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Worlds of Design: Medieval Travel & Scale
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<blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 8041161" data-attributes="member: 29398"><p>As a player, that's something I absolutely despise: 'fluid' geography, particularly when it comes to scale.</p><p></p><p>Now if the map is blank or extremely low-detail where the PCs go that's fine, fill in whatever makes sense. But once it's filled in it remains so - if a gorge was introduced as a complication when the party was travelling north it had better still be there when they travel back south on the same route, and when they come back three years from now. And if it takes 20 days to travel 300 miles on a good low-traffic road here it should take 20-ish days to travel 300 miles on a good low-traffic road anywhere.</p><p></p><p>It's also something I dislike in books. One fantasy series I just re-read has the maps and the narrated travel times in complete disarray; the author just writes what he wants to write and geographical realism be damned, and this bugs me to hellandback. If you can't narrate your setting as beingconsistent with itself, try again until you can. And I only just noticed on this reading that the maps very conveniently don't include a scale.</p><p></p><p>One of the very first things I learned in cartography (which I took in college) is that for something to be defined as a map two things need to be present: 1) a scale of distance, and 2) something - by convention usually a compass rose or an arrow pointing north - showing which direction is which.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Lanefan, post: 8041161, member: 29398"] As a player, that's something I absolutely despise: 'fluid' geography, particularly when it comes to scale. Now if the map is blank or extremely low-detail where the PCs go that's fine, fill in whatever makes sense. But once it's filled in it remains so - if a gorge was introduced as a complication when the party was travelling north it had better still be there when they travel back south on the same route, and when they come back three years from now. And if it takes 20 days to travel 300 miles on a good low-traffic road here it should take 20-ish days to travel 300 miles on a good low-traffic road anywhere. It's also something I dislike in books. One fantasy series I just re-read has the maps and the narrated travel times in complete disarray; the author just writes what he wants to write and geographical realism be damned, and this bugs me to hellandback. If you can't narrate your setting as beingconsistent with itself, try again until you can. And I only just noticed on this reading that the maps very conveniently don't include a scale. One of the very first things I learned in cartography (which I took in college) is that for something to be defined as a map two things need to be present: 1) a scale of distance, and 2) something - by convention usually a compass rose or an arrow pointing north - showing which direction is which. [/QUOTE]
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