Our Kingmaker map is 15x42 hexes. Each hex is 12 miles across. That's just our immediate campaign area.
I tend to avoid hard borders, myself. I map out a continent completely -- where the PCs will be starting -- and have a bit of coastline/archipelago for areas into which they can explore later. Usually have copious notes about the cultures and ecologies "off-map," so I don't have to scramble too hard once they decide to branch out (if they do; I've had groups be content to stay close to home a few times).
But props to you for having the whole thing laid out before you start!
The best answer I found was to copy a hex sheet onto a transparency and then draw my maps on regular (plain white) paper, with a 1 inch = x miles scale. Your maps are a bit more legible, and you can bring out the hex-overlay when definite distances are required.
Really, it's as big as you want it to be. For my world I decided I wanted my known world to be roughly the size of Western Europe and went from there. Other "worlds" might only be 50 square miles or so, and yet others are vast (see Forgotten Realms).
Think about what you need -- if you need a couple cities, a river, and a forest, you may not need to design a huge world (yet). OTOH, if you want the whole thing ready now, there's benefit to that too.
For CC3, overland maps are by default set to miles, IIRC, so a default overland map will be 1,000 x 800 miles. (You can also set the units to mean whatever you like, however) You can set its grid settings to have grid points show up wherever you like (so one grid point every 20 miles or whatever).
Working smaller than default in CC3 can be useful as it's easy to get overwhelmed by what you're looking at.
Also, I'd suggest before making your serious map, make a "dummy map" or two (following tutorials if you like) just to get a feel for the tools.
I usually use CC3 for maps, especially city maps, but lately I've been using GIMP and Inkscape for making regional and continental maps. Here's my current campaign map:
Optionally, if I'm really up to it, I use Wilbur to do erosion and rivers.
I usually use CC3 for maps, especially city maps, but lately I've been using GIMP and Inkscape for making regional and continental maps. Here's my current campaign map:
Optionally, if I'm really up to it, I use Wilbur to do erosion and rivers.
Here's the city of Ja'Ka where my players are currently causing/solving trouble: Ja'Ka
Background rendered in GIMP, City built in CC3 with City Designer 3. Labels done in Inkscape.
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Thanks for the examples CB!
Also, I'd suggest before making your serious map, make a "dummy map" or two (following tutorials if you like) just to get a feel for the tools.
Good idea DQ, I've been drawing and deleting maps while I try to work out the continent layouts. So I could definitely use one of those for practice.
Really, I'm just trying to find a size that has room for dropping modules in without being too empty. Some of my design choices might be in conflict with that, so I'll have to play around with things to see what I can bend them into.
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Just posting up some setting brainstorming from my Facebook page for commentary.
One thing I like about world-building is the freedom to break any rule you like. There are a lot of things people take for granted about what a setting 'should be like'. Like being round, for one.
So in mine, the world is square. :) Yes, Discworld did the flat earth thing first, but I haven't read any of it, so nyeah. :P
Still working out what all the borders end in, glacial ice wall, waterfall into the abyss, but in every case, players shouldn't expect to adventure past them before 21st level.
Player character races are a big part of the flavor of a setting. Some groups like human-centric worlds, others like one chock full of fantasy. (Look at my Shackled City group!) So here's my working list of races. Question marks mean I'm still thinking it over.
Human
Dwarf
Elf
Gnome
Halfling
Orc
Warforged
Dragonborn?
Catfolk?
Aasimar
Tiefling...
I just came up with my twist on dragonborn. There will be only one dragon god, an evil one who believes dragons should rule the world. As such, he created the dragonborn as foot soldiers for his children to command. (I may or may not include the rebirthing ritual as his way of 'converting' the other races.) The good dragons are rebels aligned with the rest of the world against their maker and may have access to the ritual themselves to bolster their own forces.
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Any story for the Warforged? I never much cared for them, so I'm open to a cool interpretation.Tireless labor developed by gnomes for any number of purposes. Variants include oxen and horse styled warforged.
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Not sure about halflings yet, but gnomes and elves will actually live in the fey realms. And the gnomes will be in a mechanical brass castle that moves through the desert. Their warforged workers will be living metal they 'grow'.
People have a bit of a hangup on elves and dwarves living so long and not being 20th level.
The solution for my campaign is they must return to their home periodically to regenerate. Elves lie in state in the feywild, dwarves entomb themselves in the 'stonesleep'. When they awaken, they still remember past lives, but are different people.
A PC could be a 1000 years old, but recently returned, and must begin anew. So while elves might be ageless, in reality they are merely in a cycle of living and dying.
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I like this because it offers some adventure hooks and roleplaying potential. Characters who reach their limit while in the mortal realms lack the needed sustaining power to survive the process. Thus a party may be hired to escort a sleeping elf back to the feywild while enemies try to strike while he is vulnerable.
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It also explains why dwarves tend to not retreat and focus on ancestral holdings. There are those who can not leave.
Most campaign settings like to define the underground as a dangerous place. Mine is no different. But, not being a planet-like world, how it is represented certainly is.
The Underside is to the surface much as one side of a coin is to the other. However, without the sun god's chariot to light the sky, it exists in pitch black darkness.
Long ago, the dwarves lived on the surface of the Underside, unperturbed by the eternal darkness. Then, the others came. Horrible things from the empty black above. With no other choice, the dwarves fled below ground, becoming lost in the tunnels, disoriented.
Then they met the orcs.
Long having lived an underground life, the orcs were surprised by this new race scrabbling up from below. Diplomacy...was not the first option.
A long and bitter war for living spaces ensued, with the ultimate outcome of the orcs escaping to the surface, where the dwarves were confronted for the first time with light and color. Eyes unused to such brightness turned back to the tunnels and settled in, while the orcs made their way on the surface.
In game terms, orcs will be a playable race using the half-orc racial stats. (Half races do not exist.) Dwarves will get light blindness as a reflection of their background.
Exalted also used a flat earth concept, with elemental planes surrounding the rectangular world that went off into infinity. Water to the west, Wind to the north, Wood to the east, Fire to the south. I can't remember how Earth played in but I think it was possibly itself the livable world. (Exalted had 5 nonconventional elements).
You could possibly use a similar idea, not the same, but it could be that the "Beyond realms," whatever they might be, are beyond the world's edges. And that maybe what is at each border differs -- outer planes, inner planes, elemental planes, shadow or other planes.... etc.
I like the renewed life cycle of elves and dwarves, that's a cool idea.
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I could see the Earth plane being the ground below in that setting. Cool idea at least. Thanks for letting me know about it DQ.
Right now, the eastern border leads to the elf forests, the west to the gnome deserts. Walk in without their permission and you're likely to be lost forever.
The southern border is one long continuous waterfall into darkness, with mists rising high into the air. The northern is a giant ice wall, the top hidden in clouds.
I plan on their being a citadel impossibly jutting from the waterfall on a narrow arch of stone, but haven't settled on what's inside. (Might be the focus of a campaign.) Frost giants carve their homes into the northern wall, but digging too far is hazardous to their health. :)
So the edges of the world lead to nothing... doesn't mean the map you start with needs to go to/show the edge. (Just devil-advocating here, take it all with a grain of Lot's wife...)
I use Fractal Mapper 8 to make my maps. It's got a ton of tools for it, and it also uses any bmp/png/3D picture files you can dump into it's directory. Other map making apps require proprietary graphics.
I do an actual globe world, but it's got lots of ocean, and the oceans are hard to navigate (angry sea god). So the continents are mostly cut off.
My southern and northern continents are about 3000 miles across, and about 1800 miles up and down. That means each continent is about the size of the USA, which makes it easy to visual distances for me. And the US is a huge place when you're talking horse travel for the most part.
I have an eastern continent that's about half that size, and one last floating continent that's about as big as Mississippi.
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As far as planar makeup, there's not a lot of things. There's Planes,
which are wholly outside the material plane. Things like the Planes of Good, Evil, Law, and Chaos. Demons and Devil's share parts of the Plane of Evil, so Hell and the Abyss are on 'opposite' ends of this plane (near to where it borders with Law and Chaos respectively). They're always fighting, of course. All outsiders come from one of the four prime planes. In the center of the four is a sort of neutral no-man's land that is called Limbo. Limbo is where none of the four alignments hold sway (and also where neutral outsiders come from).
Then there are Realms, which are things like the Elemental Realms (Earth, Air, Water, Fire, Wood), Positive Energy, Negative Energy, and Shadow. These are much closer to the Material Plane. If you take a full color picture of the material plane, and then filter it by different types of light, you'd get an idea. Sort of like filtered versions of it. The Realm of Earth looks exactly like the material plane, but with all plants made of crystals, earth elemental versions of the animals, no atmosphere, for example. The Realm of Fire has flames for air, with solidified fire for the ground, liquid fire for oceans, the trees are like lightning strikes with flaming leaves, the very air is pure heat, you get the idea. Demirealms are where those layers rub, so the Demirealm of Lava is where the Realms of Fire and Earth meet. The Demirealm of Mud where the earth and water meet, etc.
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So what do you do about days and months in a flat world? Not to mention, how do the sun and moon work without planetary rotation?
For me, I say 'let the sun god handle it'.
So we have a CG god with a flaming chariot. Every day, he joyrides across the sky for about eight hours. Once he reaches the boundary, he parks for the night in his pocket dimension and parties all night. Then he gets ready to do it all again.
So you might be wondering, 'does that mean the "sun" never travels the same path?' Well, he could use his godly powers to just launch himself from the opposite side of the world again, but that's just not his style. Besides being the god of light, revelry, and freedom, he also enjoys gambling. What better betting proposition is 'which way will his whim take him tomorrow?'
Oh, and since PCs can totally fly after certain points, what's stopping them from flying up for an autograph? Nothing. (Besides an angelic host guarding against chariot thieves and assassins.)
Okay, so what about the night? How does the moon figure in if the sun goes away?
Obviously, the moon hangs in the sky like normal, but it's orbit is a little different. It goes up and down, not side to side. The closer to the world it is, the better its glow lights things. (Yeah, the moon itself glows.) The further away it gets, the darker the night. And eventually, it goes so high it disappears, and the night is lit only by stars.
What are the stars, since they can't be big balls of burning gas? The hosts of the moon goddess, carrying pale lanterns. Oh yeah, the N goddess that lives on the moon. Who watches over those who dream, either for that night, or for eternity. Yes, the moon goddess also holds sway over death. Hence why those that pass on are said to be 'fallen into the long sleep'.
It gets kind of lonely when everyone you know is permanently asleep. And nothing is stopping adventurers from flying up to the moon for a visit. Have to be careful of course, not to get trapped in conversation forever. ;)
Hmm, how do the tides work without normal lunar activity? Maybe it's the sea god breathing?
Thanks mdt, having seen how long it takes to travel your setting firsthand and knowing the size helps immensely.
No problem. I know everyone was kind of wondering why it took so long to get from one place to another, but when you think about going from Florida to Idaho (which is about what you guys are doing right now) on foot (at dwarf speeds), that whole 2 months of travel time just to get a third of the way makes a lot more sense, doesn't it? :)
You'll make better time on the rivers now, given you're traveling with the current on a big barge.
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One of the problems I had when I decided not to include drow was the existence of a half-drow NPC in one of my favorite modules. (Doubly problematic, since there are no half races either.) So what do I change the NPC to? Or how do I make her appearance fit the setting?
My answer is to make her a dusk elf, favored by the moon goddess, and born with dark skin as a sign of her favor. Problem solved.
Another problem arises. Warforged incorporate wood into their construction. The gnomes live in a giant desert. Wood is going to be very expensive.
The solution? Gemstones.
Gnomish warforged are grown from a gemstone, which grows veins of crystal through the metal chassis. This stone is essentially the ‘heart’. Naturally, the racial vulnerabilities in the warforged stat block are now invalid. Thus, gnomish warforged are vulnerable to Shatter spells as a crystalline creature.
Of course, there’s room for wood-and-metal warforged too. Opposite the gnomes, the elves have stolen the secrets of the living constructs, reverse engineered from captured specimens. The elves use actual seeds as the wooden heart.
Naturally, this has caused some tension between the races. To elves, their servants are property, creations to be owned and commanded. The gnomes take exception to this, having always treated their warforged as equal citizens. Luckily, being on opposite sides of the world prevents bad feelings from blossoming into full on war.
Exalted also used a flat earth concept, with elemental planes surrounding the rectangular world that went off into infinity. Water to the west, Wind to the north, Wood to the east, Fire to the south. I can't remember how Earth played in but I think it was possibly itself the livable world. (Exalted had 5 nonconventional elements).
Earth is a giant mountain in the middle of the map. Generally all of the other elements in Exalted have sort of geographic chaos attached to them. Earth is sort of like the anchor of stability that keeps them together. I think some of the setting stuff describes the Pole of Earth as Creation's Axis Mundi.
Samnell, thanks! I couldn't remember.
TOZ, just my 2 cents, but my inclination for fantasy race names is to always, metaphorically speaking, "call an elf an elf"--so players know what to expect.
That said, I can understand renaming them if their origins are a little different -- if warforged are not solely built for war, then yeah, spellforged may make more sense. "Flameblessed" seems ambiguous, however, to me.
I think you need something that sounds more badass than "blessed" in that case. :)
Samnell, thanks! I couldn't remember.
Never had a chance to play in it but Creation's damned fun to read about. :)
Warforged = Ironbound, IronBlood, Forgeborn, Forgeblood, Golemborn
Dragonborn = Dragonblessed (from above), Dragontouched, Draconians, Dracos
Failed Dragonborn = Dragonscorned (from above), Dragoncursed, Scarosians, Scaros
Golemkith's interesting. I like it.
Hm, dragonborn... something the Tempered? The Scorched? Flamerisen?
For the catfolk--what are they like? Any cultures you've drawn from to design their culture? For example, I might use a different name for a group of feral hunters than I would for graceful but decadent charmers.
And by the cats I've known in my life, I believe if they could name their own race, it would be something like, "Beyond the Gods," or "Divine Children of Bast," or simply "Majesties." ;)
Or you could just draw from Old Possum and call them Jellicles...
My current thought is to have them be dire tiger riding plains hunters. (Shamelessly stolen from another poster on these forums.) Possibly something like a Native American/African tribe vibe going with them. The males posture and fight, the females run the tribes.
TOZ, I've got no idea where you'd find the book at this point; but the Aslan (from classic traveller alien supplement 1) described a very similar race; men were warriors who spent all their time worrying about land acquisition, females were merchants who handled just about all the day to day affairs of the clan. The gender split was so entrenched in their thinking that they'd assign gender to other races based on an individual's profession rather than physical sex.
But seriously, speaking as a primate, I'd feel weird riding a dire baboon around...
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I'm mostly doing that for the coolness.
Serious. Dire tigers.
I'll look into that book, thanks for the tip. (Edit: Easy to find at least.)
And found the wiki. Pretty similar in idea, although I can't avoid thinking of Narnia every time I see that name :D
Naw, that's the awful new one, you want this one!
I linked that only for the sake of edition wars, I haven't seen the Mongoose version, but would assume it contains the fluff. Mind you the Classic Traveller Alien Modules had language generation tables. Well, for the alien races that had a spoken language; truly, it was a game for nerds.
Not to threadjack TOZ's homebrew, but:
Aw, Hivers! I was so hoping someone would pick up on my "Well, for the alien races that had a spoken language."
Aw, Darrians! They were the first space elves I recognized as such; yes, Vulcans have pointy ears, so what?
I'll be the first to admit that Traveller was not a game made for hack and slash, but, man, was that fluff fluffy. (That's a compliment.) Ah, memories!
I would think that dire lions would seem the more natural to "domesticate" given their pride nature versus the tiger's solitary nature.
Catfolk = Panthera (name of the genus for big cats)? or Pantherians?
Dragonborn = Varanus (name of the genus for monitor lizards)? or waran, or waral ?
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Eh, dire tiger was just the first thing that came to mind. It can change.
Panthera doesn't much grab me, but it isn't like I have much else.
Varanus sounds nice, but I'm not sure it ties in well. I really need to name the dragon god and see what that brings. 'Marduk' has been floating around as a possible.
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Call the catfolk the Khit'teh! ^_-
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maybe something referencing Bast (Bastians, Bastlings?) for the catfolk?
Drakrathi for the Dragonfolk?
More importantly, wanted to say I love the idea of stonesleep for the dwarves, and thought it's be really cool if Dwarves actually turned to stone when they die or enter the stonesleep. All those cool statues of Dwarven heroes in the Stonehalls? "Whaddu mean statue? That's my uncle. He couldn't wake from his last stonesleep." They return to the homeland when the enter the stonesleep because they know that the other dwarves will protect them from being broken up while in the stonesleep.
Maybe to keep them from being too similar, you could model the elves after the Trills from Star Trek? They have "eternal" fey spirits which are implanted by special rituals, thus one "elf spirit" can live many lives, as long as they are able to return to be implanted into a new host body. The host bodies and the spirit share memories and personality quirks, but each time it is a different combined being.
Just some thoughts.