Monday, July 11, 2011

more fun with maps

Just a little follow-up to yesterday's map post. Evan of In Places Deep commented:
You'll also notice that the Wilderlands map fits snugly over the Mediterranean. It sorta looks like the Med flipped on its side.



Yeah, I guess I can see that.  The central peninsula is sort of an Italy/Greece combo.  Makes me see the setting as more sword-and-sandaly.  Maybe replace all the platemail with Greco-Roman breastplates.

Meanwhile Al of Beyond the Black Gate says:
This is both an awesome comparison of maps, and an unwitting perpetuation of a very old typo - the Wilderlands maps were supposed to be 5 leagues per hex, but ended up published as 5 miles a hex.


So Bob's Wilderlands is about 3 times bigger than everyone else's :)
I've certainly heard of people using leagues instead of hexes, but if someone ever told me that was Bledsaw's intention I forgot about it.  If that's the case I wonder why it wasn't corrected in the 3e boxed set.  Anyway, here's Greyhawk and the Wilderlands compared at the revised scale:



Which gets me thinking along these lines:



Somewhere I've got the official suggestion by either Bledsaw or Arneson on how to attach both the Outdoor Survival map and the First Fantasy Campaign map to the Wilderlands, so this duo-campaign could be grown even larger.  I wonder how Minaria would look attached to the west of the Wilderlands?

13 comments:

  1. Somewhere I've got the official suggestion by either Bledsaw or Arneson on how to attach both the Outdoor Survival map and the First Fantasy Campaign map to the Wilderlands, so this duo-campaign could be grown even larger.

    Me want! Gimmee gimmee gimmee!!!

    Ahem. I've been enjoying your posts about this Jeff. Your insights into how you're thinking about campaign material are always fun to read.

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  2. Dollars to doughnuts all of that exists on the gigantic "planet" Cidri. :)

    "And in their power, the built Cidri. How? We don't know. Where? Good question. It orbits the sun where Earth would be--if there was an Earth in that universe. No one today knows for sure even WHAT Cidri is. Certainly no ordinary planet. Cidri is BIG. No complete map of its surface is known. The standard work, compiled two hundred years ago by the Imperial College of Cartographers at Predimuskity, shows 48 continents (defined as land masses of over 5,000,000 square km.); five of these are in excess of 60,000,000 square km. Almost half the known surface of Cidri is covered with water; most of its seas are dotted with islands. Yet even the great Book of Maps lists nine hundred and eleven locations which cannot be found within the known area--including the mountain city of Paska-Dal, which (by Gate) has carried on commerce with gem merchants everywhere for at least four hundred years. "

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  3. I have used the wilderlands maps at the one hex per five miles scale. Im pretty sure someone closely connected with the original maps put about the notion they were Mediterranean in size.

    Al likes stuff three times bigger. Next he'll be saying the Greyhawk map should be three times bigger and you should adjust that.

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  4. Black ice is always a good idea.

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  5. Minaria has a coast on the west, you might have have to flip it or put it west of the Greyhawk map.

    I' guess Blackmoor would fit off to the east of wilder lands, or north.

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  6. Anonymous3:38 PM

    A little googling can turn up more than one place where Bledsaw stated the scale was originally intended to be leagues.

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  7. > I' guess Blackmoor would fit off to the east of wilder lands, or north.

    Isn't blackmoor already on both GH and Wilderlands. I know it's not same as FFC.

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  8. "I've certainly heard of people using leagues instead of hexes, but if someone ever told me that was Bledsaw's intention I forgot about it. If that's the case I wonder why it wasn't corrected in the 3e boxed set."

    Necromancer decided to stick with the 5 mile hex, as did Bob Bledsaw before them:

    "Q: Why did you choose the 5-mile hex over larger ones?
    A: Originally my intention was to go with 5 league campaign hexes but Bill Owen did the cover of the campaign hexagon system book which featured the City State centered in the center of a campaign map which didn't match the scale shown upon Campaign Map One. Since it was printed already that this was the size of the campaign hexagon, I decided to live with it. After this, it became a matter of fan fervor that prevented any changes to the 5 mile hexagon. It has always been my belief that I am providing a tool for others to aid their fantasy campaign. Therefore, what the judges desire should carry more weight than my opinion despite my design control. For each judge who lamented the detailed size there has been protests by twenty others wishing no change. The Wilderlands is designed to permit high level players to establish their own centers of power or baronies. Too, the Wilderlands is precisely that...very low density of population thus making encounters more frequent beyond settled areas."

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  9. The quote is from Bob Bledsaw, btw, not Necromancer Games, in case that's not clear :)

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  10. You should compare the maps of Middle Earth, Howard's Hyborean Age Earth and Farûn.

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  11. I second that request! How big are those 3 relative to GH and Wilderlands?

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  12. For my last (now dead) campaign, I found out how far across the USA was, and how tall, at random points that looked like the furthest apart, and divided by the number of hexes I had to work with on my sheet of paper. It wasn't exact, but I had more room than I could shake a stick at to fill.

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  13. On a similar note, there is a map floating around that shows how all the 2nd and 3rd ed D&D campaign settings would all fit together on one planet

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