While most of us use Google Maps and GPS on a daily basis, it’s pretty rare to find real fans of cartography, the study and practice of making and using maps. If you were ever into geography or history as a kid, the chances are you’re not much of a map person.
By Neal Lineback and Mandy Lineback Gritzner, Geography in the NewsTM Occasionally we need to be reminded that the concepts of distance and area are important to the day-to-day understanding of bre…
For many of us, cartography day in geography or history class meant a quick nap. With our eyes open, we’d dream of all the delicious stuff we were gonna eat after school, of music we’d play on the Walkman, of a message we received the other day from that cutie…
The Trove digital service has been releasing some of the more quirky old maps of Australia, starting with a graphic dividing the country up into the sheep haves and have-nots.
Regarding the last one: What the hell, Spain?
I don’t remember if it was Voltaire who said that having many different religious denominations was a good thing for a nation, and having just one religion was bad, but the worst thing was to…
A subversive cartography of subjective perceptions of the Old World.
The Battle of Penn Hill was fought in AD 665 between a British and an Anglo-Saxon coalition at Penn Hill in northern Dumnonia, the precise location of which is unknown. It resulted in a decisive British victory, and reversed the Saxon expansion westwards across Albion. Germanic migrants, mainly from the Angle, Saxon and Jutish tribes, began arriving on the east coast of Albion in the mid-5th century, during the chaos following the Roman withdrawal from the provinces of Britannia. They quickly pe
Not as cheerful as your standard cartography - but you might learn a thing or two
If there is one thing the internet folk can’t seem to get enough of, it’s memes. Covering anything and everything you could possibly imagine, they are, in a way, an artform of the 21st century, depicting the good, the bad, and the ugly situations in life or simply providing a reason to smile.
The United Kingdom is a nation in north-western Europe, including the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland, small islands and fourteen overseas territories, the last pieces of the British Empire, which included approximately a 1/4 of the world's landmass at its height
Anyone looking to analyze the epic poem "Beowulf" must first understand Bards, paganism, the warrior king culture, and Anglo-Saxon Christianization to form a complete analysis of Beowulf.
Today I am going to talk about the Known World, or the campaign setting implied in Basic D&D. When the D&D Expert Set was introduced, it included a two-page map of part of a continent. This was described as "The Known World," and that was good enough for us back then. A lot of strange cultures were crammed into an area about the size of the North Eastern portion of North America. But hey, it was D&D, and we thought it was great. It was certainly enough for me. In fact my characters rarely left this area. There was plenty to adventure here. At the time, I did not know the work already done here and where this world would go in the next few years. The Schick-Moldvay Known World Before working on the D&D Basic Set, Tom Moldvay had a game with future D&D heavyweight Lawrence Schick. In their games they had a campaign world they were calling "The Known World." A while back, Lawerence Schick posted "The “Known World” D&D Setting: A Secret History" over at the Black Gate site. A nice history of how he and Tom Moldvay came up with the Known World for their own games and then ported it over to D&D Basic/Expert. It is a fascinating read if, like me, you are a fan of the Mystara world and/or of maps in general. James Mishler (who also did the Mystoerth map) takes this one further and provides the above map for the Moldvay/Schick known world. It is interesting how so many familiar names and even locations exist in different places. It is like looking at a world you know but through some sort of distorted lens. What is also quite interesting to me are the new lands—places, and names that are entirely new to me. The Known World Replica Map by James Mishler There is so much here I can use and honestly I have yet to grow tired of exploring this map. BUT it is not the map we ended up with. No once the Known World left the hands of Moldvay and Schick it became a different world. That world would eventually be called URT! (ok and then Msytara). The Known World of Urt Mystara Spend any time here, and you will know that the Known World of the Basic/Expert Sets (B/X) was the first world I played in. While I would move on to AD&D and Oerth, the Known World would also move to Mystara. It would be the world introduced to us in the Companion Set and expanded on the Gazeteer Series, the D&D Rules Cyclopedia, and even into the 2nd Edition age and beyond. But it was in the Companion and Master Sets that Mystara got its start. The B/X Known World only occupies the East-most lower gray box, this is the same as the very first map on the top of this page. The BECMI World, Mystara, is going to be bigger. Even this is just the continent of Brun. I am not sure who came up with the idea for Mystara to look the way it does but there are some obvious parallels. From the Master DM's Book, Here is Mystara, courtesy of http://pandius.com/ If it looks familiar, there is a good reason. (image from here, http://www.scotese.com/earth.htm) That is the Late Jurassic, the early Cretaceous period of the Earth, 150+ Million Years Ago. Long-time readers here already know of the Paleomap Map project of Earth History. It has many maps of the different stages of Earth history and potential future maps. I will admit when I first saw maps of the really old Earth it was disquieting to me. I love maps, and throughout all of human history, the Earth has been the same. Not so throughout ALL history and prehistory. It's also kind of cool to see where the places of Mystara will line up to our world. Mystara and the Lands Beneath the Waves by Grimklok At first, the Known World was known by Urt or even Urth by Frank Mentzer and was designed to be similar to Gary's Oerth of the AD&D game. We also learn in the Immortals Set that Urt did not look like Earth 150 MYA it WAS Earth at that time. Though I think (and I have nothing to support this) that the "Urt" version of the Known World was scrapped after Frank Mentzer left TSR. His good friend Gary had already been ousted. It seems like Urt was a casualty of that regime change. So "Urt" was out, and "Mystara" was in. Mystara The Known World of Mystara was later expanded and given more detail in the wonderful Gazetteer Series, Hollow World Series, and Challenger Series. While delving into everything Mystara would take me another month or another year, there is still a vibrant and active community on the web to support this world. In fact, I would say it is far more active than most other worlds. Starting in the early days of the MPGN listserve lists run by TSR. The MYSTARA-L listserve was active back in the days when my access to the Internet was via a mainframe. Many of the same people on those lists then are still active in the various Facebook groups and websites today. Mystoerth For me, I always had a soft spot in my heart for Mystara. It was the world of my Basic era days, and when I moved on to AD&D, I still kept the world as "my own." It was understood that when I was a player, it was in Greyhawk/Oerth, but when I was a DM, it was in the Known World/Mystara. Eventually, right before college, we merged our worlds into one. I got the western half, and my DM got the eastern half. So you know, I was thrilled when I found the James Mischler/Chatdemon Mystoerth map. The worlds share a lot of details in common, so a merge was inevitable. I no longer have the original map my then DM made, but this one is a better rendition anyway. Click for larger This appears to be the original map. While researching this, I found an old post by Rich/Chatdemon that offers an alternate name: Oerstara. I kind of like that. A lot. It sounds like Ostara, the pagan holiday from which Easter comes. Oestara could have been an alternate name for the planet, like Earth and Terra. Regardless of which version of the Known World I would use there is more than enough in any of them to last me another lifetime of gaming and exploration. Isn't that what it is all about? Tomorrow is L, and I will talk about Larian Studios and Baldur's Gate 3 This is also my next entry of the month for the RPG Blog Carnival, hosted by Codex Anathema on Favorite Settings.
The United Kingdom is a nation in north-western Europe, including the island of Great Britain, the north-eastern part of the island of Ireland, small islands and fourteen overseas territories, the last pieces of the British Empire, which included approximately a 1/4 of the world's landmass at its height
An interior stylist with a passion for all things bold and beautiful has created a unique haven for her family in coastal Victoria.
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“Super cool map of #Asian languages:”
After the Romans left in AD410 waves of Germanic invaders migrated to Britain, some knowing the land, who had served the Romans as foederati. The kingdoms of theJutes, Angles and Saxons grew...
During the 1980s, Yugoslavia was destabilized by an acute economic and political crisis. It seemed ethnic violence could explode in the autonomous region of Kosovo, with its sizeable Albanian preponderance. A critical political evolution was Slobodan Milosevic's election, first President of Serbia in 1989.
On 18 September, Scotland voted to stay in the UK by 55% to 45%: a wider margin than most expected, but still close enough to warrant the constitutional re-think promised […]
Mapmaking has been an integral part of human history for thousands of years. It is believed that the human activity of graphically represent...
Africa is bigger than China, India, Europe, and the USA. COMBINED.
If you’ve been a shortwave listener for very long, you may remember the annual Radio St. Helena Day: one weekend a year when this small island broadcaster hit the shortwaves and accepted reports fr…
Irish is a Goidelic language of the Insular Celtic branch of the Celtic language family. The Irish language is indigenous to the island of Ireland and was the population's 1st language until the 19th century, when English slowly became prevalent, especially in the last decades of the century.
While most of us use Google Maps and GPS on a daily basis, it’s pretty rare to find real fans of cartography, the study and practice of making and using maps. If you were ever into geography or history as a kid, the chances are you’re not much of a map person.
