Playing on Mars

My players have just taken a Gate to Mars. (I'm using a Barsoom-ish world, but since I'm largely unfamiliar with the specifics, it's mostly made-up.)

The Thurn (white Drow) live mostly underground, in the vast cavern networks around Dor (which Men call the Scar). The Free Men of the North live on the plains (which are, supririsingly enough, to the north) -- one of the few areas low enough to support normal flora & fauna.

The geography is: low-gravity everywhere (as in MotP), nearly everywhere counts as high-altitude (low O2, so quick fatigue), normal atmosphere underground (in the "Underdark") and on the Plains.

Away from the Plains, Scraggly grasses feed rodents, but nothing much else can live there. Most small & medium critters live in caverns where there's more O2, and venture up only to feed. Even larger predators prey on those critters, and so on. Typical "underdark"-ish theme.

Anyway, here's the two maps that I allow the players to see. I'll post the one with the Thurn (Drow) cities later, after they've left (or after they've found out more about the Thurn society and layout).

-- N

PS: The base map of teraformed Mars was lifted from Space.com -- excellent work by them, not me!

If you're interested, here's a copy of a Terraformed Mars map that I made myself in Photoshop...



It has considerably more water (half Mars' elevation from lowest to highest), and the map has been rotated so that north is south, and south is north.

I plan on using the map as a basis for my next D&D campaign world.

Fractal Terrains Pro can import world data, and includes a set of Mars data. See http://www.ridgenet.net/~jslayton/mars/index.html

There's a free CC2 map of Mars there, too, exported from FT.

--
Simon Rogers