Starting my mapping of the world of Greyhawk all over again was something I started to plan for over a decade ago, as I was wrapping up Hepmonaland and started working on Southlands for Kobold Press. This time it’s going to be in a way I had dreamt of back when I stated in the 1990’s, high detail, 3D and customizable in a way that my first map could never be. If I had known then how far away from being able to do it, I would probably have given up long ago, but my goal was tantalizingly possible if I just had a better computer, software and more skills. For a long time my vision felt possible, but always thousands of hours away from being a reality.
Now over a decade and several computer upgrades later, and after spending many thousands of hours pursuing my goal of creating a new generation fantasy maps of a setting at a scope no one has been foolish enough to embark on since a group failed to map the Middle-Earth back in the early 2000’s. They were a bit too early, tools and computing power were not advanced enough to do it. They go a fair bit into it, and what they showed was impressive. Now a quarter century later I’m ready to paraphrase Peter Jackson, “Now is the time to do it”. Computing power is here, and the tools are good enough to start a massive project like this.
Most fantasy maps are beautiful works of art, produced by talent and skills. My new Greyhawk maps are being done in a different way, talent and skills play a role, but the main thing is being the way they are built up around data. Elevation, biomes, water levels, road and building area and height and so on. The image above shows some of the data, inf the form of colored masks, that makes up the map below.
The resolution I’m working with is roughly 5 feet per pixel which gives enough detail to be useful all they way from large scale worldbuilding to play out encounters on a VTT. The sample map is of the town of Hirtfer on the wester shore of the Veng River in the Furyondian barony of Herechel, that is a part of the Earldom of Willip. The sample map is 2000 pixels across, and at this resolution Shield Lands will be roughly 70,000 pixels across, the Flanaess will be nearly 22 million pixels. A lot of those pixels are water or uninhabited wilderness, which are a lot easier to do. Roads and buildings are all hand places which take quite some time. Nature can be made using procedural and fractals which speed up things a lot.
To get a better view of where Hirtfer is located below is an overview map. Thanks to its being data, I can easily throw the water mask of blue to represent lakes and rivers, add roads and settlements and then labels.
Testing how to do annotations and best integrate them as well. A simple top-down overview map might not be enough time to make good use of the fact that these map are based on heightmaps giving them three dimensions. Below is a 3D overview map with Hirtfer in the center seen from the SW and Critwall in the background. Hirtfer is an agricultural hub in the middle if the very fertile Veng floodplains forming a mile wide band along its shores. The Veng valley has its own microclimate due to it flowing south from the colder north causing a more humid climate with increased mists clouds and rainfall, compared to areas only a few miles inland away from it. This can still be seen on the Furyondian western shores with large parts of the forest that used to cover this area intact. The best areas for crops have been under the plough for many centuries but lots of forest are kept for timber and hunting. Wood for construction and boatbuilding are still a major industry in and around Herechel. The Shield Lands side used to have much more forest along the Veng, but most of it was lost during the siege of Critwall. Small patches and young promising regrowth can be seen.
Below is a closer look at Hirtfer from the air.
Hirtfer has a small port to support transport of agricultural products to Herechel and Critwall, and occasionally further away as well. The port is designed to cater to small and mid-size river traffic. There is a small lakes just outside of the town walls that have a boardwalk alongside it. This is a pod used for wastewater from Hirtfer’s wool and tanning business, the cleaning, treating and dyeing wool and leather. Dumping it outside the town wall letting it drain slowly into the Veng downstream. I’m very pleased with how the swampy shoreline turned out with reeds and trees.
The 3D horizon reference images are a great way to get a feel for a place and how it fits into the world around it. This is what Hirtfer looks like from the east across the Veng (top), downstream Veng from the south (middle), and from the northeast upstream Veng (bottom). These are quick views taken from World Machine and then given a fake sky in Photoshop. Blender and WM5 will be able to a much better job at this so landscape images of places from MeyerHawk will be a key part of this project.
Sometime its nor realism you’re after, you might want to give the players a copy of the stylized map they bought from a cartographer in Willip when they arrived in Furyondy aiding them in exploring. Below is a quick sample to show how you can use the data to make a map that looks very different but is still recognizable as the same place.
I tried to use the same method on the whole big tile scaled down to thumbnail size. First without styling:
And then stylized:
These are down sampled from 16,384 to 512 pixels, and thanks to masks for roads and settlements they can be enhanced to be visible. This samples are just quick test to prove that is works, with more work they can be made to look a lot better. Even at this low resolution it’s sill way more detailed than my old map, but it’s starting to look a bit like it.
When you need a base map to show anything from troop movements and historic borders to how that party progresses, a simple overview map is very useful. Below is a simple map ready to be a backdrop when you need it.
Often I just want to be immersed in an area getting a feel for those living there or characters traveling there are seeing. Great for worldbuilding and adventure prep. Where do the Iuzian hordes lay in ambush or how arduous the journey across the hills is?
How roads are laid out across the landscape becomes much more intricate when you work in three dimensions across a natural landscape with its hills, rivers, lakes and other natural obstacles needs to be mitigated. Below is a look at the road west from Herechel, again only a preview in World Machine but shows it well, I think.
City design is another very interesting part of cartography that enters when you move from setting maps to these much more detailed work. Critwall was my inaugural test bed and it has gone through numerous iterations over half decade I’ve been working on it, from simple sketches to full 3D model. Here is a closer look at Shield Reclaimed, the big temple and the Critwall old ward and its fortifications.
My take is that these might buildings are carved out of the rock, as much as they are built. The builders carved away stone from the inside to use to build up more of it. This way they could make it stronger and larger without having to lift all the material up from lower down. You can read about my take on the history of Critwall here: https://www.patreon.com/annabmeyer/posts/critwall-599-cy-88584154
You can download all the images shown here in full resolution (103.9MB): https://annabmeyer.com/Downloads/New%20Generation%20Smples%201.zip
Thank you again for your support, without it, I wouldn’t have been able to embark on this new chapter. In many ways it feels like it did back in the 1990’s setting off on a journey to discover Greyhawk one small piece at a time leading to the first-generation map. That was like a fly over tour giving a distant look at things from afar, this time its more loke traveling though the landscape seeing each square mile in detail. This is what I dreamt of doing, and now thanks to your support, I’m off on another journey to discover the world of Greyhawk. I invite you to journey along with me. I’m currently mapping out Scragholme and the Veng Estuary and more way more is under way. I’m working in 6 stages, and I have more than 1 million square miles at stage 1, more than 50,000 square miles at stage 2 and around 3,000 square miles in the last stages ready for settlements roads and final touch up.
