Shadows Over Garenport map

I finally—after many, many dumb delays—have printed my "finalized" version of the game rules and put it in a report folder, so I have a decent copy to refer to at the table. I also made, scanned, and slightly colorized my SHADOWS OVER GARENPORT campaign map (refer to the tag of the same name for more info). This is meant to be a tool for the game. It's not exactly the same as my overall campaign map; not only was I deliberately adding new details that came up during my 5x5 development, but I was adding them as I was sketching the pencil underdraft of this map as I thought of things that the map needed, or noticed instances of white space that were too big, begging the question of what is there, etc.

How is it a tool? Well, for me as the GM, it's a tool because it shows me the entire layout of the area in which the game will take place. But also, the traveling rules from the appendix require the players to have at least a general idea of the geography so that they can make plans on how to travel, what kind of route to take, etc. I'm going to presume that all of my PCs are generally familiar with the rough outline of the geography, so exploration will be more on the micro-level; i.e, nobody is going to discover an unknown major mountain range or lost civilization over the horizon, but knowing that there's a range of mountains, or hilly country, or a river, etc. doesn't mean that you know much about them other than that they're there, until you get there yourself and see for yourself what it's like.

The map also doesn't show a lot of micro-details. One can assume, for instance, that most well-traveled roads have small hamlets, villages, settlements, or at least coaching houses at regular intervals, and that there are a vast number of smaller roads, trails, paths, etc. that aren't marked at all, as well as smaller streams, ponds, lakes, bogs, etc. Even empty spaces have unmarked places of interest at fairly regular intervals. I've actually given a lot of thought to how to make overland travel in game be more interesting than it normally is. I've also done a fair bit of research as to what other developers; amateur or professional, have come up with. As a fan of hiking, road trips, and overland travel in general in real life, it seemed a shame to make it either boring, or something to be skipped over in game.

So it's a tool, but it's not meant to be the be all end all of geography of the campaign. It's still a rough guide, not an exact representation.

Note that this is mostly a re-defining of the Hill Country, because that's the major area of the SHADOWS OVER GARENPORT campaign. It's not exactly a one to one correspondence. The West Marches just west of the Sabertooth Mountains aren't shown at all for instance; and even the Sabertooths are truncated a bit east to west. The Cactus Balds and whatever (so far) unnamed settlements of the hillmen are on them is simply not shown, nor is it expected that this campaign would ever end up that way, since none of my 5x5 makes any mention of any of them whatsoever. 

Because the Hill Country is the most protagonist of the protagonist nations of the Three Realms, both of the next two 5x5s, although centered on one of the other three key component regions, will have at least one tie of some kind or another to these far-flung bastions of the Hill Country; I anticipate that the revised CULT OF UNDEATH will send the PCs for at least some kind of side quest into the southern Cactus Balds, and the MIND-WIZARDS OF THE DAEMON WASTES already assumes that the PCs were trying to make their way to Bucknerfeld; I'll eventually make sure they get to see those areas in those campaigns, even if just briefly.

Again, although the distinction is somewhat esoteric, this isn't meant to be a campaign setting map; it's a campaign map. It's utility is focused on running the specific campaign, not in being a reference for the setting overall.

In a future post, I may decide to annotate the map, with brief entries describing all of the named area on the map for reference.