Wednesday, April 3, 2019

Figuring out the scale of Viridstan's Map

One of the mysteries of the original run of Judges Guild products is the scale of the map of the hexes on the City State of the World Emperor.


Nowhere on the above the map or in the text of CSWE is how big each hex is and has remained a minor mystery for the past 35 years.

Recently I realized that the city map to Tarantis is drawn in a similar style to CSWE. While it doesn't have hexes it does have a scale.

So I superimposed a section of Tarantis on top of CSWE and resized Tarantis until the main street, alleys, and building look comparable to the same on the CSWE map.


I then made the Tarantis map transparent and moved the scale over on of Viridstan's hexes. And viola! It looks like each hex is 120 feet.


While my works is an elaborate guess it makes a lot of sense. It unlikely to be 240' feet, but it could have been 60 feet. Or the 60 yards of the Thunderhold Map. Making the scale 120' would make the size of the building comparable to those in Tarantis.

If I ever get around to drawing the City State of the World Emperor that the scale I will go with.

11 comments:

Matrox Lusch said...

Has anyone ever thought (besides me) of working with the reimagined Veridistan, City-State of the World Emperor that I think was from the Judges Guild site around 2005, by Gabor Lux maybe? I toyed with the idea of using the shop books from the original with the outline and scale of this newer map except my adventuring group haven't been back there for a long time...

Frank said...

Cool, good work. The CSIO map I have with a grid (single sheet poster size) has 120' squares so 120' hexes seems quite reasonable. I think you got it right.

Anon. said...

Yes, please to a re-drawn map of Viridistan. I’m still confused by the original.

Scott Anderson said...

Congratulations on solving a thirty-five year old mystery! Clever and careful detective work.

Jeff V. said...

You do good work, Rob!

Matrox Lusch said...

I colorized the re-imagined Viridistan from Judges Guild (2005) … Viridistan 2005

grodog said...

@ Robert Conley: Nice sluething, Rob! :D

I have some follow-up Qs for you, too: the 120 foot hex size for the city maps doesn't align to the JG hex mapping system, which broke the campaign hexes down from 5 miles (26,400 feet) to 0.2 miles (1056 feet) to the smallest scale of 42.24 feet. Each hex is 25 times larger/smaller than the others as you go up/down the scale, which aligns well to the 25 small hexes mapping to the larger hexes of the mapping system hex paper grid.

At the smallest scale of 42.24 feet/hex, a 120 foot hex is 2.851 times larger than a 42.24 foot hex, and the 25:1 scale becomes an 8.8:1 scale. This naturally throws off the general consistency in hex size progressions.

So, my Qs to you are: 1) do you know if JG intentionally shifted their scale/system over time, or is this a simple case of inconsistency between products?, and 2) From the POV of mapping the cities, do you think that using the 120 foot scale vs. the 42.24 foot scale is any better/worse from an aesthetics POV, in terms of making the maps and their detail level more usable at the table?


@Matrox Lusch---Nice color map! Do you have a higher-resolution version available to download?

Allan.

Allan.

Matrox Lusch said...

Here is a hi-res in my drop box. Please note it's not my art (ha even the colors I "borrowed" from the original CSWE!), but I have looked around to see who drew it and can't find the original post. Ha, I bet Rob would know...

PS I made a correction, the "...…" indicating the scale of the map is too long on my original link to my colorized map. The one in the drop box link is correct.

Viridistan Re-imagined in color

Joseph said...

If you redrew the viridistan map I'd buy it from you before the ink was dry.

Jeremy "frothsof" Smith said...

Great post, the Sherlock Holmes of the Judges Guild! Linked folks to it today.

ShandyAndy said...

Excellent work Rob. For some reason I'd never actually worked out a scale for the map; For me it was some indeterminate scale. But I'll definitely go with your scale as it seems to make sense.

BTW I'm another who would purchase a re-working of the Viridistan map in an instant.