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There’s no putting it off any longer.
You’ve been a DM for years,
and the campaign world you created and cobbled together has outlived its
usefulness.
Your players’ characters
have explored practically every nook and cranny,
and you’ve become intimately
familiar even with the parts they haven’t been to.
Your pride in the world
has waned because it doesn’t bring out the same sense of wonder and mystery
in you that it once did --
and if the wonder and mystery
is diminished for you,
then what must things be
like for your players?
Or . . . you’ve decided to
take the plunge and become a DM for the first time.
You’re pretty familiar with
the rules of the game, and you’ve learned
a lot from the campaigns
you’ve participated in as
a player. But those weren’t your campaigns,
and all the ideas that have
been building up in your conscious
and subconscious mind are
aching for release.
No matter which of those
situations you’re in, you stand at a
crossroads -- a focal point
from which radiate a virtually infinite
number of paths. You are
about to start making a new campaign
world, and it all begins
with the first line you draw on a blank piece
of paper that will become
the world map. With every mark you
make on that paper, you
eliminate some possibilities and open up
others. At some point, when
the paper actually begins to look like
a map, there will be no
going back (without starting all over
again). By then you should
be confident that what you have done
will stand as a firm foundation
-- a structure to which you can
(and must) add detail,
but a structure that can support detail without
limiting your creativity.
This section of the WSG
will not tell you
how to make a world where
water flows uphill, a desert is bordered
by a swamp, and a steaming
tropical jungle is nestled between
two arctic mountain ranges
several thousand feet above
sea level. If your ideas
run along these lines, you don’t need any
help -- just put pencil
to paper, let your imagination run free, and
see what you end up with.
The AD&D@ game can be played in any kind
of universe, even
one where the natural laws
of our Earth do not necessarily apply.
* But for the purpose of
this discussion, we’re going to use the
same assumption that underlies
practically every other paragraph
in this book: The campaign
world is one that could exist on
Earth, or at least under
Earthlike conditions. Water flows downhill;
you can’t go from a swamp
to a desert without passing
through (or over) some other
kind of land; terrain features that are
found at sea level in the
tropics are not also found thousands of
feet above sea level surrounded
by snow-covered peaks.
An Earthlike campaign world
has some advantages over a
“freeform” environment or
one that is deliberately created with
unearthly features. First,
both you and your players are naturally
familiar with the features
of the planet we live on; when you say
“mountain,” they know what
you mean. But if you create a world
where “mountains” are made
of wood (for instance), your players
are going to ask questions
and you’re going to have some explaining
to do: Are these wooden
mountains slippery? Do they
burn? Can the characters
get splinters if they’re not careful? For
every “unrealistic” question
that players come up with and you
are forced to address, the
players’ suspension of disbelief is
strained a little further.
When it gets strained too far, players become
preoccupied with the fact
that, after all, they’re “only” playing
a game -- and role-playing
falls by the wayside in favor of an
artificial “contest” between
the players and the world they’re trying
to understand.
** Second, homo
sapiens is the dominant and predominant creature <>
in the game universe that
is described in the rules, and the
campaign world should be
one in which PCs (either
human or demi-human) can
survive and prosper -- one in which
they can feel at home without
having to undergo some biological
or artificial adaptation.
For instance, if you think it would be fun
for your world to have an
atmosphere of methane instead of air
that is normally breathable
by characters, think again. Even if
every character was somehow
equipped with an apparatus that
allowed him to survive,
no character in his right mind would set
out on an adventure for
fear of breaking or losing his life-support
apparatus. And if the apparatus
can’t be broken or lost, or if the
characters all have “special
lungs,” then why bother to create a
poisonous atmosphere in
the first place?
*** Third (and related to
advantage number one), the best kind of
campaign world is one that
is everpresent but usually inobtrusive.
The world should be a backdrop
for the activity that takes
place between the characters
and creatures that live in it -- the
location of a conflict,
but not the source of the conflict itself. The
way to keep the world in
its proper place is to make it “ordinary,”
so that PCs can concentrate
on what they’re doing
instead of where they’re
doing it.
All of the foregoing is not
meant to say that some deviation from
the norm is not a good idea.
In a campaign world of continental
proportions, there’s plenty
of room for your pet ideas -- but USE
them on a small scale. Replace
that clear, tranquil river with water
that is always at the boiling
temperature, so that even characters
who can swim
won’t be able to just jump in and paddle along
-- but don’t make every
river a scalding experience. Create a forest
of trees that not only lose
their leaves in the autumn, but actually
pull themselves down into
the ground when the first frost hits.
When a fantastic feature
of this sort is localized, it remains intriguing;
when it’s used everywhere
throughout the world, it loses
its distinctiveness and
becomes an obstacle instead of an oddity.
If you’ve ever spent ten minutes
looking for a pair of sunglasses
and then had someone else
tell you they’re perched on
top of your head, you’re
aware of two basic facts about the human
mental process and our powers
of observation: The obvious
is often overlooked, and
what’s obvious to one person may not be
apparent to another. Even
if you know how to create a world map,
read through these step-by-step
suggestions in case you run
across something that hasn’t
occurred to you before.
1. Settle
on a scale. Decide how much area you want your world
map to cover. It isn’t necessary
to create an entire planet at one
time; stick to something
the size of a continent or part of a continent.
The DMG, on page
47, recommends that
the scale of a world map
should be from 20 to 40 miles per hexagon.
At 40 miles per hex (measured
across the middle),
a standard
8 1/2 x 11-inch piece of small-hexagon
mapping paper covers
an area of roughly two million
square miles - 1600 miles in the
long dimension and 1250
miles in the short dimension. If this isn’t
a large enough area for
what you want to create, simply fasten together
two or more sheets of hex
paper and work in an even
larger scale (50 or 60 miles
to the hex) if you want to. Everything
will be scaled down later
when you need to detail a certain section
of the world; for now, all
we’re concerned with is describing
the size and shape of the
world and locating its most prominent
physical features.
The outline of your world,
and any other features you draw on
the map, need not follow
the boundaries between hexagons; in
fact, it’s much better if
you don’t restrict yourself in this fashion.
The hexes are there only
for the purpose of regulating size and
distance. As you fill in
the features on your map, try to pretend the
hexes aren’t even there
-- or, better yet, draw the map out in
rough form on blank paper
and transfer it to hex paper later.
Sheets of hex paper, with
hexagons of a different size on each
one, are provided in the
back of this book (pages 124, 125,
126).
The <>
owner of the book is hereby
granted permission to make photocopies
of the sheets for his personal
use only.
2. Start
at the bottom. Decide whether your creation is going to
be the size of a continent
or just part of one, and then pencil in an
outline that describes the
coastline. Now’s the time to plan for
major islands, long peninsulas,
and other ultra-large-scale geographic
features. If you’re creating
an entire continent, you must
know whether the continent
is an island in itself or if it connects
above water with another
large land mass. Unless you have a
reason for creating a continent
surrounded by water, extend the
land mass off the edge of
your map paper in at least one direction.
This keeps your options
open: If you want to connect another
land mass to this one later,
you can do it without redrawing
anything you’ve already
done. If you want to turn the continent
into an island, all you
have to do is make a small extension of your
original map containing
the previously uncharted seacoast.
At this point, your map
shows all the places where the land
meets the sea, at least
as far as the major land masses are concerned.
By definition, these lines
also show the location of zero
elevation, or sea level.
3.
Now
take it to the top. Decide where to place the mountain
ranges,
and
determine how high the tallest peaks will rise. Don’t
make
them too frequent or too high; characters shouldn’t have to
scale
something the size of Mount Everest once every few days
during
a cross-country trek. But don’t make them too low, or they
won’t
provide a good challenge and change of pace. Locate the
tallest
peaks individually and decide
how
high they stand. If any
peaks
are higher than 10,000 feet, draw shapes around those
points
indicating the line of 10,000-foot elevation. Then do the
same
for a line of 5,000-foot elevation.
Now
your map is a rough topographical map, showing the highest
points
of elevation on the continent and the area’s lines of elevation
at
5,000-foot increments. The rough shape of the world, in
all
three dimensions, has been determined.
4. Place
if on the planet. Decide where your world is located
with respect to the poles
and the equator of the planet it is a part
of, and then note some rough
boundaries where climatic zones
change. The world you start
with need not run the gamut from
arctic
to tropical climate; on the other hand, it
doesn’t need to be
the size of the Earth’s
northern or southern hemisphere in order
to contain all five climatic
regions. At this time, you should also
determine the direction
of the prevailing winds in each climatic
area of the world; see the
weather-generation system in the appendix
for general rules to aid
you in these decisions.
5.
Just
add water. Now that you’ve placed the areas of high and
low
elevation and you know what the climate is in any spot on the
map,
you can draw in rivers and lakes. Rivers begin at high elevation
and
run toward the ocean (or some other place at or near
zero
elevation). A large river usually has several tributaries that
flow
into it, and extremely large river systems (such as the Mississippi
or
the Amazon, and all the tributaries that feed them) are
rarely
found more than once or twice in a continent-sized area.
Large
inland bodies of water (wide-ranging river systems and
huge
lakes) are somewhat less frequent in subarctic
climates
than
in warmer areas, but a subarctic region may be laced with a
dense
and intricate network of smaller rivers and lakes; look at a
map
of Canada for an example of such a network (as well as
some
areas, such as Great
Bear Lake and Great
Slave Lake, that
contradict
the above statement about frequency of large bodies
of
water). Don’t be bashful about laying in rivers and lakes, but
don’t
run a stream through every hex unless you’re designing a
world
with no deserts.
This
is also the time to decide where you want your swamps.
Put
them in areas of low elevation, usually near or on the seacoast
and
usually in an area that has a lot of rivers or lakes.
6.
What’s
for desert? Now that you know where water
is and
isn’t
located, you can plan your desert areas. Have an eraser
handy
for this stage (if you haven’t used one already), because
you
may want to dry up a few rivers and lakes along the way.
On
Earth, most deserts are located in subtropical
climate and
the
part of the temperate zone closer to the
subtropical area (the
southern
half of the zone in the northern hemisphere, the northern
half
in the southern hemisphere). This is because of global
wind
patterns; the prevailing winds blow generally
east to west
around
the equator, and usually in the opposite direction in the
temperate
regions. When they meet each other in the upper atmosphere
over
the AREA in between, the cool upper air
descends.
As
the air gets
lower, it gets warmer, and its ability to retain moisture
increases;
thus, the water vapor in the air remains suspended
and
is not released as precipitation.
Farther
away from the tropics, deserts are often located
on the
downwind
side of high mountain ranges. When the wind hits the
slope
of a mountain, the air rises and becomes cooler. Since cool
air
cannot retain moisture as easily as warm air, the water in the
air
is released as precipitation on the
slope
facing the wind direction,
and
by the time the air crosses over the mountains all or
most
of its moisture has been depleted.
With
these two facts in mind, place your deserts, and be prepared
to
obliterate a river (or at least change its course) if your
map
shows water flowing through an area that would make a
good
desert.
7.
May
the forest be with you. You’ve already established
lots of
places
(high mountains,
deserts,
arctic
regions) where forests
can’t
grow; now is the time to decide where they do appear. Mark
off
the forest areas on your world, remembering that they are
more
likely to be located along or near large
bodies of water.
Don’t
go above the tree line (where arctic climate
begins) and
don’t
put a forest right next to a desert, unless you have a
specific
reason
for creating a region of “unearthly” terrain
in that AREA.
8. None
of the above. Any terrain that you haven’t designated
as seacoast,
mountains,
swamp,
desert,
or forest must be either
hills
or plains. If it has no other distinguishing characteristics,
the
area adjacent to a mountainous
region should be considered as
hills. You may also want
to spot some hilly regions in the middle
of an AREA that is flat
and featureless, just for a little variety. After
that, as the next-to-last
step in this process of creation and elimination,
anything else is plains.
9. Large-scale
details. Up to now, we’ve been dealing in features
of immense scale -- the
aspects of a world that would be
apparent to someone from
a vantage point several dozen miles
above the surface. Now it’s
time to narrow the scope just a bit and
toss in a few details. Does
that huge desert have an oasis,
or
more than one? Is there
a pass that runs through that awesome
mountain range?
Mark these features now, and you won’t have to
worry about putting them
in when characters decide to look for
them. This is also the time
to make any large-scale additions or
alterations to the terrain
features. If you want to run a thin strip of
forest
land on either side of the big river that
slices through a vast
plain,
do it now. If you want to send a river
coursing through a
desert,
that’s okay, but be sure to border the river
with a couple of
strips of something other
than desert. Make any large-scale finishing
touches to the terrain that
you think are appropriate, until
you’re satisfied with the
lay of the land.
10. Points
of interest. While you’re still looking at things from an
ultra-large-scale viewpoint,
you should pinpoint the locations of
special isolated features.
If your world has features resembling
the Grand Canyon, Death
Valley, or the Yellowstone area, locate
them now. This is also the
time to determine if your world has
earthquakes or volcanoes
and, if so, where you ought to place
the fault lines and the
hot spots.
An earthquake can occur almost
anywhere, but the most frequent
and most severe quakes take
place along major fault lines.
These lines are often located
where the land rises abruptly in elevation,
and especially near the
seacoast. (The San Andreas Fault
in California is an example
of this.) A major fault line can also occur
in the middle of a mountain
range, running along the long axis
of the chain of mountains.
If your world has features that might be
the location of major fault
lines, sketch in those lines now.
Individual volcanoes
do not need to be placed on a map of very
large scale; this would
be as difficult as locating every individual
mountain peak. However,
you should know where the “hot
spots” are, because these
are the areas where volcanoes will be
found. Each hot spot is
an AREA of 20 to 40 miles in diameter, usually
located in the lower regions
of a mountain range or along a
major fault line that cuts
through a mountain range, representing
a place where magma lies
close to the surface.
Not every major fault line
produces frequent earthquakes, and
not every hot
spot contains active volcanoes within
its AREA, so
don’t be stingy about locating
these special features. If you don’t
want to make all of them
active right away, no one else (in other
words, the characters) will
have any way of knowing that they exist.
But if you decide that a
long-dormant volcano is suddenly going
to spring into life, you
can cause the eruption by design rather
than on a whim. The more
decisions you make in the creation
stage, the fewer times you’ll
find yourself caught short later.
You now have a one-of-a-kind
creation -- a map that looks like
no other map ever made.
But it’s still not ready to use as the location
for adventures until you
bring it alive. Divide the terrain into
countries, sketch out political
boundaries, and decide where the
major population centers
are located. This is a much more complex
and difficult process than
that single sentence would indicate.
Unless you have reasons
for doing things differently, use
these general guidelines
to rough out the political and cultural
makeup of your world.
1. The largest population
centers are usually located adjacent
to large bodies
of water, especially along the seacoast or on the
shores of bodies of water
with an outlet to the sea. The health of a
city depends on commerce,
and the most efficient way to move
trade goods from one place
to another is by boat or ship.
2. Other large cities
may be located in areas with an abundance
of a useful natural resource.
A city can spring up in the
foothills of a mountain
range several days’ travel from the nearest
large river, as long as
a road exists (or can be built) from that city
to another city that lies
on the river. The first city is a place where
miners can bring their take
to be assayed and refined, after which
it is sold to a merchant
caravan operation that transports it to the
manufacturing and shipping
center that lies on the river.
3. Areas that are physically
isolated tend to be politically independent,
at least at the beginning
of a world’s political history (before
an aggressive neighbor decides
to try expanding its
boundaries). An AREA that
is ringed by high mountains, or composed
entirely of mountains, will
have a different government
than the areas around it.
(Switzerland is a good modern-day example.)
The areas on either side
of a vast desert will usually not
belong to the same country,
since it is very difficult for a single
central government to successfully
exercise its power across a
large expanse of impassable
terrain.
4. In the absence of other
factors, rivers often serve as political
boundaries. This is to your
advantage and the advantage of the
people who live in the adjacent
countries, since there can be no
doubt about where one country
ends and another one begins.
5. Enclaves of humanoids
and demi-humans will usually occur
in terrain
that is suited to them, according to the descriptions of
those creatures given elsewhere
in the rules. Elves tend to be
more numerous in forests,
dwarves in mountains, and so forth.
Flesh out your world, still
working in large scale, by spotting at
least the larger cities
and the places where a certain type of creature
forms the predominant part
of the resident population. Outline
the countries, perhaps leaving
some of the political
boundaries indefinite (that’s
how wars get started). Then use a
combination of common sense
and imagination to make some
general assumptions about
the state of the world, such as:
Country
A doesn’t like Country B because B insists on sending
all of
its refined iron ore eastward into Country C. It doesn’t seem
to matter
that A and B are separated by a mountain range
that
makes
overland traffic between the countries almost impossible.
Country
B, being no dummy, sells the ore in return for weapons
that
it sends to the troops stationed along the mountain
passes
near
its border with A.
Country
D, watching the interplay between A and B from its
vantage
point to the south, is carefully playing a waiting { game
} but
building
up its military strength in the meantime to keep itself safe
from
invasion by either A or B, in case one of those countries
starts
looking for a way to make an end run around the mountains
and attack
the other.
In three short paragraphs
we have described a fairly simple situation
that could produce a wide
range of consequences and
which offers several opportunities
for { adventurers } to either
defuse
or aggravate the tension.
The party might hire itself out to
any one of the four principal
countries, charged with the responsibility of
furthering that country’s
interests -- and no matter which
government they work for,
the characters are going to spend a lot
of time in the wide open
spaces and must know how to survive on
the way to accomplishing
what they are being paid to do.
Unless every character and
creature in your campaign is wearing
seven-league boots, your
world map isn’t going to be very
useful in day-to-day adventuring.
Even at the smallest recommended
scale (20 miles across the
middle of a hex), there will be
times when characters traveling
overland won’t cover the span of
a single hex in a single
day.
But it’s not the function
of a world map to mark location and
movement on a day-to-day
basis. To know precisely where characters
are and exactly what the
environment is like in their vicinity,
you need to draw up smaller-scale
maps of the areas they
MOVE through as they go
along.
A good way to scale down
your world map is by “clustering.”
Start with a single large-scale
hex and break it up into a cluster of
eight smaller hexes (see
the accompanying diagram). On this
eight-hex cluster, make
a more detailed map of the area the large
hex covers. Since the cluster
is three hexes wide, the scale of
each smaller hex is one-third
of the scale of your world map. If
each large-scale hex is
36 miles across, then each hex in the first
cluster you create is roughly
12 miles wide. (The scale change is
not an exact 3:1 ratio,
since the hexes in a cluster are always oriented
differently from the larger
hex, but it’s close enough for our
purposes.)
Of course, each hex in a
cluster can be broken down farther;
each time you step down
in scale, reduce the distance across a
single hex to one-third
of the next larger value. If a 12-mile hex is
broken down, each hex in
the cluster is 4 miles across. If you
need to work in an even
smaller scale, just keep going: from 4
miles to 1 1/3
miles, from 1 1/3 miles to about
1/2
mile, and so on.
You don’t have to make small-scale
maps for every hex on the
world map -- at least, you
don’t have to make them all at one
time. Concentrate on the
AREA the characters are in and the AREA
they’re heading toward.
Before you sit down to begin or continue
an adventure,
be prepared with “cluster” maps of the territory
that you expect the party
to travel through, drawn up in as much
detail (as small a scale)
as you think will be necessary. If the characters
head in a direction you
didn’t expect, you can either call a
brief halt to the activities
and generate some rough small-scale
maps, or you can simply
improvise without interrupting the flow of
play. (See the text below
on the subject of “Winging It.”)
Smaller Scale, More Detail
Your large-scale world map
is a collection of generalities. That
big green spot is
a forest, hundreds or perhaps
thousands of
square miles in AREA --
but it’s not all forest. Next to it is a large
grassy plain, extending
hundreds of miles in every direction -
but it’s not just
flat terrain. Remember, your large-scale map is a
picture of the world as
it would appear to someone viewing it from
hundreds of miles overhead.
From that distance, small-scale variations
in terrain arn’t visible
-- but that doesn’t mean they’re not
there.
As you break each hex of
your world map into a cluster of
smaller-scale hexes, keep
in mind that in most cases terrain does
not remain the same on a
mile-by-mile basis. Very often, the monotony
of a flat grassland is broken
by a grove of trees several
hundred yards wide, or even
a small forest a mile or two in diameter.
If the elevation of the
land in the middle of a forest takes a
slight dip, the result might
be an area of swampy ground among
the trees. A small cliff,
perhaps only twenty or thirty feet high, can
show up almost anywhere
on otherwise flat terrain.
With each step you take to
a smaller scale, the detail of your
hex maps, and the variety
in terrain and special features they
contain, should increase.
If a river cuts through the hex that
you’re scaling down, draw
in some streams coming off the main
branch and trailing through
some of the smaller-scale hexes. If
the large-scale hex takes
in part of a lake, sketch in some
swampy ground along the
lakeshore when you go to the next
smaller scale -- a swamp
that doesn’t show up on the large-scale
map but is there nevertheless.
A DM must be able to think
on his feet. No matter
how much planning you do,
your players will occasionally have
their characters do something,
or go somewhere, you didn’t anticipate.
Sometimes this can be a
problem, but more often than
not the problem is just
an opportunity in disguise -- the opportunity
to do some creation and
decision-making on the spot, during
the
game instead of taking the time to do it later.
When characters move into
an AREA that you haven’t yet
mapped in detail, you can
do a lot more than simply say, “There’s
forest
around you as far as you can see.” Of course, that may indeed
be the case -- but it doesn’t
have to be. Remember, you’re
in control; you can improvise
and invent (within reason) any special
features that you think
will make this segment of the adventure
more interesting, or at
least give your players some things to
think about. Instead of
the simple sentence given above, you can
say something like this:
“You’re in a lightly wooded area, with
most of the trees the same
height except for one big oak a short
distance away to the east
that towers over the trees around it.
Looking north from where
you are, you can see an area where a
lot of sunlight reaches
the ground; this may be a clearing. The
land slopes upward gradually
to the west, and you can see that
the peak of this slope has
very few trees.”
By improvising like this,
you accomplish two good things. You
impress your players (whether
they realize it or not) with your organization
and attention to detail;
never mind that the detail was
created on the spur of the
moment. And, perhaps more important,
you create possibilities
for excitement and intrigue. If someone
climbs the big oak, maybe
he’ll be able to see something
important in the distance
from this vantage point. If characters
move to the clearing, maybe
they’ll find a path leading away from
it that makes it easier
for them to move through the rest of the forest.
If they climb the slope,
maybe they’ll discover that there’s a
sharp dropoff with a small
pool at the bottom. By improvising further
on what you’ve just invented,
you can make things easier or
tougher - or, in any event,
more interesting - for your players
and their characters.
The only rule to remember
when you improvise in this fashion
is that you can’t un-create
something later. Keep track of what
you tell your players, either
by making brief notes as you go or
(preferably) by sketching
the features you’ve just described on a
handy sheet of hex paper
(large,
medium,
or small).
If the characters visit this spot more <links added>
than once, they will obviously
expect to see the same details that
you described when they
first arrived on the scene. Between
playing sessions, take a
few minutes to update your collection of
small-scale maps, incorporating
the features you devised during
the game. Then you won’t
be caught short in case the characters
decide to backtrack or just
happen to stumble upon the same location
later.
As has been said many times
within the AD&D@ game books,
all the rules we can create
still provide nothing more than a
framework upon which your
world and your adventures are built.
In effect, we’ve given you
the pieces to a puzzle that has an infinite
number of different solutions.
Now it’s up to you to put those pieces together.
