One of my favorite elements of D&D were the maps. Dungeon maps, setting maps, city maps, anything that allowed me to dream-away the time in those fantastic places. I still can just stare at those same maps and be drawn into their mysteries imagined situations.
I wanted to create a campaign setting that I could develop into an open-ended sandbox adventure. I started with a larger view and mapped that with general ideas of the kingdoms and realms which gave me a backdrop for the general feel of the campaign. I moved into just one section of that land which would become the initial focus of the sandbox. That would be the land of Eir'ian.
Once the sessions started, I realized that Eir'ian was still too big of a chunk as I wanted the player's sandbox to slowly expand. I focused on the home-base town of Caladan and the surrounding area, displaying just enough to pique their interest and curiosity. Granted, the characters are just first level and it may take them a while to even get outside of the Caladan city limits, but I hope that this tiny view of the greater world will inspire their curiosity for adventure.
I didn't give the players the map to start off with, they ended up purchasing it from a shop in Caladan during the second game session.
In future posts, I'll talk about how I created this map and others.
That's a very elegant design, and is reminiscent of Pete Fenlon's maps from Middle-earth Role Playing.
ReplyDeleteThanks. I've always liked the way the trees were drawn in the Tolkien book maps and I love the textures that Fenlon added. I was finally able to recreate that look and feel. How can you not look at those and just get drawn into those locations.
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