Maps of The Land

Map I

Our first campaign map and the first view of The Land. This was hand drawn on a large sheet of quarter inch graph paper. This map was produced for our very first role playing campaign while we were still at school around 1978. The campaign was run with FGU's Chivalry and Sorcery (C&S) role play rules. Each player was a feudal lord with their own retinue and holdings, we bought and painted miniatures for our soldiers and plotted! Chris umpired the game and played the King of Loran, Alex was a Dwarven Lord. The campaign didn't actually last very long as the players fell out over an act of treachery during the first battle. The Campaign was fairly memorable in spite of its short duration and got us started on role play and campaign games. The original map gathered dust in our parents attic for many years except when it was brought out for an argument!

Map II - loran_map_2.jpg - 317 k

The Map II file is a scan of our second version of the map of The Land. It was drawn by Chris in early 1985 when he started work as an architectural technician. Copies were made at various scales and some were coloured. This map was used as background for our 'The Fantasy Trip' (TFT) role playing game. Most of the 'current' history of The Land comes from this campaign and some of the original characters are still around.

The TFT campaign setting of The Land is very different from the original C&S version. Much of the Geography and place names remained from the original campaign but the world has been moved back to a 'Hyborean Age'. Government is by individual city states, technology is mainly bronze age, Iron is a recent introduction and horse riding is a barbarian novelty not to be undertaken by civilised folks who prefer chariots. Most trade is carried out along the navigable rivers. The old Kingdom from the first campaign has been split between Alexan and Loran, barbarians trouble the borders and a new power has burst out of the east with the Toltac empire.

Map III - loran_map_3.gif - 88.25 k

In the early 90's Chris started using Computer Aided Drawing at work. About the same time Chris started playing in Dave Grantham's PBM Umpire (PBMU) [1*] Space campaign at Humberside Wargames Society, this inspired several players to start their own wargame campaigns. Chris played in several of them and started producing his own campaign maps using EasyCAD. Originally the maps were just route diagrams with no geographical detail, they were used to plot troop movements and resources.

Then in 1994 Chris set up his 'Interesting Times' campaign. This is a Play-By-Mail wargame campaign set in The Land using PBM Umpire to manage the campaign and Hordes of the Things rules for table top battles. The game ran with 8 - 12 players each running a nation with their own land and armies. Player orders were monthly at first slowing down later and gave six campaign turns for each game year. The last turn is still waiting to be played.

This map was drawn using EasyCAD and updated as Chris acquired newer versions of the software. It included cities, provinces and routes between them, major geographical features such as mountain ranges, rivers, forests and marshes are shown. The map is based on Map II with additional minor provinces and expansions into the barbarian territory. All provinces are named. Numbers on routes indicate the distance and relative dificulty of each route. Later editions of this map included the Islands and other new provinces.

Map IV - loran_map_4.gif - 235.80 k

This map was drawn by Chris using Campaign Cartographer [*2]. It is styled after early English county maps such as by Saxton or Speed with the addition of roads for the convenience of players! This is the pretty version of the campaign map from our PBM Umpire Campaign. It's also now effectively the background map for the role playing campaign, though they don't cover the same time period. The role play campaign takes place when the wargame campaign is history.

1* - PBM Umpire
PBM Umpire is a brilliant shareware program produced by Richard Bodley Scott; co-author of De Bellus Antiquatus (DBA) and Hordes of the Things (HOTT) miniatures wargames rules. Its a campaign management system that lets players run nations and move armies around then fight out battles on the table top.
[See http://www.byzant.demon.co.uk/pbmump.htm ]

2* - Campaign Cartographer
"If you must have maps, check this program out. I sure haven't seen anything I like better."
Jerry Pournelle on CC2
[See http://www.profantasy.com/ ]

The Fantasy Trip, In The Labyrinth, Advanced Melee and Advanced Wizard are copyright ©1980 by Metagaming, Game Design by Steve Jackson.

This page is owned and managed by Chris Nicole,
Page created; Tuesday, 4 December 2001 , last updated; Tuesday, 23 October 2007 .