Random Realm: Trimming the Map

I previously showed how I turned a map generated in Dwarf Fortress into something usable in a tabletop RPG game. At 250,948 square miles, the map that resulted is about 2.6 times the size of the UK, which is too large for a starting campaign. For this portion, I’m going to work on trimming the map down to a more manageable size and making it useful for actual gaming.

Step 4: Trim the Map(s)

Trimming the map is as simple as zooming in on a particular portion and cropping out the rest. Since I used a 24-mile hex scale previously, I can keep things at the same scale here. I’m not resizing things, I’m just cropping. Here’s the cropped map:

I chose this section based on the kind of terrain I thought would make for a fun campaign. I specifically wanted something temperate, with access to mountains, the sea, and not too many deserts. Deserts, to me, suggest a specific kind of campaign that’s different than standard D&D. Not to say that this will necessarily turn into bog-standard D&D, but I’m reasonably confident that I don’t want to run something with a lot of deserts.

 

 

 

Step 5: Convert to a Hex Map

I really like the look of the pretty map that the GIMP plugin created, but I find hex maps more useful on the GM side of the screen. My goal is to ultimately produce two maps: a graphically appealing fantasy map and a useful hex map.

To make a campaign hex map, I’m turning to yet another piece of software: Worldographer. One nice feature of this program is that it lets you drop an existing map onto a background layer to help decide where to place hexes representing the predominate terrain.

For that purpose, the original Dwarf Fortress ASCII map is actually a little more useful, because each of those ASCII symbols roughly translates into a specific type of terrain, which can in turn be represented by a single hex. The DF map, when cropped identically to the prettier map and dropped onto the Trace Underlay layer of Worldographer, looks like this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After I add hexes for Terrain, the map looks something like this:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next Steps

I’ll need to add more realistic coasts, terrain features like rivers, and make general improvements and tweaks to the campaign hex map.