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.
A teaser of what is coming!
After nearly a decade of trials test, failures and more learning the time has finally come to launch a new generation of Greyhawk maps. Thanks to your support all this time I can now finally start teasing this project, the biggest of my career as a Fantasy Cartographer for sure, and one that will be ongoing to the rest of my career.
I'm pretty certain that no project of this scope and detail have been attempted before. A whole campaign setting mapped in 3D detailed enough to see every hills, creek, road building and tree. It will be my vision of the world of Greyhawk at a scale of 5ft per pixel.
More information for patreons is coming soon. Thank you again for joining me on this journey to explore the Flanaess....
I will be nerding out about Greyhawk with Angelo tomorrow at 6pm PDT.
https://www.youtube.com/live/gTBhidbA07A?si=4qtHJFFpM1J__ZY0
Hope to see you there 🙂
A bit of house keeping. I haven't published an updated Campaign Map version of my Flanaess map in a while, here is the latest version: https://www.pathozoom.com/image/702589
You can download the JPG (115MB) here:
https://annabmeyer.com/Downloads/Campaign%20Map%202026-06.jpg
I'll be back with more stuff soon!
I'll be streaming a work session tonight @6pm PDT on Twitch as usual. On the agenda tonight are a mixture of texture work in Photoshop and touching up the base heighmaps of the next part of the Shield Lands in World Machine.
Tune in at: https://www.twitch.tv/anna_b_meyer
See you in a few hours!
PBS is celebrate Earth month with several great videos, and one about maps and projections. It tells the story of Mercator and how he created a new type of map. Might not sounds that interesting or relevant to fantasy cartography but I think it is.
Battling with how to make maps of the world of Greyhawk that are located on a spherical planet, really appreciates this video. It tells the story about why and how the modern Mercator based map was created, and with it the way to create maps made to be a navigational aid. Something unheard of before, and something we takes for granted today.
For fantasy roleplaying are needs are different, we don't need maps to navigate the world in a "real" way, using compass, bearings, sextants and such. Out needs are more, in my opinion, to understand the landscape in order to improve our play. I think this means that maps that are area correct are preferrable, over angle accuracy. No need to be able to calculate a course and then follow it in the real world, fantasy navigation needs to understand distance, lay of the land, obstacles, ease of way, biomes, climate. This is why I prefer Orthographic Projection that is based on what an area would look like seen from space, it s accurate in the center but errors creep in the further away from the center you go. This means that Ortho projection works great for regional maps an smaller, city, provinces and most countries, but for the whole of the Flanaess the errors might be a bit too large at the fringes. I'm referring to reference maps here, the ones used primarily by the GM as a planning and worldbuilding tool, and then if it is detailed enough can be used during play as well. Inspiration and understanding being its most important attributes.
The PBS video shows examples and tells a bit about maps made before Mercator and projections were invented. I'm often wondering what kind of maps like hat would be made by the Flan during the age of Vecna, by the cartographers of Rauxes during the heyday of the Great Kingdom or by the Olmans. The Great Kingdom's mappers would use Rauxes as their center point at the later sages, and probably Rel Astra before that. I can image a map with Rauxes at the top and everything else show below it to show its reign of the world.
One day I'll create that map just because.... 🙂
Thank you so much for your support!
Time for some much delayed housekeeping!
Easyzoom got new ownership and restructured a while ago, and I thought they would cancel their image hosting service. To my delight they only rebranded it to pathoZoom, due to them now focusing on medical imaging. Despite their new focus the service still functions as before, but with new links, which are provided below!
598 CY map - 2022 Edition
https://www.pathozoom.com/image/356079/album/0/4?mode=manage
598 CY map - 2022 Edition - 12 mile Hexes
https://www.pathozoom.com/image/357865/album/0/4?mode=manage
598 CY map - 2022 Edition - 30 mile Hexes
https://www.pathozoom.com/image/331757/album/0/4?mode=manage
576 CY map - 2022 Edition
https://www.pathozoom.com/image/325836/album/0/4?mode=manage
576 CY map - 2022 Edition - 12 mile hexes
https://www.pathozoom.com/image/331665/album/0/4?mode=manage
Here is a link to my campaign map, which includes lots of stuff that are for my campaign as well (and in some instances instead of) the things on the public versions.
Campaign Map:
After more than a fair bit of delay, sorry about that, here comes the next set of Banners. I'm working my way along the alphabet of countries, provinces, cities and factions and others who might have banners. Two big commissions hitting me simultaneously due to changes in schedules, made the promise to do them a long time ago, and then projects get rescheduled and or changed which makes things collide in time.
The banner bases are a a combination of AI, stock art and photoshopping, I have then used more Photoshop editing to turn the template into the final banner. This way I can get a myriad of versions and ideas without having to reinvent the wheel for each one. Frist out are two banners from the Pomarj, the Bloody Axe Gnolls and the Bluebottle Hobgoblins.
None of them are organized enough to bother wit more than a big banner, so no pennants.
Next up is the Bohdon's, noble family of the Shield Lands who in my campaign is currently led by Earl Lyndon Bohdon, the former Commander of the Shield and now Lord of Critwall which makes him acting major of the city. Sir Lyndon stepped down as commander in favor of Katarina.
Bone March, that infamous area of failed statedom that developed between the North Province and Ratik. Again only the banner, the riff-raff that gathers under it doesn't see the use of refined symbology.
Next up is the County of Brackenmoor the westernmost province of Nyrond tucked away north of the Gnatmarsh.
Empire of the Bright Lands is trying its best to field the regalia of a powerful realm, using a three tonged pennant.
The Wild Coast town of Cantona's banner is still existing in a vault in the Domain of Greyhawk, kept safe to be brought forward for the day it can lay claim to the site of the now ruined town.
No banner is know to have survived.
The Kingdom of Celene uses a whole range of national symbols, and in case they want to flaunt their power the human realms do in the Flanaess, they have a banner and pennants made for that purpose.
The Marchland of Chathold, the southern part of former Almor that is now under Rel Deven in form of a marchland run by Marquise Karn Serrand of House Cranden.
Back to the Wild Coast with the Cockatrice Riders of Pascorel.
The City of Crockport in northern Furyondy had ample use for its banner during the war since it was in the center of the fight against the Old One.
For the next one I have taken myself a lot more creative freedom, the Kingdom of Cruski. "Viking-esk" old Norse themed banner and a cold tipped spear.
And last but not least, Dumadan.
You can get them all here is a zip file (24MB): https://annabmeyer.com/Downloads/Banners/Banners%20Vol3.zip
BIG Thanks to all of you who pointed out my mistake, it is of course tomorrow Friday as of the text below. Couldn't replace the post title image so I had to create a new post!
I'm back home again from Gary Con XVIII, which was turbulent in both good and bad ways. I managed to get sick with this years really ugly version of Con Crud and only got through Thursday unscathed. Had to cancel my game and my DM'ing in Tower of Gygax.
Felt a bit better Saturday and my seminar means I could keep some distance so I held it and got lots of great questions and comments.
Tomorrow on the regular hour for my stream I'll run it again on Twitch, so please come and join https://www.twitch.tv/anna_b_meyer
6pm PDT tomorrow Friday March 27th!
We have 145 slides to go over and other news as well... 🙂
I will be back with more news and updates soon, now I need to get Chico to the vet. Nothing serious but still important.
Module LA5
Designer: Len Lakofka and the Lakofka Archive
Editor: Paul “Artharn the Cleric” Jurdeczka
Art Director: William Henry Dvorak
Art: Del Tiegeler
Colorist: Ozzy
Cartography: Andy Duvall SketchyvanRPG
Get it here (PDF 9.5MB) https://annabmeyer.com/Downloads/lakofka/embassy-to-the-pale-digital.pdf
