RuneQuest Starter Set Design Diary #6: creating the Jonstown City Maps

[MOB]

By Jason Durall, RuneQuest creative director

The Starter Set for RuneQuest: Roleplaying in Glorantha is coming! Between now and its release later this year, RuneQuest creative director Jason Durall's Design Diary will share insights about the development of this exciting new boxed set which will introduce the RuneQuest RPG and Greg Stafford's mythic world of Glorantha to all-new audiences.

Diary #1: What to expect in the RQ Starter Set
Diary #2: Cover Art reveal, and what's inside the box
Diary #3: The new adventurers
Diary #4: More about the new adventurers
Diary #5: Welcome to Jonstown, setting for the Starter Set (guest post by Jeff Richard)

This the second in a pair of guest posts from Jason's colleague and co-developer of the Starter Set Jeff Richard, Chaosium's guru for all things Gloranthan. Here Jeff shows how the Jonstown City maps were created, beginning with a rough sketch from Greg Stafford's Gloranthan archives.

Making the Jonstown Map

Olivier Sanfilippo, whose beautiful work you can see in the RuneQuest Core Rules, GM Screen Pack, and other RQG releases, worked with us to create a rich and beautiful map of Jonstown. 

We started with a sketch from Greg: 

GREG STAFFORD'S SKETCH MAP OF JONSTOWN

From Greg's sketch, we worked out how many hectares the city covered and its population. I'm a big fan of imposing material restraints when developing a setting - how big is this place (and how does that compare to real world ancient cities)? How many people could live in a place of that size – again based on real world ancient cities? How do people live, eat, protect themselves, and so on. In short, how does this city WORK?

From there we sketched out its quarters, streets and markets, even temples.

JONSTOWN QUARTERS SKETCH MAP

JONSTOWN STREETS AND MARKETS SKETCH MAP

JONSTOWN TEMPLES SKETCH MAP

Olivier took these crude sketches and made them beautiful! Here's the result, which we're delighted with:

JONSTOWN CITY MAP BY OLIVIER SANFILIPPO

We then broke this map into neighborhoods, so you could get the effect of a City Travel Guide:

The Hinterland

But of course a city needs a surrounding hinterland to function – people to grow food, raise livestock, and so on. In Sartar, the cities are confederated with rural tribes; really petty kingdoms with their own history and politics, and rivalries. So I sketched out Northern Sartar and worked on the tribal boundaries to make sure it all worked together.

JONSTOWN HINTERLANDS SKETCH MAPS

Earlier this year we were fortunate to have acclaimed mapmaker Matt Ryan joined us as Chaosium's in-house cartographer. Matt had already been working with me on an amazing master map of Dragon Pass, so we zoomed in on the area around Jonstown and filled it with details.

JONSTOWN AREA SHOWING TRIBAL BOUNDARIES

Some Unique Things About Jonstown

1. The Jonstown Library

In the RuneQuest Companion, the "Jonstown Compendium" served as a writer's device where snippets of lore created by Greg Stafford could be published without any accompanying "game information" - so little myths, kings lists, anecdotes etc. And with that the Jonstown Library was born – a sprawling temple-library to Lhankor Mhy built by the son of Sartar, with over 10,000 scrolls within.

I love the idea of this library being a great repository of knowledge in what is a largely illiterate rural society. Like Name of the Rose or Anathem or the Library of Babel, the idea of a great library filled with secrets greatly appeals to my sense of fantasy. 

*And of course on the basis it too is a wonderous assortment of Gloranthan treasure, we've named our community content program at DriveThruRPG as the Jonstown Compendium.

2. A place where tribes and city meet

Jonstown is where a half-dozen tribes meet to trade, worship the Orlanthi gods, and resolve disputes. Not all of them do so anymore – a pro-Lunar tribe seceded from the confederation, and the Telmori werewolves have turned their back on the tribes that hate them. But it is still an assembly place of many tribal groups.

Jonstown is also a place of merchants, crafters, healers, thieves, and scribes. You might have a session where the players need to discover lost lore from the Second Age, only to follow up with a monster terrorizing local farms. The scenarios in the Starter Set include a good cross-section of these to get things started, and the location of Jonstown makes it easy to continue from there.

This means there are lots of cults active in Jonstown and plenty of temples, even if you worship comparatively minor deities like Chalana Arroy, Yelmalio. Or even the Seven Mothers!

3. Baths!

In addition to libraries, crafters, and all that good stuff, there are also public baths in Jonstown! The largest of them is part of the Chalana Arroy temple complex: go to the bath, get your healing – clean body, healthy body! The players in my campaign make a beeline for the Chalana Arroy temple and its baths every time they come to Jonstown.

[Arcadiagt5]

DROOLS. WANT. 

[RandomNumber]

51 minutes ago, Arcadiagt5 said:

DROOLS. WANT. 

Seconded.

[Thunder Brother]

Absolutely beautiful. Olivier's maps are really something special.

[Shiningbrow]

Very nice! Can't wait!!! (metaphorically, of course)

I had always imagined the Jonstown Library to be, well.... greater...

[PhilHibbs]

Yes the map is gorgeous, like the Boldhome map, I love that style.

1 hour ago, Shiningbrow said:

I had always imagined the Jonstown Library to be, well.... greater...

Yes, I'd have swapped the Merchant's and Scholar's Quarters. There's that amazing rocky hill, with that big causeway adjoining the processional, why isn't the library on that hill and the merchants down in the more accessible area where the markets are? Or maybe it's deliberate, they they don't want to appear "out of touch up there on the hill in their ivory towers" like the usual stereotype fantasy scholar.

That huge sacred space to Eurmal, though? Approved.

[Jape_Vicho]

The maps and pictures are absolutelly fantastic.

[Shiningbrow]

39 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

That huge sacred space to Eurmal, though? Approved.

Wee bit too close to the library though...

And the Merchant's quarters....

 

And, well, the city in general.... 😛

[Łukasz Jezierski]

Looking at the description of the library's Right Arm:

• The ground floor […]. Stairs lead up to the first floor.
• The second floor […].

I assume this isn't the final proof. Regardless, should I report this to anyone?

[PhilHibbs]

53 minutes ago, Łukasz Jezierski said:

Looking at the description of the library's Right Arm:

• The ground floor […]. Stairs lead up to the first floor.
• The second floor […].

I assume this isn't the final proof. Regardless, should I report this to anyone?

If that one got through, it's too late now. I'm pretty sure this this is the "final proofreading" text that went out, and maybe a corrected page went to the printers, but this is a pretty small one. They're using US terminology of "Ground floor, second floor, third" rather than the European "Ground, first, second", so it should read "Stairs lead up to the second floor." Could be worse, at least there isn't an entire floor description missing!

Edited April 27, 2021 by PhilHibbs

[jajagappa]

6 minutes ago, PhilHibbs said:

If that one got through, it's too late now.

Like item 11 on the Main Map:  Concil? 

1 hour ago, PhilHibbs said:

Yes, I'd have swapped the Merchant's and Scholar's Quarters.

But those are consistent with what we saw previously in Sartar Companion.

[PhilHibbs]

27 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

But those are consistent with what we saw previously in Sartar Companion.

Well yes when I say "I'd have", I don't mean it literally, I wouldn't change established canon. Just saying what I think would be more cool, and off the top of my head too. No-one ever accused me of putting too much thought into my posts. Except my character creation spreadsheet. I definitely HAVE put WAY too much thought into that.

Edited April 27, 2021 by PhilHibbs

[ChrisJ]

Firstly - Amazing maps and pictures.  Love the detail and the travel guide.

 

One comment - on the city map location 12 is listed as "Mayor's House" - in other discussions the title of this position was listed as "City Rex" - is this being simplified for the Starter set, or does Johnstown have some special use of this title?

[Psullie]

this is better than awesome!

[Starcarr]

I do like these “picture maps”. They create a great atmosphere like the  picture on the Pavis box. But am I the only one that also wants some proper, flat, top down maps? They are more useful in a game.

Not complaining about these maps - I do love them and think they’re awesome. They’re just a bit less useful than a flat map.

Edited April 27, 2021 by Starcarr

[Richard S.]

Well it's good to see I already know all the dialogue I'll need for the Jonstown guards 😛

"My cousin's out fighting Lunars and what do I get? Guard duty."

[Runeblogger]

12 hours ago, MOB said:

Jonstown is where a half-dozen tribes meet to trade, worship the Orlanthi gods, and resolve disputes. Not all of them do so anymore – a pro-Lunar tribe seceded from the confederation,

What tribe was it?

[Rodney Dangerduck]

13 minutes ago, Runeblogger said:

What tribe was it?

Pretty sure it's the Dinacoli.

[RandomNumber]

13 hours ago, Starcarr said:

I do like these “picture maps”. They create a great atmosphere like the  picture on the Pavis box. But am I the only one that also wants some proper, flat, top down maps? They are more useful in a game.

Not complaining about these maps - I do love them and think they’re awesome. They’re just a bit less useful than a flat map.

I agree with you completely. We need utility as well as artistry.

[Marc]

9 hours ago, RandomNumber said:

I agree with you completely. We need utility as well as artistry.

And me.  I love the look of the maps, and they're great for getting a feel of the location, but they are less useful when a party starts moving around.

[Jeff]

The maps are very helpful if you are moving around from place to place. They are intended to work like the DK Eyewitness Books which I have used extensively in real life and greatly prefer to top down maps of streets. If you are planning on skirmishing your way through Jonstown or set the city up as a battle map, well I can't really help you.

[Joerg]

There is an entire main road with blocks around it hidden behind Issaries Hill.

Getting something akin to Streetview inside Jonstown would be awesome, and I wish I had time to start modelling this (or Boldhome) in Sketchup to get at least the outlines of houses as a basis for sketches of such views.

But then, that's way beyond the scope of a short presentation of a tribal federation city.

I wonder whether there is some info on where my Torkani rural clansfolk characters would have to go to find their resident tribal representatives to help them with whichever legal or administrative problem they want to solve.

[Lordabdul]

3 hours ago, Joerg said:

There is an entire main road with blocks around it hidden behind Issaries Hill.

I'm not even sure that there is these days... I know that the brainstorming sketches show a street back there, but if I hadn't seen those sketches, and only had this new isometric map as a reference, I frankly would just say that the Issaries Hill connects with the city wall, and that there's not much hidden from view. If you extrapolate from perspective, you'll see there's not much room...

...but now that write that, it occurs to me that what I'd do is have this street be very narrow and almost always in the shadows, stuck between the cliff of the Issaries hill and the wall. Sounds like a perfect place for lots of small dodgy shops that sell unsavoury and illegal stuff. "Shadowlane" or whatever seems like a super obvious/on-the-nose choice for this street 😄 

Generally speaking, I find these isometric maps really great. I don't need a tactical or precise urban zoning map for the cities -- I need a map that gives me a good idea of what the city is like. Don't get me wrong, I also love super precise maps! (one reason I love Harn on a theoretical level) But the isometric map conveys a lot more "flavour" stuff such as the scale of buildings and hills and walls, and doubles as an illustration that shows what the place looks like. Sure, that sacrifices knowing exactly what alley goes where and so on, but Glorantha was never a precise cartographic exercise anyway.

The French Glorantha line has an exclusive sourcebook on the Dundealos, which means it has a write-up of Swenville. The map can be seen on Twitter and you can see that it's a top-down map like some of you are requesting...

I don't know about you, but for all the wonderful cartographic work that Thomas did here, I find the isometric map of Jonstown, Apple Lane, and Boldhome to be more efficient at helping me picture what these places look like. I get little sense of scale about Swenville here. I can only get that from other illustrations, such as this one which I think is OK to share because IIRC it was also shared on social media:

Now all of a sudden I can see how impressive these walls are, and how tall that big staircase is!

I'm happy to sacrifice mapping precision and completeness for more flavour because, in practice, as a GM, I need to describe these places as living breathing cities and hamlets -- I don't need to measure exactly how many meters to the next intersection.

Edited April 28, 2021 by lordabdul

[RandomNumber]

15 hours ago, lordabdul said:

I don't know about you, but for all the wonderful cartographic work that Thomas did here, I find the isometric map of Jonstown, Apple Lane, and Boldhome to be more efficient at helping me picture what these places look like. I get little sense of scale about Swenville here. I can only get that from other illustrations, such as this one which I think is OK to share because IIRC it was also shared on social media:

 

 

I don't believe the two have to be mutually exclusive. Personally, I'd like to have a map to use as a map and artwork to give me a sense of how these places look.  RQ2 Pavis nailed it - the fold out map was a complete and valuable resource for GMs and players. Combined with the two-page isometric "Pavis Panorama" all the bases were covered. Not having an overhead view is a fair enough decision but a shame, IMHO. Feedback is a gift etc.

I'll still buy the packs though as the RQG products and material absolutely rock.

 

Edited April 29, 2021 by RandomNumber
typo

[Lordabdul]

3 hours ago, RandomNumber said:

I don't believe the two have to be mutually exclusive. [...] RQ2 Pavis nailed it

Oh yeah definitely. Like I said, I love love love some good cartography. So if we could get both a detailed map and some overview illustrations, that would be gold. Maybe Chaosium people can share what kind of thought process goes into these decisions, but my uneducated guess is that they make a compromise to keep art budgets sustainable and have a couple more pages to fill with text. I think they did good picking the overview option as the one to keep.

Edited April 29, 2021 by lordabdul