Homebrew campaign map idea

[James Heard]

Now I am convinced this is a good idea, and yes, it would be easier just to use an area unrotated, wouldn´t it. The only problem now is finding a good source of maps - preferably topographical and without much writing...

Survey maps, you can find them in a lot of libraries. Heck, some of them my be FOA-available online for all I know. There might be a lot of stuff you don't need on those things, like rock types, but every one I've seen doesn't have much on it for cities at least and includes a contour elevation.

As for the basic premise though, do be careful about it. People have tried this little trick on me three or four times in my lifetime and it's been very hard not to bite my lip occassionally as I instantly recognized something like the middle east no matter what angle or orientation it was placed at. Of course you can use that to your advantage, if you're ending up with a flipped UK for instance then it wouldn't be hard to press that similarity as evocative in your player's minds.

 

[Aeric]

Worried about the players recognizing your world map as a copy of a real-world location? The solution is simple: never show the players a world map. World maps as we know them today didn't exist until the 20th century, and the ones that did exist were compliations of smaller, localized maps and a lot of (incorrect) guesswork. As a result, the sizes of different countries in relation to each other were totally off, and there were even worse mistakes. I've seen a map of Europe that showed North Africa as a long, thin continent whose southern shore was the southern border of Egypt. People just assumed there was nothing further south. I also saw a similar map of North America, where California was completely disconnected from the rest of the continent--and it didn't even take "the Big One" to do it! .

For a real sense of how messed up medieval maps were, check out this site:

http://www.henry-davis.com/MAPS/LMwebpages/LML.html

Unless there is some kind of suborbital Scrying going on in your world, maps of large areas such as continents probably aren't going to exist except in these funky, screwed-up ways.

 

[schporto]

These are a couple of good ones.
The bad part for your puposes is that they are current so they show roads and houses.
http://terraserver.microsoft.com/ http://www.topozone.com

 

[Desdichado]

I dunno; in my experience it's still pretty obvious what they are. I had a guy who cut and paste just the outlines of a bunch of countries as islands in a piratey campaign, and we still said stuff like; "hey, isn't that France turned on it's side?" "there's an upside down Australia right there" and all that. It wasn't as hard as you're making it sound to spot the source of the maps.

Then again, maybe I'm just too geographical for my own good...

 

[Vlos]

I just find it's easiest to just draw on graph paper several land masses. Then erase a bit, and a bit more. Add some islands.

Then think about what you want in your world. Are there specific land features which separate cultures? Specific land features you want as plot devices, for example "a mount doom"? A "grand canyon"? A desert so big there is an ocean in the middle (though dried up, possibly by some ancient magic gone bad).

I find taking existing maps just doesn't fill my needs to add these types of features. Than Start adding more minute details, more islands, bays, where major countries lie, cities, etc. Adding rivers and such along the way.

Below is my world I started putting online, basically only have the maps so far as everything else is in my note books.
http://www.miniworld.com/adnd/campaigns/cataclysm/world/

Once you have it on paper the question is do you want to put it on the computer. I made the maps above using Photoshop and layers. I love the old grid maps from the "Known World" (Basic D&D).

I scan in the map (most people have a scanner nowadays) and then opened it up in photoshop, using the grids, just started pasting.

Then as long as you don't show the world map (or give) the world map to the players you can change as needed during a campaign.