Couldn't have been offline for very long. I think one of us would have noticed.
--Ray.

I would have sooner, but I've started downloading every map you make instead. Could have sworn though I was looking at some linked to your site last week.

It's OK now.

Regards,
Gary

Yep, it's fixed now.

I really don't know how long it has been down for, but there is actually a reason why perhaps no one noticed: the recent maps are all on a different server, because my home page server is full.

As long as they are also kept on the Vaults, we won't loose anything. That's the most important part.

--Ray.

Hehe. Don't worry about losing them, the PNG files online aren't the originals anyway, they're just exports from the Illustrator files, which I have here, with backups too.

Somewhere in this thread someone (I think Thorf) mentioned that making a map on hexes that can be wrapped around a sphere is nigh impossible.
The following Java program has this capability (although it doesn't use vector graphics so it's not as pretty as Thorf's maps).
http://www.bifrost.demon.co.uk/comp/java/mapcraft.html
http://mapcraft.sourceforge.net/

Man that could be a very useful tool for me. Thanks a lot. I have a project in mind that this would be perfect for.

Hi guys.

Just a quick note to say that I'm not dead, nor entirely disappeared.

I'm currently taking a bit of a break from mapping and stuff for the time being, but I will get back to things hopefully before too long. Lots is happening back home in Scotland right now, with illnesses and problems in the family, so I may go a little MIA for a while, but please don't worry.

I'll try and drop in from time to time to check on our progress!

Sorry to hear that, Thorf!

Best wishes,

Jesper

I second Spellweaver's augury and wish you the best for everything, Thorf!

Hope the problems will be scattered away from your household as soon as possible, so you'll get back to pester us with your vicious posts!

Take care,
Marco

Heya Thorf,

Hope everything is going well for you and your family - my prayers are with you.

Is it possible, when things are more-or-less straightened out and on the level, to get copies of the basic hexes you use in map design, blown up to about 60 pixels high and saved as bitmaps? I've got a sorta-kinda-related mapping project of my own, for which this would be quite helpful.

Thanks in advance!

This thread is really huge, so I'm not sure if these points were already discussed before.

Talking about Karameikos map, have you ever considered to add some of the minor villages and ruins shown in some official adventure modules?
Explicitly, here is what I found:

The village of Lunn:

X12 "Skarda's Mirror", page 42 (but also in some other places of the module)

Ashgarth was the son of a townman in the village of Lumm, a small community a few miles northeast of Kelven.

The whole village was kidnapped by Skarda some 20 years before X12 events (which is set in the 30th year of reign of Sthepen Karameikos, which means AC1000). It could be added as "ruins" or as "village" if you suppose X12 was already played and all the captives of Skarda are freed.

The village of Knosht:

GAZ5 "The Elves of Alfheim", page 41:

Boris Beerthumb is a native of Karameikos, a Traladaran. Boris was born in 965 in Knosht, a small farming village in the wooded foothills to the east of Treshold.

The ruins of Xitaqa:

B10 "Night's dark terror":

These hutaakan ruins are clearly shown on the B10 map, along with many other notes about humanoids positions and other notable sites (including the "village" of Sukinskyn).


My 5 cents, anyway....

Interesting stuff Michele!

I would add a few:

1) Haven, from B3. Although marked on several maps, it was never given a map symbol
2) Argos' Lair, from Who is who among Dragons.
3) The Village of Bywater from the Penhalgion Trilogy and Escape from Thunder Rift
4) Karameikan Armstead (IMC renamed Bronow), not to be confused with its Darokinian namesake, replaced by ruins of such in AC1010.
5)Eltan's Spring, from K:KoA
6) Grey Mountain, in Rablebb, from B4
7)Castle Caldwell
8) The Ruins of Mistlamere Castle, from tha basic set intro adventure.

Håvard

Great contribution, Havard!


By the way, the correct spelling is: "Mistlamere" or "Mistamere" (without "l")?.
The Italian translation of the Basic Set red box (single edition, very diffused) says "Mistamere".

Funny misspelling, anyway...

Its probably Mistamere. The name was removed entirely from the Norwegian version entirely (along with a series of other cute spelling errors), so I'm only going with what I remembered from discussions on the web.

Oh, and another one: Stallansford from DDA1 & DDA 2, a village not far north from Penhaligon, as well as Illiana's fortress, from the same modules, located in the southeasternmost hex to the northwest of Penhaligon.

Also, it would have been nice to see a map indicating upgraded nobles after Stefan became King...

Håvard

I had this thought not so long ago, and began work on a 1 mile/hex map of Karameikos (in the vein of Morlay-Malinbois from PC4) to fill in exactly some of the areas you mention.

What I've found thus far is that... a 1/mi hex map of Karameikos is *huge* (or *yooge* as Donald Trump would say).

Also, that various map sources don't exactly mesh up with one another (B10, Gaz1, Expert set, and also the map in AC2: Treasure of the Hideous One, which is supposed to be set in western Karameikos somewhere).



Missed that one, but I'll raise you the village in Treasure of the Hideous One (where Rosentos disappeared), and Eltan's Spring (from Karameikos: Kingdom of Adventure).

Oh, also Stallanford (from B11: Queen's Harvest), Bywater (from the Penhaligon trilogy), and possibly one or two others that I can't recall offhand. There are actually a lot of little homesteads and villages/towns in various products for Karameikos at least.

Oddly, it seems Stefan never got around to promoting any nobles after becoming King, at least according to K:KoA (which has everyone pretty much in the exact same positions, with the exception of Zandra Sulanov, who is promoted to Minister of War after Lucius Hyraksos' death seemingly out of the blue- and in opposition to the promotion of same to Sir Retameron Antonic in one of the PWAs- 1011, I think. The only thing I figure is that Retameron filled the spot temporarily, until it was permanently assigned to Sulanov.)

It seems strange that, at the very least, Mistress Sascia wasn't granted Luln as her barony (since she is mentioned as being under the Duke's eye for such)- after 13 years, she should have gotten something. Similarly, I wonder that other already landed nobles weren't promoted to baronies, and existing baronies upgraded in status.

Wonderful additions so far!
My little contribution:

- Irenke, a village north-west of Penhaligon which hosts some retired adventurers, from Joshuan's Almanac;
- Highdell, the mining community situated north of Threshold, from D&D Expert set (blue box) - disappeared from later products;
- Arkayz's Manor, from B8, and the surrounding area with woods and mountains, which is said to lay north/north-east of Threshold, on the Cruth/Black Peaks range (confirmed by B1-9);
- The ruined monastery on The Hill and Guido's Fort from B5 (with Shrill River, IIRC), which according to B1-9 is set north-west of Haven;
- Elwyn's castle east of Threshold and Black Eagle Outpost at eastern border of von Hendriks' barony, both from B9;
- Sisak village, from Dungeon #24 ("In the dread of night"), located along the Westron Road;
- Sir Reynard's fief and the small town of Utica from Dungeon #42 ("Ransom"), located in the Threshold region;
- Seragrad town, located in the point there the Castellan River joins the Highreach River, from Dungeon #59 ("Voyage of the Crimpshrine");
- Bargle's Dungeon from D&D Basic set (red box), where the unnamed hero meets Bargle for the first time in D&D; probably they're located near Threshold.

Moreover:

Are you meaning the Grey Mountain with the temple where is to be found the Rahib of B7? If so, we've also the near elven village of Kota-Hutan, where Rahasia is kindnapped in that adventure.

I think however the B7 is set east of the Duke's Road, before it begins to climb the mountains; in fact, in B1-9 says the PCs get there while travelling to Selenica, following a near-hidden path in the middle of the forests that heads east of the road (probably forested hills, according to Thorf's new map of Karameikos ).
Moreover, GAZ1 says the Callarii communities are found mostly in the Radlebb Woods and in the forested hills south of Highforge, but also that many more elven villages lays in the Karameikan wilderness.


That would be great! Are you going to post it somewhere as soon as it's finished?

I orginally considered this a flaw of K:KoA, but I think its better to apply your perspective that he just hasn't gotten around to it yet, by AC1013. It seems like the most likely next step though, and the fact that he hasn't done so yet is likely to make some people unhappy...

Perhaps it is a strategy to figure out which nobles are really loyal to him, after he finally realized what was going on with the Black Eagle.


I agree. IMC the reason could be that he wants to give this area to one of his sons when he is old enough, to compensate for the older son (Justin?) becoming the next king. IMC, daughters cannot inherit the throne, and Adriana's marriage to Hyraksos was probably arranged to strengthen Stefan's alliances within the Traladaran population. Queen Olivia has other plans however.

Form the game designers perspective, it seems more likely that Sascia was passed over to make Halag a possible Barony to be awarded to the PCs. This is suggested quite explicitly in the adventure booklet that came with K:KoA.

I think it makes the situation quite interesting, and I imagine Sascia is now quite bitter that the King didn't listen to her even now after ignoring her pleas concerning the Black Eagle during all those years...

Håvard

Another little contribution:

elven village of Callanya

It is described in one of the PWAs (PWAIII, I think), it should be somewhere in the forest, west of Rifflian. I think it is destroyed by a forest arson in 1012DI, forcing its inhabitants to leave.

elven community of Kavva Lindnenem

She is an elven pregenerated character in M5 "Talons of Night". She comes from "a small elven community exiled in the westernmost forest of Karameikos". She also adventured in Norwold, where her mate was killed by humans.
She wears very ancient elven weapons and armory, "valued hundred of thousands of gold pieces". If these obejects come from her village, maybe this elven community is more powerful than it seems...

The links to the Orc's Head maps are broken, I think i's because of the apostrophe in the file name. If you could change the file name so the maps can be linked properly, it would be greatly appreciated.

Haven't seen Thorf in a while (I'm sure he's busy atm with family and all), but found some more interesting corrections/addendums to the existing maps for him.

I know he hasn't quite worked his way to some of the smaller maps or maps from modules and such, but the map of the Domain of Fenhold from CM9: Legacy of Blood is inconsistent with the map of Darokin. The location of Fenhold, as given in the module, would place it in the same 24 mile hex that Dolos appears in on the 24 mile hex maps (in particular, the Wrath of the Immortals map I'm currently looking at).

As to how that would affect the 8 mile/hex maps, it seems that Dolos should be moved down a hex, and the hex above it changed to swampland. The trade road should be redirected southwards through Dolos (with a trail appearing in the space where it currently runs, cutting around the swamp).

This would seem to fix the problem with a minimum of fuss, and would explain why the larger (more visible) town of Dolos would appear in its current hex at larger scales (it is still very close).

(Seems to be a problem with the cartographer of Gaz11, published in 1989, not cross-checking with CM9, published in 1987.)

Reporting some broken links from the indexed post #1:

Updated 8-mile hex map #18 - Orc's Head Peninsula
Updated 24-mile hex map #3 - Arm of the Immortals
Replica 24-mile hex map #12 - Orc's Head Peninsula

Figured I should mention them or you may never find out!

These aren't actually broken links. It seems that these boards have a problem with links that include apostrophes, which all three of these files do. If you manually edit the URL rather than clicking "Continue" at the "You are leaving wizards.com" page, you will see that the files are in fact present.

I agree it's a bit of a pain, though. I should probably just delete the apostrophes from the filename.

Incidentally, has anyone heard from Shughuy? His page seems to have disappeared. I was going to ask him to let me steal his HTML coding so I can update the map pages on my own - which is currently very much out of date.

While we're here, I have been considering once again the benefits of providing PDF files of my maps rather than (or in addition to) PNGs. But I don't have the server space to do both on a permanent basis. Maybe we could put them on the Vaults...?

Ahhh! Thanks, Thorf.


Nope. Sorry.


The ones on the Vaults are PNG files. Maybe you could have the PDFs done in 'sets', like "Known World", "Alphatian Sea", etc. or something along that line. Or, organized as they are in the index; "replica 8-mile", "updated 24-mile", etc.

Actually, may I suggest that the Darokin maps automatically include the Alfheim map? the work has already been done, and it gets rid of that ugly white hole on the map.

I know that it sounds like an extremely simple and easily implemented suggestion, but unfortunately that is not the case. I have been trying to find a good way to work around the myriad problems of making maps that feature parts of other countries for over a year now, with not a lot of success.

I could of course paste Alfheim in there right now - that part isn't hard. But then I would have two versions of Alfheim to update, in two separate files. Moreover, the more hexes in each map file, the slower the editing process. Darokin is already a little slow, and it would only get worse if I added Alfheim.

I have tried linked files, but it's messy and problematic, surprisingly hard to set up properly, and still slows things down of course. I've thought about adding featureless versions of surrounding countries, as many of the Gazetteer maps themselves did, which would work, but I'm not sure I want to do things that way - and it would slow down the maps, of course.

Another solution would be just to permanently merge the Alfheim and Darokin maps, of course. In that case alone, it might work without much problems, but what about the rest of the area? I can't merge all the maps, and yet they fit together in such a way that it's impossible to have them showing in each other's files without duplicating stuff.

At one point I had a great idea, which was to make trail maps by pasting lots of linked files into a new file. That way, I could update the individual files, then clip the individual country maps from a larger image. This has been my best plan so far, but unfortunately the attempt failed when I found that Illustrator didn't like dealing with so many large linked files.

Of course some of these issues are related to my computer, so increasing my memory, for example, might help a bit. But that is not something I can do just now, unfortunately.

If anyone can think of a good, workable solution, I will be extremely happy. I will continue to search, but it might take a while.

That explains the lack of other countries in each map. Quite fair reasoning!

So Thorf, have you managed to get any futher with the Wendar map/Gaz?

Cheers,

LJ.

An alternative to doing a full merger would be to simply include the area 24 miles out (ie 3 hexes) from each nation's border. that is enough for anyone to easily visually match the edges for campaigns along a border, but hopefully isn't so much work that it would make any given map prohibitively laborious to produce.