Alan’s Mystara

In June 2001, Alan Derek Jones began sharing a series of maps on his web site, titled The Known World Gazetteer. (It was still online until as late as 2021; these days it is available through the Wayback Machine.) He recreated a large number of maps from modules and Gazetteers, using ProFantasy’s Campaign Cartographer 2 software. He shared not only low resolution GIF versions of his maps but also the original CC2 files. Thanks to this, it is now possible to re-export his maps at much higher resolution — with a little tweaking, of course, since the software is now many versions removed, and currently known as Campaign Cartographer 3+.

This was one of his first maps: the world of Mystara, based on the Hollow World Set Outer World Planetary Map, which he traced into vector art. He also began adding symbols to the terrain areas marked on the map, but abandoned this partway through. He left the partially completed layer hidden, so I have included a snapshot of this work-in-progress below.

Although Alan clearly based this map on the Hollow World Set map, it’s actually somewhat compressed east-west compared to that map. I wonder if perhaps this shows that he had noticed how the world map fails to line up with the hex maps. On the other hand, since the pseudo-Robinson grid is also compressed, perhaps not.

Fan-made Map by Alan Derek Jones (June 2001)

This is an original map created by one of Mystara’s excellent fan cartographers. For more information on the cartographer, including a gallery of all their maps, see also Appendix M: Mappers of Mystara.

Fan-made Map by Alan Derek Jones (June 2001)

Fan-made Map by Alan Derek Jones (June 2001)

Work in progress map: This map is incomplete. It appears here in the most recent state available, but it may be missing certain elements.

Sources

• Hollow World Campaign Set (1990) (PDF at DriveThruRPG)
  • Outer World Planetary Map

Fan Sources

• None.

References

• All of Alan’s maps at the Atlas of Mystara
• Alan’s entry in Appendix M: Mappers of Mystara (upcoming)
• Alan’s author page at the Vaults of Pandius

Chronological Analysis

This is a fan-made map. It was published in June 2001. The updated Atlas version of this map is not yet available. See also Appendix C for annual chronological snapshots of the area. For the full context of this map in Mystara’s publication history, see the upcoming Let’s Map Mystara 2001. (Please note that it may be some time before the project reaches this point.)

The following lists are from the Let’s Map Mystara project. Additions are new features, introduced in this map. Revisions are changes to previously-introduced features. Hex Art & Fonts track design elements. Finally, Textual Additions are potential features found in the related text. In most cases, the Atlas adopts these textual additions into updated and chronological maps.

Under Construction! Please check back again soon for updates.

Additions

Revisions

• Aspect Ratio — Alan compressed his version of the map in the horizontal aspect, so that it appears slightly less stretched than the Hollow World Set map.

Hex Art & Fonts