Today marks a year since I started working on Godsbarrow. It’s been a consistently fun process, and even when I’ve banked my creative fires I’ve still done something to make forward progress every single day. You can find links to all of my Godsbarrow work, loosely organized, on the Godsbarrow handbook page. Here’s my first […]
A year of Godsbarrow worldbuilding Read More »
Work on my first proper multi-region map for Godsbarrow continues apace. All of the settlements and roads are in place, I’ve tweaked a bunch of coastlines and island shapes and whatnot, and the center third has its mountains, fields, and most of its forests done. I also dialed the white back by 90% in the
WIP Godsbarrow poster map, 13th anniversary of this site Read More »
While I’m creating Godsbarrow region by region, in “tiles” which are more or less square, I’ve also been stitching those tiles together into a larger map. As you can see on that map, it’s full of small and medium problems as a result of this rough-and-ready approach: almost nothing along the tile boundaries lines up
WIP: Turning five maps into one Read More »
After wrapping up my fourth region, the Ice Courts, I wasn’t sure what to work on next. I slept on it and decided to fill in the blank tile on my poster-size map. Growing up on TSR box sets, with their gorgeous rectangular poster maps, I couldn’t resist the urge to finish out a map
Roughing in Middenglum, my fifth Godsbarrow region Read More »
Writing yesterday’s post about banked fires and leaving countries partially unmapped made me realize how much I’ve thought about this stuff over the past several months, and how non-obvious some of it might be to anyone outside my personal flesh-prison. I’m sort of mapping Godsbarrow the least efficient way possible . . . but stitching
Godsbarrow: Why not create a world map first? Read More »
I never get the roads, rivers, etc. on the “tile” boundaries quite right, but nonetheless I get a thrill out of seeing Godsbarrow start to come together as each region is added to the larger map. Here’s a (clumsily) stitched-together map showing the first four regions: the Unlucky Isles (where I started, top center), the
Godsbarrow map: the first four regions (plus noodling on banked fires) Read More »
I’ve been more in the mood for cartography than writing, so I’ve finished — at least in draft form — the map for the Ice Courts before the region write-up is done. The Ice Courts sit just south of the Unlucky Isles and the Gilded Lands, and this region occupies two map “tiles.” (You can
Map of the Ice Courts, Godsbarrow’s fourth region Read More »
Today I wrapped up my second region of Godsbarrow, the fantasy campaign setting I started working on earlier this year: the Gilded Lands, situated just to the east of my first region, the Unlucky Isles. The Gilded Lands are anchored by Kadavis, the largest and wealthiest of the six nations that comprise this region. With
My second region of Godsbarrow: the Gilded Lands Read More »
Last Wednesday, my Seattle group started up a new D&D campaign set in a friend’s homebrew world. She unveiled the map for her setting, and it was amazing — pro-level cartography, tantalizing and inviting and clear, both functional and beautiful. She mentioned in passing that she’d created it in Wonderdraft, a mapping tool I’d never
Remapping the Unlucky Isles with Wonderdraft Read More »
This method for quickly mapping fantasy kingdoms over on Coins & Scrolls is really neat. Start with a blank map, just coastlines. Add dots for major settlements, and color the hexes around them to identify the “core regions” of different counties/duchies. Then roll dice to expand those counties, determine undeveloped regions, and create enclaves. The
Coins & Scrolls on fast kingdom mapping Read More »
