Saturday, February 1, 2020

Have Map---Will Travel: My growing collection of D&D inspired maps


Greetings my fellow D&D veterans! Hope the New Year is going well for you all! 
I've been picking up some old school maps as of late...Ebay & elsewhere. Care to take a look? Good...let's get started then....
Maps have always held a certain fascination for me. As a child I would stare at my Grandfather's Atlas and imagine the places he had traveled to...the incredible things that he had seen as a "Knight of the Open Road" during the Great Depression!

So Fantasy maps have also always held a great deal of mystery and awe...the Hyborian Age map of Conan, The Middle Earth maps of Tolkien, and the lands of Narnia by Lewis....all have let their mark upon my creative mind.
I'll start with the older maps that I picked up back in the 80's....not 1880's you wisenheimers! The Middle Earth maps that came with the ICS MERP games were, in my eye, the gold standard of fantasy maps! Here's both Northern & Southern Mirkwood!


Even though they don't fit together correctly (how did that slip by quality control?!?) its still a brilliant map! The close up shows the incredible amount of detail! I've always strove to create my own maps that were just as detailed!
Recently I picked up the "World of Greyhawk" maps...that were created by Darlene for TSR...


I never owned these while I as actively gaming in the past...they are truly beautiful maps. My group of friends were more interested in our own campaigns rather than the TSR modules that came afterwards. Pity...these are magnificent maps!
I also picked up the map to the game "Search for the Emperor's Treasure" that was included in issue #51 of the Dragon magazine!


This map to the Tom Wham game was also created by the extremely talented Darlene...and has the added bonus of having had David Trampier doing the lettering! Being a collector of all things TRAMP I had to have it! 
Speaking of TRAMP...I also picked up the rare board game Divine Right specifically because TRAMP created the map for the game! 




Great detail in the map...the swamps, the forest, wetlands & mountains...the symbols are very similar to the ones TRAMP used in the board game TITAN that he created with Jason McAllister! 
Another recent purchase was a map of Krynn...the World of Dragonlance!

Very cool map! I enjoyed the books...not so much the modules that TSR created ...seemed too "railroaded" for my taste!
Lastly I picked up the map #1 of Judges Guild's "City StateCampaign".

As with everything that I've picked up of Judges Guild this is very high quality! Very detailed and nicely drawn!
And here's a few examples of my own maps...for campaigns I plan to run in the future...and just create at my leisure.


Two Hand drawn & two created on my PC!