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BASICS
Todd Gamble’s Cartographica
Journal of Maps,
Volume 1 (whew, what a
name!) is the first book in
what looks to be a series on
maps of various typical (and
maybe some not) fantasy
game locations. It is a 62page
softcover book with
color cover and full color
interior on nice paper with a
retail price of $16.95 USD.
INSIDE
Upon opening and flipping
through the book you’ll
notice that all of the maps
are just stunning. They are
all of absolutely superior
quality and except for a very
few which are kind of dark
are all easy to read and navigate. Chris Pramas (head Green Ronin guy)
points out in a short introduction that the inspiration for them doing this book
was to give DM’s pre-made maps to use in their home-brew adventures.
The first eight maps are in a section called ‘Behind Castle Walls’ and they
represent some fairly standard layouts and also some that are nice and
different. In general, the scales are easy to measure, but not all of the maps
have the standard 5’ square that many of us have become accustomed to with
Dungeons and Dragons. The next six maps lead us to a wizard’s Tower and
Power House that is build into a dam which generates power through a large
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turbine and is right next door to a dragon’s cave. This multi-story, but kind of
small, dwelling then leads to a series of cave under the river for you to explore
which take up another 5 pages of maps.
Next we move on to several Sacred Tombs that could be scattered throughout
the Overland Maps, Exotic Islands or Small Hamlets that also populate the
book. There are five pages of dungeon levels and while each of them, taken
individually, might be a tad small for a single adventure, you could connect
them all and have a five layer deep dungeon that just needs you to stock it
with all sorts of nasties.
The Mining Passages could make for a great raid into a goblin or dwarf mine
and the Underground Sewers are just waiting to be populated with beggars,
rats, and maybe even were-rats.
VALUE
This book will be of questionable value to some people and here’s why. If
you’re not a DM or interested in building adventures around pre-generated
maps then you’ll probably look at it and say, “Wow, what great looking
maps” and walk off. Granted, not everyone is a DM with those desires and
Green Ronin certainly knew this when they put the book together. You could
easily build several adventures around the maps in this book and to anyone
that is artistically challenged (yes, I’ll raise my hand). How hard is it to draw
a map, you ask? Well, not too hard if you want it to look like a bunch of
squiggly lines. If you’re ok with that, then you’ll keep walking, but
considering that these maps come out to just over $0.25 per page I’d say that
they are worthy of a spot on your bookshelf and can assist you in pulling
together at least a handful of adventures. My only wish for the series would
be to maybe do larger foldable maps that could be used directly on the game
table along with miniatures.