Postcard Maps
Wyvern
🖼️ 280 images Cartographer
In my accidental "voyage of discovery" of non-standard maps this year, following my learning of the playing card maps highlighted here earlier, recently I came across some old UK annotated postcard maps, not least one that the H P Lovecraft Historical Society reprinted as a physical prop with one of their series of 1920s-30s-style audio programmes, "The Iron Maiden", published early last year. Mostly, these "Dark Adventure Radio Theatre" shows are based on the works of H P Lovecraft and similar horror writers of that period and before. The prop in question was this map of the Isle of Wight off the south coast of England, from the 1920s:
This style of map could be quite easily drawn using CC3+, and I particularly liked the annotations, as elements it would be easy to add to such a small-area map to inspire adventures in a fantasy setting, notably that short list, the "Six wonders of Wight".
Again, like the county playing card maps, this could be something readily adapted for RPG mapping use, I think, to give a fresh twist on how they appear. Of course, a dedicated style, with suitable feature symbol illustrations for CC3+, wouldn't go amiss either!
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Resurrecting this topic, as another, but much larger, map in a similar style has recently come to my attention, as a version of it was recently republished by the H P Lovecraft Historical Society as a period prop to accompany their latest Dark Adventure Radio Theatre audio show, "The Blood Red Sphinx". It's a 1932 pictorial map of the Greater Los Angeles area:
The reason I can post it here, is because this version comes from Wikimedia, and that's where you can find a much larger, higher-res version (albeit the Index list is STILL too small on the largest version to read clearly!). Its colour palette reminds me of the beautiful E Prybylski Watercolour style, from the 2023 Cartographer's Annual. All we'd need is a vast array of suitable building and other object symbols to match 😉😁!
It's a very pretty map. Thanks for sharing the info :)
https://www.loc.gov/collections/panoramic-maps/
That is a pretty cool postcard map.
I may try that for a few fantasy cities.