an Old school city map with CC3

[Richardb]

Now that is a city!! Wow, and an investment in time. Very nice.

Thanks,
one of the things I love about this style of city map, is that is captures this sense of this entire world behind the walls. Imagine the scope of this city, most of the poor inhabitants would never likely see the world beyond their quarter, much less outside of the walls. An entire world of adventure lies within each district, in the streets, in the buildings, and below them.

[pyrandon]

All I can say is "wow." Now THAT's a dedicated world-builder!

[Richardb]

You're really gonna laugh at this: the maps are often the easy part. I have world maps that are supported by word docs up to 200 pages long! Those often take longer than the maps. I was talking to someone about this a month ago, and admitted that I had one world and supporting doc and population spreadhsheets (40 tab spreadsheet and charts) that took about 400 hours or so over the course of a year+

[RPMiller]

And the reason you aren't publishing these is...?

[Richardb]

Publish? I just don't generally think that way. Maps are like writing for me, a creative outlet. I certainly have enough material to publish... I suppose I have at least 400 finished maps, maybe more, many with some form of documentation. We'll see.

[Gamerprinter]

Expect to see two of Richard's worlds being made available at Gamer Printshop we've just started a project together...

He will publish and I'll print, as well as setup graphics, website and marketing.

Shhh... I didn't tell you anything...

[Richardb]

As long as Gameprinter makes it easy... I'll go with it! As long as the business never gets in the way of making maps! (for me that is, or course he has to work on his business!) Me, I just want to crank out maps. Finished another last month (nice small world, humans are on the decline, forced inot a large river valley in the cold north, with advanced civilizations of other races pushing on all sides), and have a great one in the works now, really working on a true racial melting pot theory, trying to make a world where there is no dominant race, where interbreading has created numerous sub-types, and humans are not a race so much as the ultimate mongrel mix of many other races, and most of the world is emerging from tribal status, with a few powerful empires forming and driving across large swaths of land, disrupting great tribal nations.

I think POD's are a great service by the way, and think that the time will come when the industry comes to differentiate POD (the technology and the ability to reach niche markets) from the vanity press concept (dumping junk on the market with no selectivity based on making money by collecting fees from the author).

It looks to me like Gameprinter has the right idea here. The RPG industry stuggles with the financial side, and the small publishers have to make serious decisions about what material can go to market due to the concerns they have in significant cash outlays for materials that may or may not sell well. Great stuff ends up not getting to market...
A great example was the recent re-emergence of the Judges Guild. Some of the most innovative maps and fun material of the late 70's and 80's came from the Judges Guild. They come back, so a few really great re-do's, but just can't make the financials work well enough to keep the bigger publishing houses interested, because the materials are nichy, or just not publicized enough (which is also expensive). POD provides the way to reach niche audiences that may number in the hundreds, or a few thousand. The financail risk is minimized as costs are incurred only as a function of taking an order, not as a large pre-investment. A traditional publisher would really struggle making a living taking a risk putting out products for which there may be 1,000 buyers or less.

[loydb]

I still have my original City State of the Invincible Overlord maps That one holds up well in comparison! Nice work.

loyd

[RPMiller]

Expect to see two of Richard's worlds being made available at Gamer Printshop we've just started a project together...

He will publish and I'll print, as well as setup graphics, website and marketing.

Shhh... I didn't tell you anything...

Good to hear that my question didn't fall on deaf ears. Best of luck to you and Richard!

As an aside, I mentioned your name to another VTT/mapping person. You may get contacted soon. Hope it proves lucrative.