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Sunday, July 15, 2012

Astoria campaign map

This is the campaign map from my second D&D campaign, drawn circa 1978. The scale is 25 miles to the hex, so about one day's travel overland for a small band of adventurers. I'm still pretty pleased with the cartography. Some of the place names are borrowed from what I'd been reading at the time. Like there's this bit named after Pern, but its totally unique because its DWARVES that ride the dragons there and there's no thread, or something. I think there's a bit of Earthsea and a bit of Deryni, and of course some Tolkein influence in there. 17 x 22" hexsheet, ink and colored pencils, laminated with contact plastic against wear and spills. Since it's laminated I'd often plot party location below hex level with a dot from a dry erase marker. It's holding together remarkably well except at the folds. This is the second version of this map, the first was all pencil and colored pencils and is tattered from gaming wear and old age.
I just noticed I had placed the Judges' Guild Tegel Manor on it. That was one of my favorite dungeon modules. Astoran, the capital, used their City State of the Imperial Overlord map. The preprints of that map blew us away at GenCon VII, and got a lot of us to pony up for Judges' Guild subscriptions. I lived close enough (70 miles) that I actually got to drive down to Springfield and visit Judges Guild a few times with friends. We'd buy as much swag as we could afford and then hang out if things weren't too busy. I remember a great chat with Bob Bledsaw where we ended with one of those future getting back down for a game plans that never gelled.
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