April 9, 2008
Cartographica
One of those things about me that most people don't actually know is that I'm something of a map geek, especially when it comes to gaming maps. Now, most of you, my faithful readers, pretty much know this - the whole Cartographer's Guild thing for one, and I've posted plenty of Campaign Cartographer doodles up here.
One of the things that really really doesn't get talked about is the fact that, in amongst my D&D things, I have a box that, once upon a time, back when they were the height of technology, contained an external 100 MB Zip drive. Now it contains AD&D poster maps. 81 of them, to be exact, ranging from the 3rd edition FRCS map of Faerun to the Dragonlance maps from Tales of the Lance to maps of Europe from the Historical Reference series. About the only thing missing is my two-poster Greyhawk Wars map, which is still in Oregon.
Totally, they represent much of my spending money from my teenage years. Some kids collect baseball cards. Others clothes. Some people spend it on their cars, or dating. Me? I can recreate most of the Forgotten Realms in 30 miles to the inch poster maps.
With a larger version here.
That includes maps from:
Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting: Revised (1993)
The Horde Campaign Setting (1990)
Maztica Campaign Setting (1991)
Spellbound (1995)
The North (1996)
Vilhon Reach (1996)
Lands of Intrigue (1997)
Empires of the Shining Sea (1998)
Storm Riders (1990)
Not pictured are the two 30 mile to the inch poster maps from the Al Qadim set, which would be somewhere south of the two brown maps from the Horde and Storm Riders, approximately where my kitchen cabinets are. We'll also skip out on the 15 mile to the inch map of Michaca from City of Gold.
Now, while the entire 2nd edition line of FR boxed sets was supurb (culminating in the ridiculously excellent Lands of Intrigue and Empires of the Shining Sea), I actually did a lot of my collecting not for the source material, but for the maps. These are the best sorts of maps, really, because you can point to some ruin on them, look up that ruin, and go imagine yourself having adventures there, which was incredibly important to my teenage self, and I suppose still is. In any event, I have a fair number of maps I've never actually used, such as:
With a larger version here.
You FR savvy types will recognize three of the great cities of the Realms there:
Waterdeep, from the 1994 City of Splendors box
Myth Drannor, from the 1993 Ruins of Myth Drannor box
Menzoberranzan, from the 1992 box of the same name.
Never used a one of them, but they sure are cool, aren't they? City of Splendors in particular was an awesome box for maps - in addition to the two-poster city street layout you see there, there are also maps for Castle Waterdeep, a tavern, and two photographed posters of miniatures layouts of parts of the city. Made of win. Also the books were great.
And this is the sort of thing that, aside from the actual 3rd edition FRCS, which is the best basic set for the Realms to date, is sadly lacking recently. By way of illustration, let's show this picture of my 90 miles to the inch FR poster maps:
With larger version here.
With maps from:
Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting: Revised (1993)
The Horde Campaign Setting (1990)
Al Qadim Campaign Setting
OA6: Ronin Challenge (1990)
By contrast, do you see that sole, single poster, 120 mile to the inch map that's had chunks edited out of it to fit? That's the 2001 3rd edition Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting map, and it's pretty much the only one you're going to get in all of 3rd edition. And that's just sad, now isn't it?
Now, that's not the only thing hard to love about the new map. While, for gaming purposes, 30 miles to the inch is a great scale, and it's pretty much the only one I like to use, 90 miles to the inch isn't a bad scale, and those two FRCS:Revised maps in the northwest corner are pretty well-loved. But 120 miles to the inch? That's unusably small. Which wouldn't be so bad if 3rd edition products had made up for it, but they really didn't. And I for one am pretty sad about that.
Posted by Dwip at April 9, 2008 8:36 AM