Completed Ytarria Hex map with terrain added

[darebear]

Indeed. There is a lot of room in there for interesting locations. The area along Lake Alfir is a good choice for a small mountain chain, along with the western uplands along the al-Haz border.

I am playing around with certain features to make hill and mountain terrain more aesthetically interesting vs the colored regions they are now. I am strong inclined to redo Zarak and Gods Fence, breaking it apart into smaller mountain chains, with corresponding valleys, lakes and small forest regions. They are both large areas (huge really); as it stands, representing them as just a large blob of mountains is not very evocative.

I have played around with Inkcarnte and it is easy to use. I believe I can import my finished map and add terrain features to make the final product more appealing.

[apoc527]

Awesome...now, does anyone know of any good maps of Ytarrian cities? I've got the old Tredroy map, but others are always welcome!

[darebear]

Latest incarnation. Still a WIP, additional lakes, rivers and other minor feature are needed. Coming along though. Added some trails between settlements where I think appropriate.

Tried making some of my own symbols. For large area terrain features they are mainly there to give the impression of the area (say a whole forest) rather than an exact detailed hex by hex mapping approach. The mountains are basically as-is though. Any hex that does not have a mountain in a mountain range would be considered rough terrain (hills, forest, valleys, ect).

https://darebearsminiemporium.blogsp...f-ytarria.html

2/9 - Sinle sent me updated map templates today. MUCH APPRECIATED. He added color to the oceans and a darker hex map...now incorporated into the main map. Colors reduced slightly in opaqueness to allow for better visibility of the hex grid.

[Blind Mapmaker]

Wow, that latest incarnation is gorgeous. Love what you've done with the mountain ranges and the forests. The edge fade feels very natural. The climate shading looks also good. The only things I'd suggest is giving the Great Desert a bit more of an edge fade and reworking the smaller lakes. They look a little incongruous to Styx and Acheron right now.

Thank you for sharing your amazing work and thanks to sinleqiunnini for the very detailed mapping these are based on.

[darebear]

Thanks for the suggestions Blind.

Working on some revisions this morning. Looks much better now. All oceans, lakes and rivers are harmonized in color. I think I have a good compromise now between color and a usable hex map. Had to play with the opacity quite to get it just right (almost anyway).

The Great Maelstrom has been added. Not sure if I should leave that on there or not. My gut says no.

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by darebear

The Great Maelstrom has been added. Not sure if I should leave that on there or not. My gut says no.

I'd leave it because it's a major hazard to navigation. Admittedly, its exact location changes, but keeping its general location on the map serves as a reminder to players.

[tbone]

Let me add more thanks to darebear for these maps. They're a great thing for Yrth. In an old review of Banestorm I've got posted, I note my biggest dissatisfaction with the book is simply wanting more stuff - including more physical features of the land. (I expect there's a ton more stuff on a hundred topics that the authors would have liked to add if time and scale had allowed, so I mean no criticism to them.)

The book's maps are a bit featureless in some regards; there's room for a lot more in the way of canyons, fjords, mesas, deltas, swamps, lesser rivers and bodies of water, named trade routes, smaller cities, etc. etc. Which is fine. I see the book's maps as old-timey, largely representational maps depicting a large-scale view only, with plenty of guesswork in some regions; I figure that a "real" map will naturally have lots more detail (and maybe even some big changes). I'm enjoying your project as one such "real" (if unofficial) mapping.

Looking forward to more!

[darebear]

Thanks Tbone. When GURPS Fantasy came out in the mid 80s I felt the same way: great potential, lack of detail on the physical representation of the world.

Ytarria is vast and the individual nations cover a much larger physical area than they probably should (based on their populations). Either the authors never bothered to actually compare the population numbers vs the size of the continent, or the canon numbers are only vague estimates. My guess is, due to the lack of a properly vetted and rationalized map, the answer is the former (especially since the original map was done in the mid 80s).

Some facts:
Cardiel, 6 million folks and 275,000 sq/mi (slightly bigger than France) has a population density of 22 people per square mile.

Megalos, 16 million folks and 1.3 million sq/mi (the size of India) hovers around 12 souls per square mile. Modern India has over 1300 folks per square mile.

Now, I live in Canada and our population density is just over 10, with most of the country being uninhabited forest, swamp and tundra.

Megalos, by the book, is the same as Canada: almost uninhabited. In fact, when I ran the numbers from a few supplements which deal with this topic (Magical Medieval Society and ACKS) the inhabited areas under cultivation are not much more than the settlements on the map (92% of the 16 million population is rural, 67 cities and towns, 450 rural population per manor, 1 manor per square mile, 1 map hex is 500 square miles equates to 66 populated hexes. Of course not every hex is fully populated, but the simple fact is that the countryside is in most cases a vast wilderness. The various regions of Megalos, as I interpret the book anyway, are semi-autonomous regions with little to no interaction with each other or the Capital. Megalos, at least to me, is a degenerate fantasy version of the Third Imperium, from GDW's Traveller.

Of course, at the gaming table, none of this matters. 99% of players are not interested in demographics since it is irrelevant to the game. For GMs though what this means is Ytarria has huge potential for traditional fantasy adventures. There is room to fit just about anything: lost valleys, civilizations, monster lairs ect. GMs are also of course free to increase the population numbers to whatever levels they wish (just ignore the timeline and assume much more time has elapsed since the Banestorm than the canon 1000 years).

The canon map is basically done. There is not much more I can add, other than a few minor details, perhaps naming some minor rivers and mountain peaks. Going forward, I will be adding non-canon specific features to the map and posting that map alongside the canon one. These ideas come to me in waves so this is very much a living document.

North America was not explored all at once. The same goes with Ytarria. Who knows what lies over the horizon.

[tbone]

You're right, the population density is quite low. Or maybe the Ytarria censuses seriously undercount people between the cities. : ) My initial impression of Ytarria, way back when, didn't fully appreciate the size, but some folks on the forums here pointed me to that map overlaying Ytarria with maps of the US and England, and that puts things into perspective.

On a future update to your map, a key to terrain and symbols would be great.

One thing I'm wondering: Is your scale on the map (the 240-mile black bar at bottom) correct? I wouldn't expect exact correspondence to the book's maps, given the difference in styles and all, but:

By some loose eyeballing, the Blackwoods on your map looks maybe 300 miles EW; the Great Forest looks to be about 400 miles EW, maybe 150 miles NS.

On the books' country-level maps, though - and breaking out a ruler for a little extra geekitude - the Blackwoods looks more like 500 miles EW, and the Great Forest a whopping 800 miles EW, about 250 miles NS!

Maybe I'm getting something wrong, but eyeballing a bunch of things here and there, I think Ytarria might be even bigger than your scale suggests. (Or maybe the book's scales are inconsistent between big and small maps, and you're closer to the correct numbers if going by the continent-level map.)

Either way, here's an amusing tidbit that cements the scale of things. If you take the measurements above for the Great Forest and plug them into a formula for the area of an oval (which the forest sorta loosely is), you get about 47,000 square miles using the smaller dimensions above, or about 157,000 square miles using the larger dimensions.

By contrast: Yellowstone National Park is just under 3,500 square miles...

[JulianLW]

Yep. Srsly lovin' this map. It's a game starter. Thanks bigly.

I'm going to try to find my hardback copy of Banestorm.