While still in full-on Gamer ADD mode because of this gorgeous little package, I stumbled across this map via the internet:
This, I believe, comes from the Necromancer Games adventure Shades of Gray designed for 3e. Note two things:
- It depicts part of the map provided with the SWLP.
- According to the scale of this map the distance between Darnagal and Potter's Field is about 50 miles.
To put this in context, I looked up my old stomping ground on Google Maps and planned a trip from the Boston Convention Center in downtown Boston to Fenway Park. This morning, the fastest route was 7.7 miles. If we did to Boston what Frog God Games has done to their world, that distance would now be 46.2 miles. A trip of about 17 minutes is ballooned to a trip of over an hour. At that distance, the Boston Red Sox really aren't in Boston anymore.
I have no issue with Frog God Games trying to make their world much bigger than what it has been is the past, but not only does it make the map provided in the SWLP useless, it also radically changes the material previously provided by Necromancer Games and Frog God Games. If I ever wanted to run Shades of Gray, for example, I would either have to ditch the map from the SWLP or re-write significant portions of the adventure to fit the new scale.
Or, as I mentioned in my previous post, I can just drop the '0' from the '50' and use the map as it was originally designed.
5 comments:
I feel you, scale matters. A 50 mile hex is an area over 2,000 square miles. 5 such hexes would hold the entire tate I live in. Unless it's an empty howling wilderness villages wouldn't even be marked on such a map. Better to go with the 5 miles a hex.
Your math here made me consider another possibility: what if the 50 mile hex was intended to be a 50 square mile hex? That would put the distance across one hex at around 7 miles, which matches up pretty well with the difference in the maps, and makes me wonder if that's not where the mistake was made.
As awesome as this idea is, it doesn't reflect what Frog God Games says about their own world. I found this quote in a preview of Stoneheart Valley:
The Lost Lands starts with The Lone Goldfish map and grows from there. You’ll notice that there was no scale on The Lone Goldfish map, which is good because The Lost Lands are big...way bigger than the scale on the K6 map would indicate. We’ll still incorporate the Shades of Gray map into the final product, but it’s going to require some modification and scaling to make it fit.
the history of cartography is full of imperfections. so what?
you are the boss decide which is reality.
Yes. Yes I am (at least in this case).
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