades in Tartarus.

7.  Triad of Fates
-------------------
There's a stone door embedded in a post and lintel with no obvious way to open.  Symbols and letters covering the whole alphabet are etched into the post as buttons.  Depressing the (worn) letters that spell FATE opens the door (it slides with a rumble into the wall).  Magic torch light flares into life along the walls of the room.

The room is dominated by a large statue depicting the three fates (Moirai).   Clotho (spinner), Lachesis (allotter) and Atropos (unturnable).  They carry book, staff, and scale.  A brazier near the base illuminates a stone table with the Book of Blessings and Curses - consisting of a series of bronze plates attached to the table like a book.

A lingering Ghost (an athletic looking female, with grey eyes) lingers in the corner.  She lost her life at the hands of the book and now lurks in the room with unfinished business.  If anyone doesn't try to read their fate in the book, the ghost attempts a possession.  She'll move on to her reward if her possessed victim takes on a curse and survives the Fates.

Anyone who attacks the statues or attempts to damage the book... Save vs Disintegration.

Curses:
===========
1 Take 2d8 points of damage.
2 All wealth carried vanishes.
3 Polymorphed into harmless animal.
4 Lose one level of experience.
5 Disadvantage for the next 24 hours.
6 Struck blind.

Blessings
===========
1 Healed of all damage.
2 Receive gem of random value.
3 Gain 300 xp.
4 Advantage for the next 24 hours.
5 May re-roll any one failed result.
6 +1 to a random ability score (one time gift only).

8.  Medusa Mural
-----------------
The room has a few petrified remains of dead adventurers.  The south wall is a lifelike mural looking into the lair of the Medusa (the room beyond looks like a crumbling Greek temple in a cave).  She can see anyone in the room and petrify through the looking glass - there's a 1 in 6 chance the Medusa is nearby and moves to peer through the mural if there are lights in the room.  There are sigils along the mural border that identify the sequence to a teleportation circle, allowing fast egress to the level 8 Medusa Temple for high level parties.

Taenarum 2.0 Player's Background

Wow.  It's been over a month since the last post.  I've been keeping super busy in the meantime, though most of it has been work related (I'll spare the details).  From an RPG perspective, I've gotten some experience running 5E games and been working with the system.  I installed mapping software on my 8.1 machine.  I got Taenarum reconfigured and ready for some 5E action!  Players are on the way this weekend, so I'm going to post a player's background here for easy reference.

Player's Background

Taenarum is the legendary entrance to the Greek Underworld.  Hades, the god of wealth and the underworld, covets the souls of mortal heroes, and his undead minions have created sprawling dungeons along the road of the dead, promising fantastic treasures and ready death.  Heroes from around Greece sojourn to Taenarum to test themselves against the death god's minions and the chance to loot Hades' wealthy vaults.

The great heroes and kings of the Trojan War have faded to obscurity, leaving behind petty city states and grasping kings.  It's a landscape ripe for a new generation of heroes , where a strong sword arm and a hefty purse can raise an army and allow one to start their own conquests.

The gods themselves are deeply divided.  Slights and insults from the war years have created rifts across the pantheon, rivalries that are echoed amongst their mortal followers.  When angered, the scornful gods send terrible monsters to punish disrespectful followers.  Apocalyptic oracles warn that the known world is on the verge of a new Dark Age…

Next are the maps I'm using for the world.  This view of the world came from the Greek historian Herodotus; if you google "Herodotus world map" you can see what I mean.  Imagine if the world really looked like this!  There are decadent and ancient city states in the lands beyond Greece, crumbling and corrupt centers of old civilization like Carthage, Memphis, and Babylon.  Somewhere in the far north dwell the bizarre and otherworldly Hyperboreans with their alien science and magic.  This map of the world is far enough away from the real world that it's easy to "fantasy it up" and place Mythic Greece at the center of it all.

Oikoumene, the Known World

Taenarum, in southern Laconia

Assumptions for 5E
I plan to run 5E using most\all of the core assumptions and keep it "by the book", interpreting races and classes through a mythic lens where warranted. Customization will mostly be new monsters, magic items, and artifacts.

The following core classes all work fine as is for Greek adventurers - Bard, Fighter, Cleric, Paladin, Rogue, and Wizard.  All the wild lands north of Greece are filled with Barbarians.  Druids and Rangers can hail from the Celtic wilds of Iberia, and Sorcerers and Warlocks can be from any number of the decadent civilizations to the east.  I'm sure the players will generate additional ideas, and I plan on taking in some player suggestions, too.

The dwarves of mythic Greece are forge-bound followers of Hephaestus; elves and the fey races are be outsiders from the wilds of Europe and the north - though keeping with the Greek theme, the natural world is somewhat split between the portfolio of Artemis (order) and Pan (chaos).  Keeping with the swords & sorcery vibe, Tieflings hail from the decadent east and demon-plagued cities of night, and perhaps Dragonborn are from some distant part of Asia (although there's also the mythic "Spartoi", the men grown from dragon's teeth by Cadmus).  I could go either way on Dragonborn.  I'm not a fan of Half-Orcs - there aren't any orcs in the game, they're "pig-men" instead - but perhaps the Half-Orc represents a human cursed by the gods - like Caliban from the cheesy "Clash of the Titans" movie.  A Half-Orc is made when a god takes a clay statue of a man, and warps it into something twisted and grotesque as punishment for a slight or insult.  I'm not 100% sure how the Drow are going to fit into the Greek mythos yet, I just know that I got a fever, and the only prescription is more Drow.

Treasure Map Example

A reader the other day asked for an example of how I'm using treasure maps to give the players clues around the dungeon.  The maps are simple, and have been found in piles of discarded gear or other treasure hoards.

Here's an example of the treasure map (the original is in the player's notes!)  It was found stuck in a reed basket in a room that looked like other adventurers used as a camp at one point - it was snagged on the weave.  The players were carrying it around for months:

Here's the area of quadrant 1-4 referred to by the treasure map.  These treasure maps aren't high impact techniques, but the players got super excited when they realized they knew the map reference and found a hidden cache.  I think the evolution of the technique will see maps that cross entire dungeon levels, and putting backstory behind the map makers.

Plus you get to see part of quadrant 1-4 from the game reports.  The complex on the right side of the map is the palace of Atalante and the chambers of her pig-men; Connell died in room 11 when he was eaten by an Ochre Jelly; the Brew Crew were camped in room 9 when the players jumped them.  Room 15 is where they found the pit with the satyr-head potion-fountain sticking out of the wall.  The large 20' wide north-south corridor is the road of the dead, the frieze-lined passage that spirals into the Underworld.  Near the bottom of the map, it turns west and slopes downward, meeting up with level 2 of Taenarum.

More Reasons Why You Shouldn't Believe the Map

This is just  a brief follow up to yesterday's post (Everything You Know About the Map is Wrong)  about making the player's map incomplete, vague, or abstract as a way of stressing exploration and discovery.  Here are two more reasons why player maps might be misleading, even if the area was previously surveyed and accurately mapped by other explorers:

Propaganda
Maps make excellent propaganda pieces.  Having trouble convincing settlers to go to a wintry island capped with glacial ice?  Why don't you name it "Greenland" on the map and let them fill in the blanks?  Closer to home, I was looking at a German map of colonial Pennsylvania, where central areas had labels like "Happy Valley" and "Greensboro" in order to encourage settlement - a contributing factor to PA's modern communities of Pennsylvania Dutch and large influx of German-Swiss settlers.

A borderlands or wilderness map could be filled with misleading names and labels, calculated to lure colonists and settlers to stabilize the frontier (or lure adventurers into clearing out areas filled with monsters).

Borders Are Political Statements
Going back to colonial mapping, there are competing maps by French and English cartographers that show vastly different claims to the New World by those countries respectively.  This idea really amuses me - cartographers in remote offices back home, drawing arbitrary and artificial claims on maps, maximizing their nation's illusory influence over untamed wilds (just because they can).  These illegitimate claims then contribute to border conflicts, wars, and land grabs by colonists and traders on both sides!

Competing border claims along the frontier is a situation fraught with gaming opportunities.

Everything You Know About the Map is Wrong

Hic Sunt Dracones.  Terra Incognita.

Certain knowledge is an enemy of wonder.   We frequently see advice on begetting uncertainty through monster usage; use a custom bestiary, or mix up the characteristics of monsters to keep the players on their toes.  For me the problem goes further - the very act of creating statistics to define a thing limits the possibilities by bounding them.  I consider this a curse of Westernism, and blame Aristotle.  This is not escapable on the DM's side of the screen; to define a thing is to reduce it, and as game masters, this is what we do.

But today I'm considering a complimentary topic, regarding the hex map; as modern people, we take for granted that maps are accurate.

Where do fairy tales take place? It's always "once upon a time in a land far, far away", an indeterminate period in an indeterminate kingdom  - the tales can be anywhere in Europe, but left to the reader's imagination.  The great 1930's horror movies I like so much are vaguely placed in central Europe or Germany, someplace east of the Alps but west of Russia - a foggy land of pre-modern technologies and lonely castles and superstitious peasants you also won't find on any maps.

As the game master, you need to know the monster statistics, just as you need a firm grasp of the geography of the game world.  A map is an awfully convenient way to organize information, after all.  But the intent behind custom bestiaries is to keep that sense of discovery and unknown in the encounter system; can't we do a similar situation with our maps and exploration?

I've never placed a high premium on wilderness maps for the players that deviate from the game master's map, but my opinion is clearly changing.  Sure, I've used the simple approach of leaving white space, but for a scrawled warning of "beyond here, there be monsters" or "unknown lands".  How about distortion of scale or coastlines, the way old maps of the globe show a clearly defined Europe, but vague outlines for the New World continents?

Another approach is presenting the map like old street directions.  For instance, I really liked a Salisbury player's map I saw in Pendragon; it was an abstract collection of heraldic devices, landmarks, and walking distances, delineating the extent of player knowledge through areas known via oral tradition.  I could see a similar approach in a nautical campaign where the "map" consists of sailing directions and distances.

What it comes down to is appropriately defining the well-known local world of the players, while keeping the larger world vague or incorrectly described to reinforce the thrill of exploration and wonder.  A nice side effect is that maps of far off places become a much more important source of treasure.  Englishmen in the Age of Sail were knighted for returning home with maps and charts taken from the experienced navigators of the Spanish or Portuguese.  The value of a good map is apparent if you're going to travel off the edge of the world.

Lazy Map Day - Thule Island

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.

Maps of Games Gone Bye

I dusted off the campaign cartographer this weekend while working on some maps for Thule and the Black City; I rediscovered all these old campaign maps, plucked from the wreckage of abandoned campaigns destroyed by Gamer ADD.  Anyone else use CC3 for their maps?  I was never great with it, but a B&W map shouldn't be too hard - I think I'm going to do the black & white island maps both in Hexographer and CC3 and see which approach I like best (they'll end up with hex overlays either way).  In the meantime, here are the forgotten maps of yesteryear:

Greek Colonies
At one point, I thought it would be fun to run something in the ancient world, based around Greek colonists to eastern Spain.  Here's the map of Spain, a map of Greece, and then Europe (all done in Campaign Cartographer).  I seem to remember there were dwarves in the Pyrenees, and had a dwarven monastery discovered by the Greek colonists.  Celtic indigents were bad guys.  I don't remember exactly what "Pillage" was about on the Achea map, but I remember my son (who was probably 6 or 7 at the time) wanted me to use it as a city name - I think it was meant to have a Necromancer king and a bunch of undead.  I'm laughing that I used Roman names on a Greek map of Europe!

Tarraco, Greek Colony in Iberia

Achea, with the City-State of Pillage

Continental map for the Greek campaign

Forgotten Realms
These two are from some starts/stops in the Forgotten Realms when we were still fooling around with 4E just before the old school return and Gothic Greyhawk - one is from the Luruar area, the other is Thar in the Moonsea region.

The Moonsea

Luraur

Nentir Vale
These must have been from the beginning of the 4E time period - they are two versions of the same smooshed Europe, with names lifted from Hyboria.  I can see where I placed the Nentir Vale near the top of the map, assuredly marking these as early 4E era maps.

Black City Map Post - 1st dungeon level

Lazy post today - work is kicking it and I'm buried until the weekend.  Here's a sneak peek at the unkeyed maps for the first level beneath the ruined city.  The surface hex maps of the city are being revised significantly, partly for black and white printing, partly for function - they originally appeared here (black city maps and transit tunnels).  The first dungeon level beneath the ruins consists of a series of large "subway style" 20' tunnels beneath the ruins called "the transit tunnels".  The 30 x 30 maps below represent nodes along the transit tunnels where there are clusters of rooms, junctions, and small installations for exploration.