Blackmoor Maps

[Dave L]

I have no real idea about the size differences.

Have you read the description in the "Maiden's BM" booklet?

That might maybe serve as an inspiration.

I have read it, but had forgotten the vital fact that you have the Valley of the Ancients extending thousands of miles to the west.

I was looking to connect the Wilderlands maps directly to the Blackmoor map, which obviously would make it totally unsuitable for your campaign, as the Valley of Ancients would be less than 100 miles long.

I might still keep this project in the back of my mind, for a later date.

I look forward to your explorations of the Great Kingdom to the south, as I have none of the material you mention having drawn inspiration from.

[Rafael]

Thanks a lot!

I am already working on a first version of the "Maiden's Map"!

I think it's no problem to include the WL area as well, but I would then ask you to maybe work in our extended version of the BM map as well:

http://home.nvg.org/~hoc/BlackmoorExtended3.jpg

The areas there will probably be mentioned in the upcoming chapters, and (gaaaaaaaaaah, spoilerific) the Vales and the Valley of the Ancients will definitely feature.

Apart from that, I don't particularly care of how close BM is to WL; I prefer not to measure the distances exactly to leave people room for their own interpretation.

[Dave L]

I think it's no problem to include the WL area as well, but I would then ask you to maybe work in our extended version of the BM map as well.

Hmm, maybe I can load Havard's map and scale it into a hex grid, then we can avoid overlapping it with any of the WL material.

[Rafael]

Sure. Do as you please.

[Dave L]

Actually, today I've been looking at the Wilderlands maps, but they are all at 5 miles per hex - if I wanted to connect them to Blackmoor (I can already see how it could be done) it would mean either pretending they were 10 miles per hex, or re-making the Blackmoor map to twice its current size.

It's not something I really want to do, as it would take ages, but the thought of being able to connect Blackmoor with all those existing maps is quite tempting ...

Did I really say that yesterday?

How embarrasing! :oops:

It's amazing how insights hit you after a night's sleep.

I hope to have a five mile per hex map available by Friday at the latest - earlier if all goes to plan. :wink:

[Dave L]

Two things - the first is to say a corrected version of the combined map has been posted at the Piazza - the western edge of DA3 got truncated in the merging of the two maps. :oops:

Secondly - Rafael and Havard, if you check the link I gave you, you will find two files - continuity 1 and 2, where I have overlaid the combined map onto Havard's, and where I have outlined the space that needs to be left free in any attempts to add new material to the maps.

Of course, this assumes the using of the DA3 area as well as the FFC Blackmoor area.

It became obvious that Havard had stretched the map slightly, so as a base mark I took the distance between Starport and Blackmoor and made sure they matched up on both maps.

Sorry if this is a bit garbled - I have to rush out now. Have a look, I'm sure you'll understand what I've done.

[Havard]

Two things - the first is to say a corrected version of the combined map has been posted at the Piazza - the western edge of DA3 got truncated in the merging of the two maps. :oops:

Something has happened to the combined map. Now all the water has disappeared!

Secondly - Rafael and Havard, if you check the link I gave you, you will find two files - continuity 1 and 2, where I have overlaid the combined map onto Havard's, and where I have outlined the space that needs to be left free in any attempts to add new material to the maps.

Of course, this assumes the using of the DA3 area as well as the FFC Blackmoor area.

Cool! Its pretty interesting to see how those maps correspond.

It became obvious that Havard had stretched the map slightly, so as a base mark I took the distance between Starport and Blackmoor and made sure they matched up on both maps.

Note that my maps were never intended to be 100% accurate. I used Clayton Bunce's map from the D20 Sourcebook as a basis, so it is possible that this also resulted in some differences compared to the DA maps. Interesting to see how they compare in any case

By the way, I have now uploaded the maps to the Blackmoor Archives:

http://blackmoor.mystara.us/gallery.html

And they now made another blog post:

http://blackmoormystara.blogspot.com/20 ... -maps.html


Keep up this great work Dave!

Havard

[Dave L]

Thanks for the heads up on the disappearing water!

I'd turned the river layer off to work on something, and forgot to turn it back on before saving the png - Gimp defaults to merging only the visible layers, and I didn't refresh the page once I'd uploaded it to check. That'll teach me!

It's actually a very useful option, because if someone just wanted a terrain map - no roads or cities or text labels - three mouse clicks, save the file, and there it is.


The main reason I put your map onto the hex grid and compared it is because Rafael wants to use your map as canon for your campaign - so if I was going to attempt a link to the Judges Guild maps, I didn't want to encroach on the territory your map covers.

Once I saw the results, it was pretty cool, I agree!

It also gives Rafael a starting place to work from if he wants to move west or south (or north or east!) with his own hex maps - being able to link in with yours will hopefully be useful to him.

Edit: It seems weird to see my maps on your semi-official site - but good!

You might want to upload the latest DA3 map, as I'd missed off the city marker for Windhoek - at the moment the label is on an empty mountain.

It was one of the problems of not having the "real" maps to work from - the scans are so indistinct in places once imported into Gimp that I was getting eye strain! Hopefully all of the noticeable errors have been picked up now.

I just have one last check to do tomorrow and the 5 mile/hex map will be ready to upload too - I finished the labelling tonight.

[Dave L]

I just realised that I forgot to let you all know that my 5 mile/hex map has been posted. You can see it here.

I included the DA3 map area as well, simply for completeness sake.

Obviously anyone who wants to use Blackmoor with the Wilderlands maps is free to change it however they wish. It was interesting to realise that the original Blackmoor area is the size of four of the WL maps - and was only a relatively small part of the Thonian empire. It's a shame there wasn't any further information on the exact size of the empire.

[Dave L]

I have just been doing some rough drawings and calculations based on Havard's map - I wanted to know how much space anyone had to leave if they were attempting to link up to Thonia in the south.

It's quite interesting - if you take a standard Wilderlands map (at 5 miles/hex), it turns out that Havard's map is the size of 12.8 WL maps!

What this says to me is that the WL area is really quite small - all 18 maps only cover an area 4.5 times the size of the original Blackmoor map.

I always thought the WL area was huge - simply because there were so many maps, so I did some checking on RW country sizes.

It seems the Blackmoor area has twice the area of Great Britain, and all 18 WL maps combined are just over a quarter of the size of the USA.

So, compared to the size of GB, the maps are big, but compared to the USA, the whole WL is only 3 times the size of Texas.

I suppose it just depends on your perspective, but it will help me to visualize things in my mind while drawing.