Dungeons & Dragons World Map Design

Dungeons & Dragons World Map Design

As an avid player of Dungeons & Dragons, a table-top role-playing game where a Dungeon Master tells a story to its participating players in a (usually) high fantasy world, I love to immerse myself with those that I play with every week. As the Dungeon Master (the player who guides the adventurers in the world as the narrator) for a long-standing campaign, I helped my players tell a story with their characters in a setting I created called Worldwhen. I was the Dungeon Master for a group of friends I played with as an undergrad for about three years.

To help guide my players throughout this complex setting with wonders around every corner, I've created a map that they frequently consulted. The current map is evidently incomplete, but previously evolved and grew as my players explored Worldwhen and discovered more locations. The map has political boundaries, points of interests, settlement markers, geographical features, and more with respective labels. The world is unique in the sense that much of its locations and regions were dependent on my players' backstories and histories. It was created to be malleable with this in mind.

Since I graduated, we no longer play anymore. However, I do intend to use this map as a base to complete the rest of the world, should I use my homebrew setting again, playing as a Dungeon Master for another group of D&D players!

To create this map, I downloaded a free base map template online and further sculpted its lands via a program called Inkscape to define the world's shape. After I was satisfied with the landmasses, I exported it to GIMP and created symbols and icons for points of interest. I downloaded appropriate fantasy-like fonts and used pathing tools to give landmarks and labels their curvy shape. While unfinished, I plan to continue adding to the world using the same processes in the future should I use the Worldwhen homebrew setting again. I also add an overlay of a rough papyrus texture to give the feel of an old, used map. These methods helped me create the map of Worldwhen with this cartographic exercise.

It isn't just graphic design that aided me in building this map. A combination of writing skills and knowledge in cultural anthropology studies helped mold an understanding of worldbuilding and map design.

A map is a representative of the entire world. And for a fantasy world at that, there must be a multitude of so many different wonders, cultures, regions, climates, etc. The possibilities are quite literally endless. There are so many histories to consider, and so many places to draw inspiration from, whether from our real world history, or other fictional worlds in video games, novels, or television shows. A worldbuilder must take into account everything about their world, as a tiny effect can have profound changes in how a culture, kingdom, tribe, ethnic group, etc., acts about another thing. For example, how does magic operate within the world? How do certain groups of people respond to it? How do they learn it? Do they conglomerate together in certain spots in the world where magic is high in concentration? Do they war against each other, and thus changing the landscapes? Worldbuilding is a nuanced and detail-heavy skill that I'm proud to possess.

Since beginning my studies in cultural anthropology, I have constructed different cultures and groups in Worldwhen with their own unique varying and diverse set of values, ideals, hierarchies, and more. For example, at one point in my campaign, my players visited the Serpen Isles (represented by the white geopolitical region on the map). That place is ruled by tyrannical humanoid snake folk with a strict caste and hierarchical system. Huamans also live there, but they're used as fodder in a magical ritual to transform them into snake people. My players thought it hideous and horrendous that the snake folk would dare do this to hardworking humans, but the culture in this region was that it was an extreme honor to be transformed into a snake, as it meant serving the king in his image. It was complete culture shock for my players that meant a more nuanced approach to their quest was required.