Community Mapping: Invidia
Posted: Thu Apr 04, 2024 2:15 am
Hey everyone!
I hope that everyone's Easter and April Fools and other holidays went well. I figured that things have been a bit quiet in recent days and wanted to do something that would involve the community.
It's pretty well-known that Ravenloft has a lot areas on the map that tend to be neglected. Whether that's due to the wacky demographics of the setting or the nature of mapping the Core in 2e and 3e, that leads to big or semi-important settlements being on the map while small ones that get mentioned in supplementary material or are homebrewed in tend to get the short stick. But it would be nice to come up with new places in the Core, even with all of that being taken into account. So, as I was rereading Gazetteer IV and remarking on how rural yet populated Invidia was suggested to be (given the Gabrielle vs. Malocchio conflict), I felt a bit disappointed at the amount of villages and locales. There's Karina and Curriculo and Tancos and Beltis and Valetta, sure, but I feel like the smaller villages that would be more fun for PCs to interact with and be even more affected by the choosing-of-loyalties within the domain got the short stick. That's when I hatched the idea: why not make more locales and sites of interest? In fact, instead of one person doing so, why not have this be something that more and more people can pitch into? So, with some editing software and use of Jester of the FoS's maps (thank you Jester!), I made this: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1F4Y ... sp=sharing
In this link, there's an annotated map of Invidia based on Jester's map that adds 19(!) places on the map to be explored. These could range from villages affiliated either with Gabrielle and the Gundarakite resistance or Malocchio's loyalists, to military outposts that Malocchio's mercenaries use, to mines, to farmlands/ranches/pastures/orchards, to lumber camps, to ruins, to trading posts, to more!
The goal would be for users to contribute however many sites of interest/locales to Invidia as they want (though I'd caution against doing more than, say, 5, as that might deprive other posters of chances if only 1-2 people are populating the thread), until we fill out all 19. It's a first-come, first-serve basis but I tried to add enough variety in placement that people will be able to find something else that interests them even if their ideal spot is taken. A write-up of each locale would consist of 2-3 sentences at minimum, 5-6 sentences at maximum, along with creating 1-3 NPCs for your write-up (and the sentence count for those NPCs don't count against the sentence count for the write-up proper so go wild!).
This is similar in idea to my Community Thread: Settlements (which I'll get back to, I swear) but instead of posting a settlement from anywhere in the Mists, this is a site of interest (so it doesn't have to be populated, though I have a bias for that, which you're free to ignore) specifically themed to Invidia. If this goes well, I'll be happy to make more threads for other domains in Ravenloft that might benefit from this (like Falkovnia, or Borca, or Valachan, or Sithicus, etc).
If this thread really takes off, I'd be willing to see if it would be possible to commission a cartographer for nice map of Invidia that added elements of all the settlements elaborated here, alongside the gazetteer description that Jester included in his map. Of course, I'd only do that with the explicit permission and approval of the posters here, and that's more a stretch-goal than anything else (it would be in the style of this Barovia map, for instance: https://www.deviantart.com/mapynieprakt ... -858206624) (or this Nova Vaasa map: https://www.deviantart.com/mapynieprakt ... -920722969) (Or this Dementlieu map:
Have fun folks!
I hope that everyone's Easter and April Fools and other holidays went well. I figured that things have been a bit quiet in recent days and wanted to do something that would involve the community.
It's pretty well-known that Ravenloft has a lot areas on the map that tend to be neglected. Whether that's due to the wacky demographics of the setting or the nature of mapping the Core in 2e and 3e, that leads to big or semi-important settlements being on the map while small ones that get mentioned in supplementary material or are homebrewed in tend to get the short stick. But it would be nice to come up with new places in the Core, even with all of that being taken into account. So, as I was rereading Gazetteer IV and remarking on how rural yet populated Invidia was suggested to be (given the Gabrielle vs. Malocchio conflict), I felt a bit disappointed at the amount of villages and locales. There's Karina and Curriculo and Tancos and Beltis and Valetta, sure, but I feel like the smaller villages that would be more fun for PCs to interact with and be even more affected by the choosing-of-loyalties within the domain got the short stick. That's when I hatched the idea: why not make more locales and sites of interest? In fact, instead of one person doing so, why not have this be something that more and more people can pitch into? So, with some editing software and use of Jester of the FoS's maps (thank you Jester!), I made this: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1F4Y ... sp=sharing
In this link, there's an annotated map of Invidia based on Jester's map that adds 19(!) places on the map to be explored. These could range from villages affiliated either with Gabrielle and the Gundarakite resistance or Malocchio's loyalists, to military outposts that Malocchio's mercenaries use, to mines, to farmlands/ranches/pastures/orchards, to lumber camps, to ruins, to trading posts, to more!
The goal would be for users to contribute however many sites of interest/locales to Invidia as they want (though I'd caution against doing more than, say, 5, as that might deprive other posters of chances if only 1-2 people are populating the thread), until we fill out all 19. It's a first-come, first-serve basis but I tried to add enough variety in placement that people will be able to find something else that interests them even if their ideal spot is taken. A write-up of each locale would consist of 2-3 sentences at minimum, 5-6 sentences at maximum, along with creating 1-3 NPCs for your write-up (and the sentence count for those NPCs don't count against the sentence count for the write-up proper so go wild!).
This is similar in idea to my Community Thread: Settlements (which I'll get back to, I swear) but instead of posting a settlement from anywhere in the Mists, this is a site of interest (so it doesn't have to be populated, though I have a bias for that, which you're free to ignore) specifically themed to Invidia. If this goes well, I'll be happy to make more threads for other domains in Ravenloft that might benefit from this (like Falkovnia, or Borca, or Valachan, or Sithicus, etc).
If this thread really takes off, I'd be willing to see if it would be possible to commission a cartographer for nice map of Invidia that added elements of all the settlements elaborated here, alongside the gazetteer description that Jester included in his map. Of course, I'd only do that with the explicit permission and approval of the posters here, and that's more a stretch-goal than anything else (it would be in the style of this Barovia map, for instance: https://www.deviantart.com/mapynieprakt ... -858206624) (or this Nova Vaasa map: https://www.deviantart.com/mapynieprakt ... -920722969) (Or this Dementlieu map:
Have fun folks!