D&D 5E Wondering Monsters 12/12/13: Mapping the World

[Hussar]

This was actually a really good article and made me realize how uselessly huge most D&D settings are.

In the past when I've run hex crawls at 6 miles per hex it's been very abstract and not very imaginative because I can't really describe what a journey would look and feel like at that scale. It's also unusual to have more than one encounter per day so in game terms it's like a series of 5 minute workdays. I think a much smaller map scale (1 mile or even 1/2 mile per hex), maybe combined with a rule where you can't actually rest unless you find an inn, would solve both of those problems.

There's a trail that goes through a ravine from my house to an off-leash dog park. That's a little over a mile. I can actually relate to a walk of that distance.

edited to add:
The Elder Scrolls Oblivion and Skyrim have 8 or 9 cities in a gameworld about 16 square miles, and they feel pretty huge and epic. They're basically a Ten Towns of Icewind Dale game.

This I really agree with. He even hits on it in the article when he overlays one area and it shows a town some 5 miles across and a river three miles across. But, the big thing was, in that map, all there was was that one town. D&D worlds are ridiculously large. i would really appreciate seeing a setting where the campaign was a whole lot more local and much more detailed.

 

[Klaus]

This I really agree with. He even hits on it in the article when he overlays one area and it shows a town some 5 miles across and a river three miles across. But, the big thing was, in that map, all there was was that one town. D&D worlds are ridiculously large. i would really appreciate seeing a setting where the campaign was a whole lot more local and much more detailed.

Wasn't that basically the Nentir Vale (and specially the Harkenwold section, as described in the Essentials DM's Kit)?

 

[Hussar]

Pretty much [MENTION=607]Klaus[/MENTION]. It's an approach I really like, personally. Yeah, it's great that you have this ginormous campaign setting, but, because they're often so high altitude in over views of the setting, virtually all the actual legwork - NPC's, locations, etc - is left to the DM. Other than serving as inspiration, I find a lot of campaign settings not terribly useful when it comes to the nitty gritty of actually running a campaign.

 

[Klaus]

Pretty much [MENTION=607]Klaus[/MENTION]. It's an approach I really like, personally. Yeah, it's great that you have this ginormous campaign setting, but, because they're often so high altitude in over views of the setting, virtually all the actual legwork - NPC's, locations, etc - is left to the DM. Other than serving as inspiration, I find a lot of campaign settings not terribly useful when it comes to the nitty gritty of actually running a campaign.

I liked the plug-and-play aspect of the Nentir Vale, and of Harkenwold, specially.

This was also another great strength of Red Hand of Doom, where the Elsir Vale was self-contained and easily placeable in any setting. Come to think of it, I6: Ravenloft also presented Barovia as a self-contained locale that DMs could place in their own settings (only later did it get placed in an isolated demiplane).

 

[I'm A Banana]

I think that a small focus is always the most *practical* focus for a given campaign. A continent and a cosmology is nice, but ultimately your characters are going to be slogging through individual squares and traveling individual days, so you're going to need that level of detail to actually sit down and play.

But a cosmology or a continent can have ramifications down at that level, too, so I wouldn't say the larger context is pointless for me personally. It matters on the level of individual squares and traveling days that Dark Sun is cut off from the planes and that its magic uses the life-force of living beings and that rain is a rarity.

It's also interesting that smaller bits can be re-appropriated more easily. Even if I'm playing a Dark Sun game, I can take a map of the Nentir Vale and just pretend all the grass is sand and it'd work pretty fine for any valley in Dark Sun. Can't really say that, say, a world map of Abeir-Toril would work the same way (except maybe in a Spelljammer game!).

 

[Klaus]

Even if I'm playing a Dark Sun game, I can take a map of the Nentir Vale and just pretend all the grass is sand and it'd work pretty fine for any valley in Dark Sun.

... and the forests are petrified glades of razor-sharp fossils, and the rivers are sloggish silt streams, and the...

STOP GIVING ME IDEAS!!!

 

[Aloïsius]

This I really agree with. He even hits on it in the article when he overlays one area and it shows a town some 5 miles across and a river three miles across. But, the big thing was, in that map, all there was was that one town. D&D worlds are ridiculously large. i would really appreciate seeing a setting where the campaign was a whole lot more local and much more detailed.

Yup.
Just have a look at that :

This is the historical/mythological setting of various epic battles of the Tuatha Dé Danann, the Fir Bolg and the Fomorians (you know, the guys who were ruled by a chad named "Balor of the evli eye" ?).

Compare its size to Eberron. Now, guess which setting is the richest : the America sized Eberron or the mythological Ireland ? I know, there is no warforged in Erin...
But you may place this kind of stories :