Mapping tutorial: Serpent Coast (part 3)

I'm drawing a map of the Serpent Coast, a rugged country from a campaign I'm writing up called The Legend of Copper Isle.  Part 1 showed the steps for drawing a coastline full of fjords, then in part 2 we added rivers and mountains and started labeling.

(One small change: I noticed a much better site for the house of Flying Bar Goose, so I moved it.)

Mapping tutorial: Serpent Coast (part 2)

I'm drawing a map for the Serpent Coast, part of a randomly-generated adventure The Legend of Copper Isle.  In part 1 we ended with a coastline full of fjords:

Mapping tutorial: Serpent Coast (part 1)

I need to make a map for an upcoming adventure, so I thought I'd share my drawing process with you here.  If you'd like to follow along, grab a pen, some paper, and a pencil for planning ahead.

The country we'll be mapping is called the Serpent Coast.  Here's what I know about it so far:

• Deeply-indented coastline.
• Lots of islands.
• Mountains.
• River flowing in from the southwest.

Let's head over to Google Maps for some inspiration.  This adventure is supposed to feel sort of American so I'll start with the American coast and wander around for just a few minutes.

The Legend of Copper Isle - randomly generating a campaign

Last randomly-generated campaign worked well, so let's do another one.  This post is about the process of generating the campaign, then I'll post the writeup once it's done.

Here's a link to the writeup.  (or where it will be later)

Like last time, I have no idea what this campaign is going to look like.  I'm just rolling the dice, following the procedures, and seeing what happens.  Randomly rolled items are in bold (unless the text is very long, in which case just the first few words are in bold).

First we'd sit down with the players and talk about what kind of adventures sound like fun, but since we don't have any players, I'll just roll up some great opportunities randomly.  (If any of the ones from last time come up, I'll roll for something else because that sounds fun to me.)

• Exploring Expedition
• Legend of the Lost Place
• Wanderer's Tale (a new one I'm still writing up)

Through the Saw-Grass, a randomly-generated campaign (results)

In the last post, I rolled up an entire random campaign premise, starting from scratch and writing it up while going along.  Since then, I've drawn up a map, organized my notes, and cleaned up a few loose ends.

Here's the result:

(download as a pdf)

The first page (shown here) is taken up with the map and local descriptions.  Each one has some kind of trouble, something they need, or something else going on.  The second page has information on each faction, encounter tables, how to start the campaign, etc.

This adventure premise is based on three great opportunities: Lost Treasure, Gold Rush, and Shining City in the Wilderness.

As for the actual ruleset, I suggest choosing something low-magic, with good support for overland travel.  I've been using some homebrew rules myself, which I could post more about if people are interested.

If you could take a look at the pdf and tell me what you think, I'd appreciate it.  Let me know if there are any other big parts that ought to be included in a writeup like this.