Western Shores Map

[Scott Ruggels]

An acquaintance  of mine did a full color Version of the old FH Background, Western Shores, as a D&D style map.

 

I thought some of the old crowd might appreciate it. So anyone else have any neat campaign maps?

[Lord Liaden]

I'm afraid I get a "403 Forbidden" when I try to follow that link.

 

Our old forum colleague "Curufea" conducted extended campaigns in the Western Shores, and has posted quite a bit of material from them to multiple locations on the Internet, including various versions of the WS map. This campaign wiki on RPGnet includes links to several such maps: https://wiki.rpg.net/index.php/WS:Index

[dmjalund]

1 hour ago, Lord Liaden said:

I'm afraid I get a "403 Forbidden" when I try to follow that link

same here

[C-Note]

Fantastic! Any chance of making this available in a higher resolution?

[C-Note]

Here's one of the continent maps I use for my Hyborian Hero campaign:

 

 

 

Tarantia, capital of Aquilonia:

 

 

 

Shadizar:

 

 

 

Aghrapur:

 

 

 

Another continental map:

 

[Scott Ruggels]

Here is a different link for the Western Shores map. 

https://imgur.com/a/5Kmh0cf

[Scott Ruggels]

11 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

I'm afraid I get a "403 Forbidden" when I try to follow that link.

 

Our old forum colleague "Curufea" conducted extended campaigns in the Western Shores, and has posted quite a bit of material from them to multiple locations on the Internet, including various versions of the WS map. This campaign wiki on RPGnet includes links to several such maps: https://wiki.rpg.net/index.php/WS:Index

Fascinating.  Also I posted an alternate link that you can hopefully lol at. 

[Christopher R Taylor]

I used concepts and some names from the Western Shores map to create the Westermark for my fantasy hero campaign.  Its a very evocative setting and map, you can almost feel the adventure

[DShomshak]

The world map for my "Magozoic" campaign is the early version of Pangea Ultima (a.k.a. Pangea Proxima) as forecast by geologist Christopher Scotese:

 

•  

• "Pangea Ultima" will form 250 million years in ... - scotese.com

  scotese.com/future2.htm

  "Pangea Ultima" will form 250 million years in the Future. The next Pangea, "Pangea Ultima" will form as a result of the subduction of the ocean floor of the North and South Atlantic beneath eastern North America and South America. This supercontinent will have a small ocean basin trapped at its center. back to Earth History

  The premise is Earth gpone magical in the far future, a la Zothique, Gondwane or Book of the New Sun. Conveniently, Dr Scotese has worked out various possible future configurations of continents.

   

  Within that, I've made maps of the particular regions where I set campaigns. The current campaign is set around the southern end of the Inner Ocean. My own maps are of course much less pretty than those of Dr Scotese! But here's the map of the Plenary Empire. I use topo maps from an old copy of Goode's School Atlas as raw material, and have a rudimentary graphics program to add some texture.

  

   

  And here's the basic mao for the city of Thalassene, showing the botoughs but not much else:

  

   

  This map shows the neighborhoods in the boroughs of Quarters, Tarsia, Lost Harbor, Exordium, and the Waterfront:

  

   

  And finally, the PCs are currently the neighborood watch of Pillars, a section of the Oddmonger neighborhood. That made it worthwhile to map out Pillars:

  

   

  Of course, most of the city will never be mapped in such detail. I'm such a slacker.

   

  Dean Shomshak

Edited April 1, 2023 by DShomshak

[dmjalund]

[Scott Ruggels]

Here's the  map at high Res. Enjoy!

https://imgur.com/a/5IcmFXZ

[dmjalund]

[Duke Bushido]

I think for our first ever fantasy campaign using the Champions rules (it would be _years_ before we could find a copy of Fantasy HERO in the wild), we use the Volturnus map for the first Star Frontiers module....

[Derek Hiemforth]

On 7/11/2021 at 10:54 AM, Scott Ruggels said:

Here's the  map at high Res. Enjoy!

https://imgur.com/a/5IcmFXZ

 

Thanks for this, Scott!  The next time I do a Fantasy Hero game, I think I'm going to set it in the Western Shores. I've always liked its level of detail.  It's plenty to build on and get you started, but it's not so much detail that it's too much to digest or that it doesn't leave room for adding your own ideas.  It offers plenty to get the creative juices flowing, then gets out of the way.   

[Lord Liaden]

You could spend years, game-world and real-world, adventuring in the Western Shores.

 

I will once again pimp my favorite original Hero System fantasy world, The Savage Earth, created by our long-absent forum colleague, Keith Curtis. It's a future Earth turned on its side by a magical apocalypse, reminiscent of a more serious and detailed version of the old Thundarr the Barbarian cartoon. Keith being a professional cartographer, his setting maps are outstanding. Here are some samples:

 

http://savageearth.net/Savage-Earth-Master-Map.jpg

 

http://savageearth.net/Merikia.jpg

 

http://savageearth.net/Tallon-Rendered.html

[Ninja-Bear]

11 hours ago, Derek Hiemforth said:

 

Thanks for this, Scott!  The next time I do a Fantasy Hero game, I think I'm going to set it in the Western Shores. I've always liked its level of detail.  It's plenty to build on and get you started, but it's not so much detail that it's too much to digest or that it doesn't leave room for adding your own ideas.  It offers plenty to get the creative juices flowing, then gets out of the way.   

Really? I love the Western Shores too however I never felt it was designers to be adventured in. The Countries too close and delineated for adventure. (Warning this is me so take it with a block of salt). For example why adventure into Daria? It has a wall blocking off it from Ambria. Perhaps adventuring in the Peaks of Dawn. The Greatwood forest takes up nearly half of Ambria. So if the elves control it, what’s an adventurer to do? I’ve always seen the map as being too constrictive but that’s probably just me.

[Derek Hiemforth]

On 7/25/2021 at 6:02 AM, Ninja-Bear said:

Really? I love the Western Shores too however I never felt it was designers to be adventured in. The Countries too close and delineated for adventure.

 

I've always more-or-less had the idea that the countries aren't quite as cleanly delineated as they appear on the map. Many of their write-ups describe monster incursions in the borderlands, and the general feel I get is that the further you get from the "core" of each country, the less well-defined it is. So there seems to be plenty of potential danger to travelers, or reasons why caravans need guards, or orc uprisings that need to be opposed, etc.

 

And of course, the entirety of the eastern part of the Shores, with the Daemon's Cleft, Celinad, the Ruined March, the Witchwood, the Drakor Mountains, etc. are all adventureland.  

 

On 7/25/2021 at 6:02 AM, Ninja-Bear said:

For example why adventure into Daria? It has a wall blocking off it from Ambria. Perhaps adventuring in the Peaks of Dawn.

 

Kron's Wall hampers armies, and therefore keeps Daria and Ambria from constantly being at war, but I don't think that does much to isolate Daria from adventurers. I'll agree that it's no tourist destination, so adventurers are unlikely to want to just go there to see what's there, but I can think of all sorts of plot hook reasons why they might want/need to go to Daria.

 

Perhaps they have family there being threatened under the tyrannical rule. Perhaps they've learned of an old ruin with an item of power, and they want to retrieve it before Zephrahm and Sarador find it and use it to break the balance of power with Ambria. Perhaps they're crusading do-gooder types who want to bring down Zephrahm and Sarador in hopes that their successors will be less terrible to the people. Perhaps they're spying for the Dwarves of the Peaks of Dawn, gathering intelligence on Zephrahm's war preparations. Perhaps they're smuggling something or someone into or out of Daria through Vlaskarov. Perhaps they're pirates (or just Brondheimers) plundering the All Sea coast. Heck, for a twist on things, maybe a powerful necromancer arises in Daria --  a land of ancestor worshippers seems ripe for such -- and Zephrahm and Sarador actually seek out the PCs' help in stopping him before he can put the lich of some great past Darian Wizard-King back on the throne or something.

 

On 7/25/2021 at 6:02 AM, Ninja-Bear said:

The Greatwood forest takes up nearly half of Ambria. So if the elves control it, what’s an adventurer to do?

 

The book itself notes, "Though the Elves patrol the central forest, the outlying areas are more wild, and make a good location for wilderness adventures." The elves rule the forest, but they're not its only inhabitants, nor are they everywhere at once...