The only fantasy world map you'll ever need

[Morrus]

This seems to have gotten popular recently!
http://eotbeholder.deviantart.com/art/The-Only-Fantasy-World-Map-245738593

Here's something I threw together for the game I'm running with some coworkers. I plotted out where everything was going to go on a world map then decided, yknowwhat, let's just keep the serial numbers filed off, so now it's a map good for every RPG setting ever. Starting in the Tiny Bickering Fiefdoms is traditional but anywhere works. (My players are mostly from Tortuga.)

EDIT: Wow, almost four years later and this thing just exploded. The internet is a thing of mysteries. Thank you all! A lot (well, a number) of people have requested a blank version so they can add their own names... yeah, sure thing. To anyone asking for permission to use this for their own campaigns... I mean it hardly qualifies as "original", so as long as you're comfortable stealing from someone who steals from the people who only steal from the best, knock yourselves out

If I could make some additions (which I suppose I could, but, nah) I'd call out the Boring/Doomed Pastoral Village somewhere in the Tiny Bickering Fiefdoms or the Land of Poncy Knights, and also add a Giant Wall to Keep the Monsters Out. Giant walls are so hot right now.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

My favorite is "Hills for the Hillfolk"

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

What I also love is that you can genuinely use it for the basis of a kitchen sink world. Just slap on the serial numbers and away you go....

 

[trappedslider]

Nice..this will work for placing my city somewhere, just need to put a river somwhere and there we go

 

[Viking Bastard]

OMG, give me one that's kinda sorta shaped like the Americas and it fulfils all my needs.

 

[Razjah]

Did anyone else read A-ra-bian Niiiiights like the Disney opening song to Aladdin?

Also, this map is pretty funny. But also a bit sad. It has almost everything I have ever seen in a campaign setting. I think this points to the issue of "traditional fantasy" when Fantasy as a genre is massive beyond belief. Yahtzee at the Escapist calls out "traditional fantasy" games for being re-hashes of the same stuff. I think table top RPGs need to do that more too.

 

[Ratskinner]

Did anyone else read A-ra-bian Niiiiights like the Disney opening song to Aladdin?

Yup

Also, this map is pretty funny. But also a bit sad. It has almost everything I have ever seen in a campaign setting. I think this points to the issue of "traditional fantasy" when Fantasy as a genre is massive beyond belief. Yahtzee at the Escapist calls out "traditional fantasy" games for being re-hashes of the same stuff. I think table top RPGs need to do that more too.

Honestly, I think that D&D is part of the problem here (historically). I mean, during the (early) 2e era, much was made about how boring and predictably Western-European/Tolkienesque everything was and how awesome Oriental Adventures was...and so they (both TSR and homebrew DMs) produced all sorts of stuff to expand on that from kits and kitbooks to entire settings (the best being Al-Qadim, IMO). Unfortunately, the D&D conceit that every DM has a "world" meant that rather than being entirely new things, all that "exotic" material just kept getting tacked on into one corner of the map or another. Additionally, D&D (for better or worse) has become such a touchstone for "traditional" fantasy, that these "kitchen sink" type things are back-contaminating that pool.

The real problem when comparing D&D's range to the range of fantasy fiction, IMO. Is that almost all of this is really just trappings around the same mechanics which actually kinda tell a pretty narrow (if infinite) band of stories. The core design of D&D (I'm talking "kill&loot->XP->level->repeat" or "HP, AC, damage" core) drives that more than the trappings do. They make it really hard to push the boundaries as far as authors can in books. Making the game less abstract and adding fiddly bits (as the game tended to do, especially in the WotC era) only made that problem worse. Different folks have tried different things to bash that kind of thing around, and some have even enjoyed limited success, but that kind of thing has some pretty profound-yet-subtle impacts on the fiction. "Hero to Zero" for instance, is rather hard to pull off.

Which isn't to say that that's horrible or unnecessary thing for other reasons like gameplay and play(er) agendas. Nor am I trying to imply that that band of stories D&D does well is inadequate for entertainment purposes. D&D has a lot of appeal for solid reasons. However, it is part of why I no longer consider D&D a game that's good for scratching much of a story-telling or story-authoring itch (whether that itch be of a group or individual nature).

 

[Mishihari Lord]

Well lookit that, it's the Forgotten Realms!

 

[gamerprinter]

Honestly, I think that D&D is part of the problem here (historically). I mean, during the (early) 2e era, much was made about how boring and predictably Western-European/Tolkienesque everything was and how awesome Oriental Adventures was...and so they (both TSR and homebrew DMs) produced all sorts of stuff to expand on that from kits and kitbooks to entire settings (the best being Al-Qadim, IMO). Unfortunately, the D&D conceit that every DM has a "world" meant that rather than being entirely new things, all that "exotic" material just kept getting tacked on into one corner of the map or another. Additionally, D&D (for better or worse) has become such a touchstone for "traditional" fantasy, that these "kitchen sink" type things are back-contaminating that pool.

You're making the assumption that every D&D group relies on a kitchen sink setting, or that every D&D group is using the TSR created settings for their games. While I can agree that the designers created these kitchen sink worlds to fit the flavor through variety and comparisons to real world cultures for those groups less adept at creating their own worlds. Not everyone has relied on Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms or any other published kitchen sink setting. I won't say most, but more than half the tables I've played had their own worlds, and most of them not kitchen worlds.

I never create entire worlds, as I don't need to know every culture on a given planet - my players more than likely will never leave the current continent their campaigns reside. I've never needed to create anything larger than a continent, and more often than that, my 'worlds' have been limited to regions or only a part of a continent. Thus I've only needed to develop the cultures within a limited area - and not required every possible culture, only a handful.

Also being a professional fantasy cartographer, I've never needed somebody elses map to depict my world, I've always created my own. I currently have a published setting for the Pathfinder RPG, and it is my analog Japan, for the Kaidan setting of Japanese horror. In the past I've created my own analog of Russia, a pseudo British Isles and a Spice Road/Steppeland/Near East analog. I've never needed the entire earth of cultures replicated for game use.

My point is, not everyone endures the same problems in their D&D game, because the assumption is never the same for any two game tables.

 

[steelsteve]

I like how everyone is assuming kitchen sink worlds are terrible to play in, or that they get old after a while. I like kitchen sink worlds in some regard, I'm in the middle of making my own! I guess the way to make sure that it's different rather than just more of the same is to find some twist in traditional settings and make it something far more interesting. One of the things i've done is have desert dwarves as an analog for the near east asian (i.e. turkey, isreal ect.). Elves in my world, or at least a far east asian analog, have a twist where when they go into battle, they have two self-portaits on their person as a type of funeral rite, as well as a way to determine who they were. Little weird things like that can easily change how one sees the world, and keep i fresh and interesting.

That all said, the Forgotten Realms is way too much for anyone who wants to catch up, especially since they focus on their north east corner most of the time