Welcome! And thanks.

You have raised a good point. You can actually see the official cartographers' attempt to deal with this if you compare the Master Set map with the later world maps, which are slightly distorted and displayed on a projection-like grid.

Thus far I have been completely ignoring the problem of using flat maps to depict a globe. I'm not sure that there is a real need to take it into account, to be perfectly honest. At least, no more than the official maps already have. Especially when dealing with hexes, it would be a whole new nightmare area for me to lose sleep over.

Also, the problems I talked about in my last post are more than just results of the conversion from flat map to projected map. The coastlines I have don't fit on either map! And the Isle of Dawn looks completely different on both.

A very good question, Thorf. I remember when we were trying to map out the Kamminer Bay area, for example, Andrew, Thibault, and I (who were working independently on this at different times, but shared our work) all seemed to reach the same solution that appears on fan-made maps now. I used WotI and the PWAs for the most part (in which Heldann's peninsula is more pronounced than in earlier maps) and to fit it all together, having a sizeable bay seemed to be the only workable solution. Some of Andrew's draft maps (I have one on my HD that I'd be happy to share) pointed in the same direction. In this case, I think, we all made judgement calls.

Davania was different. Aside from portions of the northern coast in PWA #2, DotE, and VotPA, there were no official hex maps of the continent. In this case, I used the world map in the RC, combined with PWA #2, to produce a workable scale at 72 miles per hex. The Adakkian Sound map was the first map produced, and from that I mapped out the rest of the continent, continuing to use the RC world map as a guide for proportions and scaling. It was very, very time consuming, as I had to calculate the length of each bend in the coastline and rivers, convert these distances into numbers of 72 miles hexes, and plot them out, using inland features (mountain ranges, transitions from forest to desert, etc.) to ensure that the proportions were right. Each map I created also had to overlap a bit with the others, as my intention all along was to create a composite map of the entire continent. You don't know how happy I was to see that it worked!!

To think that I did all that by hand, too...when I look at what's available now for mapping, it's as though the older maps done by people over the years came from a different era. In a sense, they have.

Anyhow, enough rambling. I hope this helps you,

Geoff

Geoff, thanks for your reply! I have always been in awe of your maps, all the more so because you did them all by hand. There's no way I could have done all this by hand!

I've been slowly approaching the Norwold placement issue for a while now, and exploring all avenues of approach to try to find an answer. I think I'm starting to see that in the end you, Andrew and Thibault's solution(s?) will be the best way to go. It seems like practically every map has a different version of the join between Norwold and the Known World...

The thing that is getting me at the moment is the placement of the hex grid over some areas. It seems to me that if I don't get the hex grid lined up right from the start, I will eventually have a huge mess on my hands. From what you've said, you dealt with this by starting in one location and then overlapping each consecutive map in order to keep them all in line, right?

Thanks for you comments, I really appreciate hearing from one of the "old master cartographers."

Thorf!
Loved seeing your version of the Masters Map. I always like seeing the old names of the various regions/countries. IMC these are real places, but they are not as big as the map indicates, making room for the other official and unofficial material aswell.

Are the RC worldmaps on their way too?

Håvard

I have just updated the following maps:

The Gulf of Hule, 8 mi per hex
The Savage Coast, Central Region, 8 mi per hex
Herath and the Squamous Kingdoms, 8 mi per hex
Wallaru, Jibaru, Nimmur and the Orc's Head Peninsula, 8 mi per hex
The Arm of the Immortals and the Orc's Head Peninsula, 24 mi per hex

Note: the versions presented here are not necessarily those originally referred to in this post. Please check the filenames when in doubt. (Sep 2020)

Regarding the nature of the update, most of the changes are internal changes to my mapping system, and thus are invisible to you. The main changes you will notice are the new deciduous forest hexes (now much closer to the original symbols), and a slight change in palette, mostly for forest-related hexes.

(If any of the links don't work, please let me know.)

The updated version of this map will follow, possibly tomorrow.

Funny thing is, I never thought it was a big job while I was doing it.


Pretty much! I used the Gaz maps, plus Trail Map 2 and X13, to create a large chunk of the Heldann map, and then extended it north with WotI. So in that sense, my Heldann map should match the Gaz series in term of placement of hexes and whatnot.

IIRC, I also used Andrew’s map of the Kamminer Bay to flesh out my own ideas. Finally, I used the map I made for the Mystaran Almanac (based on CM 1) to finish it up. Thibault then took a lot of my work (resolving some consistency issues he found) and went further.

Geoff

the wizards redirection thing is having problems with the apostrophe in both these names, but the files are there so if you just put the name in your browser it's all good.

Today's map shows the Serpent Peninsula, with consistency issues between the Champions of Mystara Great Waste and Serpent Peninsula maps fixed, and the edge of the Thanegioth Archipelago and some small islands in the Sea of Dread added from the Expert Set map.

Just wanted to quickly say that these maps are AWESOME!!!

Now all I have to do, is buy a colour printer that'll handle large sheets of paper (yeah, right!) Otherwise, I guess I'll be calling the local KallKwik or ProntaPrint to get their quotes.

I was looking at your map of Sind again, because Im going to send the characters in my campaign there soon, and noticed that there are some inner-Sindhi borders missing. For example the borders between West Jhengal, Azadgal and Putnabad. Any chance that you could update those?

Thanks!

EDIT: I´ve noticed that on the big map that also includes the Great desert all borders seem to be ok.

My wife has a bad stomach bug, so my time is in short supply today, I'm afraid.



The map you're referring to is a replica of a Princess Ark map from Dragon magazine, right? The original has those borders missing, which is why they aren't marked on my replica. (Actually there was errata for that in a later issue, but I haven't gotten round to adding it in yet. )

The other maps I have dealing with that area are the Great Waste from Champions of Mystara (another replica map), and the updated version of the Great Waste using all available sources.

As it happens I just updated the latter one today, to resolve consistency problems with the Serpent Peninsula map. And I am currently working on a revision of the Gulf of Hule/City States part of that map, using the 8 mile per hex maps to make that area more accurate, but I have not yet been able to determine how to place the 24 mile per hex grid over the 8 mile per hex maps. It's vital that it gets placed accurately, or the regions won't line up when all the maps are combined.

Edit: Just to clarify, the updated Great Waste map is not quite finished yet. As noted on the map itself, there are a number of sources yet to incorporate into the map.

Apologies for the lack of new maps this week. I'm behind schedule.

Tonight I finally found some time to do some mapping, and have almost finished Alphatia at 24 miles per hex. Phew! I never realised this map showed so much detail - it has taken a rather long time to do.

In any case, you can look forward to seeing Alphatia and hopefully some other maps next week. I can't promise a map every day, but I can say that there will be at least three over the course of the week.

Wow, I just went through this thread and downloaded all your maps. They're awesome. Can't believe I waited this long to look.

I hope you all like Alphatia, because you're going to be seeing a lot of it this week!

First up is a basic replica of the Dawn of the Emperors map.



Additionally, the following maps have been updated today:

• Thyatis, 8 mi per hex
  
• The Known World 1004 AC, 24 mi per hex, from Wrath of the Immortals
  
• Wendar and Denagoth, 24 mi per hex, from X11
  

I have started adding a "last revised" note to the title of each map, to make it easier to keep track of the newest map.

Continuing "Alphatia Week", here is the updated map. In fact there is one more map after this, but you'll
have to wait until tomorrow to see how it differs. (You can probably guess though...)



There might actually be a corner of Bellissaria to add to the bottom right corner, but I haven't confirmed
that yet. Otherwise this version should be pretty complete.

Nice Alphatia maps Thorf!

The DotE map didn't have names for all of the cities IIRC so its nice to see a more complete version of the map.

On a side note, I have a real problem with the capital being named Sundsvall, since this is a town in Sweden, which makes it sound very mundane and unfantasy-like to my Scandinavian ears. Thats not your fault though
Any ideas for what I can substitute the name with IMC? Alphatia City sounds a bit dull...

By the way, isnt it strange that the Yanifey Islands dont have a single settlement on them?

Håvard

I always thought the Yanniveys had a few villages on them (I think there might be something in DotE on this), but nothing approaching a town in size - so nothing would appear on a map like this.

Geoff

Thanks!



Actually this map is not much more than a copy of the Dawn of the Emperors one, with a few extras. So I think the names must have been there after all. In fact, there aren't really that many source maps to work with for Alphatia: Dawn of the Emperors 24 and 72 mi per hex; Wrath of the Immortals 48 and 72 mi per hex (both partial maps); Poor Wizard's Almanacs (non-hex, and showing the Hollow World version - which looks suspiciously like the Outer World version, complete with Sundsvall and Aasla intact and no sign of their replacements).

(I just noticed a few extra labels in the Wrath of the Immortals 72 mi per hex map, so I'll add them in for tomorrow. They include the names of three of the Yannivey Chain, but unfortunately the northernmost island isn't on that map, and doesn't seem to be named anywhere else.)



Yep, I can sympathise there. It's like having Skara Brae in the Ultima computer games - sounds really weird to us Orcadians.

My suggestion would be to keep part of the name but change it slightly - for example, Sunwall or Sunswall.


According to the description, the Yanniveys are barely more than rocks, and extremely uninviting places to live. Dawn of the Emperors states that there are no settlements of any size there, and only outlaws and undesirables live there - eking out a meagre existence.

Or something like that.

Sunwall is perfect!

For Blackmoor I have translated everything to Norwegian (places, characters, you name it), and made similar changes where I felt it neccesary, but for Mystara that would be too much work to be worth it I think.

Thanks again for the maps. And you know we want more!

Håvard

Love the Alphatia maps. Since one of my players is from Alphatia is has become obsessed with learning about the Empire. She is excited they are powerful and yet her people (the Shiye elves) are right in the middle. Her and the Necro are going to have problems I think.

Alphatia once again, this time with evergreen forests, as marked on the Wrath of the Immortals maps.

This version also includes the names for the Yanniveys that I mentioned yesterday.

Gotta say, Thorf, I love the look of this map with the evergreen hexes. I even find that the forested, heavy forested, and forested hills are actually quite easy to distinguish at a glance. Nice work.

Although it would be a very significant endevour to attempt, do you have any plans in the near (or not-so-near) future of doing an 8-mile per hex map of Alphatia? I know the detail level would be higher than our actual knowledge of the area, but maybe people could help "flesh it out" with things from their own campaigns (such as settlements, waterways, towers, woods, and smaller named regions, etc.). Perhaps it could warrant it's own thread like "building Alphatia" or something.

I didn't plan on suggesting this, it kind of just popped in my head! Just a thought to consider if you wanted to create "non-canon" maps. Although I've never had a campaign go into Alphatia, I'm starting to realize that there is a huge amount of space (i.e. potential) here!

Ah, another lovely Alphatia map! This makes me even more convinced that destroying Alphatia was a serious mistake.

Ofcourse, I am bringing her back IMC...

Håvard

Yes, I agree. I've had the middle part of this map as my wallpaper in Windows for the last few days, and it looks really nice. I especially like how Shiye Lawr looks with evergreen forests.


As a matter of fact, I do. And I have considered doing exactly as you say, and coming here to ask for input. 8 mile per hex Alphatia could be really fun to do. I imagine there would be rather a lot of wizard's towers marked! Obviously we'd only mark on the main ones, but it could be a lot of fun getting everyone here to contribute the names and perhaps even a capsule-type write-up for them.

As for extra rivers, there aren't usually that many added for the 8 mile per hex maps, so that wouldn't be a big problem. Villages and other towns are really the main thing, because they all require names too.

I'm afraid it's not at the top of my list, though. And although my list is getting smaller week by week, there are still a lot of major maps to be worked through.



It's a great suggestion, and I do indeed want to move on to unofficial extensions to the atlas once the official sources have all been exhausted.

And I think you're entirely right about Alphatia. If the Known World is Europe, Alphatia is obviously America. As such, each individual state should have its own identity and peculiarities, while sharing the same overall cultural foundations.

Hmm, wasn't there a project going to detail Alphatia at some point? Whatever happened to it?

On another note, in case you're wondering what my current project status is: I just finished a major map last night which will be posted tomorrow and Friday, and I have another half done that hopefully will be ready for next week (and might take three days to post...). At the same time, I have been doing a lot of work behind the scenes on preparations for Sind, the Northern Wildlands, Wendar, Denagoth and Heldann at 8 mi per hex. What this means is that I am nearing the point where I have reproduced all the available source maps, which means I'm ready to start compiling the sources into new small scale maps.

At the same time, I am using the coastlines and rivers from the 8 mi per hex maps to construct a new 24 mi per hex map, which I am building up mostly from scratch, with reference to the Expert Set and Wrath of the Immortals maps (the former of which is out of date, the latter a complete mess). Eventually I will do the same with the 72 mi per hex map, thus producing for the first time a set of exceedingly accurate and consistent maps. (No offense intended to other cartographers, official or otherwise, but none of the map sets I've seen up until now match up very well between scales. The problem lies in the official maps, and it seems that no one has yet tried to tackle it until now.)

Of course, the upshot of this is that my Known World trail maps are slowly crawling closer and closer to completion and release. I know I'm being extremely slow with them, but it's only because I'm being so thorough with the areas on the edges of the map, so please be patient.

Hehe... Well, it's no coincidence that I have yet to tackle most of the Wrath of the Immortals changes in my maps. The only one I've even touched on is Aengmor, and that was only because it was a good test of my mapping system to see how easy it would be to change Alfheim into Aengmor.

Personally, I never liked the destruction of Aasla and Sundsvall much. Both were very cool cities. It was a little hard to believe that a "natural firestorm" could wipe out Aasla, too. I mean, Sundsvall has wizard fire stations specifically marked on its map, surely Aasla had them too.

Moving Alphatia to the Hollow World didn't really bother me too much, except that in doing so it lost some of its most interesting territorites (Floating Ar, Aquas), and changing the coast from seacoast to... um... sky... is just a little too strange!

And my brother absolutely despised the takeover of Alfheim by the Shadow Elves. Alfheim is his favourite nation, and the home of his best character, a Clan Red Arrow warrior. As for me, I disliked it because I am a fan of the Shadow Elves - and like Rafiel, I know in my heart that they belong underneath the earth, not in some twisted surface realm where they have to hide from the sunlight all day.

Just this morning I was thinking that if I ever do get the opportunity to run another campaign, I will do things very differently. Partly to throw the players off balance by going against their assumptions, partly to allow the players more control of what happens, and of course partly just to do my own thing.

Although we may hate some of the things that happened in WotI, the process of bringing things back to normal would make a very interesting campaign(s). In the case of Alfheim, I suspect having the Alfheim elves take back their forest was something that was supposed to happen eventually. Bruce even wrote the sentence "...when Alfheim returns to normal" in an issue of VotPA. A slip?

Alphatia is more tricky, but that too seemed indicated in the Almanacs who portray Alphatia as not really "fitting in" with the rest of the Hollow World cultures. IMC Terari is about to figure out what happened to Alphatia which will lead him on a quest to restore the Empire, leading him to the next step on his path to immortality...

As for the other changes, some were refreshing (School of Magecraft, Radience), some were stupid (Clerics in Glantri) and others I remain undecided about (Fall of Thyatis, Rockhome).

When you're done doing all of the maps you can possibly imagine, I'll let you make maps for my Known World AC1035...

Håvard

I can help you out here...a bunch of us produced a number of mini-gazetteers (Alex Benson was the exception - he produced a very substantial - 40 pages or more IIRC - work on Randel). Off the top of my head, the Vaults should have the following:

Arogansa
Bettelyn
Blackheart
Floating Ar
Foresthome
Frisland
Greenspur
Haven
Randel
Theranderol

We didn't add new towns for the most part, but instead filled in a lot of detail for the settlements depicted on the maps. There should be a lot of material there that could help you out (i.e., adding more geographical detail, etc.) when you do sit down to develop more detailled maps.

Geoff

I too have my own plans to for Alphatia in the WotI. It won't be destroyed. I love the place and I won't stand for it again in another campaign. It will just get torched real bad.