Fantasy Map of Darkwind Sea

[Harry Metcalf]

Below is a map from a solo session of Fantasy Map Maker: a game I designed to help fantasy cartographers generate ideas through a tabletop game.

In hindsight, the textures added to the oceans, land, and forests are probably a bit too similar and don't improve the "readability" of these parts of the map. Still, I am mostly happy with the map as I think it hints at some interesting aspects: the north is mostly uninhabitable, a strangely inhabited volcanic island exists in the ocean, a religious community exists in the southeast, and so on.

From a game design perspective, the variable quests and event set-up of the game, along with the randomness of the dice, have been incorporated to ensure each map is not only different, but also challenges the player/artist by forcing them to consider different situations that arise within the game (I wouldn't naturally draw the volcanic island so far away from anything else, for example). Being a game, there are some conceits involved - the scale of the maps are relatively small, and there can only be so many features within any one map - but within these restrictions, I hope there is enough variety for the average cartography fan.

Game: Fantasy Map Maker (drawn in Procreate)
Actual game time: 60 minutes
Touch-ups: 90 minutes

Map only:


Full Game Sheet: