Designing a medieval map

[Shades of Eternity]

Ten Beautiful Medieval Maps

Our list of the best medieval maps - ten maps created between the 6th and 16th centuries, which offer unique views into how medieval people saw their world.

www.medievalists.net

Medieval World Maps (T-O Maps)

Several cases contain maps that represent the world as medieval Europeans saw it, and usually they are signified as a diagram of a T inscribed within an O.

beinecke.library.yale.edu

Trying to figure out if there is a way to design a map so it feels like a medieval map while still being functional like a modern map.

The closest I've seen is Palladium Role Playing Games map and even then it is more on the side of a standard map.

I have this conceptual model in my head of doing a fantasy map of Europe, where doggerland rose due to divine intervention and as a result of a response to a tyrant to give a chance for people to flee his iron grip and settle somewhere else with a rough feel of the Canterbury tales, but the map makes me bug eyed and looking for suggestions.

 

[MGibster]

Trying to figure out if there is a way to design a map so it feels like a medieval map while still being functional like a modern map.

I don't typically think about maps but I've given this issue some thought. On one hand, a functional map is good for the DM to have. But for some reason I dislike handing players a map that is overly detailed and gives them an accurate account of the distance between objects. Maybe maps from the early modern period, 1450-1800, strike a better balance between functional and mysterious.

In one edition of Legend of the Five Rings there was a map of Rokugan that was great. It wasn't meant to be an accurate representation, you wouldn't know exactly how far Ryoko Owari was from the capital, but you'd know where major cities and landmarks were in relation to one another.

 

[Baron Opal II]

Looking at the Matthew Paris’ Map of Britain now I know where the Game of Thrones map came from.

What is noteworthy about old maps, to me, is that while distances aren't accurate, paths and order tend to be. If you sail north from London, you'll encounter Ipswich first, then Kingston, Sunderland, then Edinburgh. Distance will be vague between them, but you'll have the order. Or, the average time between each city will be on the map.

The other thing I note is that a number of maps, although not all, have a lot of explanatory text on them. I remember seeing a US map from the 1790s at the National Library that has some text on the border of the Ohio territory that said something like "[Tribe1] used to live here and are extinct. [Tribe2] and [Tribe3] joined together to eliminate them as [Tribe1] were cannibals."

Or another one from a French (?) map "the cathedral here was completed in time for the festival of [Saint] in 16XX. An untiring ox appeared and helped. This miraculous animal allowed completion of cathedral by the Grace of God".

 

[aco175]

You can always rationalize that in a D&D world, the magic involved like fly spells and shapeshifting into a bird can make maps more on scale and modern.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

How wedded are you to realistic distances?

 

[Bohandas]

Are you talking drawing style, or the actual arrangement of the various locations. For the latter this article might be helpful:

Collections: The Lonely City, Part I: The Ideal City

This week and next, we’re going to look at an issue not of battles, but of settings: pre-modern cities – particularly the trope of the city, town or castle set out all alone in the midd…

acoup.blog

 

[kigmatzomat]

I would suggest you make your modern GM map for your own sanity with points of interest and their connecting roads

Then make yourself a grid with travel times between adjacent points along the common path; whether that is boat, path or road.

Redraw the map using 1 day=1 unit but keeping things in the same general spatial position (Chicago is north of Indianapolis and west of Detroit, which is northwest of Cleveland) but let there be some drift to make the travel-units work. (I.e. Chicago may not be shown being north of Cleveland and south of Detroit because the common travel between Detroit & Cleveland in d&d is by boat across the lake which throws things off)

The parts of the map more than 1 day-unit to either side of a route should be blank, other than major features that are visible from distances (mountains, some bodies of water)