First a huge thank you to all for supporting my Greyhawk cartography endeavours, there are more of you now than ever before which means I get the resources to do even more. So what is going on?
With Duane Costa's expert help the revised index is is taking shape, thank you Duane for helping out again!
I've just uploaded a first version of the cover and legend, so please take a look at them and the other maps here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/kxzix4c9p8irsit/AABYC8mmlkAfkm-jXdhyYb1wa?dl=0
[cover]
There might be a final tweak to these when I have the index, and then I'll add the credits page as well. Hopefully we can wrap up the this years edition of the 576CY Atlas with in a month from now. Having done the 2020 Atlas taught me to do things a bit different this time. I kept all the text and symbols as vector art, to improve printability and keep the file sizes smaller. I hope the atlas will be a useful addition to the map portfolio of Greyhawk gamers.
The Flanaess & Hepmonaland 598CY Map project is off to a good start. I worked on the 598CY terrain update in parallel to the 576CY version which pays off now, having it ready and in Illustrator underlaying the existing 598CY map. Now it is just to go through all the realms, compare it to the new 576CY map and all the to do list I keep in my Evernote. I'm not sure how long it will take, it depends a bit on work allocation with the other projects. There will be a brand new 598CY map of the Flanaess and Hepmonaland this summer including an Atlas version.
A promised earlier to launch a limited number of spots on a $50/month Patreon tier for those of you who want me to work on a custom content for your campaign. It can be changes to the existing Greyhawk map, custom heraldry or anything else map or Greyhawk related. I'll allocate at least a 4 hour shift each month to your project. We can communicate using Zoom, Discord or the like to coordinate things and share files with you using Dropbox, OneDrive or similar service.
This will be launched when the 598CY map is getting near readiness, as you can choose that as one of the base maps for your custom version. Or you can choose the 576CY as a base to customize from. The content created as part of these projects I will retain the rights to publish what we do together as Creative Common -by -nc -sa content as a part of my Greyhawk related content.
The Heraldry update project is continuing, and as of now I've done 208 shields including some custom made ones for my own campaign. I have about 100 more to do which will take me a couple of more months. When all the shields from the current map (and more) are done it is time for a Greyhawk Heraldry Compendium and poster of of some sort. I'll start looking into formats and layout for that this summer as we get closer to having all the heraldry ready.
Another pet heraldry project of mine is to do the shields of the Death Knights of the former Great Kingdom. With the help of Gary Holian this is now under way, and as a sneak peak here is the Myrhal shield.
Jay Scott and Troll Lord Games are going publish do Jay's Free City of Altimira as a box set, and I'm going to do most of the maps! Work has started on the regional map and my goal with this is to set a new standard for campaign setting maps using "PortaPotty Scale". My next step is to make a big decision of what main tool to use World Machine or Gaea, a post on this and more is coming to soon. There are a lot happening in the field of terrain generation at the moment, more than I've experienced in 20 years. Lots of promise but we don't know how much will be delivered and how soon, but it is still of great interest to everyone in the field.
Altimira updates will be a regular feature as the projects progress leading up to the launch of the Kickstarter.
I've reorganized my office and moved my webcam, streaming software and cabling to a secondary computer, freeing up my main computer to do the mapping and another to handle the streaming like dedicated streamers do it. Next is to test if a software capture is good enough or if I need a capture card. I hope software work (30 frames/ second is good enough) for me , or worst case scenario I need a capture card. My issue with a capture card is the passthrough resolution might not be high enough, and I have to rewire things every time I stream which is a hassle I want to avoid. Video Ninja is promising and will hopefully be enough.
I have canceled my participation in DnD in a Castle this year, it was going to be e costly in both time and money and I need spend both wisely this year. Investing in a new computer and Greyhawk mapping projects instead. This means that I don't need to keep the content I worked on for the castle needs to be kept secret, so that will be dispensed here over the next six months.
Expect maps (of course), locations, heraldry, back stories, npc's and monsters and even a few house rules. First out of the monsters are the Iuzian special breed of Abyssal Trolls.
These are the projects under way, there are several others in various stages from idea to concept or formalizing trying to figure out how to best go about doing them. More on them later....
Again thank you so much for making it possible for me to work on this!! 🙂
