Todd Gamble's Cartographica

[JoeGKushner]

This is going to be a short review. Like the Kingdoms of Kalamar Atlas, this book has a single purpose that it sets out and does.

It provides the GM with pages and pages of full color maps. No game stats, no map keys, just page after page of maps. Unfortunately, the interior covers aren't used and a page is taken for the introduction and another page for two Green Ronin products. It's also important to note that this isn't a d20 product, but a product for use with any fantasy RPG or any RPG that uses maps of this nature.

Each page starts off with what the map is, for example, Samll Hamlet, a specific piece of information, SoutherQuarter, Birdseye View, map direction key, and who the Cartographer is. Sometimes this takes up a almost a quarter of a page.

My favorite locations include the Underground Sewers as for some reason, my players, regardless of what city they're in, spend some time in those dark reaches. The Dungeon Levels are also useful for those times when you don't have a pregenerated module and want something quick and dirty to populate.

Is there a problem with the book? There is no table of contents and no page numbers so you can't flip to what you need at a glance. A minor problem is that some of the maps are too dark like the Sacred Tombs Cemetary and the Erotic Islands Map Two A and B. I certainly don't want to sound like I could do better, but some of the maps aren't 'exotic' enough for me. Perhaps it's because SkeletonKey Games has so many maps on their website that when I look at some of these maps like Site One of the Sacred Tombs or the Subterranean Passages, I'm not that impressed. Seems pretty standard stuff to me. Stuff that 'Any good gamemaster' as refered to on the back cover, could do.

Overall the Cartographica does what it sets out to do. More specific and exotic locations instead of generic land masses would serve the gaming community better as there are several free resources to those who can read this review (i.e. the Internet). that do an excellent job of covering the basics. Speaking as a GM, I myself would've rather had a 128 page book of well done black and white illustrations for $19.95-$22.95 as this is almost more of an art book than a fantasy adventure product. If you're looking for full color maps, this is your book.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

Any good gamemaster can create an adventure, but drawing great maps is another story. Todd Gamble is here to help. The ENnie Award-winning cartographer responsible for Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, Freeport: The City of Adventure, and Manual of the Planes has created a book full of color maps suitable for any fantasy roleplaying game. Cartographica provides beautiful maps of dungeons, subterranean lairs, overland routes, fantasy buildings, and castles. Adventure design just got a whole lot easier!

 

[Messageboard Golem]

By John Grigsby, Staff Reviewer d20 Magazine Rack

Sizing Up the Target
Cartographica: Journal of Maps is a new release from Green Ronin. This 64-page perfect-bound softcover showcases some of the fantastic work of Todd Gamble. The work retails for $16.95.

First Blood
If you play fantasy role-playing games, I’d say chances are you use maps. Let’s face it; maps are an integral part of FRP. Likewise, if you’re like me, most of your maps consist of a crude sketch roughed out on a sheet of graph paper. Okay, so they’re not exactly a thing of beauty, but hey, it’s functional.

Of course, there are mapping software programs available (Campaign Cartographer comes immediately to mind), but while these can make some very attractive maps, they also tend to be prohibitively expensive, have a high learning curve, or both. There are less-complicated (and cheaper) tile-based drag-and-drop programs out there, but they tend to be more limited and just can’t do some of the things I want a mapping program to do. So, it’s back to the old graph paper, right?

Not any more. The name Todd Gamble will be familiar to most fantasy role-players who have recently joined (or have remained with) the hobby. He is the award-winning cartographer that has provided the beautiful and detailed maps for a multitude of FRP products, including working for such luminaries as Wizards of the Coast (Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil) and Green Ronin (Freeport: City of Adventure). If, by some small chance, you’ve never seen his work, you can check out a sample (free for download) at http://www.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/mw/mw20020425a.

Now, how about a whole book of that kind of quality? Did that get your interest? It should have. Cartographica: Journal of Maps consists of 64 pages of Todd’s best work. A castle, a wizard’s lair, a collection of sacred tombs, a traditional dungeon, a mysterious group of islands (including a small hamlet, a dragon’s lair, and a vampire lair), an abandoned mine, and a city sewer system are all detailed in glorious color, ready to be populated by the DM and dropped into the campaign.

Critical Hits
There’s really nothing more to say. You get an entire book of Todd Gamble’s most elegant works, with enough variety that almost any DM will find a use for at least some of these maps. Just perusing the book can provide a wealth of adventure ideas. I daresay this is a book that absolutely no GM should be without!

Critical Misses
Two major problems and a minor (but amusing mistake) plague the book. Though identified as the Exotic Islands on the first map (an overview of the archipelago), subsequent maps refer to them as the Erotic Islands. Admittedly, I had to double-check to make sure that the font used wasn’t just making it look like something else, but sure enough. This is a minor error, but it does present the island chain in a whole new light (sounds like the kind of place I might want to visit).

My two major complaints are somewhat less amusing. The first is that several of the maps are unusually dark. I understand that this is part of the atmosphere, but it does have the side effect of making them quite difficult to read (and therefore use). Permission is granted to photocopy the maps for personal use and I recommend that DM’s do so, perhaps lightening up the copy a bit to make the map more legible. I don’t recall the maps from the Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil being this dark and hard-to-view, and I was somewhat disappointed that much of Todd’s beautiful work is hidden beneath a veil of blackness.

Finally, very few of the maps are keyed in any fashion. While this serves to enhance the attractiveness of the works (no clunky numbers to get in the way), it also makes them difficult to use in a game. Again, my advice is to take those lightened photocopies you just made and key the rooms on there, preserving the beauty of the originals and still making the maps useful to you.

Coup de Grace
Strictly speaking, this is not a d20 product. You won’t find a whit of mechanics, text, or anything other than maps here. This book is a fantasy GM’s dream, regardless of what system you use. Books of maps are nothing new, of course, but Todd’s work is wholly original and of the highest quality. But for the complaints I voiced above, I’d give this product top ratings. As it is, I have to say, go and get this book. You won’t be disappointed.

To see the graded evaluation of this product and to leave comments that the reviewer will respond to, go to The Gamer's Corner at www.d20zines.com.

 

[GameWyrd]

Wow. Okay. Let’s try that again. Wow.

No. There’s no escaping Todd Gamble’s Cartographica’s "wow factor".

Mind you, there’s no escaping the "Get your dirty minis off my lovely maps!" factor either. If you don’t have access to a colour photocopier then don’t go near Cartographica. You’ll go insane as you attempt to balance the urge to use the wonderful maps in your game against your instincts to protect the book.

The maps are supposed to be used as battle maps; the square grids on them are proof of that. The urge to photocopy the maps must also be perfectly valid since Green Ronin grant permission for personal photocopying up front at the start of the book. Yet the maps have something of a handout feel about them too. The square grid overlay on the maps always smaller than the standard size for game use, often significantly so. There might be no risk of miniatures being used on them, not unless someone has a supply of miniature miniatures. The maps are decorated with in-game paraphernalia like ‘wax seals’, GM notes (directions, comments) and decorative headers.

The Cartographica isn’t terribly efficient. You get 64 pages for your $17. There’s neither index nor table of contents so although that means you get an extra map it means they’re hard to find. An index would be useless anyway since there aren’t any page numbers. An efficient set of maps would be a collection of black and white drawings, or in my opinion, an $8 PDF collection is better still – why photocopy when you can print off at whim and make changes with PaintShopPro?

The thing is, Todd Gamble’s Cartographica isn’t supposed to be terribly efficient. Let’s coin the phrase "Map porn" for the book. Eye candy for cartography freaks. On that score it works very well. GMs can transfer the book’s wow factor to their game by taking a quality colour photocopy and laying the map down on the gaming table for the players to stare at.

There is a fairly good mix of locations in the 64 bold colour pages. Sure, there are insides of castles and passageways ready for dungeon crawlers but there are the likes of graveyards, islands and orchards to.

It’s worth noting the colour. The colour and fine detail are some of the reasons why the Cartographica has such a wow factor but there are a few maps when you’ll find yourself squinting and holding the book up under the light just to see them. A few of the maps are rather too dark.

If you’re well off, if you appreciate fabulous cartography, if you’ve a special scenario coming up and don’t mind one or two eccentricities on a map, even if you’re just one of these things then Todd Gamble’s Cartographica will make a famous addition to your RPG collection. Quite honestly it’s something you can take out and show friends. If you’re a strict, no nonsense, matter of fact gamer then you may well find the book too expensive and too esoteric for your tastes. I liked it. I guess you’ll have to chalk me up as a purveyor of map porn.

* This Todd Gamble's Cartographica review was first published at GameWyrd.

 

[Messageboard Golem]

This is definately a book you should look through before you buy. I also found many maps too dark to be usefull and some that didn't have squares.

Aaron

 

[Simon Collins]

This is not a playtest review.

Cartographica is a journal of colour maps by Todd Gamble, for use with any RPG, released by Green Ronin Publishing.

Cartographica is a 64-page full colour softcover product. It contains maps of a wide variety of environments - several castle floorplans, a wizards tower built on a dam for generating magical power from the water flow, subterranean passages, sacred tombs, dungeon levels, exotic islands, overland maps, a small hamlet, mining passages, and underground sewers. Each location has several pages of maps giving different views or showing different areas. All maps come with scale and compass direction, but no key and little in the way of explanation or description. Maps of internal or underground locations are overlain with a grid. There is no index and the pages lack numbers.

High Points
As could be expected, the level of detail, texture and quality on most of the maps is superb. The variety and type of locations chosen mean that the product's possible utility should be good. The best usage for the maps in my opinion is as a creative catalyst to design an adventure around - the ambience and the unusual design of some of the maps really sets the creative juices flowing.

Low Points
The first irritating aspect of the maps is that several of them are too dark, notably some of the exotic islands, sacred tombs, and dungeon levels. Photocopying these would be useless, as they would just come out totally black. The second irritating thing is the amount of space the title of some maps takes up, impinging onto the map itself with huge fonts that take up almost 1/4 of the page. One thing I would have liked to see was the use of a photocopying scale (much like that given in Atlas Games' Backdrops product) such that the grids on the internal maps could be expanded to a reasonable size for miniatures more easily.

Conclusion
Beautiful to look at (apart from the dark maps), and a stimulating catalyst for adventure design, I still found the lack of utility (no photocopying scale, no index), wasted space of the encroaching titles, and potential for expensive large-scale colour photocopying impinged on my enjoyment of the maps. Even given the quality, I still did not find the maps as good as those produced by 0one Games and given the comparative price, medium (i.e. 0one use a .pdf file with optional mono or colour maps), I felt Cartographica to be an expensive piece of eye candy with limited utility, compared to what might have been.

 

[Psion]

Todd Gamble's Cartographica: Journal of Maps

Todd Gamble's Cartographica: Journal of Maps (hereafter, Cartographica) is a full color collection of maps by WotC alumni cartographer Todd Gamble. The book is published by Green Ronin, and is not d20 branded or published under the OGL. That said, this review will be primarily from the standpoint of its utility for d20 System fantasy gaming.

Cartographica is a 32 page perfect bound softcover book priced at $16.95. The interior is all glossy full color pages.

The cover of the book has an illustration that resembles a stamped and bordered piece of parchment with a map scale and an illustration of a waterfront tower.

With the exception of the title page and an ad page, the interior is entirely maps. Each map has a stylish parchment-looking banner and a border that makes the map itself appear to be on parchment (well, if you fed parchment into your printer to print CG-looking maps...)

The maps are colorful and stylish. Some of the maps use 5 or 10 foot scale grids, though some use no grid or an odd-scale grid. Some grids are not actual grids, but have different shades and/or colored tiles on the illustrated floor that act as a grid. However, all of the maps have scale bars.

The maps themselves are colorful, computer-generated maps. Maps are divided into sections, some sections with thematically or physically linked maps. Sections include:
- Behind castle walls: Floorplans of castles and other large buildings like cathedrals.
- Wizard's Tower and Power House: Four levels of a wizards tower built on a dam with a magical power generator.
- Subterranean Passages: A collection of man-made an natural catacombs connected to the wizard's tower.
- Sacred Tombs: Manmade tombs, some of them apparently blow ups of sections on the subterranean passages.
- Dungeon Levels: A few levels of a man-made dungeon.
- Overland Maps: Islands, parts of continents, and some smaller maps.
- Exotic Islands: A few villages and lairs on the before depicted islands.
- Small Hamlet: Some maps of buildings, trees, and other features in a small hamlet.
- Mining Passages
- Underground Sewers

The maps seem primarily useful to me if you are going to be showing them to players, something that is most likely with the overland maps. Some of the maps seem to have good utility as quick maps.

However, these maps seem much less inspired/inspirational than many of the maps by Gamble that appear in Wizards of the Coast's Map-a-Week archive. In fact, only the wizard's tower seems to be of the same "idea content" caliber as the WotC archive.

The main drawback of the maps themselves are that some have shading that is so dark that they make some or most map features difficult or impossible to see. This is particularly true of some castle maps and most of the outdoor exotic island maps.

Overall Grade: C+

-Alan D. Kohler

 

[Yummysnake]

I totally agree with your review. I was disappointed with this product. I had high hopes for usable maps, but the wizard's tower was about the only thing I found unique and interesting.