Urickland

[sarendt]

So I found some old maps I drew and Ross suggested that the board might enjoy checking them out.  I will post them here in follow on posts... I hope to anyway, assuming I can get it to work :*)

-Scott

[sarendt]

testing...

fail :*(  -having problems getting images to link as they are to large to attach...

*Update* - All the maps should now be working with thumbnails and links :*) Yay me :*)

** Modified to include update

[sarendt]

starting point:

I started with a map from the real world, bonus points if you can tell me where it really is!  I modified it to fit my interest, which strangely enough were a newly colonized continent!  I was shooting for more of a hundred years into colonization though, so it was still fairly new world, but they had a lot of the basics and a few cities had quite large populations and large castles as well.  What I really wanted was a continent that I could build on, but that would require me to create a 'HUGE' back story and history for, but one that I could fill in as I went.  Although the countries were orgionaly colonizes of a larger continent, communication and trade have dropped off and many regular (ie non educated) people now barely remember that they were once a colony.

Some other strange ideas I through it were that humans and gnomes where the only primary races allowed.  I had back story for Elves and Dwarves, so a character could play those, but they had to be briefed with their back story.  No one choose to play those races so it didn't turn out to be an issue.  Also I made Goblins much more friendly and civilized, like cousins to the gnomes, they were steam punk tinkers while the gnomes were clock work tinkers.  

The cities labeled at the top might be hard to find unless you zoom in a bit, it was drawn in with a led pencil and didn't stand out in the scan.  There are four nations, similar in my mind to some of the colonies in North America in the 1700's.  The players start in a small village called Riversend in Urickway (red on the map), the country of Urickway was recently invaded and captured in short order by Urickland, a much larger country ruled by a senate, similar to the roman's.  The reason they invaded Urickway was to save its people from what they saw as a iron fisted tyrant. In reality the king of Urikway was mostly just lazy and didn't both to rule much at all, more willing to live life to its fullest rather than be bothered with leading his country.  Some of his advisers ruled with an iron fist and thus Urickland believed the king did as well.  

Thus the players start the game to find that their country,  shinny and new to them of course, in the course of the first game has been free'ed!  To many of the local villagers this comes as a shock, as part of freedom comes a lot of taxes, something they weren't use to prior to acquiring their freedom.  

So I think that should cover the first map.  The other two countries don't play in much in the early game, but they have names and rough agenda's of their own.  The Urick Islands nation is primary the high seas men and traders, little worried about the ways of the mainlanders.  I never came up with a name for the orange country, but they would be a nation that mostly just wanted to avoid being conquered by Urickland.  This was a fairly safe country as Urickland really did see its actions as just (Think US in Iraq... regardless of the out come we or our motives we conquered the country to make it a better place in our eyes...)

**Modified to fix image link to Imageshack

[robotkarateman]

So I found some old maps I drew

Hey, -Scott, there's no shame in borrowing maps from other web sites, we all do it. But don't claim you drew it if you're not going to be bothered to take off the URL from the site you got it from.

Also - crayons?

[robotkarateman]

Sorry, -Scott, only that first image came up for me when I first visited the page. Now I'm seeing the other maps that you actually drew. Apologies.

[sarendt]

@robotkarateman: No worries, I was adding a lot of detailed description to the post as you were replying, hopefully I cleared up what I was doing with that first map.  Its primarily colored pencils I believe, but I may have used crayon, sometimes coloring large areas is a pain, and I feel that color adds a lot of detail to a map so I always try to do them in color.

Scott

[clockworkjoe]

protip: use imageshack.us to host images then copy the direct link and paste it in the reply box with the img tags enclosing it.

[sarendt]

This was a map I created for my own use, the players were given a similar map, but with a lot of the details removed or just not there yet as I would add things at the players went along.  I have some more detailed maps for the 'abandoned tower', Dragon cliffs, abandoned hill dwarf village.




Riversend: pronounced River'Send, basically I tried to imagine some locals calling the place rivers end when they moved here and over time it slurred to Riversend.  I have another image of some of the details for the town and towns folk, these are the ones who live in the center of town vs. the farmers and their families.  



The players were primary humans, I think their was one gnome that I had come in on a trade caravan as a locksmith.  Most I introduced as children of farmers.  Prior to creating characters I ran a game that bridged another game we were playing with high level characters, low 20's I believe.  I had the high level characters do a task for the gods, the gods asked them to 'oversee' some children from another world that needed help solving a problem that was to big for them.  Each character was introduced to a child of about 8-10 and more or less became that child for the first game.  The story was that their village required the river to survive and for some reason it was starting to run low.  A group of teenagers (the same ones the players would eventually be :*) had traveled down the river and had not returned.  Rumors of a fort at the base of the mountains caused lots of villagers to fear the worst.  The group had to solve the problem and hopefully rescue the others.  I had them stealing food and supplies and sneak off through the woods to get to the 'dragon cliffs' (cause there is a loud water fall there)



Eventually they encounter the goblins that are using the water to power their own mining operation, (thus the lowering water level) but because goblins in this world are civilized (relatively) they treat the children with respect if they don't attack first (which would have been suicide, they players were quite worried as they had no clue how their lvl 0 kids would solve any of the problems, I was trying to see if they could play with out their weapons and spells to solve every problem)  The children broker a deal with the goblins and the village elders, which starts trade between the humans and goblin nations for the first time, making the village more important than it was, which plays into the events of the future when suddenly the village finds it self owing a lot of taxes.

This last map is of the area around the goblin outpost and the inside tunnels where the other adventures were being held captive.  The Goblins have a mechanism that uses the water to mine, so its sucking up some of the water in addition to damning the water.  The weird colored area at the bottom is suppose to be a elevation map of the tunnels.  This never played into the game, it was mostly an experiment, it proved to myself I could do it, though it wasn't easy or obviously useful...

**Modified to change links to ImageShack
**Modified again to add an explanation of the last map

[sarendt]

@clockworkjoe  I will try using Imageshack later, i have a good start for the moment, if folks would like to see the rest, there is probably about another dozen or so maps and descriptions, let me know.  The players only made it to the next city before the group broke up...  I plan on developing the world some more though for future games, so I could have more to add after that as well.

-Scott

[sarendt]

Part of the apeal of posting these was to hear everyones thoughts, I understand its still mostly unfinished but if anyone has comments or suggestions I am open to hearing them :*)

-Scott

[robotkarateman]

I'm not sure what kind of feedback you're looking for. You posted your images, stated what they are, and left it at that. Please clarify what it is you're looking for.

A few points I can make -

• The maps are confusing. Without your descriptions, posted here, there's very little indication as to what exactly we're looking at. Ok, the upside down V's are clearly mountains, but what about the rest? Only the second map has a legend on it and that only for terrain. There's some kind of structure in the middle that's completely indecipherable without the notes you provided.
  
  
• Your maps seem to be haphazard collections of shapes and objects that are only there because you wanted them to be there and offer no concessions to realism. For example, the map of Midriver. Are the buildings really huddled along the beaches like that? Come a good rain the entire town is washed away. Does the town really have only one road? Must be a pain in the ass to get your goods to market. The houses on the opposite side of the river from the buildings numbered in the 60s are completely boned regarding transportation, unless they're all riding around in on the river like some sort of swampy Venice. Think about the logistics of a structure before you place it.
  
  
• Freehand lines - ugh. Really, look into a ruler or straight edge if you're going to freehand artwork. Also, consider using different types of lines for roads, trails, etc., to differentiate them.
  
  
• Back to legends - it's easier to put an A. next to an item and then include a separate list of names and descriptions than it is to put them on the map. Map 3 is a good example of why. Some of the text reads like description, others like names, still others like designations. Pick a convention and stick to it.
  
  
• Building maps are a pain for everyone, but you can get real-world examples from dozens of sources. Also, see the above point, it applies doubly so for indoor maps.
  
  
• I am completely baffled by map 6. I get that it's some sort of cave structure, and I think I understand your elevation coloration, but it's difficulty to look at and not intuitive at all.
  
  

Of course, these are all criticisms of the maps as a public release. If you published these maps on RPGArchive.com, they'd garner a lot of criticisms such as the ones I've made.

But, if the maps work for you, then there's no problem. If the point is for you as GM to keep track of when and where, then these work perfectly fine ... for you.

[robotkarateman]

Here's a map from my current campaign - it's the handout version of the map intended for the players to use. Per my points on your maps above, notice that this map leaves out a lot of detail that is filled in verbally. This keeps the map cleaner and easier to read.



In particular, I've left off all roads (because of scale), included only the major landmarks the characters would know, and included no terrain information. Just the basics of what the map had to include.

Hope this helps give an idea of what I meant.

[sarendt]

@robotkarateman: The feed back that I am looking for is not quit a critisim of the maps themselves, though if I can learn from it I won't complain :*)  I guess what I am after is how do these maps look from a player prop point of view if you were using them in your game as a player.

Most of these maps are to serve two purposes, for me and for my players.  Most of their look was designed to look like a real map you would get handed in game, I use them as props with the hope that they add to the game feel.  It allows me to give the players information with out having to spell it out, who takes the time to look at the map in detail an wonder what this squiggle is?  Then they go off and explore it... Also if your telling the players the information than it must be important, but if I give them notes from npc's or maps of the world its up to them to gain the information and come up with their own conclusions as to the meaning. 

 Some of them are maps that I as the GM was using but are very similar, possibly copies of them.  The reason I do this is so that I can add information to the maps as the players explore, maybe they go someplace and have a random incounter with a spider, and their on my map I mark spider territory... in the future when they go there I know what was there.

 

• I personally dislike straight edges for these types of maps, let alone artwork... but I can see the advantage for the purpose of having your maps online, at which point one might just use computer graphic's, which look great when printed out, just like a computer did it, thats just to much breaking the forth wall for me though...  Any of the maps I have seen from the ancient civilizations look horrible to modern standards, especially if you know what the current maps look like, but they fill me with wonder and make me want to go explore those worlds when they didn't know everything.
  
  
• The whole map of midriver wasn't described, you hit on the idea of it fairly well though, especially for how 'haphazard' they are :*)  It is a swampy venice, that was exactly what I was going for.  The homes that don't have access are ment to be a pain to get to, possibly theives dens, and loaners live out that way.  Some of the homes are of older constructions with deep foundations of stone, others are built on high pilings or stilts to prevent them from being washed away but still give them access to the rivers and creeks, which is what they use for transportation (ie roads).  All that 'brown' that I think you thought was beach is in fact board walk type areas, so you can move through the main part of the city and keep dry.
  
  
• Your point about map 3 is a very good point, that map as I descibed was my copy, that I would refrence to as the players are running around, thus I wanted the names of each farm easier at hand then fliping through papers.  Not maybe the best solution but for me it worked.
  
  
• Most of the indoor maps for me are just short hand, i put them on display only for their background information for the forum.  For most of those buildings I just wanted to be able to copy them or describe them to the players in a consistent manor, so it wasn't ment to be an exact or perfect map of the interiors of the buildings. 
  
  
• Im not sure about your point about getting real world examples, do you mean to use them or to use them as a bases for starting ones own maps?  I use some very old maps, or maps from other fantasy worlds at ideas, but wouldn't ever use a modern map, except in a modern game, say like shadowrun.
  
  
• Map six is a pain for me as well, I think it was more of a mental exersies on 'could I' make a cave three demensional on paper, I proved to myself that i could, but that it was a pain...
  

I hope that explains a bit more of what I am looking for and presenting, again if I post more images to the file with out describing them don't expect to understand them, they aren't ment for that.

Robotkarateman, thanks for taking the time to look at them, even if there was some confusion about them.

-Scott

[sarendt]

@robotkarateman - What is the scale on your map?

[robotkarateman]

I guess what I am after is how do these maps look from a player prop point of view if you were using them in your game as a player.

[...]

I post more images to the file with out describing them don't expect to understand them, they aren't ment for that.

Those two things are mutually exclusive. How can you expect us to judge the maps as props but then state we're not meant to understand them?