At the very least from reading the Hobbit when aged nine, I have poured over maps, both real and imagined, following their contours and throughways with an open and exploring imagination. This fascination alone has voraciously consumed whole afternoons, before considering my own simplistic maps, shepherded into existence with map packages such as Wonderdraft. These imaginary spaces have ensorcelled a geosocial backdrop for many an adventure over the years, with the creative joy sometimes infusing the adventures themselves.
Recently, I have come to appreciate that, though my cartographic efforts have not been in vain, there are consumately skilled artists out there who have created works upon which you can build. I wanted to highlight one creator, whose work I have followed for many a long year, and has beautiful examples available to download. Daniel-André Sørensen paints such beautiful maps, and weaves his own worldbuiling upon them. Check out his glorious work on DrivethruRPG.
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| The western realms of Blank Continent 4 by Daniel-André Sørensen |
As a huge bonus, he has also provides some large high resolution blank continents for you to label up and make your own, and share, even commercially, if you have a project that could use them. I have spent a good hour on ‘Continent 4’ visualising a backdrop for either Heroic Fantasy or Zweihänder.
His labled maps could also be taken whole cloth, finding meaning and connection between the etched in names. I wonder if there might be a ‘Clash of Steel‘ on the streets of the bustling port city of Kasra?
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| A small section of the sword & sorcery inspired world of Vrayth by Daniel-André Sørensen |
Of course such eye candy may yet call for the services of my favourite print shop Pixel2Print, with some custom table display prints at 440gsm PVC. Appreciating such a canvas rarely has too high an impact on the actual play, especially for a focused one-shot, the casual verisimilitude of the imagined world made physical always gives me a thrill. The VTT canvas backdrop beckons…