Once day every week I set aside for "experiment & learn", it is an important part of my weekly routine. This can be both a fun and often highly frustrating, but today I must count as one of the more successful and rewarding sessions in a while.

I set out try try and create a top down map that could be useful on a continental scale, using only  Photoshop. To test this I choose, like usually do, to try something not that easy, and match the style and look of my Flanaess map. Hepmonaland was a great target. It extend out from the map and have some good reference material to try and match.

After having spend around five hours on this I must say I'm pleased with the results. With a bit more tweaking the results will be a perfect extension of Hepmonaland. At least half the time today went to figuring out how to go about things. Things could go alot faster once I have the workflow set up and  can concentrate of producing results.

This technique clearly has some potential, so now comes the question where to put this on my to do list... 😉

First a shout out to all of you who just joined, thank you so much helping out mapping Greyhawk!
To all of you I need to make an apology for the single minded focus at the moment, the Flanaess Full Map 2018 update is a major undertaking with hundreds of hours invested the past 4-5 months.
Now only the home stretch left, with pre-release version 4. This is a major update, the biggest so far with lots of terrain edits and a number of things added and corrected. Here is the update list:

Terrain Map Edits:

- Refined Coastlines

- Baklunish West overhaul for variation

- Baklunish coastal areas and islands are now home to forests and way more variety to better match text sources

- River systems added in the horned Lands and Land of Iuz

- Meteor Crater added in the Abbor-Alz

- Rivers added in the Abbor-Alz

- Ocean depths are slightly blurred

- Lots of minor corrections    

Added the Provences of  Greyhawk

Added City of Bureis

Added sea lanes to Bureis

Changed icon for Kongen-Thulnir

Added Gnomiskillin

Added Rigodruok

Changed symbol of the Zagig Bridge

Changed Keaton to Keaford 

Changed Ice Giant Caverns to Hold of Grugnur

Added Fort Critwall

Added River Taal

Added Town of Rawlins

Removed Forgotten City

Moved Xuxulieto to the location of Forgotten City

Added Hraak Pass

Added Mt Vroom

Corrected Artonsbruek spelling and placement

Added Hands of Light Heraldry

Added Dunrealta Keep

Added Black Rock Tower

Added Small rivers in Bandit Kingdoms

Added Firewatch Island

Added Minor rivers

Corrected Hellstone Tower label

Added Csipros Erd

Added Ruins of Baklarran

Added a Crater in Abbor-Alz

Added the Great Meridian

Added Sasserine Heraldry

Added Janasib Pennant

Added Ataphad Pennant

Added Bakhoury Coast

Added Heraldry of Bakhoury Coast

Corrected Hardby is a Large City

Corrected placement of Pits of Azak-Zil

Added Star Cairns

Added Salakesh Cove

You can get the PDF version here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/ribj428e2yy1di4/Flanaess%20Full%20Map%202018%20Edition-A4r.pdf?dl=0

JPG version here:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/zikd2szhm6ugita/Flanaess%20Full%20Map%202018%20Edition%20A4.jpg?dl=0

I compressed this file a bit more aggressively to make it more manageable, please report any quality issues!

Here is a 9 part PNG:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/wcxfy945nyltwuu/AADINGQxzMj5f3EYNtcldf58a?dl=0

I plan to have a final Pre-Release version out next week, which will be for you to find issues with. In first week of December I will try and fix all the issues you find, and then it will be a Public Release mid December. After I have had all the critical eyes of the Greyhawk community pouring of over it for a few weeks, it is time to create all the other variants of the map.

This will unfortunately consume most of my time, which means not much else to be published the coming month so again I'm sorry for this. But I think it is for a greater good, we will have a better version to use as a base for future work. 

I have received a couple of reports of problems with loading the map. PDF's are notorious for being a resource hog, and the full JPG is large enough to bog down even the best of computers.

As a temporary fix to this here is the JPG version in 6 parts:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ag6lxn9q8mxkk9n/AACM9pGkC1Kr8ji-exT7mME7a?dl=0

Due to the election and upcoming PatreCon this weekend, there are less time for me to devote to my Patreon and Greyhawk. I'm so sorry for this and hope that you will forgive me for being a bit absent this week. I feel l have to as a permanent resident help a couple of my local candidates get elected. I hope you all do the same, which is as political I want to be, this patreon is not about politics!

PatreoCon is a gettogether where I hope to learn others and be inspired to try and do more, and it is in LA so close enough for me to drive daily. Really looking forward to this!

Today is my Greyhawk Day of the week, and  working on the 2018 Edition. The list of changes grows and there are new heraldry in the making as well. My goal is to have a release candidate done by the end of next week, so you guys plus a select group of Greyhawk experts can scrutinize it for a month to tell me what needs to be fixed. In the meantime I will go over the terrain one more time to touch up the last annoying bits.

This is a screenshot of what I'm working on for the moment, the Hands of Light, a fighting order of Pholtus of the Gran March.

Thank you again for your support!! 🙂

The quest to place the Flanaess have now reached the first tentative steps. My approach to this is to create an Equirectangular map of Oerth and superimpose a map of Earth using the same projection, and then georeference using the the overlayed map of Earth. To create an Earth overlay on top of the Oerth map I'm using Nasa's Global Map Projector tool: https://www.giss.nasa.gov/tools/gprojector/ It is easy to use use, support Equirectangular map input and its available for free.

 Using G Projector I can create a myriad of Oerth maps using different projections, like the Equirectangular Oblique seen on the title image for this post. Various projections are useful for different things and for the purpose of confirm coordinates of the Flanaess I will need to stick with the Equirectangular projection for the first stage of this project. But before we go into the details here are some cool (and weird) projections.  

If you want to try it out, here is the Oerth map I created and used for this: https://www.dropbox.com/s/ce16npzhb87q446/Oerth%20Equirectangular-2-01.jpg?dl=0

To place the Flanaess, my approach is to start with the big picture and then gradually move in for more and more accuracy. This first step is to get the Flanaess to align with the illustration that best shows its location, from the 1983 Gazetteer.

Here we run into a problem right away the longitude lines are straight which is makes me think that they just made it easy for themselves. I'm going to assume that they are most accurate around Greyhawk and then become less and less so as you move towards the edges of the map.

This map also shows an islands suspiciously similar to the Isle of Dream much farther north than I remember seeing it in later sources. I used the later sources for my decision to place it south of the area covered by my Flanaess map, there might be reason to take a new look at that again. This map also has shows plenty of islands scattered around the most of the oceans visible which is something I really like, lots of small "worlds" to develop. There are even a few small islands I have missed! Glad I looked at this old map again, there will be to add some new bits of land 🙂

Next step will be to zoom in and fine tune the reference points of the Flanaess.

Thank you again for make it possible for me to spend lots of time doing this, to have the base coordinates right will be very useful going forward!

My personal campaign map needed to be updated with re-edited terrain and new styles, and here it is.

PDF version: https://www.dropbox.com/s/enx9fbpy4ftf9mx/Flanaess%20Campaign%20map%20181018r.pdf?dl=0

JPG version: https://www.dropbox.com/s/0oh3ka111tpuvz5/Flanaess%20Campaign%20Map%20181010.jpg?dl=0

Here is the latest pre-release map in JPG version:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/181550s8dym8wcr/Flanaess%20Full%20Map%202018%20Edition%20A3.jpg?dl=0

Here is the next pre release version of the 2018 map. The big change to this version is the terrain, is almost ready for release. Added shallow water and touched up the coasts lines, and lots of other small corrections here and there. I will probably find a few more things to be corrected. But all in all the terrain bit is done, and after more than a hundred hours of work I'm starting to feel like it's up for the job of being the home of my campaign for a while longer. 

Content wise it is not much new yet, most of that work is still to be done. Here is the list of changes so far:

Added Tal Aska in the Vesve

Added Fairdells area  in Highfolk

Greyhawk Heraldry - removed a chain link

Settlements near Tringlee - Harrington, Glodnen, Dariax and Loradden

Brannigan's Farm - Highfolk

Island names near Dyvers

Village of Bracken

New Iuz Heraldry

New Heraldry for the Knight Protectors of the Great Kingdom

You can get the PDF file here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/74cuvqycpg5dmee/Flanaess%20Full%20Map%202018%20Edition-A3r.pdf?dl=0

The next update will be all about content, trying to through my list of some 140 items to be looked at.

Thank you again for making it possible for me to work on this!! 🙂

Crater:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/mckl4uv57d55gmq/AACMdlxNX6cUwTp6bALODrL3a?dl=0

Islands:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/lbet04acuglsu4y/AADZxppuRAe_H7REX8cL5j4Pa?dl=0

Crater:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/3d5ap4m5bjgzvso/AAD34teVSDxMPDWGCHJE8oXya?dl=0

Islands:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/1w8et9kwnktqhtp/AABI5JPJg6nqu94NNbD4ePAea?dl=0