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View Full Version : DM Help Making large-scale maps



dragsvart
2015-08-20, 07:04 PM
I recently wrapped up DMing a campaign (that I wrote myself) and, after asking what everyone wanted in the next campaign and one thing that came up was a larger overland map of places to explore. after working out a map for a new campaign I'm working on it ended up more or less the same size.

How do all you more experienced DMs make good, large-scale, overland maps for you're campaigns.

mephnick
2015-08-20, 08:12 PM
What do you feel are your current restraints in terms of making it larger? Are you sticking to one country, or a continent? Multiple continents?

There are lots of other programs for making cool, big maps: Campaign Cartographer, Dunjinni etc. Hand drawn works well too, of course.

I'm currently using a map built in the Civ 5 World/Scenario Builder and running on Steam to display it on my laptop. It actually works pretty well, looks nice, and you can zoom in and out. However you're not going to get a lot of customization options. If you've played Civ you know how big the maps can be.

dragsvart
2015-08-20, 10:10 PM
I don't really have any constraints, probably a large country and I am trying to hand draw it. my main problem is that it always ends up being about the same size. mostly I'm just looking for any sage advise anyone has on the subject of making good overland maps before I spend time and paper trying to figure it out myself.

EccentricCircle
2015-08-21, 06:24 AM
My main advice is to understand how geography works, and where different environments are likely to be found. That way you will be able to create a map which will look right.

I usually work at three scales when designing a campaign. Global, Local and Regional.

The global map doesn't have to be very detailed, as it is quite likely that your players don't have the ability to travel between multiple continents, but you will need to have a good idea of where in the world your setting is located, as this will dictate it's climate and environment, as well as constrain it's social history.

The local map is the most important as this is where your campaign will start and where much of it will be set. This will often be a single city and it's surroundings, or perhaps a stretch of wilderness with a few small towns. This needs to be very detailed, as your players are likely to see quite a lot of it. But make sure that you keep it flexible. if you map out every inch of Forrest or every alleyway in your city then you constrain what you can do when your players want to duck down an alleyway. It can take a bit of practice to put in enough detail to capture the players interest, but not so much that you limit your options for improvisation.

The Regional map ties it all together, this is usually several countries wide, I usually do one that is somewhere between the size of the UK (So around four major countries large) and the size of western Europe (many countries and nations, so you don't see as many of the smaller details such as villages, rivers etc. Bear in mind that in the ancient or medieval setting of most fantasy worlds towns are really small and there is lots of uncharted wilderness between them.

Doing a smaller regional map lets you put more detail in that rather than your local map. So i'd make it smaller if you want your local map to be a city. If your local map is a region then make the regional map larger, as this will dictate what lies around the edges of your setting and so what cultural and geographical factors will affect it.

JAL_1138
2015-08-21, 07:13 AM
I steal them outright from old TSR box sets. These days, nobody notices. My art skills are utter, complete crap, ao that also keeps people from noticing quite as easily. I also mirror them and tweak them if there's another grognard in the group.

Yora
2015-08-21, 07:53 AM
Why do you want the map to be bigger? Do you want to have more detail or cover a larger area?

Lord Torath
2015-08-21, 10:32 AM
How big was your previous map? (X miles by Y miles)? Did your party actually run out of places to explore? How far (in miles/km) did they travel from their starting point?

I second JAL_1138's idea of using maps from previous editions. The Rules Cyclopedia has some excellent maps of both the outer and inner surfaces of Mystara. Steal some portion that looks usable, and flip/mirror it if necessary.

Thrudd
2015-08-21, 11:16 AM
I don't really have any constraints, probably a large country and I am trying to hand draw it. my main problem is that it always ends up being about the same size. mostly I'm just looking for any sage advise anyone has on the subject of making good overland maps before I spend time and paper trying to figure it out myself.

How do you go about planning your map? What eccentric circle said is good advice. Modern random world map generators also save a lot of time.

What I did when building my world was draw some continents with random wiggly coastlines, inlets and smaller islands, major mountain ranges and rivers. I based the size on the size of the earth, and calculated what the scale was depending on the size of the paper (might be 1cm=2000 km). Then divide the world map into four sections, and draw a zoomed in map with more details for each section, now the scale will be half of what it was, 1cm=1000 km. Continue this process, drawing more zoomed in maps. Obviously you won't draw every single map section at first, it would take forever, you pick one area and keep zooming in until you get to a scale appropriate for hex maps. This the scale where you are actually tracking the character's travel, map will be somewhere around 1cm=25km, a hex might be 50km across, which is about one day's travel time on foot. To start your campaign, you can have eight or twelve such "land travel" scale maps, and you should be set for players exploring for a while. If you ever need to, you can do more pretty easily because you already have the general shape and large features of the surrounding world.