The Realm of Quindia

[Torq]

Welcome Quindia. I love the map. The look is really cool. Its kinda Pete Fenlon meets grunge but everything is clearly set out and informative, not to mention artistic and eye-catching. My favourite aspect of the map however is that its a sort of chart of the history of gaming. You've worked on its so long that the landmarks are often landmarks in gaming history, that bring back some great memories. Its clear how you've managed to incorporate some famous products and flagship adventures as well as literary favouritesinto your own campaign world.

Places like White Plume Mountain, Dearthwood, Marzabul, the Borderlands and Charn come to mind. I love the map because its not sterile and contrived, its testimony to many hours of great gaming.

Well done.
Torq

[quindia]

I've designed lots of different game worlds because I love drawing maps (hence the reason I joined the forum), but I always keep coming back to Quindia. Some of the places have names that a goofy ten year old would come up with (the city of Frodo), but I can't bear to change them now.

Some of the iconic additions came during the years when I dropped a ready made adventure into a game and they stayed part of the campaign world. Others names, like Haven, have been used in many different worlds. A few others are purposely generic (the Black Forest) to invoke a nostalgic sense of mystery such a place would have held when I first started playing D&D.

The overall effect is that the world has a familiar feel even for people who see it for the first time. The games I've run over the years have shaped the world (the fifth ring was once whole, Ram's Wall was built by a player, Gornath was once the capitol of an empire).

I'll post some of my other maps here soon, but none have the history of the Realm of Quindia.

[The Cartographist]

If only I had kept updating the same map over my years of gaming...
I always seemed to scratch and start from new.
Really nice maps.

[terrainmonkey]

okay, i've been using corel draw and paint for about 2 years now, and i've never thought about making a map this beautiful because i didn't know how to do it. please, you've got to tell me the secrets, so that i could make a map this great. any advice you could give would be awesome. thanks!

[ravells]

I love the idea of the map evolving with the play! Did you draw the trees individually by hand or was it a pattern fill? They look gorgeous!

[RobA]

Hi quindia -

Beautiful map! So what is the backstory on Ram's Wall? It is so rare to see constructed features on a map of this scale it really jumped out at me...

-Rob A>

[quindia]

It would be very hard in this format to reveal all of the secrets of CorelDraw. I've been using the software for everything from graphic design to illustration to layout to cartography for about 15 years.

This image, aside from the sky in the background and the lens flare on the sword, was created entirely in CorelDraw.

Suffice to say, CorelDraw is a very powerful tool and while it requires more dedication to learn than many programs that are designed for cartography, the results are well worth it.

I will consider trying to work up a tutorial for CorelDraw, but the two most important pieces of advice I can give out quickly is learn to use layers and vary the width and angles of your pen tool! The former makes editing easier and the later adds a hand drawn aspect that is lacking in many computer generated artwork.

In the meantime, I will try to answer specific questions...

[quindia]

Hi quindia -

Beautiful map! So what is the backstory on Ram's Wall? It is so rare to see constructed features on a map of this scale it really jumped out at me...

-Rob A>

Ram's Wall is basically a Hadrian's Wall style structure built along the eastern border of the Kingdom of Bronet to protect the area from the denizen of the Troll Lands. Ram the Paladin, a high level character of a player in one of my games in the late 80's announced his intention to build such a fortress. There were already a series of forts along the border (see the original colored pencil map from website). The player actually worked out the cost at one point according to the DMG per mile and began allocating resources to the fortress. Realistically, I didn't give out that kind of treasure, but the idea was so cool, I began to devote resources from Bronet.

The PC eventually became an NPC, but his goal in the game carried on. Over the years, the wall was expanded. Sometimes, decades passed between campaigns and the wall grew more quickly. At one point civil war in Bronet ended construction for a generation. In the current time line, Ram has passed on, the civil war is over and new king reigns from Haven, but strife and skirmishes with the neighboring Kingdom of Goland (they supported a loosing claim during the civil war) have still kept any new resources from being alloted to construction. Not only that, the wall is crumbling or even collapsed in places. The time may come when the new king wishes he would have seen to Ram's Wall sooner...

This kind of stuff is the reason I keep returning to Quindia. There is a history that has evolved that I could never have written.

[quindia]

I love the idea of the map evolving with the play! Did you draw the trees individually by hand or was it a pattern fill? They look gorgeous!

Insanely, the trees are drawn individually. The Jungles of Omeer contain over 3500 of the little buggers. The good news is that I only had to draw about 1000 before I had enough to start a copy/paste routine to expand the initial section. Variation was created by mirroring sections, deleting or adding individual trees to make the pastes fit together without patterns, and occasionally hand drawing new small sections. After the Jungles of Omeer were finished, I was able to grab chunks of it, drop it down in another spot and delete or rearrange pieces to form new sections of woodland.

Another cool aspect of vector maps - if I decide to work up a full color version, I can instantly go into my "Forest" layer, select all, and fill every one of these trees with a shade of green (which I would then likely import into Photopaint to add textures and airbrush color variations).