DM-babble: Creating the world with maps

Starting location map zoomed in. (Inkarnate)

These past couple of weeks I've been working, on-again off-again, on maps for my homebrew. Why maps? Because I'm hoping it's going to supply me with answers to the story as opposed to creating a map to fit the story I've pre-written. A bit arse about face, but I console myself with the knowledge that I will be using these maps and thus it isn't time wasted.

So what I've been doing is randomly generating maps on Medieval Fantasy City Generator and Village Generator, then going to Inkarnate and reworking them either to fit my 'vision' better or just to make it look prettier. I'm also by no means a map maker. I didn't take geography at school and have no notion of how things should be on a map. But I don't think it came out all that bad. And hell, it's a fantasy land with dragons and whatnot. Sense is not something it needs to absolutely make.

Here are some examples of what I've been up to:

The city of Alsheim doesn't have a governmental structure yet, but I know that it has a river that flows through it. Yay! With the help of mapping, I've gotten some ideas on the wards of the city, if not the actual contents.

Alsheim (Inkarnate)

But! Before my victims... I mean the party... reaches Alsheim (if they decide to go to the city at all), they have a starter village to investigate called Cara's Pasture. This village was randomly generated with the Village Generator and then I decided that it needed the river to flow past the village and lead down into another bigger town of Spelar. I nabbed some concepts for Cara's Pasture from The Lost Mines of Phandelver as the frontier town of Phandalin had a range of handy dandy shops and places that I wanted to see in this village. Plus in terms of location, the two settlements have similar resources at their disposal (or so I tell myself).

Cara's Pasture (Inkarnate)

I do have the village inhabited by a couple of plain characters and one or two more colourful ones. I have the beginnings of tension in the authorities at play, which I think there should be for it to seem a bit more real. And, I have a couple of quests (though not nearly enough) to start the players off. Hopefully the events will transpire the way I want them to and not have the players killing off my innocent little monsters before they can do what I would like them to do. I probably need more quests and thoughts on this, but so far the whole thing is a little daunting.

Spelar is one of the two places that the party may decide to go to on their way to the city of Alsheim. Much like the city, I basically only have the map for it. No NPCs or quests yet.

Spelar (Inkarnate)

Despite this, I still feel like I've been doing quite a bit. My mind has been working in the background thinking of ways to use and populate these spaces that I've created. So I wouldn't consider any of this a distraction though it does sometimes feel like it. I think I'm avoiding the 'big work' of bringing these places to life. I fear that, like my limitations with geography, my knowledge of political/governing systems is going to put a spanner in the works. But I guess that also depends on the type of players I get. Those who are interested in stabby-stabby would not care for who rules in the random port town that they are passing through where as the more role-playing party just might. It's difficult to tell.

Tell me what you think?