Wyvern's Wood - A Handdrawn Fantasy Map

Wyvern

Seeing the maps appearing on the Forum using this new style already, it's perhaps unsurprising I've felt the need to join in, as much as anything because the main sample map that comes with the Handdrawn Fantasy Annual style included The Wyvern's Wood!

In a break with my usual mapping too, this one isn't intended for the Community Atlas (although it's possible it may eventually feature there, probably in a variant form). That orange outlining square shows the region I picked to illustrate from the sample map.

Having had a long fascination with woodlands for fantasy mapping and scenario designing, I was somewhat spoilt for choice as to which of my previous RPG-related settings to draw upon in creating this map. What I went with was a selection of items from a storyline drafted in 1993. I'd intended it originally as a one-off scenario, run using the Call of Cthulhu rules, for a twice-yearly gaming convention I attended for much of the 1990s. The design though grew into something that needed a longer timescale as a short campaign instead, and ultimately, it was never run at all.

That scenario was a modern-day one, set initially on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall, England, and which included various loosely Arthurian and mythological items, then increasingly introducing horror and surreal elements, rising to a chaotic finale. What I've extracted from it here are specific significant locations, adding them to the new map in no strong order, since the originals were designed to be encountered in only a rough order anyway - and in some cases repeatedly. Most of that detail and pathway structure has naturally been omitted here.

So this is what I came up with:

As is obvious though, I had to draw on other handdrawn styles from SS1 in identifying the various features, to highlight them sufficiently, and their sizing is of course hopelessly out of scale, as so often happens with this kind of pictorial map. Maybe though some of these added symbols might give some ideas for future expansions of the new style!

Ralf

Lovely stuff, thank you for expanding on the sample map! :D