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Here is a (work-in-progress) view of my DM map of Varisia, concentrating on the road from Magnimar to Fort Rannick. It's an old-school grognard reflex to want to fill in all those blank spaces, for a richer, more comprehensive sandbox campaign.
When I set out to fill in some of those spaces, I saw many fellow forumites had tread those trackless wastes before me. Kudos to Haladir for Garret's landing, and to P. H. Dungeon for the settlements along the Yondabakari, on the road to Fort Rannick. I'd just as soon paste in any other previously developed material as make up more from whole cloth, so feel free to point the way towards further Varisia-based resources, such as cities, wilderness locations and what we used to call "places of mystery".
Nicely done. Snagged and thanks for your contribution.
the complete map pdf says it was removed.
Glad you liked Garret's Landing! I kind of winged the location when my PCs were looking for a place to stop on their first visit to Magnimar, and fleshed it out from there.
the complete map pdf says it was removed.
Hmmm. Very odd. The file is still in the same place. Let's try this link:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7fznBL2UkWnMHQ4ekRpMWxWaW8/view?usp=shari ngI'm still looking for additional information on the interior of Varisia, perhaps from other modules or adventures. Any suggestions?
The Shattered Star map folio has a poster-sized version of the (beautiful) in-world map of Varisia used in the Varisia player companion, as well as poster-sized maps of Magnimar and Kaer Maga.
- The other early APs, Curse of the Crimson Throne and Second Darkness, add some detail to some areas, especially cities (Korvosa and Riddleport). CotCT adds more, especially about the region around Scarwall. Both the Shoanti and the Varisians get some lore in support articles in CotCT, as does the region called the Cinderlands.
- City of Strangers is a guidebook to Kaer Maga.
Guide to Korvosa is 3.5, like the Curse of the Crimson Throne AP, but the lore elements should be good. - Pirates of the Inner Sea discusses the pirates of Riddleport
- The Jade Regent AP begins in Sandpoint, and adds Varisian Caravan rules that may prove useful, as well as flavor for them.
- The Shattered Star AP visits several places, such as Windsong Abbey and the Lady's Light, giving more details on them.
- There are PFS Scenarios, such as King of the Storval Steps, that take place in Varisia and add details to it.
You may want to look over the Adventure Finder and set it to show all adventures in Varisia.
Some of Urath's sources I'm already familiar with, others not, so thanks for the list. The shattered star map is nice, but at far too great a scale for my tastes.
Back in the day (mid to late 70s) we would map out the wilderness on a 5-mile hex grid. We eventually decided that the hex grid was too artificial, but that's about the level of detail that "feels right".
The Sandpoint hinterlands map crams far too much action into a small space, IMHO, but that's mostly because of the poor choice of scale for the map. In between that and the double-page maps showing all of Varisia, I wanted to find some middle ground.
So I blew up just the one corner of Varisia, from Magnimar to Fort Rannick, and started adding detail. The excellent list of settlements along the Yondabakari from PH Dungeon filled in a lot of blank space. If I can find all the resources from Urath's list and add any hamlets, terrain features, rivers and places of mystery to this corner of Varisia, it'll feel like a good day.
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There are also a few others:
- The NPC Guide has a Varisian caravan that roams the area.
- The Harrow card decks are a big focus of Varisian life.
- The adventure "Murder's Mark" has a Varisian caravan/circus visiting the town of Ilsuaian. Ilsurian gets detailed in "Towns of the Inner Sea".
- The adventure "The Godsmouth Heresy" takes place in Kaer Maga and adds some bits of lore, and a new Thassilonian monster suitable for any Thassilonian rulns.
- The adventure "Feast of Ravenmoor" expands the settlement of Ravenmoor.
- The Player Companion "Magical Marketplace" has a Varisian caravan that roams all over Avistan. Not exactly adding depth to Varisia itself, but makes for an interesting means of adding news and buying/selling unusual gear.
- The Player Companion "Black Markets" expands on the black market in Riddleport, "Lubbertown".
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Nice. I did something similar a while back. Have developed half of the villages in more detail but then got distracted by re-writing the second half of the campaign :)
Link here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/sk7s0utpx1bvw0k/SW_varisia.pdf?dl=0
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Doh, old link. Here's the completed map, I added a few things. It looks like you referred to it a bit. I never worked on the areas up towards Ember lake. I may refer back :)
South West Varisia - detailed map.
I found the Magnimar sourcebook (city of monuments) useful for the area, as well as elements from the Inner Sea World Guide. But mostly the pathfinder wiki, with all its footnotes.
What a fantastic thread this is. Excellent fleshing out of the area! Thanks to both Wheldrake and Yossarion for putting together these maps. :)
Actually, my only sources were the existing Paizo Varisia maps, PH Dungeon's cool write-up and Haladir's Garrett's landing. Yossarian, if I'd known your map existed, I'd've used it, it looks exactly like the sort of thing I like.
I just ran the journey to Fort Rannick last week. It went well, and despite the urgency the players felt to get to Fort Rannick and skip all the intervening stuff, they got involved in several of PH Dungeon's vignettes. Especially...
One thing I did was summarize all the relevant movement rates, ride or handle animal DCs to hustle or forced march and so on one sheet, so we wouldn't be shuffling pages during the book-keeping phase. This worked well, but it did leave me wondering if I shouldn't have hand-waved the cross-country travel bit in favor of a chosen few action vignettes.
Still, this is exactly the kind of detail that makes wilderness adventures come alive. Keep it coming!
Hah funny. Salonta and Vese made it onto your map from my map via PH's version. Which I hadn't seen and is very nice. Everything is evolution: I took some inspiration (and a few names) from the Shamutanti Hills, the first book of a wonderful 4 part choose your own adventure series by (the other) Steve Jackson.
I've made use of some of the Raging Swan published material to add flavor to my wilderness treks. Their stuff is very reasonably priced and available via this site. They are great for those one hour diversions that need more depth than just 'bandits attack'.
Here's an example of the raging swan material. Their angle is to feed ammo to a sandbox-style GM.
http://www.ragingswan.com/gm-essentials/gms-miscellany-wilderness-dressing/