The remainder of the Aunty MacKassa maps are now shown and discussed here.

Resuming the presentation of the final maps linked to Errynor Map 01 from previously, all concerning the deep-sea hag Aunty MacKassa, we must now zoom right in to Aunty's deep-sea-bed home:

From early in the process of constructing Aunty's lair, I wanted both a fixed-spot home cave, and at least one unusual vehicle, to let her get out and about in "her" 50-mile zone, as established earlier, more readily. This is what some hags have in real-world folklore after all, such as Baba Yaga's chicken-legged hut and flying mortar and pestle. I settled on two smaller "spare" random cave designs from what I'd downloaded from the Curufea's Random Cave Map Generator website earlier as suitable for her coral cavern lair, providing a pair of subterranean levels. These were chosen mostly because each had one cave of a form roughly like the stern of a ship, and a shipwrecked vessel seemed the most obvious choice for a deep-sea hag's vehicle. My idea was, being a faerie creature, and thus seemingly able to circumvent physical "laws" most folks take for granted as "normal", that Aunty would be able to shift her lair effortlessly between cave and vehicle whenever she chose, so a similar shape and size for at least part of both seemed reasonable. Then an idea for a second vehicle, suitable for amphibious sea to land transport, came about too, from which the clearest option was a hut made from another shipwreck, with - what else? - gigantic crab legs.

As I knew elements would need to be copied between all three of these maps, I decided to use the standard DD3 mapping package, except for the fonts. The Coral Cave map was done first (using the East Anglia font from the 2012 Cartographer's Annual):

The hatch and ladder between the levels of the Home Cave were chosen to fit with the ship's-cabin concept, of course, while the scatter of clutter and treasure (if it is) was distributed as a compromise between the classic D&D very cluttered hag's lair, and a map that could be read still. Although the deep-sea hag creature is largely an idea of my own of old, it has always been heavily influenced by D&D, and as the 5th edition allows powerful hags to have an assortment of servants, I came up with the illustrated variants of Undersea Gargoyles and Shadow Killer Rays here (the latter drawing partly on a 1953 short story by Joseph Payne Brennan, "Slime", which made a lasting impact on me when I first read it as a youngster). The illustrations for the latter, the north pointer, and the "sunken" border around the Lower Level map segment, were enhanced thanks to the chance publication of Remy Monsen's blog posting on the use of Bevel Effects to create sunken "carvings" on floors while I was preparing this map.

Then I thought it would be interesting to see just what Aunty MacKassa looked like. So I constructed this image of her, using CA3:

As usual, there'll be a PDF and series of text-file notes available in the Atlas to explain the game-relevant map details, from which you can discover why she has a long, bone hairpin in her grasp, and a pair of gold-tinted spectacles in her other hand, should you wish! Plus of course, I added her face to the Coral Cave map to serve as the Atlas link-point to this portrait.

We've had this discussion before Mike, I fear. The reality is that most people playing board wargames aren't in the military and most never will have been, so the actual real-world map (which itself is only an abstraction of the reality anyway, of course) isn't going to be of significance for players of the game at all. Indeed for many, it will be hopelessly confusing.

The reason the last map style you showed is used so heavily in many published hex-wargame boards is it allows the game to flow easily, with players being able to immediately identify what is where, and how best to plan what they intend to try. While I can understand this brushes-up sharply against your sensibilities as a real-world field commander, this isn't how most players will think. While a field commander can look over a topographic map with trained eyes and identify the same things the abstracted game map shows clearly, hardly any game players will have that capability, which is naturally why the game map needs to so abstracted in the first place.

I think perhaps the way to approach this is to identify what the key terrain elements are that you want to reproduce in the game, bearing in mind what the capabilities are for the science-fiction forces you'll be using. For instance, if there are many units with hovercraft/GEV abilities, open ground, rivers, lakes and marshes are going to have almost no game effect for them, whereas rough ground, woods, heavily-built-up areas and steep slopes will (crude examples, but hopefully you see my point). Once you know that, you'll have a better idea what level of abstraction will work for what you need, I think.

Maybe the list should be given among the Resources on the Forum? I didn't even know it existed till now, and did wonder how a few people managed to show the tool buttons so easily and precisely.

It might be useful to have a series of Steampunk "add-on" symbols, for things such as pipes, machinery items, odd-looking consoles and other features, ad infinitum, rather than trying to create new house, etc., symbols with the pipework, gears, and so forth pre-attached. Obviously, there will need to be new vehicles, but even there, something like a "normal" steam locomotive could be created, to which fancy pipework & co could be added to taste by individual map makers.