maps RQG Campaign Journaling in LegendKeeper, assisted by Argan Argar Atlas

[rondaa]

Roughly a year ago, I discovered LegendKeeper, a really cool tool that lets you zoom around your setting in a mad mix of Google Maps and a custom wiki. This is a private "world" instance that's shareable with my players. I don't actually upload much in the way of images, but I dug up this birds eye view of Jonstown and threw in some wiki article text so you could see how it works.

A few months after my discovery, the Argan Argar Atlas was made free in support of Jonstown Compendium creations. I was dismayed to discover that AAA was a paginated PDF, and even more horrified to discover that each page was actually an imprecise composition of 5-7 images. Unfortunately, that's all I had to work with, and work I did. Many hours later, I finally had a map that reaches LegendKeeper's 15K pixel maximum. There are several ugly seams and photoshop splotches, but I managed to piece it all together at the AAA PDF's original pixel density which means all placenames are fully legible.

I'm sharing this now for a couple reasons:

• I have a new RQG campaign, and I think I can finally put all that old work to good use! I'm really excited by my players' level of engagement so far, and their characters are shaping up splendidly. We start in a couple weeks! If you don't mind that I've only been running games in Glorantha for a year, we could accept one or two more players!
• I saw the teasers for a new Matt Ryan map of Dragon Pass. I'm thrilled to see the level of detail, although I request for the love of all that is holy: make a high resolution digital image available for purchase! I fully intend to use it as a digital campaign aid as seen above. I'd prefer not to have to piece together another PDF, and the AAA PDF is a tad blurry at 100% zoom level.
• A "Community" update for LegendKeeper is imminent. This will allow anyone to browse a "public" world created by a LK user (or licensed by LegendKeeper with an IP owner), and logged in users may be allowed to make a copy of it for their own purposes. I think Glorantha is a great candidate, either officially (as a sort of interactive version of Nick Brooke's index of Jonstown Compendium scenarios) or as unofficial Free Fan Material. (If I'm volunteering myself for setting that up, I accept!)

[soltakss]

That looks really good, thanks for sharing.

It looks like an awful lot of work went into this. If it could be shared, that would be wonderful.

[rondaa]

I'm happy to share my photoshop work but, even though the PDF is free, I'd still need permission from Chaosium to share the images/PSDs freely. To tell the truth, I would prefer if Chaosium themselves revisited the AAA source files and produced their own high resolution image update; however, I understand if they're not going to make that a priority.

I wouldn't be opposed to making my LegendKeeper "world" public, but "invite only" is the only option available at present. I'm not certain it qualifies for Fan Material despite it being derived from free content and not charging for it.

Edited October 4, 2020 by rondaa

[Tyrian Telbenj]

We need your' map

[Jape_Vicho]

What a coincidence, I have been piecing a full map of Genertela from the Argan Argar Atlas these days too, in the intent of making a 1625 political map. Tedious work for sure, and harder than it seems. I'm not done yet, once I am, I intended to share it, but given your second comment I might have to look up if that wouldn't be against the rules.

Edited October 4, 2020 by Jape_Vicho

[rondaa]

4 hours ago, Jape_Vicho said:

Given your second comment I might have to look up if that wouldn't be against the rules.

I'm more careful than most 😁

Your project sounds great, I know I'd be in the market for that! If it's a "transformative work" it's probably fine, but what I did likely falls under "copying" so redistributing without permission isn't as appropriate

Edited October 5, 2020 by rondaa

[soltakss]

7 hours ago, rondaa said:

Your project sounds great, I know I'd be in the market for that! If it's a "transformative work" it's probably fine, but what I did likely falls under "copying" so redistributing without permission isn't as appropriate

Well, the Argan Argar Atlas is freely available for the Jonstown Compendium and its maps can be used for Jonstown Compendium supplements.

So, it is not beyond the realms of possibility that a map made by stitching together the maps of the Argan Argar Atlas could be sold under the Jonstown Compendium. There are maps sold under the Jonstown Compendium, so it is probably possible, maybe.

[Jape_Vicho]

1 hour ago, soltakss said:

Well, the Argan Argar Atlas is freely available for the Jonstown Compendium and its maps can be used for Jonstown Compendium supplements.

So, it is not beyond the realms of possibility that a map made by stitching together the maps of the Argan Argar Atlas could be sold under the Jonstown Compendium. There are maps sold under the Jonstown Compendium, so it is probably possible, maybe.

In my case I meant sharing it here on the forum, I don't think my work meets the quality it would need to be published on the Jonstown Compendium. 

[rondaa]

Mine qualifies as a "hack" that's not "publication ready" as well. For example, there's actually about 1 hex-width and 11 inches long of missing coastline adjacent to the Keniryan Sea. Obviously it exists in some form somewhere, but it gets lost between the pages of the Atlas. I used Photoshop's stamp tool to make a new coastline and tried to match smaller resolution images of that section as a reference, but it's still a hack.

[soltakss]

1 hour ago, rondaa said:

Mine qualifies as a "hack" that's not "publication ready" as well. For example, there's actually about 1 hex-width and 11 inches long of missing coastline adjacent to the Keniryan Sea. Obviously it exists in some form somewhere, but it gets lost between the pages of the Atlas. I used Photoshop's stamp tool to make a new coastline and tried to match smaller resolution images of that section as a reference, but it's still a hack.

So, it's better than the Argan Argar Atlas, if it contains more detail or missing sections?

Publish, publish, publish!