Of Campaigns Past: A Simple World Map of Nova-Kintar...

Good Morning, All:

One of my favorite parts of the Nova-Kintar Campaign (of which there were several), was the world map I had created for it. I was in error in my last post: my desk globe was actually a representation of Abraham Ortelius's world map from the first world atlas, Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, published in 1570. It was different enough from Earth to spark my imagination, but also close enough to pull on the subconscious expectations of the players to help fill in the gaps when needed.

My original map (which I sadly cannot locate at the moment), was drawn and colored by hand on a poster-sized piece of hex paper sold by The Armory back in the day. I had only used the top half of the map, because the hexes ran the direction I wanted them to, and I implemented the icosahedral layout of the world maps of Traveller, so get something slightly akin to a flattened representation of Nova-Kintar's surface. The original map was 105 "world" hexes (250-mile hexes) in circumference. Each world-triangle was thus 21 hexes in height, and thus the polar caps extended 8 hexes from the poles. The entire map covered approximately 4620 hexes.

In preparing this post yesterday, I got nostalgic, of course. Since I could not find my map, I started thinking about redoing it in Hexographer. That was a bit overwhelming for simple nostalgia (not to mention a little time consuming), so I quickly decided to aim for something simpler, and thought about a Traveller world map. Using the classic Traveller world map, which is 45 hexes in circumference, each hex would thus be ~550 miles across, and the polar caps would extend 3.5 hexes from the poles. The entire map would consist of about 900 hexes. It was with that in mind that I decided to quickly create a simple continental map of Nova-Kintar, to share with you the basics of the world. Here's what I came up with:



The continents of Nova-Kintar were:

• Tanalis - the northern-most continent; home to Synovia, Pasalovakia and a majority of the first two-thirds of the Nova-Kintar Campaign.
• Mazteklan - the northern of the two continents in the eastern hemisphere; joined by an isthmus of land to Cameria.
• Cameria - the southern of the two continents in the eastern hemisphere; joined by an isthmus of land to Mazteklan; home to the last third of the Nova-Kintar Campaign.
• Uporea - the southeastern subcontinent of the western hemisphere; south of Akirfa, attached to Neidan.
• Akirfa - the northern of the two continents of the western hemisphere; north of Uporea, northeast of Neidan.
• Neidan - the southern of the two continents of the western hemisphere; attached to Uporea, southwest of Akirfa.
• "Frostlands" - the southern-most continent, surrounds a small sea over the actual South Pole of Nova-Kintar. I never thought about it much, as it was under the southern ice caps, which is why I can't remember it's name after all these years.
• Lemuria - an island subcontinent in the eastern hemisphere south of Tanalis, resembling a very small Australia, if you will.

I may still sit down with Hexographer and whip out a world map based on the above. I think that, of any of my past worlds, this would be the world map I'd be most likely to pull together for my "ultimate campaign setting." Indeed, the memory of this map is the basis of the world I described as Taerantha in the Hammersong's Legacy Campaign Setting.

With Regards,
Flynn