Make Yourself A Campaign Setting Warhammer Style: Use Real World Maps!

[psychognome]

I have been thinking of this for quite a while, but only quite recently (okay, okay, it was a few months ago, but I haven't really given it thought) I noticed something weird about the world of Warhammer with my friends: the map used in that world parallels our world!

Let's take a few examples: the Old World is, of course, Europe. Right where we have Germany, there's a big old thing called the Empire of Man which is, oddly enough, quite Germanic in the naming conventions and all.

A state of the Empire called Sylvania also catches my attention. It's in the eastern part of the empire, and it's ruled by vampire counts, and evil undead roam the dark woods. Vell, I alvays considered ze Eastern Europe a dark place, even viz ze vampires.

Where we'd have France in the real world we have Bretonnia, a place with knights in shining armor and quite a lot of Celtic flavor, like the Lady of the Lake. The people who live there actually have names like Giles L'Imbecile and stuff!

The British Isles were absent from the map for quite a while, but then suddenly the island of Albion appeared, which is a misty, rainy, marshy place with lots of druids and giants living around, just the way I'd imagine Britain to be.

The thing that irks me is that right where Finland and rest of the Nordic Countries are there is Norska, a place of Demon worshipping savages with longships, and right up north there are the Chaos wastes. Hey, we Scandinavians aren't that bad!

It goes on: right near the real world Arabic countries there's a place called Araby, where people deal with strange magic and Djinn and stuff. Even further East there's a country called Cathay, a place where monks study the perfect art of the body and who eat rice and have a Great Wall and who think of everyone living outside the wall as being "foreign demons".

The Americas have a similar trend too: South America is full of rain forests, and is home to an ancient civilisation of lizardmen who are quite Aztec-like. Even their gods have that Tiki-tcha-whatnot sound to them!

North America is quite interesting. Part of it is obviously a land ocalled Ulthuan, where the High Elves live, but the Northern parts, known as Nagarroth, are inhabited by Dark Elves... what have the people at Games Workshop got against Americans? Oh, yeah, they're Brittish...

Have any of you ever tried to pull of a similar thing? I don't mean just borrowing real world cultures and religions, we all do that, but making blatant geographic similarities with the real world and then spicing it up with a little bit of magical stuff! I've been considering doing the very same thing for my next campaign, and so far I'm happy with what I've been able to come up with...

Comments? Flames? Tomatoes?

 

[Silver Moon]

I use real world maps all the time - it is a great time saver. What I'll do is just get a Rand McNally or AAA map of some state or Canadian province that my players would not be familiar with, and trace sections of that map for the campaign setting.

I keep rivers, lakes, mountains, and other key features the same as on the map, make the Interstate highways the main roads, the main state roads the secondary roads, and the other roads rough trails (usually not on the map, but visible to travelers). For all communities I use 1/100 of the present population, which translates well for a D&D setting. In some cases I keep the community names the same. For larger communities, that the players may have heard of, I usually take the name of the county that it is in as the name.

 

[Gilladian]

my current campaign is set in the "real world" geographically, but not socially. My major kingdom in the current story arc is set in northern Florida/Georgia. The PCs are spending a lot of time in the cypress swamps south of Fort Myers. The local area has a low-magic romanesque feel, but is really more of a theocracy.

Before that, we had a long-running campaign set on the Chesapeake Bay. This area of the world is fairly typical feudal/european in flavor, but with a somewhat modern sensibility. It was established by slaves who escaped a major civil war several hundred years earlier.

Other areas I've given some thought to are the dwarven kingdoms (there are three) that live in/under/near the grand canyon, the high-magic users who survive on the west coast, and the mercantile/piratical cultures of northern south america and central america. And of course the elves inhabit most of the Ohio river valley, in a secret land that is partly in another plane.

So the players can relate to the geography/climate/plant and animal life, but have no advantage of knowledge about the people/cultures they may meet.

Gilladian

 

[dglass]

The only time I did that was when I found a map of what the earth would look like if the water level of the ocean raised. I have since lost the link to the map. Another neat map is the one of mars shown as if it had oceans.

I once ran a short GURPS Technomancer game but I don't know if that counts. It is a parallel earth where magic is real but remains similar to modern day earth.

 

[Sixchan]

The only time I did that was when I found a map of what the earth would look like if the water level of the ocean raised. I have since lost the link to the map. Another neat map is the one of mars shown as if it had oceans.

I once ran a short GURPS Technomancer game but I don't know if that counts. It is a parallel earth where magic is real but remains similar to modern day earth.

I had a map just like that, but I lost it too...maybe I'll see what I can dig up...

 

[Sixchan]

SOmething like this?

 

[FungiMuncher]

I call my campaign Fantasy Earth. It takes place in Europe after the fall of the western half of the Roman Empire. Does that count?

Basically, I took the really old maps of Earth (with all the geographical errors), combined the mythology of the fairy realms and the theories of alchemy, and started a campaign.

I'm using real world maps all the time (but usually stick to just historical ones).

A link can be found in my profile, if anyone's interested.

FM

 

[Sixchan]

Older maps were usually made with East at the top, IIRC. Some historical world maps make for great campaign worlds because you don't recognise the world on its side.