The Shared Lands
by Travis HenryJust thought I'd share the map of the campaign world which 3 DMs and 14 players have co-created since our local D&D Club began in January 2019.
I just now converted its map into X1-style hexes and Mentzerian BECMI font (Baskerville). There's a little paragraph for each dominion, fitting on one page of text; just like how X1 does it.
The map came together organically. We started our D&D Club by playing through the Lost Mine of Phandelver. That was the core of the map.
Then, as each of the 3 DMs ran an adventure, we placed it on the map, thereby extending beyond the Phandalin/Sword Coast map.
So Karameikos (rotated), the Isle of Dread, and Ierendi got added to the map. And another DM added the Duchy of Berghof from the TSR UK adventures. Then there was the Dessarin Vale and Greyvale regions from Forgotten Realms. And several local maps from third-party adventures we ran (Goodman Games, Kobold Press, solo adventures from DMs Guild, etc.) And totally home-made adventures too.
We assigned Real World "parallels" to each village, town, and city, based on our RW location on the New York-Massachusetts border. So as to bring the places to life.
So the Sword Coast is like Columbia County, N.Y., and the Dessarin Vale (a.k.a. Basston Vale) is like Massachusetts. Also, a good deal of our play has been freeform LARPing, while traipsing through parks and woodlands. That really makes for a lively imaginal connection. Those RW places got blended into the map too.
I credit Thorf for the map symbols -- thank you!