I can't remember exactly why, but one Saturday evening I found myself alone in my flat without any sort of social event to go to, and with my girlfriend out at work. And I suddenly remembered that when I was younger I had spent a lot of time making maps - just drawing them freely on sheets of A4 paper and making up cities, countries, and so on. I got a sudden urge to do it again. So I bought a book of graph paper at the convenience store and spent the evening creating a world.
I then remembered that this map-making urge had been closely connected to playing D&D and other RPGs (which was itself, I suppose, connected to abortive attempts at writing fantasy novels in my adolescence) and this was what spurred me to re-involve myself in the hobby.
Having had an extended break from RPG activities proper (I have been focusing on various publishing projects, the main one of course being Yoon-Suin 2nd edition) I now find myself with a strong hankering to do some gaming. But this has brought with it a more primal desire to just get out paper and pens and make and key some maps.
(I can also lay some of the blame at the door of the author of Rise Up Comus, who has been slowly keying a very large 12-mile hex map of Middle Earth, itself derived from the excellent Idraluna Archives, itself an almost obscenely useful and interesting resource containing, for example, downloadable hexmaps of Antarctica.)
If drawing maps of made-up places is itself rewarding and pleasing, then keying hexmaps is almost...I was going to say orgasmic, but that might be pushing it too far. You get it, though, I think. It is a license to just sit there and imagine things, of course, but also an opportunity to play God - to exercise complete discretion over what is before you. All acts of sub-creation are like this, obviously (what is writing a novel if not playing God?) but the careful cataloguing of an imaginary world over which you have sole control does it in the most direct way possible.
What is the correct way to go about creating a hexmap? I would say that the world is divided into three, mutually hostile and rivalrous camps, each of whose members would not hesitate to exterminate those in the other camps if they gained full control of the levers of power.
The first camp are the bottom-uppers. They start with a 1-mile hex map of a small campaign region, and fill it in. Then they ascend to a 5-mile regional hex map. And so on.
The second camp are the hex-by-hexers. They start off with a standard scale (6 mile hexes, let's say) and then just dive in, filling in contents hex by hex.
The third camp are the big picturers. They start with a world map, using 20-mile or even 50-mile hexes, and chart out kingdoms, empires, and so on, and the connections between them and the continent-scale geographical features. Then they burrow down, to continents and then regions and then to the lowest scale of all.
Thought the members of these different camps harbour maniacal, genocidal hatreds of one another, the final ideal is the same: an entire world, catalogued, from the biggest scale to the smallest (25-mile hexes; 5-mile hexes; 1-mile hexes perhaps being the ideal). One done, the designer is entitled to a seventh day of rest as he surveys what he has created and is pleased. But such a task should not be undertaken lightly, for it is a life's work. Like the climbing of Everest or trekking the Appalacian Trail, it is a feat that requires careful planning and extreme commitment and dedication. Many are seduced by the romance of the task - far fewer attempt it, and almost none succeed.
I dare you to try, for those who succeed are entitled to Great Honour the likes of which ordinary men dread even to dream of.
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