Pleased we could help a little here!

I'd forgotten how much information had already been presented on this topic using the BEDMAP2 data - it was all a few years ago now we discussed it first, of course!

With online searching, sometimes it just needs an extra, or slightly different, word, and even then, you've often got to hunt through the list to track down the specific item of most use, assuming what you need is even there at all.

And I REALLY wish I could find the off switch for the dratted AI "findings" Google now insists on stuffing at the top of a search list, given these are almost always pure fantasy (their AI doesn't handle interpretation of factual data at all well, it seems).

Not sure if you've seen this FAQ post by Monsen Scott, but it may help.

Thinking more about the new Sticky Note Dungeon Annual just released yesterday, while checking it over and afterwards, it occurred to me that with a few additions, it could be used equally to generate a form of point-crawl overland map too. For those unfamiliar, this is a sketch that links places of interest in a pattern to identify how the various points can be reached, without bothering too much about the exact distances, directions or terrains intervening - except that things such as intervening difficult terrain might mean no direct links, with instead a set of further points bypassing the blocking feature to be encountered along the way.

As an example, I created this map almost ten years ago now for a wargaming magazine article on Jason and the Argonauts, showing a stylized series of overland connections along the western and northern Black Sea shores of Anatolia, into about the middle of that great peninsula, and along the coast north to modern Georgia, ancient Colchis:

This isn't all that clear at the usual Forum resolution, so I've added a further version at higher-res to my Gallery.

Thus essentially what can be drawn for such a system is a very simplified map, one that here even ignores the coast, and features only the main river lines of significance, chiefly those that cross travel routes, all in a rather abstract manner.

Something that's long been of interest to me has been trying to map the places referred to in H. P. Lovecraft's stories concerning his Dreamlands. I've had a couple of tries at this myself, the first time almost 40 years ago, and another that sadly didn't get very far more recently, using the beautiful E Prybylski Watercolour style from last year's Annual. Several other vastly superior to me artists have created their own versions of such a map over the years too, which all have their pros and cons.

One main difficulty is the details in Lovecraft's tales don't include things such as specific distances, or where different places might lie in relation to those mentioned in one story, and perhaps only obliquely referred to in another. Distances might be given in terms of hours or days sailed or flown on sea or in the air, or overland by yak, zebra or on foot, or might just be stated as being a long way apart. It's possible to estimate real distances by making assumptions, but this still doesn't help in locating where some of the places mentioned, but not passed through, or directly connected to elsewhere, were.

In the stories, as it would in genuine dreams, this all makes perfect sense, since these aren't real places, and Lovecraft was a lifetime lucid dreamer, so was writing more or less from experience. As a mapper though, it quickly becomes problematic.

However, the Sticky Note concept helps here, by generating a means to show places with some details about them, and lines showing how they connect, without worrying about details on exact directions, distances or even the size of a given place.

So I tried a quick version as a test earlier today. Had to create a couple of new drawing tools, and import a bunch of symbols from the SS1 Handrawn Hollow set, but it was all pretty straightforward. I drew out just the places along the Southern Sea coast, heading westwards from the great city of Dylath-Leen, as described by Lovecraft, using an annotated hand-sketch I'd prepared last year when working on the E Prybylski version:

Obviously, a lot more could be done than I've tried here, and this is a bit rough-and-ready in places, but the basic concept seems sound.

These SS1 hand-drawn symbols seem to work quite nicely, although I'm sure none of us would be averse to having a purpose-made set in the C. C. Charon style, should an overland version of the Sticky Note style be offered subsequently 😁!

(We might need an A3 or larger option for the paper to draw world-sized maps though 😉)

And now the Sticky Dungeon has been released into the wild, as the October 2024 Cartographer's Annual issue!

Many congratulations to C.C. for this fantastic achievement!

So finally, an actual map I DID make here!

The area map was going to be drawn and filled first. While the basic format for the style of hex-map was already established, I had some new sets of random design mechanics I wanted to try, to determine what was going to be in those identified hexes. These would later have Shadowdark notes added into the map's PDF file, where relevant, to keep a degree of consistency with the other maps in this current collection.

So the contents for each labelled hex were determined using, or adapted from, tables and random processes in "Into the Wild - Omnibus Edition" (from Third Kingdom Games, 2023). This is designed to work with the Old-School Essentials RPG by Necrotic Gnome, so it draws on creatures from that, and other associated sources among the established "old-school-rules" form of the RPG hobby (as to an extent does Shadowdark). This was my first time using Into the Wild, and it proved something of a challenge, as its layout is not the clearest to find things quickly, or avoid accidentally missing some key element. It did though come up with a lot of interesting ideas, sometimes after a little tweaking, and with occasional additions from the random Shadowdark tables.

The nature of the area, having wildly magical, magic-free and normal magic regions, meant I was looking primarily for unusual creatures or aspects for whatever came up randomly, and so often chose tables accordingly. I also opted to check for both features and creatures in each highlighted hex, again with adaptations, so not everywhere ended up with both elements. One aspect I decided against was involving any high-tech aspects from the barrows also appearing on the surface, as I quite liked the idea that only if a party of adventurers opened one of the barrow entrances and failed to close it properly, might those denizens begin creeping out into the world.

As noted for previous of my area maps, once the features list is decided, other aspects of the map start to fall into place, here including where the streams might lie, as well as larger areas of new terrain types, including some odd, black-sand dunes, and low hills, notably towards the eastern side of the magic-free and wild magic regions. After which it was time to progress to the CC3+ mapping:

This too proved quite a challenge, since the forest density originally hid too much of the normal hex lines (those not highlighted) and had to be revised a couple of times, to try to keep things clear enough while not looking too hex-based. Similarly, ensuring the highlighted-hex symbols weren't overwhelmed by the trees involved more tinkering. The No Magic Zone was possibly the easiest, as it was just the background colour revealed by punching a Color Key hole though the overlying terrain fills, creating the Wild Magic Zone's circuit simultaneously - that circuit achieved by a desert (dot-shaded) terrain fill polygon, without any effects to ensure the edges were sufficiently obvious.

A few extra symbol-shapes had to be hand drawn, such as the little pools (of mercury) in Hex 807, and the depressions in Hex 905 (harpy dust baths), one more of which items was resized and reused as the sinkhole for the stream in Hex 1102. Most other highlighted hex features were either normal symbols, or resized ones (sometimes resized differently in one or both dimensions).

The main drawn items were the three gigantic barrows, which were so large, they needed preparing as specific items. From the start, I thought they'd be more interesting as definite circles, as that seemed weirder than making them less neat and regular, aside from, of course, being easier to draw! Ultimately, I simply drew the first one, then copied it to the other two locations. Initially, I created a new drawing tool to prepare the outer circuit as white with a dark grey outline. However, that proved problematic at the join where the avenue leading in to the centre of the barrow was, with the darker outline showing a break there. Thus that idea was scrapped, and the outer circuit drawn instead using a dark and a white line of different widths on separate sheets. The little cross-lines, helping to suggest the outer stone walling (I've pretty much envisaged these as gigantic versions of the great Newgrange barrow in Ireland), were simply hand-drawn, and are deliberately not all straight or evenly-spaced, to hint at something maybe less manufactured about these structures, despite their overall regular forms. The interior dome was drawn using a Solid White 10 fill circle, or more accurately, copied and amended to be so from one of the outer circuit lines, onto a new Barrows sheet. This had a suitable lighted bevel effect added, tweaked to help darken the domes to make them stand out better. For some reason, the Solid White fill worked better than the Solid one in doing so.

Labelling the map wasn't altogether straightforward either, trying not to hide too many of the dead tree symbols, and avoiding the highlighted hexes, while still making clear what was being labelled. The "Scale" note was the most trying (bottom right corner), as having just squeezed in a "Feralwood Forest" label on that side of the map, I couldn't decide if I should lose the eleventh hex in column 1600 to keep the scaling comment on two lines, or lengthen it to three. In the end, the latter won out, as the map felt lopsided because of that missing end-hex. Well, I kept noticing it, at least!

Onward now to the subterranea!

[EDIT 19 November 2024: Although I originally added the provisional PDF description for the map to this post, I've removed it now, as the final version has been submitted for the Atlas!]