The Eastern Stockades Map
This article will detail the thought process that went into creating my latest fantasy RPG setting. Think of it as a behind the scenes kind of thing. I am using this setting for a sandbox campaign I am running with my current group. I'm also putting it up on patreon, where you can read the overview for free.
The Start
So, I'm really, truly, unbelievably tired of fantasy settings that fall along the lines of "Medieval Europe with Dragons." I feel like that has been done plenty and we can do far better with our inspiration sources. There's just nothing left to say about it. However, I also understand that so much of fantasy presumes this as a default that its hard to get too far away from that type of setting in D&D.
So what instead? I've always loved the idea of a "crossroads of the world" campaign that borrowed little bits and pieces from vast stretches of history and geography. I've played in campaigns with that style and it was awesome. The type of campaign setting where no one questions whether their character "fits in" regardless of whether that character is a Greek hoplite, a Bedouin ranger, or a Shaolin monk. However, that's just not what I was feeling at the moment.
So what else? I've been kicking around the idea of running a game in a deep wilderness area, an untamed frontier. That got me started thinking about various pre-Columbian civilizations. I recalled something that I read long ago about the people who had reached what is now the Americas before Columbus. Supposedly, medieval Russian fur trappers had kept going further east through Siberia until they reached what is now Alaska. Some quick research into the topic suggests that this claim is very unlikely, but it did get me reading about Russian colonization of Siberia and the New World, as well indigenous Siberian cultures and their trade with Native Americans/First Nations in Alaska and Canada. Also, did you know that the Mongols were around until the 1400s? Doesn't history make it seem like that their empire was a million years ago?
Considering the subject matter, it would be very easy (and a cheap take) to read a couple Wikipedia articles about Native American folklore and base the setting on that. And while I'm sure someone with a different background could make a great game along those lines, I couldn't. Nor did I want to turn this into an "Avatar" story about a nature-loving, coded-as-Native American culture being attacked by the evil humans.
There is a big difference between culture appropriation and "being aware that not all history is European history and having my writing influenced by that." I didn't want to copy and paste a mythology I'm largely unfamiliar with, nor did I want to rewrite the horrors inflicted upon Aleutian Islanders by the Russians.
The Big Idea
What I took from my reading was a series of images, an aesthetic. I was borrowing geography, not culture. I was thinking endless landscapes of thick pine forests, rugged, snow capped mountains, rivers made treacherous by falls and white water. To me, this all reeks of mystery, and my mind immediately started going in the direction of hidden glades where fae creatures gather, curses, riddles, and a long-forgotten civilization whose remains have been all but lost to the wilderness.
So here we are. We know that this setting is a far northern land, a land of harsh winters. It's a mysterious, unexplored region with many secrets. We know that it is a frontier land, where the "civilized" world ends and a lightly populated, unspoiled natural landscape begins. From here, certain things seemed to naturally go along with what has already been established. The whole time I was kicking this idea around in my head, I kept going back to the idea of a series of wilderness forts that defined the region and gave it a name, "The Eastern Stockades" is what I settled on.
So we have a line of primitive forts built to "open up" the unexplored region and serve as trading posts. I also liked the idea of these forts being manned in order to protect from raiders or invading armies on the other side. So, if this region is a buffer zone between two military powers being opened up for exploration and settlement, it makes sense that the people building the forts would want to encourage people to move to the area. Possibly this means giving away grants of land to people who would never otherwise get the chance to own their own farm.
So the region is now a rough northern wilderness dotted by small farmsteads, forts, and trading posts that exist next to the tribes and kingdoms that have always lived here. Also, there are outlaws because of course there are.
There is one problem that comes up at this point. If my setting is a frontier, what is it the frontier of? What is the densely populated region that people migrating here are escaping from? That's really the boring part of the whole thing, so I didn't spend much time on it. I jotted down some notes about a loose alliance of kingdoms and city-states that are kind of at each other's throats a lot and aren't paying much attention to what happens on the border region.
Add Some D&D to It
Now for the fun stuff. The first thing you gotta figure out is what types of monsters play a starring role in the setting. The first thing I thought of: mammoths, wholly rhinos, polar bears, and dire everything. A land of giants. Also, there are actual giants, tons of them. I wanted to make it clear that nature rules here. I also couldn't forget about the fae creatures I had already established as part of the setting. I wanted them to be plentiful and always just out of sight.
The next thing you have to establish is how the various ancestries available to player characters fit into the setting. I really love how 5E handles things like orcs and goblins as player characters, and I've always chafed against the "all x are evil" version of fantasy races. The new assumptions are much easier to work with.
Again, "classic" fantasy is tired and boring to me, so I deemed that the "default" fantasy cultures like humans, elves, and dwarves are concentrated in the cities to the south and west. The frontier region will be populated with a broad mix of the other ancestries and variants available. My mind immediately goes to stoic orcs trading hides and ivory with wood elves. Mountain dwarves, goliaths, goblins, aarakocra, centaurs: these people will populate the isolated camps and settlements of the wilds.
At this point, I've already mentioned a ruined kingdom whose remnants have disappeared underneath the reemerging wilderness. So we have dungeons. Next, we need dragons. Well white dragons ruling frozen lairs in the northern mountains basically writes itself. But I also like the idea of black and green dragons ruling over distant kingdoms along the edge of the map. Perhaps dragons are not commonly found in the more heavily settled parts of the world, but in the deep wild, they are a fact of life.
Mapping it Out
For mapping, I've long used Fractal Mapper. It works well for me and I already know how to use it. I started the mapping process by throwing some mountains around and placing my line of forts along the passes. I didn't pay much attention to what was on the other side of the mountains, but I wanted there to be some other natural barriers. What could be interesting? A vast marsh called the Deadmire, where "things" make sure that no one who goes in comes back again. A lake where strange and powerful beings are rumored to live. Take notes, get back to it later.
The rest of the map was just filling in forests, rivers, and more mountains. I placed small, notable settlements here and there. Two along one of the rivers, and one among the forts. This last one was the only large colonial settlement that I wanted in the campaign, the rest would be hamlets or thorps in terms of size. I had the vague notion of an ambitious noble trying to snap up as much land as possible and now rules an isolated kingdom with an iron fist.
This decision did not preclude having local communities with large populations, but I decided that many of these groups would be nomadic or semi-nomadic in order to retain the "rough" feel of the setting.
Other bits and pieces of the setting came to me as I played with the map software, but I don't feel the need to go into that with great detail. Some of these ideas popped into my head fully formed, others were just a name or vague concept that got fleshed out later.
Finishing
Some people create a setting first and then map it. Here, I've shown the opposite approach, which I prefer. It doesn't take much to turn a map into a list and a list into the outline of a setting. The work of detailing the entries of a setting is what takes the most time and creativity, but that is much easier for me once I've got a general theme and "feel" for the type of setting I'm creating.
So that's it, more or less covers the process I went through when creating this setting. Feel free to hit questions and comments below.
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