Africa-land Mapping

Signing in to confirm my continued existence. This last week has been a solid wall of play testing and map making for Africa-land and Dead City stuff, plus my usual gaming obligations. It's got to the point where both groups are on the brink of heading straight into the desert to find the city so I've had to pick up speed as a result.


I've continued to chop away at Spears of Dawn until it fits the hole I've set aside for it in my campaign, namely to frame the desert that will house the Dead City. The latest step in this process has been to re-imagine the map. I've tried to stay close to the source material in spirit, keeping most of the names and general spacial relations, but changing bits and pieces as they suit my style (both aesthetic and gaming). The result is quite pretty, I feel.

It looks small because it's zoomed way out. If I were to print this it would be about two metres long. So, rather big. From this distance you can hardly make out the rivers or the words, but that's JPGs for you.

Click here for the outrageously huge and high quality version.



Here's how it all fits together so far.

The big red rectangle is the above map overlayed on the world map. See that tiny red square in the top? That's this map. The Three Lands and adjacent Ekidna Desert is rather big in comparison to puny old Vornheim and the Kairnlaws. The desert itself stretches off into the heart of the continent, hiding the Dead City in it's drifting dunes.

I'm working on a bigger scale than I'm used to and have so far enjoyed it. Fewer rivers to figure out, no roads to draw, and I can quite legitimately not mark anything other than the largest most important places on the map. When a hex is 36 miles across you can hand wave all sorts of things.

You may have guessed that I have a new red pen

You'd be surprised at how many people have accused me of being disturbed after viewing my handwriting over the years. They claim it's indicative of latent psychosis, I claim it's endearingly ham fisted.

Either way, have a half baked idea I drew as a break from writing about ooglies and giant lizards.

Guess who found their scanner! Hint: It's me

This is the first "proper" map I've actually made use of in a game. Everything before has been scratchy notes and arrows or a Photoshop job.

Clickety for the huge version

I thoroughly enjoy making dungeons that have their own thing going on. What we're looking at is an old burial mound that's been burrowed into by corpse lions who have then gone on a feeding frenzy, eating most of the ancient undead guardians and chewing off the wight king's arm. Especially unfortunate considering the party are here for his signet ring. Damn pesky bugs.

Things I've learnt:

I'm still bad at drawing slopes and water

Less fiddly fills in future. These were time consuming and didn't look good enough for the investment.

Drawing ant colonies is fun.

3D rooms look nice, worth investigating in future.

Pretty sure this map is going to get another pass and be tarted up for a bigger project in the near future. I'm rather fond of it. As ever, I'm open to criticism.