Friday 29 March 2019

Magpie World Map

I, like many DM's, steal ... collect things. Take this map for example. This is the continent-sized world map of the setting I've been running various campaigns since I was, I don't know, 13?



Let's see, what are the different elements in there? the lake name 'Nyr Dyv' is from Greyhawk, the 'Sea of Fallen Stars' is from Forgotten Realms, and Wayreth forest is from Dragonlance. There was an entire apocolyptic event that was very much modeled after the Night of the Eye Dragonlance novel.

Blacksand, Darkmoon, and Fire Island are from the old Fighting Fantasy books (the choose-your-own adventure, but they also put out a roleplaying game based off that which I actually liked a lot for it's simplicity. My first homebrew ruleset was mashing up that and B/X D&D- I just had the red 'basic rulebook' I found in a secondhand bookstore, but I wanted to add a few more options, so...)

The Fenglades and the Mountains of the Morning were from some weird two-player choose-your-own adventure thing. Same with the Bone Hills.

I've added on elements from the blogosphere. The Frogstar penninsula hasn't been explored yet by players, but the name was evocative enough I had to put it in. The Abominable Island, also from Goblin Punch, is in there, but I have to take it out actually because I used a lot of the material as a location for my Isle of Dread hexcrawl.

I did mash up the 'sea of fallen stars' and 'frogstar pennisula' idea, along with Elturgard from the sword coast adventurers guide to make a region studded with these low-hanging stars, miniature suns in different colours. Most of the cities in that region have their own. So I think that's a good collision of ideas.

I have a plan to add Lankhmar and a new continent in the near west, and I've mapped out the coastline to the south, although it's deliberately a rough sketch so that it's mysterious. Players can fill it in by exploring- the areas that do exist borrow heavily from Dragon Magazine's Savage Tide adventure path coastline-crawl. Tamoachan is an expanded locale, with from various adventures clustered close together and glued on.

The crow's wood/border baronies stuff I actually before i read Game of Thrones, but it's very on-theme. They don't have a wall, they have a river, and the crows are the barbarians, not the guards. I did steal Bear Island directly, but that was before it got any real mention in the books- I just liked the name. Needless to say tho I'll steal as much as fits, post hoc, cuz Lady Mormont is badass. And I changed the mountain range to the 'Ice Wall' mountains as a nod. I think they were just 'the mountains of ice' before- probably sounds better in Dwarvish.

Oh no, I think at one point they were called The Roof of the World, which is great and which I got from Tamora Pierce's books. They should probably just use both names for different sections of it

The Chalk is stolen from Terry Pratchett, Koge is inspired by David Eddings, and the Circle Wastes are basically the Scar from China Mieville.

There's so much more. You can probably identify half a dozen at just a glance, and let me assure you that all the stuff you don't recognize I almost definitely also stole from somewhere.

Even the name for the continent, 'Karn', was swiped from some White Wolf thing.

At some point I'll probably add in some original content, but it's getting a little bit crowded at this point tbh.

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