Heroes' Epoch Campaign: Background - Continents Map (Patreon)

I'm continuing work on the Heroes' Epoch campaign, a Pathfinder 1st-ed game using my Start-11 rules.

Having decided to make my own campaign world for this game (though I am placing a lot of content from the official Pathfinder 1st ed campaign word into it as well, which I'll discuss as I go along), I need a map.

I'm not going to even try to define the whole world in a single go. But I do want the entire continent I expect the action of the campaign to take place on, and some land masses around it. I went to GMWorldMap.com and grabbed a random procedurally generated map. That started with this:\

Now, I'm not going to use all that. It's too big, too cluttered, and too broken up for what I want. But I can happily grab a piece of that, and use it as my starting point. I took a slice a little left and above center, and got this:

Yeah, THAT I can build a campaign around. I particularly like the hook-shaped section of ocean jutting into the main landmass. Now I just need to add the places I know I am going to need for my planned adventures, add some areas for background and cultural context, and then start filling in the blanks as needed.

When actually writing up locations, I actually went in the order of Ebonspire Mountains -> The Hook -> Ironbridge -> Hoard -> Continents -> Regions in Arctaran. (That'll all make sense eventually). But that's because I was creating from the things I knew I needed for my campaign plans (the Ebonspire Mountains and cities of Ironbridge and Hoard) and then building outward.

To present the material to other people (like Patrons, for example), I prefer to define big areas then zoom in. Logically that would start with a world name... but I don't have one yet. This is still just the Heroes' Epoch Campaign World. I also haven't defined any seas or oceans beyond The Hook. But I HAVE given names and brief descriptions of the main continents on this map, so let's start with those.

Continents

 The continent at the center of the map is Arctaran, and the cultures on it are similar to fantasy versions of Middle Ages Europe. It’s roughly 2,800 miles west to east and 1,100 miles south to north. (For reference, in Europe, the distance from Gibraltar to Moscow is roughly 2,941 miles.) It is the expected primary location of campaign events. The major humanoids in Arctaran are dwarves, elves, gnomes, halflings, humans, and orcs.

The continent to the East is Hanjaseon, and the cultures on it are similar to fantasy versions of Middle Ages Southeast Asia.

The continent to the Southeast is Makabaal, and the cultures on it are similar to fantasy versions of Middle Ages Northeast Africa.

Now, those descriptions are intentionally vague. "Middle Ages" is a huge timespan covering hundreds of years, and there are numerous nations within each real-world region. That's all intentional. I want to make it clear that while the campaign is going to be very Europan fantasy in flavor, there certainly ARE other cultures in the world, and if a players wanted to include elements of Hanjaseon of Makabaal in their character concepts and backgrounds, they could do that,

There are a lot more things named in Arctaran than the other continents for two reasons., First, that's where I plan to set my campaign. Second, my onw personal cultural experiences are much more rooted in Europe than in anywhere in Africa or Asian. I'm certainly including non-European cultures as a thing that exist in my world, but I'd very much prefer to not define them in any depth without being guided by someone with closer ties to those cultures. If I ever decide to publish this setting in a more concrete form, I might hire professionals to do that. If I just keep it as a home game and blog content, I may just borrow things from existing campaign settings that already paid such creators (Paizo's Lost Omens books The Mwangi Expanse and Tian Xia World Guide come to mind).

I'll go into more about the marked regions and cities in Arctaran in the next heroes' Epoch post!

Support

The current bundle put together by twenty-six publishers to help me with expenses related to my cancer (now in remission!) won't last forever. It's a spectacular deal. Check it out, and spread the world. :D

It's more than a thousand dollars worth of material, for less than thirty bucks!

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/493349/the-beacons-are-lit-bundle