Thursday 30 March 2017

Further Afield

I spent a few hours coming up with a sandbox style map for the region around Stillwater village and lake. Like all of the world creation I have done for Stillwater related material I did it without any planning or researching.  Just whatever, popped into my mind and looked good.


I should note that the original genesis of the Stillwater village map was the Lake. I was thinking about a local lake called Lake on the Mountain. Which is a bottomless lake on top of a hill not far from where I live. It is feed by a few streams but basically looks like a huge cistern. The rock “cup” of the lake is fairly impermeable to water. It drains slowly out of the bottom.  I have not decided where exactly Stillwater lake drains, but I am thinking it drains into an underground river that emerges further south. Like the real lake, Stillwater is “bottomless”. Locals believe it extends deep into the earth.


The Players Map of the Setting

I have already established that Stillwater is a backwater village at least a full day travel by foot to the nearest towns of Grimwall and Pirn. So I kept that theme and made the map area a rocky shield of hills, valleys and forests. There are a few other hamlets on the map, Ravenroost, Whitewater, Padoton and Yarrow. Also a small keep maintained by the nearest realm (Mhorg Hall) to protect the area. There is also a small ruined keep at Galenford. All of the small rivers and streams of the areas are crossed by fords, there are no bridges. The largest village in the area is Padoton with a population of 200.


On the GM version of the map I placed the two dungeons I posted recently. The Barrow of the Forgotten Legion is located at Stillwater. The Crescent Moon Maze is 5 miles upriver. I also noted five other locations where I want to create random dungeons.


There is no suggested ruleset for this setting. But it is certainly in the style of OSR style rules.

GM Map with Dungeon Locations



10 comments:

  1. What did you use to create the maps?

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  2. Yup...We all wanna know how you made the map...It's a sweet one

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  3. I use Paint.net. it is a free paint style program. I find it has just enough features.

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  4. Hello Jeffrey, I absolutely love this! I notice that you also set the HEXs to = 1 mile, why not bigger?

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    1. I had established that Stillwater was just over 1 day from the nearest towns. So I have developed about a one day's walk worth of area. Also, I wanted it to be easy to fit in anyone's setting. As long as I do not bring in town's and countries it is pretty generic.

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  5. Very nice! I like the variety in the terrain. The places have very evocative names - in-built foreshadowing! They also make the non-English names sound foreign and invasive.

    Speaking of names, in Finnish 'padoton' means 'without dams'. Whether or not this was intentional, it is extremely fitting. :)

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  6. Thanks for that bit of info. It was not intentional. It was a randomly picked word from a name generator that sounded right.

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