Elissar/To Save A Kingdom Welcome to Elissar

Next year we’ll be bringing our hardcover adventure path To Save A Kingdom to Kickstarter.

To Save A Kingdom follows on directly from Memories of Holdenshire, and begins in the town of Hengistbury. It contains three adventures — To Slay A Dragon, To Stake A Vampire, and To Smite A Fiend. While these adventures have previously been published in our magazine EN5ider for 5E, they are greatly expanded and revised for Level Up: A5E.

The world of Elissar is one of our three core settings. Here’s a peek at the world map!

 

[Mike Myler]

What are “hemispheres”? I see no evidence that this map is for a globe.

(Just kidding! Remember kids: “Flat Earth” is an idea that should stay here, in fantasy settings, where it belongs.)

Spoiler

 

[xiphumor]

Shows what I know

 

[Morrus]

What's the level range?

3-13, I believe.

 

[Stormhound]

I'd be interested in hearing the story of the Thunder River. Does it flow uphill both ways?

 

[pauldanieljohnson]

Can you be more specific about what you don’t like about it?

Mainly the crude and repetitive use of basic prepackaged art assets. The same ship used over and over, the same mountain, the same town.

 

[Augreth]

Am I the only one who doesn't like the map? To me it looks like someone's first effort after watching the beginner's tutorial on Campaign Cartographer.

I agree, I don’t like it at all stylistically.

On the positive side, I like the idea of using the art assets like the spider or the dwarf for illustrating what you can find in a region.

On the negative side, it is hard to pin down why I don’t like it, exactly. I don’t want to be insulting, but it looks cheap and unprofessional overall.

I try to be more specific. The assets like mountains, hills, forests etc. look amateurish. The rivers are drawn crudely and somewhat angular, and always with the same two width settings. In Allesund they seem to spring out of nowhere, while usually rivers originate in mountains.

The proportions of most art assets don’t match. The dwarf and other people for example have different proportions, especially the huge guy in the East Downs pushing the cart. The cracks of the Hinterlands are way too big relative to woods and hills. The rivers are drawn too broad.

Overall, I think the colour composition fails to deliver tone and atmosphere. Looking at the map I don’t know what kind of setting this is, what kind of gaming experience I can expect.

This is meant as constructive feedback. I really love Memories of Holdenshire, but I already was disappointed with the maps in that book.

Cheers,
Axel

 

[Zaukrie]

I actually wish more fantasy maps were MORE fantastic and didn't follow the "laws of nature".....like, I get why they aren't, but a few unbelievable things would be cool.....

 

[Benjamin Olson]

The rivers are drawn crudely and somewhat angular, and always with the same two width settings. In Allesund they seem to spring out of nowhere, while usually rivers originate in mountains.

I think the problem, more precisely, is that the rivers are drawn largely with little in the way of tributaries, and with the same thickness at their origins as at their terminus (there are some exceptions). Rivers starting in mountains wouldn't look any more right the way they appear here, because what really tends to start disproportionately in mountains is the streams which feed rivers. There is no correct place for a river to start fully formed the way one does in "Gal Taur" here. Obviously the software used here has limitations, and one does not expect (or want) all tributaries to be mapped, but having two or three smaller tributaries joining into the headwaters of the largest rivers, or even just drawing their origins with the smaller river thickness option would help quite a bit.

The sea to sea flow of the Thunder River is, of course, much more geographically improbable than anything else happening with the waterways, but I'll assume there is either a fantastical reason for it or that part of it is actually a canal.

 

[John R Davis]

The nature of the software used always makes things look cartoonish, and the waterways way too wide.
I have the same problems with it

 

[Novak]

I think the problem, more precisely, is that the rivers are drawn largely with little in the way of tributaries, and with the same thickness at their origins as at their terminus (there are some exceptions). Rivers starting in mountains wouldn't look any more right the way they appear here, because what really tends to start disproportionately in mountains is the streams which feed rivers. There is no correct place for a river to start fully formed the way one does in "Gal Taur" here. Obviously the software used here has limitations, and one does not expect (or want) all tributaries to be mapped, but having two or three smaller tributaries joining into the headwaters of the largest rivers, or even just drawing their origins with the smaller river thickness option would help quite a bit.

The sea to sea flow of the Thunder River is, of course, much more geographically improbable than anything else happening with the waterways, but I'll assume there is either a fantastical reason for it or that part of it is actually a canal.

The lakes look wrong, too. Granted, not every lake has an outflow river, but most do. Here, only one out of eleven. That's just... odd. Also, those are some big damn lakes. Lake Michigan is only 120 miles across at its widest (not longest) and the only one here here I bothered to measure looked to be about 80 miles across. (For people asking about map scale, based on comparison to MoH, it is 10 miles per hex.)

Why does that conspicuous spur of vegetation in the Borderlands conspicuously not follow any of the rivers? Why is there no vegetation along those rivers?

Morrigan has no obvious reason to exist. Although this may be because of a bad choice of color palates: everything not forest or tundra looks like a desert wasteland. The color palate in MoH are much more green. But the cracks running through that land really reinforce the idea of "blasted wasteland" in my mind.

Thunder River: What the heck?

Now, this is a fantasy campaign, so all those things might have explanations. But if so, hopefully they were thought of in advance, and not just left to retcons and other justifications. That map just looks "off" geographically. There's more, but that's ust what caught my eye.