D&D (Dungeons and Dragons) and other RPGs (role-playing games) got me into cartography as a kid in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Now my mapping takes two forms: [1] census mapping for research and teaching; and [2] world-building and dungeon mapping for role-playing games with my friends. Sadly (?), the two rarely cross.
I usually use QGIS (though before the pandemic I used ESRI products) and MS-Excel (for cleaning .csv files) for the first. Very rarely I have used R in this capacity. While there is something that feels very precise and systematic about these kinds of maps, they lack the personality of my maps for RPG games. My RPG maps are almost always hand-drawn, sometimes on hex paper (especially the kind used in organic chemistry, which has much larger hexes than the older hobbyist hex paper), sometimes graph paper and sometimes lineless paper. Since the pandemic in 2020, my local RPG group has taken to using Discord and Owlbear Rodeo for playing online, as one of our number has a compromised immune system. In those cases, I usually scan my maps and then upload them to Discord or Owlbear Rodeo. I'm particularly pleased with my few isometric maps.
I'm able to use many of the techniques I developed as a kid and gamer in making my RPG maps. Sadly, these don't come through in my work maps; I had to learn formal cartographic techniques once I became a tenure-track professor, as I always took statistics courses through my degrees when I could have taken a cartography or GIS course (even though all my degrees are in Geography). I regret my lack of formal cartographic training, though our map librarian has hammered me into a serviceable one when it comes to map composition and the like; they also taught me how to use GIS.
Here is the crux of why I am posting: Many of the landform illustrations you show above are akin to those that captured (and still capture) my geographical imagination (in the literal sense, as the places I imagine are often only in my mind until I map them). In particular, the Molday version of Basic or Expert D&D (ca. 1980) made use of map symbols that must have been influenced by Raiitz's symbology. Thank you for providing these citations. As a kid and since then, I've noted the various cartographic styles or genres I see in RPG maps. Products by Chaosium (e.g., Runequest, Call of Cthulhu) drew on symbology that often incorporated elevation lines or hatched hill lines. Judges (sic) Guild products incorporated the stencilled (?) trees of yore. TSR (and later Wizards of the Coast) tended to incorporate simpler maps, but not always, and they championed isometric cut-away view maps. In this century, Goodman Games has continued using isometric maps and top down dungeon maps that appear to be hand drawn, though were probably also modified in a graphics program. I could go on. Hmm. Maybe I could write a paper about the evolution of mapping conventions and genres in RPG games, assuming nobody else has done that.
Anyway, thanks for the post. It was a lovely break from answering email about marking guides.
D&D (Dungeons and Dragons) and other RPGs (role-playing games) got me into cartography as a kid in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Now my mapping takes two forms: [1] census mapping for research and teaching; and [2] world-building and dungeon mapping for role-playing games with my friends. Sadly (?), the two rarely cross.
I usually use QGIS (though before the pandemic I used ESRI products) and MS-Excel (for cleaning .csv files) for the first. Very rarely I have used R in this capacity. While there is something that feels very precise and systematic about these kinds of maps, they lack the personality of my maps for RPG games. My RPG maps are almost always hand-drawn, sometimes on hex paper (especially the kind used in organic chemistry, which has much larger hexes than the older hobbyist hex paper), sometimes graph paper and sometimes lineless paper. Since the pandemic in 2020, my local RPG group has taken to using Discord and Owlbear Rodeo for playing online, as one of our number has a compromised immune system. In those cases, I usually scan my maps and then upload them to Discord or Owlbear Rodeo. I'm particularly pleased with my few isometric maps.
I'm able to use many of the techniques I developed as a kid and gamer in making my RPG maps. Sadly, these don't come through in my work maps; I had to learn formal cartographic techniques once I became a tenure-track professor, as I always took statistics courses through my degrees when I could have taken a cartography or GIS course (even though all my degrees are in Geography). I regret my lack of formal cartographic training, though our map librarian has hammered me into a serviceable one when it comes to map composition and the like; they also taught me how to use GIS.
Here is the crux of why I am posting: Many of the landform illustrations you show above are akin to those that captured (and still capture) my geographical imagination (in the literal sense, as the places I imagine are often only in my mind until I map them). In particular, the Molday version of Basic or Expert D&D (ca. 1980) made use of map symbols that must have been influenced by Raiitz's symbology. Thank you for providing these citations. As a kid and since then, I've noted the various cartographic styles or genres I see in RPG maps. Products by Chaosium (e.g., Runequest, Call of Cthulhu) drew on symbology that often incorporated elevation lines or hatched hill lines. Judges (sic) Guild products incorporated the stencilled (?) trees of yore. TSR (and later Wizards of the Coast) tended to incorporate simpler maps, but not always, and they championed isometric cut-away view maps. In this century, Goodman Games has continued using isometric maps and top down dungeon maps that appear to be hand drawn, though were probably also modified in a graphics program. I could go on. Hmm. Maybe I could write a paper about the evolution of mapping conventions and genres in RPG games, assuming nobody else has done that.
Anyway, thanks for the post. It was a lovely break from answering email about marking guides.
Best Regards,
Jeff