Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Borderlands hexmap

Geofrrey McKinney, of Carcosa fame, pointed an intriguing question about the classic Keep of the Borderlands: the scale on the map and the wilderness movement rate in the text makes crossing the few hundreds yards from the Keep to the Caves incredibly slow. Most DMs fixed that issue by chosing one or the other. 

For this map, I assumed the text was correct, and the standard movement rate of a party is 60', ie. the fighter-in-plate rate. So, one square is roughly equal to half a mile. 


Using the genious Hexographer, I drafted this hexmap version with a scale of 1 hex = 2 squares, so one hex equal one mile. To figure the height lines, I made changes in the vegetation.  I didn't put any scale on the map, so it can be used at wider scales if needed - and that's what I plan to do.











4 comments:

Nick said...

That's really cool. You're much better at Hexographer than I :(

Anonymous said...

Very cool! So at 20 hexes east-west, does that mean we're looking at about a 10 square mile area here? If so I find it helpful to go into Google Earth/Google Maps and scale out until I get a satellite map of a similarly-sized area I'm familiar with, to give a sense of scale I can relate to.
- Tavis

Nicolas Dessaux said...

@N. Wright: Thanks! Hexographer is very easy to use, but to really easy to get a good result. Here, I used a good model for my map! I got plenty others which are not finished because I do'nt achieve exactly what I want to. Maybe soon!

@Tavis: Exaclty. I think it fits best the module as he was written than the scale on the map. But I tend to suggest a bigger scale even, to be abble to use it as a complete campaign setting.

Roughly, I see the human-settled lands as being caught between the river and the forest, up to the point where the road pass next to the river. So, this is really Borderlands.

scottsz said...

Mr. D,

Thank you for posting this - very nice work.

I agree with the larger scale idea... 'The Borderlands' always did have the feel of a campaign area...