Hexmap Reminiscences

Nostalgia, in small doses, is a delightful pastime.

And to paraphrase Fallen London, in larger doses it proves one of the very worst ways to die. To finish out the month I have decided to look at my pre-digital mapmaking efforts. Originally my intent was to write a longer philosophical post on the nature of digital versus physical gaming and how Comp/CON represents an existential threat to civilization as we know it, but my thoughts refused to coalesce into something of postable lucidity. These maps are not my earliest, not by a long shot, but they are the earliest I can find.

With all that said, let us begin. The above map is faded both due to being used as the cover for my tabletop binder and because it is in reality two maps. The sketched map is laid across a printed hexgrid, this being in the years before I discovered DrawHexGrid when I had to print out grids found through searching. The game this map covered was a short-lived attempt at remotely running my native Pathfinder 1e during the early days of the Pandemic, notable only for how quickly my players and I became distracted. It was an uncertain time, to be sure. Eventually I ran Curse of Strahd in 5e over Winter 2020 to avoid having to prepare an entire game from scratch.

At first, I thought this map was one from a pre-pandemic game about Sky Islands, but in reality I believe it dates to around Summer 2021. The specific way the biome colours change indicates that I was trying to follow a tutorial about how to delineate climate zones on a map, and that this was a test case. I do not believe it ever saw use in a game.

This map was used as background for an Autumn 2021 airship-focused one-shot descended from the aforementioned sky islands game. The players were tasked with taking a mysterious package West across a mountain range, through the vaguely Great War battlefields of the map, and to the central castle which resembled Mont Saint Michel in France. This game was notable for the theming effort I undertook, having shifting location-appropriate images on wall displays, a fully integrated soundtrack, and a homemade Maconochie stew replica served at the halfway point. It was fairly linear, but judging from the reception it got, still well received.

Here is a map with an early appearance of my cloud-tracing technique, used in Autumn 2022 to create another island for an airship one-shot. In this one the players figured out how to navigate from one part of the island to the other around dynamic weather patterns and an often mechanically uncooperative ship. While less spectacular in presentation than the previous adventure, I preferred it for the less guided and more immersive aspects. The map itself has spine-based mountains where I would start with the spine and draw branching slopes outwards from there.

Hexmap, date unknown. This was never used in a game. I remember little about it, save that it was created during a thunderstorm and that I ate a meatball sub sandwich on the same day. It was a good sandwich.

The island in this map was used for a breezy and low-stakes series of adventures in Summer 2023, which could be called a campaign in a loose sort of sense. The lines here are not roads, but rather the monolithic and overgrown ruins of vast canals and fortifications. These adventures marked the first in-game appearance of some ideas which still crop up in my games, like steam-powered longships and pirate parliaments. The outline was traced from a cloud by hand, which is also the case for the next map.

This map is from what I would consider my last completed campaign, run across Spring and Summer 2022. The game itself took place largely in the top right area, but events from other regions did bleed into play over time. The setting of this map also contained two one-shots, a series of connected short adventures, and the introductory scenario for Curse of Strahd. As of writing, it was the last game I ran in 5e before swearing off the system in favour of strange homebrew and older systems.

It has been over a year since I last ran even a one-shot. Playing Pathfinder 2e is nice, but I really should get back into the game master's chair. It is comfier in there, even if one has to work hard to avoid slipping out. These maps help remind me of the joys that can be found in that position.