A map that is not contained on a whole page, or series of pages.
You know the ones, you buy the book and it has a world in it, but the world doesn't go past the margin. Maybe there is a supplement coming out? But lots of them do it.
Example: Numenera. Earth's land masses billions of years in the future fall foul of the end of the world in terms of page lay out.
(http://i60.tinypic.com/10z21ap.jpg)
And Middle Earth too. Probably the most famous one. Why have I never heard talk about what happens "over there" past Rhun?
(http://i58.tinypic.com/admbg3.jpg)
Others do it, but this is the most obvious examples I have to hand. I know it takes a long time to fill these things out, and run them and all that. But back in the day Toril, Krynn, Mystara were all full worlds (eventually!). Maybe I am being impatient with these things?
Most human cultures throughout most of history have never really had access to an accurate map of "the whole world" and their conceptions of world maps were necessarily limited by their interactions with distant lands.
This Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_world_maps) is both relevant to the topic and full of interesting ancient maps.
In any case, this is why I'm okay with "limited" maps. Both the Middle-Earth and the smaller Numenera map contain enough adventure for a GM to run at least one long-term campaign. You don't need to have the whole world mapped for a cool fantasy campaign, any more than you need the whole galaxy or Universe mapped for your Traveller game.
Besides, blank spaces and "Here Be Dragons" are permission for a GM to trash the existing setting material and come up with his own. :)
Quote from: BarefootGaijin;785818You know the ones, you buy the book and it has a world in it, but the world doesn't go past the margin. Maybe there is a supplement coming out? But lots of them do it.
Because setting != world. Sure it part of a world but the focus of the book may be just on one region of it. And that the only region that will ever get a focus.
It like asking why maps of China isn't included in a book about Roman History. It because while Rome is part of the same planet as China, and had limited trade contacts, the simple fact is that Rome was centered around the Mediterranean so that region is where the focus of any maps are going to be.
Now a book on the world history from 5th century BC to 5th Century AD should have maps on China as it going to be talking about that region.
Quote from: BarefootGaijin;785818And Middle Earth too. Probably the most famous one. Why have I never heard talk about what happens "over there" past Rhun?
Well, I.C.E. did this:
(http://www.icewebring.com/ICE_Products/M2/images/2008.jpg)
(From here (http://www.icewebring.com/ICE_Products/M2/M2_2008_Poster_Map.php).)
And described a few of those other regions as well:
(http://www.icewebring.com/ICE_Products/M1/images/2500.jpg)
(From here (http://www.icewebring.com/ICE_Products/Product_Page.php?product_id=73%20Court%20of%20Ardor%20in%20Southern%20Middle-earth).)
Quote from: The Butcher;785821Most human cultures throughout most of history have never really had access to an accurate map of "the whole world" and their conceptions of world maps were necessarily limited by their interactions with distant lands.
This Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Early_world_maps) is both relevant to the topic and full of interesting ancient maps.
We're a bit spoiled by GPS, actually. That and Google maps, anyway.
Check out all this trouble - http://youtube.com/watch?v=qMkYlIA7mgw
And that's a relatively modern day scenario.
Theah (the setting of 7th Sea) has been guilty of the same thing:
(http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y210/Frukathka/Theah.jpg)
In that particularly case, it works though. In a game of pseudo-European swashbucklers that has just begun to enter the Age of Sail, it helps to keep focus to only map the civilized world precisely. Everything to the west can be "India", anything to the south can be the "Dark Continent" - and who would ever want to trek to Siberia anyway?
If anything, it would have been even better if Cathay and Eastern Ussura had been mostly dropped from the map, and mostly inaccurate doodles had been given about the "African" coastline and the islands of the "West Indies", along with "Here there be dragons" and "Beware of the cannibals" comments...
It is funny because I've got that problem with my High Valor map, and I never realized it was a problem until a couple years back and noticed how often fantasy settings tend to do the "look suddenly walls!" (I.e End of the map.)
Now to be fair, I've got sketches of a the rest of High Valor, of the southern landmass of Khazalith, and the far Eastern Regions of the Fallen lands, of the Islands to the south east of the Fallen Lands (Hijon) , and the continents that are not yet "discovered" to the West from the Free Kingdoms and Khazalith, but they're not final. I am not happy with the borders.
On the other hand most of my more modern fantasy maps that I've been working on don't have such page borders, I show the whole landmass, or whole world if I can manage it.
"Setting = Northwest corner of continent" has been a thing since a couple decades before Middle Earth - REH's Hyborian Age does the same thing. Since The Hyborian Age and Middle Earth Are pretty much the fantasy settings, and definitely the main plagiarized ones, it stands to reason RPG maps tend to do similar.
It's kinda sad that Moorcock's Young Kingdoms aren't plagiarized as much, since the YK Map isn't quite like that (Being more like a Map centered on the Mediterranean really). Or Leiber's Nehwon for that matter (allthough Nehwon is weird, much Stranger than most fantasy RPG settings) or Vance's Dying Earth (but ditto).
For a less well-known example there's K.E.Wagner's Kane setting wich maps the entirety of two continents (three if you count a major Island), allthough the Kane stories do span milennia. Certain areas still feel different but not dramatically (but then all modern* human civ in the setting originated in *one* city, wich fills the Atlantis role (an actual Atlantis would be wrong for the setting since it's Antediluvian...)).
*="advanced Medieval"
I have the opposite problem: I hate fantasy settings that include a map of the whole world, or even a substantial part of it, when the primary means of travel are the same as the Bronze or Iron Ages.
Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;785845Well, I.C.E. did this:
(http://www.icewebring.com/ICE_Products/M2/images/2008.jpg)
(From here (http://www.icewebring.com/ICE_Products/M2/M2_2008_Poster_Map.php).)
And described a few of those other regions as well:
(http://www.icewebring.com/ICE_Products/M1/images/2500.jpg)
(From here (http://www.icewebring.com/ICE_Products/Product_Page.php?product_id=73%20Court%20of%20Ardor%20in%20Southern%20Middle-earth).)
I like that!
But it probably says more about me as a player: If shown a map of the places
I could go and there is a region "off the map" I tend to think, "I want to go there. What's over there?"
Games of exploration and mapping, perhaps an uncharted sector in Traveller, or the translation of Ryuutama (the game about going on a journey) are a good fit. Different strokes for different folks, expectations and so on.
Games about Rome, historic-fantasy like Mythic Russia and so on have a certain amount of room to forego adding additional territories as we already know what is there. The same with the recent Sword Coast D&D maps. Most older players understand that the rest of The Realms is out there waiting to be filled in, either by their GM or the company when it gets the material out.
I want to play a game on an uncharted hexmap now!
Quote from: BarefootGaijin;785941I like that!
But it probably says more about me as a player: If shown a map of the places I could go and there is a region "off the map" I tend to think, "I want to go there. What's over there?"
Games of exploration and mapping, perhaps an uncharted sector in Traveller, or the translation of Ryuutama (the game about going on a journey) are a good fit. Different strokes for different folks, expectations and so on.
Games about Rome, historic-fantasy like Mythic Russia and so on have a certain amount of room to forego adding additional territories as we already know what is there. The same with the recent Sword Coast D&D maps. Most older players understand that the rest of The Realms is out there waiting to be filled in, either by their GM or the company when it gets the material out.
I want to play a game on an uncharted hexmap now!
But as a character you probably have no idea. If you are playing a thief that grew up on the streets of Minas Tirith or a hobbit from the Shire isn't part of the whole experience that you have no idea what is out there.
Quote from: BarefootGaijin;785941I like that!
But it probably says more about me as a player: If shown a map of the places I could go and there is a region "off the map" I tend to think, "I want to go there. What's over there?"
Games of exploration and mapping, perhaps an uncharted sector in Traveller, or the translation of Ryuutama (the game about going on a journey) are a good fit. Different strokes for different folks, expectations and so on.
Games about Rome, historic-fantasy like Mythic Russia and so on have a certain amount of room to forego adding additional territories as we already know what is there. The same with the recent Sword Coast D&D maps. Most older players understand that the rest of The Realms is out there waiting to be filled in, either by their GM or the company when it gets the material out.
I want to play a game on an uncharted hexmap now!
We played Ardor, converting it to AD&D, we had great fun, used parts of the rest of the big map also. Traveller Leviathan was set in exploring unknown regions of the outrim void in the Trojan Reach, Traveller was great for exploring the unknown.
(shrugs) Our entire hobby is based on a premise of a pseudo-"medieval" world, and not the whole world of medieval times, but that of an area equal to less than 1% of the world's land area. Your average Burgundian peasant barely knew that China existed, let alone knew bupkis about it.
Quote from: BarefootGaijin;785818A map that is not contained on a whole page, or series of pages.
You know the ones, you buy the book and it has a world in it, but the world doesn't go past the margin. Maybe there is a supplement coming out? But lots of them do it.
Um. I hate to be rude here. But... you HAVE looked at real maps before havent you? Im guessing not if you believe that all maps have to show every square inch of the planet.
They usually dont.
And often should not.
It is rare for the PCs to range across the width and breadth of a planet, some rarely make it across the continent, and a few dont even get out of their start country.
When I was doing the Red Shetland RPG I asked for and got a map of the known world. Its one of my big contributions to the comic. It spans a huge swath of land 5000 klm (3100 miles) across. Which is about 1/10th of the planet if we'd mapped the whole thing. In retrospect I should have asked for a map focusing more on the Borderland kingdom and the adjoining kingdoms as that was where all the action was taking place. As that what matters to the players. As the one writing the book though the bigger map was usefull to me to know where certain characters came from and how far away certain lands mentioned were.
Also having the great unknown left unmapped leaves, as was noted by someone else, areas for the GM to embellish and on their own. I forget which game but one even flat out stated this. "Here is the starting point. The rest is left blank for YOU to make of it what you will." Another early RPG even complained that Tolkien showed "too much!". I disagree in that case. But such is.
That said. As the DM I do enjoy seeing larger maps. But that is just for my own personal perusal and enlightenment rather than usefull to the campaign at hand.
Quote from: Omega;785988That said. As the DM I do enjoy seeing larger maps. But that is just for my own personal perusal and enlightenment rather than usefull to the campaign at hand.
This nails it I reckon.
The thing that makes me sad in the Numenera map is the iced donut with the slice removed. I know there is a reason for the slice, but it just looks like lazy Photoshop due to its perfect evenness and immense scale.
I generally much prefer the 'incomplete' maps with territories beyond that shown on the map. A very rough world map with 'here be dragons' type notes works well as a supplement to the main map. I especially like the Wilderlands map and Moorcock's Young Kingdoms map, which as noted above are 'Mediterranean' type maps with land around an inner sea. The 'Northwest Europe' type maps as seen in Tolkien and most fantasy settings (notably Forgotten Realms' Sword Coast) are ok, but rather less interesting.
Quote from: BarefootGaijin;785818Example: Numenera. Earth's land masses billions of years in the future fall foul of the end of the world in terms of page lay out.
I actually like the convention for certain genres and
Numenera is an excellent example of why: This is the Known World for people in the Steadfast. Henry V of England didn't know about the Incan Kingdom of South America or the Solomonic Dynasties of Abyssinia or the Kamakura Shogunate of Japan.
It is specifically evocative to say, "And that is as far as your knowledge of the world extends. Except for a few rumors." (Which is something both Numenera and Middle Earth provide for "lands beyond the lands we know".)
Quote from: The_Shadow;785992The thing that makes me sad in the Numenera map is the iced donut with the slice removed. I know there is a reason for the slice, but it just looks like lazy Photoshop due to its perfect evenness and immense scale.
The obviously unnatural features of the Numenera map is basically my favorite thing about it.
Quote from: Ravenswing;785983(shrugs) Our entire hobby is based on a premise of a pseudo-"medieval" world, and not the whole world of medieval times, but that of an area equal to less than 1% of the world's land area. Your average Burgundian peasant barely knew that China existed, let alone knew bupkis about it.
That's probably true, however Even in the Middle Ages there were exceptions. Snorre (an Icelander) knew about America and Sub-Saharan Africa, and to some degree Asia (at least Russia). That said he was a nobleman and well read, but the Scandinavians of the time Travelled a lot (that said he was 13th century, when the Norse had been good Christians for centuries and the last Viking raid was 200 years ago).
That maps have an edge just means there's room for the GM to add his own areas.