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Building a Campaign World: Part Two Mapping
When it comes to building maps for a campaign world, you won’t find any better tools than those at ProFantasy. The price tag is hefty, but the tools there will help you build great looking maps that can be linked together. Of special note are the product bundles which offer some appreciable discounts.
If you want to take advantage of the map making power in the ProFantasy tools but don’t want to invest a lot money take a look at their map catalog. These can provide you the detailed map you want, and with a little clever photoshopping the names and descriptions can be adapted to display whatever you want, leaving the geographic maps in place.
Dundjinni is a great alternative to ProFantasy at only $39.95. Offering one software package, there is some great functionality in Dundjinni that’s lacking from ProFantasy - Dundjinni comes with built in creature stats from many different games, making adventure authoring much simpler. You can find a complete list of features for Dundjinni here.
AutoREALM is a free GNU program designed to map out castles, cities, dungeons and overland views. While AutoREALM lacks some of the features and powers of the more costly alternatives, its a great program to give you some power without spending any money.
Intense control and expert maps can be made with software like Photoshop and Corel Draw, but this is far from my field of expertise. If you are interested in making professional quality maps with this kind of software, I highly recommend this guide, which comes complete with pictures and examples.
RPG Map Share is an online community dedicated to sharing maps of different levels of detail, as other visual aids for games. This is a great place to check for pre-made maps, as well as to upload your own creations for other people to enjoy and use.
If you’re looking for more free options, check out iG-Tools map section. The first section will provide you with several hundred pre-made maps, while the following section provides some online interactive map makers which are labeled as experimental.
Games which take place in modern day Earth can take advantage of tools like Google Maps for not just the overland maps, but the map to be used on the fly during game play. During a d20 zombie game set in modern day New York, we once set up a laptop at the game table which allowed us to look at close ups of New York City and see exactly what our characters saw - buildings, streets, alleys - things which wouldn’t show up on normal topographical maps but are of extreme importance.
In another game I played in, the world bore a striking resemblance to Greyhawk in terms of geography. In fact, the game master had copied the Greyhawk map out of the book, re-labeled everything and adapted it all to his game, and proceeded to use it for a long-term campaign. This worked beautifully for him, issues of similarity between his world and Greyhawk never once cropping up.
Invisible walls are something that have been used in video game maps for years to great effect. The name comes from a literal invisible wall which would be placed in 3D video games to limit the playing field while still making it appear vast and open ended. Invisible walls can be subtle while remaining just as effective.
Grand Theft Auto 3, a game famous and popular for it’s open world nature, brilliantly employs the use of visible walls to limit the area the player moves around in at the beginning of the game. The bridge being out stops any player from advancing too far too quickly, while also relating itself to the game’s story. This is an invisible wall of practicality - a virtual wall that is formed by circumstances to achieve the same effect.
The same thing can be done in your own map making and world building. Long stretches of harsh terrain, beset by either temperature extremes or impassable nature, such as a near endless ocean or a high-altitude mountain range. Storms and other weather events can also be used as excellent invisibles walls.
Invisible walls can also be made out of living creatures. A classic example of this is the beast guarding the bridge, requiring tribute in the form of goods or information before anyone could pass. In Lord of the Rings, Moria was filled with invisible walls in the form of the trolls and orcs as well as the balrog.
Used carefully, invisible walls can limit the movement of players while you continue building the world and prepare the next stage for them.
One final and optional thing to consider when creating maps for your world, and especially when presenting them to players, is that since the maps are most likely being created entirely on a two dimensional surface, which means that there will be some distortion in terms of shape and size.
To gain an idea of how big an effect these distortions can have, they are the reason that on Mercator maps Greenland looks bigger than South America. For a quick overview on map distortions and examples of the different kinds, see this Map Projection Overview.
Do you know of any map tools, tutorials or techniques I didn’t mention here? Share them in the comments!
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