Wednesday, June 16, 2021

More Mystoerth

While I was driving on vacation, I get a message from Matthew Fenn, AKA "Matteus," on Facebook. It was his new version of the Mystoerth map.   Now I likely saw it right as I was getting ready to leave and responded back with a "wow, that is cool!" and then I sadly promptly forgot about it.  In my defense, it was 900 miles later when I actually sat down to look at social media again.

The map he sent to me is fantastic.  Click for a larger version.

Mystoerth

It is based on the James Mishler and Chatdemon map I love so much.

This would have been reason enough for me to talk about it today, but there is more! 

There is a discussion about this map on Facebook,

And at the Piazza Message Boards.  I even dusted off my old Piazza account to join in on the posts.

I am going to add some of these links to my Mystoerth page.   I also went to Map to Globe to get a globe of the world rendered.

Mystoerth globe in space

I also uploaded the huge TimeLine my co-DM from the 1980s and early 90s compiled to cover the combined Mystara-Greyhawk world.

While writing this I was chatting with Matthew and he is getting the map printed on cloth.  This made me think of my own Victorian London map I had printed by Banners on the Cheap.  I am going to check that out in a bit.  Though, maybe not as big as the one I have now.

London Map from Banners on the Cheap

So. Where does that leave me?

Well, it was not that long ago when I was talking about using the Orignal Known World for War of the Witch Queens.  

My problem is I love maps.  Every map is a new world to explore.  I have been using Old-School Essentials for my system of choice for WotWQ and I just got my OSE-Advanced Fantasy books and will be using those going forward.  Since OSE-AF is a nice mix of Basic and Advanced versions of the D&D game, why not use a world that is a nix mix of the Basic and Advanced worlds?

Ugh. I hate having to choose! Why can't I use both?  Right. Time. 

Maybe I can cheat. Make my Mystoerth hollow (I do love a Hollow Earth!) and use the Moldvay/Schick Known World map as the interior of my Mystoerth.  Hmm. I do like that idea.  It would help explain some similar names on the maps.  Though it gives me some problems with the Underdark.  The Moldvay/Schick map is much smaller, implying a smaller surface area.  It's been decades since I took calculus to figure out the interior surface area of a sphere. I could compare the outer surface vs. the inner surface and then work out the "depth" between the two worlds.  The crazy Hollow Earth book I have here assumes a "thickness" of 8 miles. I forget what the Rules Cyclopedia assumes. 

Sounds like time to do some math!

2 comments:

Lance Duncan said...

I did some calculations on the hollow world a while back here. https://www.thepiazza.org.uk/bb/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=21627

I've since done more work on it, but that was a while ago. I haven't gotten around to finalizing anything yet.

Also thorf has his own calculations of course.

Timothy S. Brannan said...

@Lance, That is a fantastic resource. Thank you for sharing that.
I will have to add it to my page.