Welcome cartographers! This is part 1 of my How To Start An RPG Campaign series. As you might have noticed, we're talking about making maps. So get out some pencil and paper, and let's begin.
Section 1: Why a map?
You might be wondering why we're starting with a map. We don't even have a setting yet. Well, we're gonna kill two birds with one piece of paper.
Through making a map we'll not only be giving the players a place to explore, but if we do it correctly it will give us a good starting off point to add detail in the future. We don't need a large map either; just the starting area. This is because we want to make our setting as we play.
Making a whole setting all at once is a big task and it takes a lot of time. Making the world as you play not only allows you to get to the game sooner, but also lets you tailor the setting to the PCs. And personally, I think making the setting as you go is easier and offers more creativity.
Maps are also a great way to get players excited about the game. They'll be curious about every little detail and want to see it all. It also gives you a fun creative way to start off your setting because every location, terrain, and point of interest, implies something about the overall world.
Section 2: What sort of map?
There's all kinds of different maps we could make and different ways we could make them. We could find a map generator, we could throw some dice on a blank piece of paper, we could even just look up something premade that fits what we want. Personally, I love cartography and drawing our own hex map will give us exactly what we need.
Hex maps are great for RPG campaigns. They're an abstract view of the world so you don't need to draw every detail. In fact you could even just number each hex and write what's in it on a separate sheet of paper. Using hexes makes it easy to track time and distance of travel. If the party can travel 24 miles in a day and each hex covers a 6 mile diameter then all your players need to know is that they can move 4 hexes at a time. Plus when expanding your map, all you need to do is draw some more hexes!
For our starting area we'll only need a little hex map like this:
The scale of the map really depends on your system's overland travel rules and personal preference. I'm going to go with the average 6 mile hex.
For those following along, I've made a template you can print out to draw your own. There's also specific map making software using hexes. My template and a list of some map makers I've used in the past are below:
My Template
Hex Map Makers
Section 3: What's on the map?
For this first map all we need is the starting area. Basically just a settlement, its surrounding environment, and a few landmarks. Small settlements like a village are a good place to start your campaign. It offers some NPCs for the party to interact with, small town drama is great for seeding storylines, plus your players will want a place for their characters to heal up at the end of the day. Depending on your world, it doesn't even need to be a village. It could be an underground shelter, a collection of islands, a space station, whatever fits your genre. I'm gonna put my village right in the center of the map. Don't worry about a name yet, we'll get to that in another post.
There's many different types of terrain to choose from when building an environment. If your campaign takes place in space, asteroid fields are a good one. Where each terrain goes and how much of it should be on your map is all up to you. But you could also randomly roll for an environment using a basic table like this that I got from Black Hack 2e
Roll A D6
1-3: Common Terrain (Woods, Plains, Hills)
4-5: Uncommon Terrain (Badlands, Swamps, Coast)
6: Rare Terrain (Mountains, Lakes, Chasms)
As a rule of thumb, I like to have a few different types of terrain directly next to the settlement. I'll go with a forest, some grassland, and hills. I also like to close off a couple corners of the map with a terrain the party won't be able to easily traverse. For this I'm gonna choose a lake and some mountains. Having mountains and bodies of water block PCs off, and big forests expanding beyond the maps' edge will all hint to the party that there's a bigger world out there. It just isn't in view... yet.
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Now lastly for our environment, let's name some of these areas. Names can say a lot about what it's identifying so choose wisely. For this forest to the southwest I like the idea that it's your typical woods and my village hunts and gathers lumber from there. It's relatively safe if you stay close to the edge but the further you go, the more you might run into some dangerous fauna. I imagine big trees with thick trunks that are spread far apart but their branches stretch wide creating a dense canopy. This is definitely called 'The Great Wood'. The other forest to the northeast will be much more ominous. It'll have gray spindly trees with crooked branches. Villagers tell scary stories about this forest. This will be 'The Aching Wild. I like that the name has some implications. Is the forest in pain? If so, from what? Was it always?
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We don't need to answer these questions yet. Just make sure to write any ideas you have down. Until we know these areas will come up, all you need is a cohesive concept of the location. Then when you know a session will take you to that area or you have to improvise more info, you'll have a strong foundation to build off of. I call this set dressing. We'll get into more uses of set dressing in future parts of this series.
To save time, I'm going to name the other areas on my own. If you're having trouble naming your own areas, don't be afraid to use a name generator. FantasyNameGenerators.com is a great resource.
For the landmarks, it's really up to you and your campaign. Just know, like the environment, each landmark says something about the area. If you're running a game like a hexcrawl, you could fill each hex with its own interesting location or random encounter. Personally, I'm just going to make a few landmarks to peak my player's interests. Because we already know we're going to make a dungeon later in this series, I'm going to hint at where that might be with a cave entrance. Next I'll put some ruins over at the lakeside going into the lake itself. Lastly, popping out of the Great Wood is going to be a tower.
Now don't forget to name these locations, but if you want, you can just leave them blank. If it's something people might not talk about like my cave, then it might not have a name. There's also the option that only the ones that live there know its name. Maybe to the villagers it's called the Mouth of Chaos but to the goblins that sleep there, it's Rest Foot. Again, make sure to write any ideas you have down while naming your locations.
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