Completed Ytarria Hex map with terrain added

darebear · 01-10-2024, 05:37 AM

All excellent ideas. I updated the file today.

I also uploaded a blank map, with only terrain features. No labels or structures of any kind (other than canon Elven ruins and Djinn Towers). I hope this will be useful to folks who want to play in the immediate Post-Banestorm Era.

On my to-do list today is to tweak the mountain chain on the eastern slopes of the Nomad Lands. It needs to extend north more and meet up with the Barrow Wood and the village of Ossary. In fact, the whole chain probably should be a little more dense by a couple of hexes in some areas. I did add some information on the method that I will be using to calculate urban areas for the map. The parent document is from "Magical Medieval Kingdoms of Western Europe". At least with that I have a guide to follow as to how many urban settlements (town and up) to place on the map.

Acrosome - excellent idea on the delta. I will read up on that today. A perfect solution in my mind to this area.

tbone - I counted the hexes on my map, by hand. It worked out to 100,000.
There is a slight scale difference between the watercolor map and the hex map, but it close enough not to matter in the grand scheme of things (I consider it an "Artist Interpretation"). On my blog the watercolor map has a hex grid overlayed which works out to roughly 26 miles per hex. It has been somewhat challenging to translate between the two. My map is based on a coastal outline and a hex grid of Ytarria which I did not create. I vetted it a few times and it is very close to what is presented in the book. If you want a smaller Ytarria then you could reduce the scale to 20 miles per hex. It would not matter much.

Perhaps the Casutiguses are the degenerate remnants of the Dark Elves which caused the Banestorm, mutated by their own folly? What do they eat? Adventurers mainly...likely not for nourishment though. They probably just like the taste.

Pursiviant - always giving me good ideas. I need to make a list of them today. I will read up on the Soda Lakes today.

Interesting article about an alkaline lake in Africa.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/scien...-stone-445359/

Meteor impacts are always fun....so are crashed spaceships with exotic leaking power cores which cause mayhem with their surroundings.

Concerning geography, you seem to know more than your average bear. Hobby or Profession? You should have written the geography section of Banestorm. I would have been easier for all of us I think.

Ideally (when the map is saved as a PDF) I would like to have the map terrain labels act as a hyperlink to a Wikipedia article concerning that type of geographic area. It would give the user an idea of what the area is actually like. So, you click on say "The Great Desert" and it will take to you the appropriate article concerning a desert. I know it can be done through Inkscape. I just need to learn how.

To be honest, what I am doing is amateurish. SJG really should contact this guy, Thorfinn Tait,https://mystara.thorfmaps.com/

Thorfinn does hex maps for just about everything, dozens of them, all in Adobe Illustrator with a level of quality that I could only dream of. He has mapped the D&D world of Mystara to an incredible level of detail...and that area is far larger than Ytarria. Give him some guidelines and creative freedom and he could take Ytarria and map it down to 8 miles per hex easily. IMO, Yrth has always languished because it lacks adequate maps of the campaign areas. This guy could solve that problem and take Yrth to a new level of professionalism for SJG. A very small investment really.

SJG - contact him! Ytarria deserves the Thorfinn Tait treatment.

01-10-2024, 05:37 AM	#11
darebear Join Date: Nov 2010	Re: Completed Ytarria Hex map with terrain added All excellent ideas. I updated the file today. I also uploaded a blank map, with only terrain features. No labels or structures of any kind (other than canon Elven ruins and Djinn Towers). I hope this will be useful to folks who want to play in the immediate Post-Banestorm Era. On my to-do list today is to tweak the mountain chain on the eastern slopes of the Nomad Lands. It needs to extend north more and meet up with the Barrow Wood and the village of Ossary. In fact, the whole chain probably should be a little more dense by a couple of hexes in some areas. I did add some information on the method that I will be using to calculate urban areas for the map. The parent document is from "Magical Medieval Kingdoms of Western Europe". At least with that I have a guide to follow as to how many urban settlements (town and up) to place on the map. Acrosome - excellent idea on the delta. I will read up on that today. A perfect solution in my mind to this area. tbone - I counted the hexes on my map, by hand. It worked out to 100,000. There is a slight scale difference between the watercolor map and the hex map, but it close enough not to matter in the grand scheme of things (I consider it an "Artist Interpretation"). On my blog the watercolor map has a hex grid overlayed which works out to roughly 26 miles per hex. It has been somewhat challenging to translate between the two. My map is based on a coastal outline and a hex grid of Ytarria which I did not create. I vetted it a few times and it is very close to what is presented in the book. If you want a smaller Ytarria then you could reduce the scale to 20 miles per hex. It would not matter much. Perhaps the Casutiguses are the degenerate remnants of the Dark Elves which caused the Banestorm, mutated by their own folly? What do they eat? Adventurers mainly...likely not for nourishment though. They probably just like the taste. Pursiviant - always giving me good ideas. I need to make a list of them today. I will read up on the Soda Lakes today. Interesting article about an alkaline lake in Africa. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/scien...-stone-445359/ Meteor impacts are always fun....so are crashed spaceships with exotic leaking power cores which cause mayhem with their surroundings. Concerning geography, you seem to know more than your average bear. Hobby or Profession? You should have written the geography section of Banestorm. I would have been easier for all of us I think. Ideally (when the map is saved as a PDF) I would like to have the map terrain labels act as a hyperlink to a Wikipedia article concerning that type of geographic area. It would give the user an idea of what the area is actually like. So, you click on say "The Great Desert" and it will take to you the appropriate article concerning a desert. I know it can be done through Inkscape. I just need to learn how. To be honest, what I am doing is amateurish. SJG really should contact this guy, Thorfinn Tait,https://mystara.thorfmaps.com/ Thorfinn does hex maps for just about everything, dozens of them, all in Adobe Illustrator with a level of quality that I could only dream of. He has mapped the D&D world of Mystara to an incredible level of detail...and that area is far larger than Ytarria. Give him some guidelines and creative freedom and he could take Ytarria and map it down to 8 miles per hex easily. IMO, Yrth has always languished because it lacks adequate maps of the campaign areas. This guy could solve that problem and take Yrth to a new level of professionalism for SJG. A very small investment really. SJG - contact him! Ytarria deserves the Thorfinn Tait treatment. Last edited by darebear; 01-10-2024 at 01:48 PM.