Spotlight on: Big Hexyland 2

Big Hexyland 2 Modular Fantasy World is the second PDF in my Big Hexyland series of customizable iso-view world maps. On this set I went nuts creating layers you could switch on and off, to hide or show individual terrain features. Some pages have 30 layers! There's also a coastline hex you can customize to make your own lakes and seas. I'm really happy with the result, and like everything I make, I use it in my own games. It's available here. Check out these beauties!

[Free Stuff] Map of Mizzen

This is a mini-campaign map I drew a few years back. Have fun exploring the Island of Mizzen!

 

[Free Stuff] Wondermorphs Sets 3: Stairs and Passages

This set includes some handy connector pieces and some stairs. Enjoy!

Link to PDF

[Map] How I do Maps

This schematic represents the DungeonTeller campaign world I've been working on. The starting city, Stormgate, is at the lower left. Blue lines mean sea routes, and brown lines mean land routes. The color of each zone indicates its relative level of challenge. Green is safe even for starting characters; yellow a little challenging; orange quite challenging; and red is nasty indeed.

I have been mapping this way for years, rather than with the usual method of drawing a continent and then filling in all the bits. I don't make a traditional Tolkien-esque map until the end of the design process, and that's mostly as a prop for the players, not for me. 
I see each zone as a room in a dungeon, with one or more exits, and a list of contents, including monsters, NPCs, and locations. Often I'll rate a zone with a number that indicates how many days' travel it takes to cross it. Some places (and exits) might require the equivalent of a Spot check to find -- this makes rangers VERY useful during overland travel.

A big time sink.

Of course, schematic maps are of no use for adjudicating hex-crawling wilderness travel -- but that has never worked for me as a DM. I remember buying the Judges Guild Campaign Hexagon System booklet (1977) and then literally getting bogged down drawing tiny swamp/marsh symbols, making sure streams didn't flow uphill, carefully lining up the details in adjacent hexes... None of that made any difference to my players, but the rallying cry of the day was "realism!", whatever that was supposed to mean in the context of a fantasy game, and golly, if I just drew my maps down to the smallest detail, then my campaign would have the ring of truth.


So here's my process in more detail, in case you want to try it, after the jump:

Key to Stormgate Map

As promised, here's a succinctly written key to the city map I've been working on. I'm using it as a setting for my current campaign -- a jumping-off point/home base for the PCs, who are assumed to be recent arrivals on the island.

More after the jump...