Meta Maps of K’Horror and Trapsylvania…

Today we (Flying Buffalo) launched a Kickstarter for a new T&T adventure called Tomb of K’Horror. It’s a gothic horror T&T gm and solo rpg game book and its really great to see it finally reveal itself to the fans.  We are doing a Kickstarter for Vaults of K’Horror right NOW so if you want to see more about that, please check it out.  I even made the video for the Kickstarter and did the narration, so you can hear me speak!  (Trust me – I’m no Orson Welles!)  Still might give you a chuckle…

Written by Andy Holmes and with a solo adventure by Ken St Andre and art by Simon Tranter and myself, this book is special in various ways. We managed to map out and explore an area of Trollworld that was on the map, (The southern section of the Dragon’s Mouth) but nothing had ever really been done with it. That design process also included developing this area with MetaArcade and Goodman Games. It was a real pleasure to work with all those various companies and people to create this wild area and one that works for all of them!

MetaArcade needed a cross country region in Rrr’rlf (that’s the name of the continent)  where they could position some of their adventures and connect them into a narrative whole, so that became the “ruined lands” across the middle section. (see closeup map below)  You can also read more about that on their blogs here: Meanwhile to the West Ken, myself and Goodman Games placed Grimtooth’s City-state (known as Trapsylvania.)  When the Vaults of K’Horror adventure was submitted, Ken and I placed that just to the East of Grimtooth’s Realm, which explained why so few had run into Grimtooth’s realm in the past (they had to get past the creatures and evils around K’Horror first).  All three of these locales share a somewhat “dark and stormy night” vibe so they fit well together.

For Trapsylvania, I started with the map of his realm, which was based on a map I drew in Traps Lite back in the early 1990’s.  I also used as many Traps related locations that Grimtooth has mentioned in previous books or were logical extrapolations (for example if he has an airship – he needs a place to put it)  Very soon (end of June) Goodman Games is going to do a Kickstarter for this book as well so look for that! Anyway here is the map of Grimtooth’s City-State which will appear as a major component of that book:

So this coastline connects to the coastline of the K’Horror map if you compare them.  You’ll note that I generally avoid putting scales on these maps.  My feeling is that as a map of a fantasy realm, it makes it easier for the GM to be able to compress or expand the distances on the map to make it fit best for whatever adventure they are running.  On close-up maps of buildings and rooms I  usually add a scale as that makes it easier to be able to know specifics for players being able to run or shoot arrows etc.

OK that covers the maps for these new projects – next time I’ll highlight some of the art I did for these books and some of the unusual techniques I used to create that art…