Mapping Golarion: Putting what we know to latitude and longitude


Lost Omens Campaign Setting General Discussion

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Shadow_Charlatan wrote:

i'd say it's about 11'oclock of Tolguth, with a distance of 36 miles (straight from tolguth)

or 18 miles west and 30 miles north from Tolguth according to the scale for the map

Thank you. That is the new location, then, and it lines up with the ISWG. So the Earthnavel is in a different spot than shown on the maps from Into the Darklands.

This means there will be a discrepancy in the final map, but I think the ISWG location should be the "correct" one since it is newer and based on more detailed maps.


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Preview image of Nar-Voth, the first level of the Darklands. This took a lot of tweaking because so many POI's have shifted since Into the Darklands was first published. Or, perhaps more accurately, given precise locations rather than rough placements.


I'm updating the interactive maps (slower equirectangular vector, faster Web Mercator tile) right now. These are still WIPs and should include John's updated layers and a tweaked Inner Sea forest layer, but no relief layer or Darklands... yet.

EDIT: Forgot to mention a bonus feature that sneaked in. On both maps, the map view and zoom level are now hashed in the URL, letting you bookmark a view. For instance, here's a link to pull up a view of Nirmathas and Molthune.


chopswil wrote:
i'm looking forward to the new Azlant AP and all the maps that will come of it.

One thing I am not looking forward to is tracing a whole bunch of tiny islands. :P

But otherwise, yeah. :)

Liberty's Edge

Incredibly minor detail - Deepmar, the small island NW of Vyre, is part of Cheliax, but the map has the Chelaxian border stopping at Vyre.


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CBDunkerson wrote:
Incredibly minor detail - Deepmar, the small island NW of Vyre, is part of Cheliax, but the map has the Chelaxian border stopping at Vyre.

Thank you. I should probably start maintaining an errata list of some sort.

There are a lot of little border issues. Most of these are discrepancies between the map borders on the global ISWG poster map and the individual, regional maps for each country. And then sometimes the supplements, themselves, also have borders that differ from the those, as well. So a given region might have three possible borders.

Cheliax, for example, technically owns a tiny piece of Garund. It doesn't show up on the Inner Sea map on pg 7 of the ISWG, but it does on the detail map on p56. And the Citadel of Cheisteno is claimed by both Chelix (Infernal Empire supplement) and Nidal (ISWG) because of border shifts.

The Linnorm Kingdoms border stretches farther north in the Lands of the Linnorm Kings campaign setting supplement than it does in the ISWG.

Taldor's borders are also wildly different between the overview map on pg 7 of the ISWG and the detail map in the ISWG.

Ustalav's borders are all over the place. I recall it being different in all three places (ISWG overview map, the ISWG detail map, and the campaign supplement).

The borders right now come from the ISWG overview map because it's the only place I have where all borders are shown. At some point I'll need to go back over them and clean it up. Some of the border issues probably can't be resolved, but the big ticket items can certainly be fixed.

Paizo Employee Developer

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John Mechalas wrote:
chopswil wrote:
i'm looking forward to the new Azlant AP and all the maps that will come of it.

One thing I am not looking forward to is tracing a whole bunch of tiny islands. :P

But otherwise, yeah. :)

If it makes you feel any better, I won't be revealing the entirety of the shattered continent. The largest region mapped (which is where the bulk of the Adventure Path takes place) is about 30 X 40 miles and contains only a few islands.

Liberty's Edge

John Mechalas wrote:
Some of the border issues probably can't be resolved, but the big ticket items can certainly be fixed.

Hopefully, the existence of a 'pretty close' version of a 'global' map will make it easier for Paizo itself to eventually produce an official version of the same.


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The easy solution is just to declare that both maps are right -- the border shifted between map 1 and map 2, and some of them may be a few decades old depending on the most recent edition of the Pathfinder Atlas. Or maybe some of them were drawn by Chelaxian cartographers, and some of them weren't...


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tonyz wrote:
The easy solution is just to declare that both maps are right -- the border shifted between map 1 and map 2, and some of them may be a few decades old depending on the most recent edition of the Pathfinder Atlas. Or maybe some of them were drawn by Chelaxian cartographers, and some of them weren't...

This has more or less been my head-canon for issues like these. Maps are imperfect, borders are fluid, etc. We are just capturing one snapshot of Golarion that can be considered more or less representative of the era in which the game takes place. It means we'll never have something that is perfect or even "right", but we will have "very good" and "good enough".


Adam Daigle wrote:
If it makes you feel any better, I won't be revealing the entirety of the shattered continent. The largest region mapped (which is where the bulk of the Adventure Path takes place) is about 30 X 40 miles and contains only a few islands.

Thanks for the mini-preview! I am excited to see new corners of the globe show up, even small ones. If you are able to help us place it in the ocean relative to the Inner Sea when the maps finally come out, that'd set my geek heart aflutter. :)


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Atlas Obscura recently published a piece on Mercator's first map of the north pole, including his incredibly wrong but entertaining guesses about its shape and inhabitants. Seems like it'd be of interest to folks in this thread.

Paizo Employee Developer

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John Mechalas wrote:
Adam Daigle wrote:
If it makes you feel any better, I won't be revealing the entirety of the shattered continent. The largest region mapped (which is where the bulk of the Adventure Path takes place) is about 30 X 40 miles and contains only a few islands.
Thanks for the mini-preview! I am excited to see new corners of the globe show up, even small ones. If you are able to help us place it in the ocean relative to the Inner Sea when the maps finally come out, that'd set my geek heart aflutter. :)

I'll do the best that I can. I can say that once you and Garrett started putting things on a globe and talking about distances between continents (and the sizes of oceans), I had a bit of a panic hoping that I put the right distance in print for things. I used previously printed sources to inform my idea of how far out into the Arcadian Ocean the islands are by looking at the Sun Temple Colony in Lost Cities of Golarion. In that article, it mentions the Sun Temple Colony's location with: "With the nearest civilization a thousand miles away..." The region in which this AP takes place is a few hundred miles south of there. (I have more specific measurements, but at the moment I can't recall exactly what I said, and I'm not super keen on spilling all the information out here long before the book's available. Plus, I still have time before it goes to the printer, so things can still change.)

I used the measuring tool from Garrett's globe and the distance I got from there was pretty accurate to what I have in the manuscript at this point, so thanks guys!


Adam Daigle wrote:
I used the measuring tool from Garrett's globe and the distance I got from there was pretty accurate to what I have in the manuscript at this point, so thanks guys!

Ha! That's awesome. (And reminds me that I should probably make another globe update soon.)


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Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

This thread is keeping my attention until more campaign setting line books are announced. Not as many campaign setting lovers as rule lovers out there.


tonyz wrote:
The easy solution is just to declare that both maps are right -- the border shifted between map 1 and map 2, and some of them may be a few decades old depending on the most recent edition of the Pathfinder Atlas. Or maybe some of them were drawn by Chelaxian cartographers, and some of them weren't...

PFWiki has a similar policy for addressing most canon conflicts. We also fall back on the implicit conceit that real-world publication dates for sourcebooks also correspond to the passage of time on Golarion, so differences or conflicts between a book published in 2010 (4710 AR) and 2017 (4717 AR) that can't be explained otherwise might simply reflect what's changed or is better-known after 7 years of in-universe time.

John Mechalas wrote:
Cheliax, for example, technically owns a tiny piece of Garund. It doesn't show up on the Inner Sea map on pg 7 of the ISWG, but it does on the detail map on p56.

In the case of Khari, the bit of Rahadoum owned by Cheliax, it's described in The Infernal Empire as being a 580-year-old Chelish acquisition. Its omission from the ISWG overview map was likely an error.


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Adam Daigle wrote:
I can say that once you and Garrett started putting things on a globe and talking about distances between continents (and the sizes of oceans), I had a bit of a panic hoping that I put the right distance in print for things.

One of the many advantages of making Golarion basically a near-geological copy of earth is that you can just put virtual rulers to the globe and get pretty reasonable, and reasonably accurate, distances for things. It's no coincidence that once we got the Inner Sea map lined up using James's guidance that the distances published in Jade Regent ended up matching. That was a crucial validation.

The only thing that really caused problems was using the same map scale for the regional maps at both the northern and southern ends of the Inner Sea. If future works keep in mind that the distance between lines of longitude decreases as you move further away from the equator, then keeping Golarion internally consistent should not be a problem. That way you can publish a big Mercator-style map, and still have north be straight up everywhere.

If any of this work helps the Paizo world designers and illustrators in any capacity at all, then that really exceeds any expectations I had when I started!


The elevation relief layer is available from the Layers menu on the vector map, and will worm its way into the tile version eventually. It doesn't scale yet/there's no pyramid for zoom levels--if you enable it, you're getting the whole 12 megabyte image. I'm still not 100% satisfied, and it's not particularly canon, but it looks pretty good.


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Upgraded the relief layer on the vector map; it's much lighter, and the shapes are much nicer. (Example)


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I really, really like this new relief layer. Thank you, sir! If I get some time this weekend (HA!) I may play around with building a full-on Inner Sea map from our data sets.


Pathfinder Adventure Path, Lost Omens, Maps, Starfinder Adventure Path Subscriber
Adam Daigle wrote:
I used the measuring tool from Garrett's globe and the distance I got from there was pretty accurate to what I have in the manuscript at this point, so thanks guys!

Does this mean that you'll come back to this for future project and point other folks writing/mapping new things here too?

Paizo Employee Developer

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That's certainly possible-probable! :D

Shadow Lodge

One dot doesn't seem sufficient.


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Inner Sea Map (10 MB), created with our GIS data layers. This includes a hillshade and highlight layer that I built using Garrett's elevation/height map data.

This is a rough map because I am still letting the GIS application do the labeling, and not everything is labeled, and the country boundaries layer still needs work, etc etc etc. But it should give you an idea of what you can build given time and patience.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber
John Mechalas wrote:

Inner Sea Map (10 MB), created with our GIS data layers. This includes a hillshade and highlight layer that I built using Garrett's elevation/height map data.

This is a rough map because I am still letting the GIS application do the labeling, and not everything is labeled, and the country boundaries layer still needs work, etc etc etc. But it should give you an idea of what you can build given time and patience.

... and all of a sudden, the awesome kicks up yet another notch :-)


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boop?

The Exchange

This is wonderful! Keep up the good work!


Garrett Guillotte wrote:
I'm updating the interactive maps (slower equirectangular vector, faster Web Mercator tile) right now. {. . .}

The first time I went to the slower equirectangular vector map, the zoom did weird things, with + first zooming out a whole bunch, and then zooming in but also panning around apparently randomly. I couldn't reproduce the problem, though.


UnArcaneElection wrote:
Garrett Guillotte wrote:
I'm updating the interactive maps (slower equirectangular vector, faster Web Mercator tile) right now. {. . .}

The first time I went to the slower equirectangular vector map, the zoom did weird things, with + first zooming out a whole bunch, and then zooming in but also panning around apparently randomly. I couldn't reproduce the problem, though.

Not at all surprising. There is a lot in that map, it's doing some things Leaflet isn't designed to do at a scale it isn't really built for, the fractional zoom levels aren't well supported, and I'm not great with code so I'm sure it's not optimized. It's built right now to be easy to update since much of the data is still in flux.

If you have problems and need to zoom/pan a lot, especially with a touchscreen or pinch-to-zoom, try disabling some of the layers.


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I wanted to take a moment to list what I'm working on, and what's in my queue. I haven't posted any GIS data updates lately because, as Garrett points out, a lot of data is in flux at the moment.

What I've done recently:

  • Georeferenced the Inner Sea Poster Map Folio, which conveniently has all the detail maps from the ISWG in one place. There are still some discrepancies between maps here and there but by and large it's a nice, comprehensive source in one place.
  • Named all the rivers in the Inner Sea data set for rivers that have names. I've deliberately not named branches of rivers that are not labeled, even if they look like they should inherit the same name as an upstream or downstream branch, because that is not always true. I only infer names on unlabeled branches if the name can be 100% determined (e.g., an unlabeled segment of the Sellen River between upstream and downstream segments of the Sellen River)
  • Oriented the line direction for the rivers so that they "flow" in the correct directions. We're not using this data yet, but some terrain generation algorithms can use an existing flow network as a source, so it might come in handy.
  • Entered all cities in the Inner Sea and their populations (where known; a handful are not)
  • Entered all POI's in the Inner Sea
  • Made judgement calls about POI's that should be cities and visa-versa. I may not always get this right. :)
  • Completed land, water body (including the ice shelf), rivers, and forest layers for the Crown of the World
  • Completed about 1/2 the rivers in Tian Xia
  • Traced water bodies and rivers in Sekamina
  • Taken Garrett's terrain height data and generated shadow and highlight overlays. Since these bitmaps overlays are done with alpha masks, it lets us drape the mountain effect on top of anything at all, even underlying vector layers, which is very flexible.
  • Fixed a lot of little data quality issues.

What is in my queue (not necessarily in this order):

  • Finish classifying all the POIs in the Inner Sea with GNIS codes
  • Finish the Sekamina Darklands layer
  • Finish rivers in Tian Xia
  • Clean up the Inner Sea country/region borders so that they actually line up with the coastlines
  • Fix several more little data quality issues
  • Take the dogs for a walk


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Might as well post my own TODOs, in rough priority order:

  • Incorporating John's new and updated layers on the interactive maps.
  • Checking settlement and POI data against PFWiki to find gaps or errors on the wiki or in the data.
  • Refining label appearance on the interactive maps, especially for the GNIS-coded POIs.
  • Generating a new interactive globe, including the heightmap.
  • Caching PFWiki excerpts to speed up detailed popups.
  • Drawing Tian Xia's forest and mountain layers.
  • Implementing the relief layer on the tiled map as a separate layer, which should allow for full-res relief on zoom.
  • Refining the Inner Sea height map to emphasize specific landmark mountains, crater volcanoes, model the Worldwound, and continue adjusting for more appropriate scale.
  • Estimating and demarcating biomes, particularly for deserts and the Eye of Abendego.
  • Interpolating the generated height maps into vector topographic contours for an alternative elevation modeling option.
  • Generating Google Maps-style vector tiles for map data, which should improve performance and reduce or eliminate the need for separate vector and tiled raster maps.


@John Mechalas: Definitely take the dogs for a walk.


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One last toy using webglglobe2 before I go to bed. Holding down shift, control/command, or alt while left or right clicking might do some things.


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OK, that is cool. Just when I think it's not possible to do something even more amazing than what has already been done, something more amazing happens.


Wow, that's way ahead of what I was expecting to be developed!

And it just happens to be what you REALLY need for world mapping.


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I made a separate announcement in the Community Use Projects thread, but I also wanted to point out here that I finally released the Golarion Solar Ephemeris calculator.

Also, I updated the city and POI data. Pretty much all known cities and points of interest on Golarion from the Inner Sea World Guide, Dragon Empires Gazetteer, and the Crown of the World are posted.


These are amazing tools for a GM running a campaign through the more extreme parts of the world.


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In honor of the Starfinder Society announcement, here's a satellite-style render with atmosphere. And for the heck of it, satellite-style Garund with the relief layer.


Garrett Guillotte wrote:

Might as well post my own TODOs, in rough priority order:

  • Incorporating John's new and updated layers on the interactive maps.
  • Refining label appearance on the interactive maps, especially for the GNIS-coded POIs.
  • Implementing the relief layer on the tiled map as a separate layer, which should allow for full-res relief on zoom.

On the vector map, updated layers and label icons. On the tiled map, relief is an optional layer.


This is cool! Now you just need to get it to give you a Google Maps style zoom-in from views like that to overhead views of the cities at sub-block resolution, and in the far future have the street view option . . . .

Wait a minute . . . do either of you happen to actually work for Google?


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Data layers for the Crown of the World have been posted. Here's a quick rendering of the north pole.

UnArcaneElection wrote:
These are amazing tools for a GM running a campaign through the more extreme parts of the world.

Thanks! Our Jade Regent campaign is what got me started on this.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

Do you have a layer of the high definition map "below" that you are using to trace this out? If a person has a copy of their own map, is there a procedure that can be used to add that back in?


BobTheCoward wrote:
Do you have a layer of the high definition map "below" that you are using to trace this out? If a person has a copy of their own map, is there a procedure that can be used to add that back in?

The process is known as georeferencing, and there's free GIS software called QGIS that you can use to georeference your own copies of the maps. (You can also view and edit the layers John provides in it.) I use QGIS for what I need in this project, but I think John has access to more advanced commercial software.

I'll warn you now that QGIS's interface is... let's just say it's very open source. If you've used stuff like GIMP or Scribus, you know what I mean. "Clunky" undersells it.


BobTheCoward wrote:
Do you have a layer of the high definition map "below" that you are using to trace this out? If a person has a copy of their own map, is there a procedure that can be used to add that back in?

What you describe here is georeferencing. For images, there's no way to generically provide georeferencing parameters because they are are only valid for that exact instance of an image (it's size/resolution and of course the contents). If my map image is cropped differently than yours, for example, then the two won't line up if you try and use the same parameters and the scaling in one direction will also be wrong. If my map is at a different resolution than yours, then the whole image scale will definitely be wrong.

Unless you are willing to dive into something like QGIS and do the georeferencing (which is not hard, but it can be tedious, and there's a learning curve to GIS applications), you are probably better off lining up the map images with the data layers after-the-fact in something like Photoshop.


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UnArcaneElection wrote:
This is cool! Now you just need to get it to give you a Google Maps style zoom-in from views like that to overhead views of the cities at sub-block resolution, and in the far future have the street view option . . . .

You kind of jest, but once I have a vector tile server going for this, that's entirely possible. More than that, though, I've already started looking into routing options for Leaflet and ways to calculate and generate optimal travel paths from the geodata, inspired by Stanford's ORBIS map of Roman-era Europe that lets you calculate foot/cart/horse/ship travel times between points.

UnArcaneElection wrote:
Wait a minute . . . do either of you happen to actually work for Google?

Nah, this just yet another esoteric Pathfinder metahobby for me.


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UnArcaneElection wrote:
Wait a minute . . . do either of you happen to actually work for Google?

Nah. I'm a cog in the machine of a different multi-national, high-tech industry conglomerate.


I think we're both in Portland, fwiw, though we've never met.


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Garrett Guillotte wrote:
I think we're both in Portland, fwiw, though we've never met.

Well, we should probably fix the latter, then!


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Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
UnArcaneElection wrote:

This is cool! Now you just need to get it to give you a Google Maps style zoom-in from views like that to overhead views of the cities at sub-block resolution, and in the far future have the street view option . . . .

Wait a minute . . . do either of you happen to actually work for Google?

Speaking of which, that is something you can do in Google Earth right now. You can't really do a region map (too much stretching), but you can make image overlays of the city maps and scale them on there after loading the kmz files.


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber
John Mechalas wrote:
BobTheCoward wrote:
Do you have a layer of the high definition map "below" that you are using to trace this out? If a person has a copy of their own map, is there a procedure that can be used to add that back in?

What you describe here is georeferencing. For images, there's no way to generically provide georeferencing parameters because they are are only valid for that exact instance of an image (it's size/resolution and of course the contents). If my map image is cropped differently than yours, for example, then the two won't line up if you try and use the same parameters and the scaling in one direction will also be wrong. If my map is at a different resolution than yours, then the whole image scale will definitely be wrong.

Unless you are willing to dive into something like QGIS and do the georeferencing (which is not hard, but it can be tedious, and there's a learning curve to GIS applications), you are probably better off lining up the map images with the data layers after-the-fact in something like Photoshop.

If I used georeferencing in qgis, is that information that can be saved as a kml file? I'm willing to learn that if it would then be easy to look at it in something more friendly.

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