Poor Wizard’s Almanac Heldann
1992’s Poor Wizard’s Almanac was in many ways the first ever “world book” published for Mystara. Whereas other settings have tended to begin with a general book covering a good section of the world, Mystara grew up through numerous books focusing on individual nations. This happened first through the modules, then the Gazetteer series. 1990’s Hollow World Campaign Set provided a “world book” for the Hollow World, but the Outer World remained fragmented across a mind-boggling number of books with no central resource.
The Almanac series tackled this lack by providing a short overview of each nation, with a profile and important information, and occasionally a map.
This map of Heldann was the first ever to focus solely on the northerly nation. Unfortunately, due to the physical print size (on a single page of the small-format book), it wasn’t really big enough to convey much in the way of new information. In fact, it came off as rather a missed opportunity. Perhaps this was due to the nature of the Almanac project: with so many nations to deal with, it necessarily tended to focus on presenting the already-available details for each nation rather than providing further development.
The second Almanac contained a slightly expanded version of this map. It would be a further six years until fans produced the first detailed hex map of the nation, in 1998.
Note that the original map was black and white; the replica below is colourised for clarity. The solid blocks of colour denoting terrain were not part of the original map, but have been added based on the terrain symbols.
Replica Map (September 2025)
Sources
- Poor Wizard’s Almanac (1992) (PDF at DriveThruRPG)
- Page 40 map, Cartography by Dennis Kauth
Chronological Analysis
This is Map 218. It was published in November 1992. The updated version of this map is Heldann, 8 miles per hex. See also Appendix C for annual chronological snapshots of the area. For the full context of this map in Mystara’s publication history, see Let’s Map Mystara 1992.
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
- XXX —
Revisions
- XXX —
Hex Art & Fonts
- Hex Art —
- Fonts —
Textual Additions (Poor Wizard’s Almanac, November 1992)
- XXX —
