Sandpoint Hinterlands Map

I am planning a short campaign to explore previous historical events for my players. They include meeting Professor Petros Lorrimor on one of his expeditions (the catalyst to Carrion Crown), exploring Thassalonion ruins so they are familiar with the theme, and taking part in the Chopper Murder investigations. With that in mind, I've been drawing heavily on stuff from Rise of the Runelords (hence why I'm posting here). My intention is to run that campaign after this one. However, I ran into an issue with the Sandpoint Hinterlands map. It just doesn't match up with the map of Varisia in any angle. I come close, but the lack of detail on the Varisia map hinders my progress. Does anyone have any advice as to how to better relate areas to my players with both the Hinterlands map and the larger map of Varisia (both of which I have due to owning the Map Folio).

I would suggest the hinterlands map from Jade Regent 1 or 2 can't remember which, its much better then the Runelords version IMO.

I am planning a short campaign to explore previous historical events for my players. They include meeting Professor Petros Lorrimor on one of his expeditions (the catalyst to Carrion Crown), exploring Thassalonion ruins so they are familiar with the theme, and taking part in the Chopper Murder investigations. With that in mind, I've been drawing heavily on stuff from Rise of the Runelords (hence why I'm posting here). My intention is to run that campaign after this one. However, I ran into an issue with the Sandpoint Hinterlands map. It just doesn't match up with the map of Varisia in any angle. I come close, but the lack of detail on the Varisia map hinders my progress. Does anyone have any advice as to how to better relate areas to my players with both the Hinterlands map and the larger map of Varisia (both of which I have due to owning the Map Folio).

I'm game-planning some side treks myself and I'm having a similar problem - the way things are laid out, there are a lot of things awfully close together and there's no realistic way so many threats could all be within a couple hours walk from as populated a place as Sandpoint.

The town does have a wall. No doubt a couple guards stand at the bridges at all times, and the rich people have their own guards as well. Nor are the goblins going to attack openly without provocation because they want to get junk to turn into weapons. That and it's more fun to attack farms.

Pretty much I figure the "encounters" mostly avoid Sandpoint. It's got a lot of people including several guards who are always armed. Caravans and the like are at risk, but not the town itself.

The town does have a wall. No doubt a couple guards stand at the bridges at all times, and the rich people have their own guards as well. Nor are the goblins going to attack openly without provocation because they want to get junk to turn into weapons. That and it's more fun to attack farms.

Pretty much I figure the "encounters" mostly avoid Sandpoint. It's got a lot of people including several guards who are always armed. Caravans and the like are at risk, but not the town itself.

I'm not talking about the goblins. Or the giant ticks of Tickwood or the giant spiders of Egan's Wood, or the Reefclaws of Sog's bay, all of which I imagine are fairly mindless and tend to only bother those who bother them.

I'm talking about the wyverns at the Devil's Punchbowl less than two miles away.

I'm talking about the harpies of the Cormorants.

I'm talking about the bugbears of Whisperwood and the devil-worshipping bugbears of Devil's Platter.

I'm talking about the ghouls of Bleaklow Moor and those of the Pauper's Graves.

I'm talking about all the monsters that dwell within and around Wisher's Well.

Most importantly though, I'm talking about the entire army of denizens who dwell in 'The Pit' which forms a nexus of the darklands and is infested with tribes goblins, gremlins, derros and troglodytes not to mention an ancient temple devoted to Kabriri (demonlord of ghouls) and the actual Sandpoint Devil.

That's an awful lot of threats to all be within 2-3 miles of Sandpoint, most of them literally within sight of the town from its highest points - it seems like them all 'avoiding' Sandpoint would be quite unlikely...

One reasoning is that varisia is relatively 'new' in the inner sea timeline. Pretty much a wild wild west mentality.....
think on this, if there is a sherrif in tombstone and the Cowboys are holed up five miles south on a claim, how often do the cops and robbers actually shoot it out?
The land is claimed by various monsters, wyverns, bugbears, that would prey on each other as well, and a nest of 10 ghouls in paupers grave wouldnt activate unless you travelled through it...probally only at night....
the triggers are your DM

That's an awful lot of threats to all be within 2-3 miles of Sandpoint, most of them literally within sight of the town from its highest points - it seems like them all 'avoiding' Sandpoint would be quite unlikely...

Since Sandpoint was the very first Paizo-developed adventuring area, I think they got slightly carried away with filling the map with adventuring locations which are under any reasonable analysis far too close to Sandpoint and to each other to constitute a viable ecology.

This said, most players won't ever go round to discover all of those locations, and it doesn't really require all that much excess suspension of disbelief to make them work. It kind of reminds me of old-school dungeons where nobody worried about whether those trolls were living down the hall from a group of wights or fire elementals.

I really liked having the Sandpoints hinterland map to lay in front of players, and wish there were more of the same, like a Magnimar hinterlands map, or even a full-sized map of Varisia. The amount of detail on the Golarion-spanning maps just doesn't do it for me.

The Brinewall Legacy, Jade Regent's first book, includes "an exploration of the hinterlands surrounding the town of Sandpoint, a region that’s anything but peaceful, by James Jacobs".

That might help, I guess.

I really liked having the Sandpoints hinterland map to lay in front of players, and wish there were more of the same, like a Magnimar hinterlands map, or even a full-sized map of Varisia. The amount of detail on the Golarion-spanning maps just doesn't do it for me.

There is a map of Varisia in the Varisia Players Guide, and several are to be found with google. I´m not sure about a map to the Magnimar hinterlands, but there might be something in Shattered Star.

Wheldrake wrote:

I really liked having the Sandpoints hinterland map to lay in front of players, and wish there were more of the same, like a Magnimar hinterlands map, or even a full-sized map of Varisia. The amount of detail on the Golarion-spanning maps just doesn't do it for me.

There is a map of Varisia in the Varisia Players Guide, and several are to be found with google. I´m not sure about a map to the Magnimar hinterlands, but there might be something in Shattered Star.

Yes, I've seen maps of Varisia like this one or this one but the level of detail on those maps don't really satisfy me.

I guess this sort of thing has always been incumbent on the DM to flesh out, which really isn't a bad thing. Still, I would have liked to see more detailed area maps like the "Sandpoint Hinterlands" map, which my players loved.

I've poked around on this forum a bit, but found nothing really satisfactory for the Magniamr region, or for the trek up to Turtleback Ferry.

To my mind it is not the monsters being close to Sandpoint but how the farms on the other side of the Devils Platter survive. The Platter on one side and Whisper Wood on the other.

Shalelu is one answer, But really you need some form of 1) secret protector 2) Some form of deterrent threat to keep the monsters in line or 3) Evil force/person powerful enough to keep the rest in line

Yes, I've seen maps of Varisia like this one or this one but the level of detail on those maps don't really satisfy me.

I guess this sort of thing has always been incumbent on the DM to flesh out, which really isn't a bad thing. Still, I would have liked to see more detailed area maps like the "Sandpoint Hinterlands" map, which my players loved.

I've poked around on this forum a bit, but found nothing really satisfactory for the Magniamr region, or for the trek up to Turtleback Ferry.

Yeah, I meant those two maps you linked above. The second one is from the Players Guide to Varisia, also from the Shattered Star map folio. It has travel distances on it, which is quite helpful. Other than that, I did not find any Magnimar Hinterland maps. I guess this area is some sort of wetland overall. An in-depth sourcebook on Varisia would be nice, but this would be at least the size of the Inner Sea world guide, and partially repetitive as well if it were to include all information already available.

Sandpoint Hinterlands

This is the only thread I could find discussing the issue.

If we use the given distances per the map, an adventurer could walk from one corner of the map to the other in a single day!

I will be using Sandpoint for my sandbox campaign, but the map scale needs to seriously change. From Sandpoint, it needs to be at least a week's travel on horseback to any point on the map, so wilderness exploration becomes a thing without having to traverse the entire map just to be forced to make camp... Assuming heroes easily acquire horses (so they no longer are hampered by having slow-moving characters in the party), that's 40 miles a day or 280 miles in a week.

This is also needed to make geographical features make sense - you don't have mountain chains 2 miles across, and at the listed distance, Ravenroost would be maybe 1300 feet across. That's not a forest or even a woods, it's a copse! By changing the distances, the shape of the map starts to make sense.

On one hand, most treks will not be along a good road. On the other hand, Sandpoint doesn't exactly lie tucked away in a corner of the map.

In the end, I think I'll have to increase the listed distances thirtyfold to get to anything even close to resembling a proper wilderness. The distance indicator on the map will be changed from 2 to 60 miles, making the distance to Whisperwood roughly 150 miles the way the crow flies.

Again I am seriously surprised I couldn't find this as errata or otherwise discussed, but here we are.

The map represent Sandpoint and neihboring farmlands. It's realistic that they farms around the town are within half a day of travel, as that makes possible for the farmers to bring their crops to the town, sell them and return home on the same day. If there weren't a town in a distance of half a day, not many farmers would be eager to settle there. It's unrealistic for a lot of villages to exist with no town around. If you rescale the map, you may want to remove the vilages or add additional towns that would be the local centers of trade.

If you check the distances between old towns, you may find that they are usually one day travel from each other. In addition as this being a comfortable distance for peasants, it is also comfortable for travelers, as after leaving one town in the morning they can reach the next before evening.

Ravenroost and Tors aren't mountain chains, they are hills.

Altogether the region shown is such a size that the explorers could venture out of the town, scout some area and return to the town for the night. It wasn't build to be used in games with long travel. For that, you may use the full map of Varisia. You can find that 150 miles is the distance from Sandpoint to Sanos Forest or Churlwood, which are ectualy large expanses, unlike the woods that are visible on Sandpoint Hinterlands map.

Adjoint is correct in his assessments, but I'll add that this doesn't mean you can't do what you want with it.

In my own game I've tripled the Hinterlands estimated distances/travel time, and doubled the Varisia map, to make the world larger. This got me the following:

Hinterlands: 1mi=3mi
Varisia: 25mi=50mi

Sandpoint to Thistletop - 19.5mi (15mi on road to Thistle River, 4.5mi difficult terrain to Thistletop) = 8 hours walking, 6 hours light horse

Sandpoint to Foxglove Manor - 29.3mi (all road/path) = 9h45min walking, 8h30min light horse

Sandpoint to Magnimar - Assuming 1/3 steep hills/rough path and 8hour travel days = 3.5 days walking, 3 days light horse.

These changes mean that my party needed to spend nights out of town to explore the 'dungeons' of book 1 and 2, but were able to retreat to town or at least friendly locations fairly quickly. It also means Hemlock's trip to Magnimar looking for 'reinforcements' in book 1 also takes at least a week (3 days each way, plus at least one speaking to the right people), giving more time for the events to occur without him available to the PCs.

One thing I did overlook about the setting as described was that there are Roadside Inns along the Lost Coast Road, spread out to be a days journey apart.

If you rescale the map, you may want to remove the vilages or add additional towns that would be the local centers of trade.

Absolutely.

Other than that, I will simply refer to earlier discussion.

The hinterlands map and the map of varisia do overlay accurately. However the large scale map has no detail at all, so it's not that useful for 'outside of sandpoint' once you get beyond the hinterlands map.

I made my own (non canon) map of the area to help in my Runelords campaign. It does accurately match the Hinterlands map and the overall Varisia one, but with extra detail (and some villages) introduced.