A Tale of Three Worlds: Mystara, Mystoerth, and Mystaerth

Over the years I've used campaign material from the Known World and Mystara in various ways, adapting and adopting material here and there.

Twice I've made major adaptations, dropping the Known World and other elements of Mystara into other worlds wholesale, and vice-versa.

One of these efforts was Mystoerth, which combines Mystara and Greyhawk by dropping the Flanaess into the world of Mystara. Here is my Mystoerth map:

It is really great to see that others took and ran with the idea of Mystoerth, such as Tim Brannan on The Other Side Blog and his development of Mystoerth. Chatdemon's version of the map, which you can find at Tim's site, re-centered the map and added the parchment effect.

Another such effort was Mystaerth, which combined Mystara with the world of Aerth, the campaign setting from Gary Gygax's Dangerous Journeys: Mythus setting. Here is the map from that effort:

I really feel the need to return to Mystara soon. Just which Mystara, I'm not quite sure yet...

This post was inspired by Trey's posts on From the Sorcerer's Scroll about placing Karameikos and the other locations from Mystara in the Real World.

I should also note, inspired by Trey's post, I went and finally dug up a huge treasure trove of old Mystara files, some of them dating to 1994! Now to go through everything and see what passes the sniff test...

[TOEE] Local Cultures, Elemental Evil Domain, and Minor Map Revisions

Here are the latest updates on the development of my 5E Temple of Elemental Evil Campaign:

I have completed my write-up of the local cultures, human and demi-human:

Dwarves: Graybeard Mountain Dwarves of the Lortmil Mountains.

Gnomes: Curelneblin Rock Gnomes of the Kron Hills, Neurlneblin Forest Gnomes of the Gnarly Forest.

Elves: Arostorin High Elves of Celene & Verbobonc, Gorgladhrim Sylvan Elves of the Gnarly Forest.

Halflings: Noniz Halflings of the Uleks.

Humans: Flannae (Adohinagi of the Gnarly Forest and Welkwood, Digadushi of the Kron Hills and Lortmil Mountains), Kronfolk of the Kron Hills, and Velvervyn of Verbobonc.

E-mail me at jamesmishler and gmail dot com if you want a copy of the PDF. 

Next I am going to finish the Random Encounters and Geographical Regions sections. Here's a sample of that:

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I developed an Elemental Evil Domain for use by the clergy of the Temple of Elemental Evil. It is available as a PWYW product on Dungeon Masters Guild. Click here to go there and get it.

Please let me know what you think!

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Finally, some minor changes on the map:

[TOEE] New 5E Greyhawk Campaign OAR6 Temple of Elemental Evil

 I have started a new Fifth Edition Dungeons & Dragons campaign using Goodman Games' Original Adventures Reincarnated #6 -- The Temple of Elemental Evil.

While I very much enjoy most of the conversion, one thing that I felt needed more personalization was the map of the environs of Hommlet and Nulb, the easternmost section of the Kron Hills and westernmost portion of the Gnarly Forest. And so I have made a new map; it is more focused than that of OAR6, covering only the area of the original map included with the TOEE, so it is about 30 miles north-south by 50 miles east-west, or thereabouts.

It is also much more solidly packed with lesser and side adventures than OAR6 or the original. I based the amount of potential adventures on Gary's Random Wilderness Terrain generator (Appendix B, 1E DMG p. 173), which assumes a scale of 1 mile per hex (as I have for this map), and therein 1 in 6 hexes thereof should have some sort of settlement, stronghold, or ruin (in addition to any monstrous lairs). In the case of the region, most settlements and strongholds are ruins, of course, and I also folded monstrous lairs and special locales into the fold; yet even with seeding only one locale in 10 hexes, I still have 138 locations on the map!

I am assuming population density of around 10 per square mile, equivalent to that of the North of England after The Bastard's Harrowing. 

It gives the whole a very Wilderlands-esque feel. Excellent!

As it is getting late, without any further ado, here is the map. Email me at jamesmishler at gmail dot com if you want a larger version.

Right Click and Open in New Tab to Embiggen... 

[World of Greyhawk] Hexographer Map of the Thillonrian Peninsula

The World of Greyhawk continues to hold my interest and inspire my work, and from time to time I like to clear my head with some general cartographic work on Hexographer. So as I did earlier with the Central Flanaess, now I have put together a Hexographer map of the Thillonrian Peninsula -- the home of the Frost, Ice, and Snow Barbarians, as well as the Hold of Stonefist. This is a big, empty land, By the Map, and so were I to set a campaign here, I'd be adding a lot of new and interesting geography. But you got to start with the basic setup...

The Thillonrian Peninsula, or "Rhizia" as the natives call it, is essentially Oerth's Scandinavian Peninsula, complete with Vikings. I always found it odd that the G (Giants) and D (Drow) series of modules were placed much further south and west, in the Hellfurnaces, rather than in the Corusk Mountains, but that just shows that the various events of the south and central regions of Keoland and Greyhawk, both much more obviously directly derived from Gary's own "True Greyhawk," were much closer to his heart and mind. They could both readily be moved to this region; plenty of room for glaciers and volcanoes in the Corusk.

The map is pretty much as exact to the original Darlene map as I could make it with the classic Mystara-style hexes. As per the original, scale on this map is 1 hex = 10 leagues = 30 miles.

As always, email me at jamesmishler@gmail.com if you want the original Hexographer file or a larger PNG file.

Central Flanaess Map -- By the Map

Here is something I've been meaning to work on for some time -- a map of the Central Flanaess of the World of Greyhawk. I'm not sure it is dead on center, but it is centered the way I want it to be.

Here you have just about everything you need to have a full series of adventures in Greyhawk. Mountains, forests, plains, seas -- elves, dwarves, halflings, orcs, goblins -- great ruined piles and decadent cities, knights in shining armor and temples of Evil High Priests.

The map is pretty much as exact to the original Darlene map as I could make it with the classic Mystara-style hexes. As per the original, scale on this map is 1 hex = 10 leagues = 30 miles.

As always, email me at jamesmishler@gmail.com if you want the original Hexographer file or a larger PNG file.

Click to embiggen