From the Attic: City State Regional Map

This was area of my first regional harn style map.

This originated in an off hand comment during a early AD&D campaign with Tim and D. They were traveling from City-State to Viridstan and arrive there in a matter of days. With the five mile hexes travel is often quick. The players were surprised and D said "You know Rob I expected this to take a month." We got talking and it came out they thought everything was way bigger. So I decided to expand the hexes out to Harn's 12.5 miles. Mainly because the original Harn book had an excellent chart on travel and good travel rules.

Like my City State Map, the original Wilderland campaign maps were wearing out. Encouraged by the CSIO redraw I tackled the Regional map. First I wanted more consolidated maps. It happened that much of the Wilderlands was oriented vertically so I chose hex sheets that were taller than wide. The hex sheets I believe came from the Armory who sold huge 24 inch by 32 inch sheets. I bought several packs and got to work.

The version below is actually not the first one of this region. I used the first one for a couple of years until it too was wearing out. Plus by now I had collected a nice collection of coloring pencils and color sticks. Note that Color Sticks had the same "lead" as the pencils . They were useful for coloring huge areas. So I redrew the map again. Other than the colors it is the same map as the original.

The outline was developed by eyeballing hexes and making sure the coast lines entered and exited in the correct location. Yes it was as tedious as it sounds. However I had the presence of mind to lightly draw in pencil before inking. So mistakes were easily fixed.



I kept at until had nearly everything north of the Isle of Blest redrawn.

From the Attic: City State

This is the very first Harn style map I ever did for my Majestic Wilderlands. I did this around 1986 on a light table in one of my Geography labs. I was able to laminate this just before the point of irreversible damage as it got heavy use.

I did this because my original CSIO maps were falling apart from extensive use and I had some improvements in mind.

Don't get me wrong the original CSIO map was great. But I felt it could be tweaked even better. The main differences is that I made many of the buildings smaller, cut in more alleyway. Redid the fortifications and walls so that they made sense. At least from my point of view.

I move the Arena to the other side of the road and made a whole new Arena district filled with gladiator schools and slums. (particularly the block next to the refuse dump).

I also redesigned the Goblin Reservation and rebuilt the Wharf district into something that would work better as a port. The area under the docks are entire community unto themselves as hundreds of boats are tied up to the piles underneath.

My Religions for the Majestic Wilderlands are different than the original city state. The big building near the center is the Cathedral of Mitra and other big building to the north is the Hellbridge Temple operated by the Church of Set. I cleared out the building to the south of the Temple to form a square.

The U shape building in the center of the city is the Palace of the Silver Dragons which was the old City Government building before the Tharian Overlord conquered City-State 200 years ago.

Nearly all the old shops are still in the same locations and I use the original CSIO as reference as I never had the time to completely rewrite the whole thing.

I was quite please with this and started the long process of redrawing the entire Wilderlands.

And yes I drew each and every tree that appeared on this map.

From the Attic: Greyhawk, Harn and Demographics

Tavis in the comments about my handdrawn map of Greyhawk asks an interesting question.

Hand-drawn beauty notwithstanding, the thing I find most interesting is the density of settlements; almost one every other hex at this scale. Some I think I recognize, like Elredd and Fax on the Wild Coast. Were you mostly mapping things that'd already been established in the Flanaess, or were you deducing settlements based on population density?

When I drew the Greyhawk map it was before the internet. My college library was pretty good but nothing like we have now. My main source for medieval demographics was Harn by N. Robin Crossby and Columbia Games. From what I could find it look like Harn was in the ballpark so it was the foundation of how placed settlements in the later maps.

Harn didn't really determine the density I used for Greyhawk. I had a local area map of the Selintan (sp?) River area around the City of Greyhawk that showed the different settlements. This showed that Greyhawk settlements were somewhat more spread out than Harn is.

However the map you see doesn't show everything. In actuality the yellow areas are densely settled areas of culivated land. All that is shown is the main castle/keep/settlement. So what does it really looks like when you zoom in?

Note the only worked examples I have are from my Majestic Wilderlands and I use a 12.5 mile hex for that.

The inset to the right is 12.5 miles (5 leagues) The yellow area are larger because of the smaller hex size. Note a league is an hour's walk.

The bigger hex map show how the culivated land is divided into manor villages and hamlets. Basically the manors are within a 1/2 days walk of the main settlements (Caer Anselford, Caer Dunslad). There are a few mines in the wilderness. Also this map was drawn for a region that was heavily druidic in faith so all the "Circles" in the middle of nowhere.

The main settlements of a country typically are spread from a 1/2 day (densely settled area) to a hard days walk (10 hours) apart.


This map show the larger region the above is taken from.

The rule of thumb I use is that every major settlement town/keep/castle. Has 10 to 15 manor villages in the surrounding region.

Between Kestizag and Antil is densely settled. Daltia in the south is also intensely cultivated along the coast and river valley.

The rest of the major settlements are spread out in then again placed a day or so walk apart.

This results from the King or Central Authority trying to defend his land and vassals.

In my Majestic Wilderlands this region was the focus of an active colonization effort several hundred years ago. So I drew the pattern of settlement slightly different than normal. The original frontier ended at Tenoch. To the east and south were the domain of various Orc Tribes.

The initial focus of colonization was Antil followed by Daltia. This is the reason why the population is so dense in those two areas. The remaining areas were the result of the kings trying to link Antil back to the old frontier and Daltia linking to Antil. Anselford and Dunslad are examples of settlements founded to connect other settlements.

So what is a normal pattern? I will get to that in a later post.

An accurate and easy source for gaming Medieval Demographics is by S. John Ross. You can find it here. I also recommend the Magical Society line by Expeditous Retreat Press. Fief by Cumberland Games. And Harn Manor by Columbia Games as well as Harn itself.

From the Attic: Maps from the Past

For you fans of hand drawn maps. I have a scan I did of one of the 17" by 22" maps I did during the late 80's and early 90's. This one of Central Flanass of the World of Greyhawk. It is drawn in Harn style. Unfortunately part of it got nailed by water at some point.