Rob Conley is a publisher and author best known for the Blackmarsh setting and the excellent "How to Build a Fantasy Sandbox", and is currently raising funds for
Into the Majestic Fantasy Realms: Northern Reaches. He's kindly agreed to answer some questions of mine. i
Question: Tell us a bit about Fantasy Sandbox. It's one of the publications that I always see mentioned whenever someone asks how to build a game world. What do you think sets it apart from other publications? What do you think it could do better?
Answer: There are a lot of excellent books out there that help with worldbuilding, like Matt Finch's Tome of Adventure Design and Atelier Clandestin's Sandbox Generator. They excel at using random tables and other tools to help folks generate ideas for their settings. Rather than try to compete with that, How to Make a Fantasy Sandbox focuses on coaching the reader through the entire process of building a setting from scratch.
Starting with an overview of the 33 steps, I walk the reader through each one in detail, using the Isle of Pyade as an example. Along the way, I point out things to watch for and offer practical advice based on my own experience.
My recommendation is to get both books I mentioned above, and then use mine as a guide for how to put everything together in a systematic way. One concern folks often have is how long it takes to do all this, so I included an appendix showing exactly how long it took me to write Blackmarsh from scratch.
Finally, I try to make it clear that you can jump in at any point in the process. Maybe you already have a region mapped out but want to zoom in on a town or a smaller area. In that case, you can start at Step 25: "Pick the starting population locale and draw a full-page map of the settlement." This is your "Home Base," and you can build out from there.
Q: How did Blackmarsh get started? I always love hearing how settings/concepts come into being, and I'm curious about Blackmarsh, especially given the ties into old school settings.
A: Back in the 2000s, I got started writing and drawing maps by doing contract work for Necromancer Games and Goodman Games. Most of it was for Judges Guild material they had licensed, like the Wilderlands of High Fantasy boxed set and several d20 conversions of classic Judges Guild modules.
One issue I noticed was that while the Wilderlands boxed set was a great product, it was a big ask, $70, which was a lot at the time. And back then, hexcrawl-formatted settings weren't as familiar as they are now. I thought to myself, "What if I did something like the boxed set, but with a letter-sized map?" That would make it more affordable and a lot less overwhelming. From working on the boxed set, I had a good sense of how many words it took to fill that kind of product. I figured I could fit four regions on maps of that size into a 64-page book.
So I pitched the idea to Joseph Goodman. He liked it, especially since the trademark "Points of Light" was available, which was fitting given the recent release of 4e D&D. For the content, I took the original material I had created for my own take on the Wilderlands and built a new setting around it. In my contract, I made sure to retain the copyright so I could continue developing the material independently if I wanted. Points of Light sold well enough to justify a sequel, Points of Light II: The Sunrise Sea, but long-term sales didn't support continuing the series beyond that.
Not long after, I got a contract to do the regional map for Judges Guild's City State of the Sea King. Instead of a regular payment, I negotiated a limited license to publish my own take on the Wilderlands. That led to the Majestic Wilderlands, which I focused on for the next ten years.
Around the same time, I was also blogging regularly. James Mishler made a post about how Dave Arneson had made the Blackmoor map by flipping a map of Holland over and tracing it on the back. I didn't know which map he used, but I figured I'd give it a try. I found an old Dutch map, flipped it, imported it into CorelDRAW, and used it as a bottom layer to draw my own map. Then I blogged about the process.
A few weeks later, I was talking to the folks putting together the first version of Delving Deeper. They were looking for extra content to include and asked if I had anything that would fit. I asked how many pages I had to work with, and once they told me, I said, "I can build a setting to fit that." I had the map ready, so I went ahead and created Blackmarsh. They released it as part of Delving Deeper, and I released it as a free download on my Bat in the Attic store.
Since I wanted it to be free and reusable, I released Blackmarsh under the OGL, and later under Creative Commons (CC-BY). I set Blackmarsh just north of Southland, one of the Points of Light settings.
As a setting, I designed Blackmarsh to feel like a frontier region shaped by ancient magical catastrophic event, the Mountain That Fell, which formed the Smoking Bay. That event scattered strange artifacts and a magical substance called viz across the land. Over the centuries, various tribes, kingdoms, and cultures fought over its riches until the Elves intervened and imposed a shaky peace. That peace, though often strained, has lasted into the present, giving adventurers room to explore the ruins and mysteries of Blackmarsh.
I'm happy with how Blackmarsh turned out. It's been used in a bunch of campaigns, published under different systems, and helped introduce a lot of folks to sandbox campaign and the utility of the hexcrawl formatted setting.
Q: Talk a bit about your current project. What should we expect going into it? Is there anything about it that you're especially proud of?
A: It takes many of my previous works, Southlands, Blackmarsh, and The Wild North, and combines them into a coherent whole. On top of that, I've added entirely new regions: the Duchy of Northport, the conquered province of Vasa, and I expanded Southland into what I now called the Southlands, which includes new areas like the vast Forsaken Desert. I'm calling the entire region The Northern Marches, as it marked the northernmost frontier of the long-fallen Bright Empire, my setting's equivalent of Rome. The broader setting is called The Majestic Fantasy Realms.
I chose to present the setting in a hexcrawl format. That lets me include a wealth of local detail in a compact, easy-to-reference layout. You can look at a location on the map and quickly find it in the text. Or start in the text and locate it on the map. I also wrote extensive summaries tying entries together, so you can get a clear picture of each area.
Altogether, the project will include four 12" × 18" maps, covering an area 320 miles east to west and 400 miles north to south. There will be four referee versions and four player versions suitable for display at the table or in a VTT. In addition, I've made two smaller-scale maps (one for referees, one for players) that combine the four maps together. Finally, there will be two full-size composite maps, one for players, one for referees, that join the corners of the four quadrant maps. That's 12 maps total, accompanied by a 200-page Guidebook that is cross-referenced and indexed for ease of use.
The setting itself has six major regions: the Wild North, Blackmarsh, the Southlands, Vasa, Northport, and the undersea realms beyond the Grey Sea. Northport is a medieval fantasy duchy within the Grand Kingdom, while the Wild North is home to the Rurasin Princes, locked in endless war beneath the vast Taiga that surrounds their towns. I drew heavily from Russian and Slavic mythology to create a fantasy version of early Slavic and Rus history. There are Vikings, blood cultists, fallen Elven kingdoms, faeries, and vengeful druids scattered throughout the Northern Marches.
Of course, there are plenty of great fantasy settings with similar potential for adventure. What sets the Majestic Fantasy Realms apart is that I take the time to paint it as a living world, one that's ready for the players to visit. It's not about a Dark Lord trying to conquer the world or conjuring images of towering mountains and forests older than memory. I take the time to paint the quiet moments, the daily struggles, the lives of ordinary folks living in extraordinary times. These battles don't shake the continent but the world remembers the adventurers who stood and fought them.
Despite all the detail I provide, there's still room for the referee to make it their own. Most locales are spaced three to five hexes apart, leaving plenty of space to expand. I rely heavily on classic fantasy medieval tropes that are easy to customize or reinterpret. I might suggest an adventure in a few lines, then move on, leaving the referee free to flesh it out however they see fit.
You asked what I'm most proud of? Its utility. I've built this project to be as useful as possible, for different kinds of campaigns, for different playstyles, and for referees who don't have time to absorb a massive setting all at once. I hope it serves as a helpful example for others looking to create a setting of similar scope.
And if someone decides to make The Northern Marches their own, maybe even share or publish what they create, they'll be able to. I'm planning to release the text and maps as part of a Setting Reference Document under the CC-BY 4.0 license.
Q: Finally, it seems pretty apparent that you've got other releases up your sleeve. What's next on the platter?
A: Yes, I've got more in the pipeline, much of it already mostly written. There are two projects I set aside while writing the draft of The Northern Marches.
The first is a Guidebook to the Majestic Fantasy Realms, covering the entire continent. Unlike the hexcrawl format of Blackmarsh or The Northern Marches, this one is written as a travelogue, not unlike the original World of Greyhawk folio. The second is Towns of the Northern Marches. I'm drawing inspiration from the original Cities of Hârn for its format, though the writing won't be quite as terse as those early Hârn releases.
After that, I have two sandbox adventures I want to publish: a 2nd edition of Scourge of the Demon Wolf, set within the Northern Marches, and a new adventure titled The Deceits of the Russet Lord.
My next major project will be the full Majestic Fantasy RPG. It'll be released across five digest-sized books and expand on the basic rules I put out a few years ago. A big part of it will be explaining how I run my sandbox campaigns, what I call a Living World Sandbox. I'll cover it from both the referee's perspective and the player's.
The goal behind how I run these campaigns is simple: to make it feel like the players actually visited the setting as their characters, while pursuing the adventures that interest them. There's more coming, and I hope what I've built helps others bring their own worlds to life.
