Cartography

Maps of Trid weren't important until the Age of Fable, when the elves began to assess the size, shape, and populations of the Continent. As the Ardic Republic grew, the elves developed a full view of the land and sea—by direct exploration where possible or by divination where not. The result is a map of Trid whose features are known to most, despite the fact that less than five percent of the population ever leaves their ancestral home.   In game terms, the world map is divided into a 20 x 10 grid of Atlas maps, each of which is, in turn, divided into 36 regions. Each region contains a campaign "sandboxes" and is itself subdivided into 6-mile regional hexes.  

Map Scale

Overland maps are laid out on grids based on one of three hex sizes:  

Hex Type	Hex Scale*	Hex Area	Height (hexes)	Contains
Atlas	30 miles	778.48 mi2	5 Regional or 30 Local	25 Regional hexes or 900 Local hexes
Regional	6 miles	31.14 mi2	6 Local	36 Local hexes
Local	1 mile	0.86 mi2	–	–

* Hex scale is measured from flat side to flat side.  

Map Templates

Overland maps are rendered on gridded hex templates, each based on one of the hex sizes above:  

Template	Hex Scale	Height	Dimensions (miles)	Area
Atlas	30 miles	30 Atlas hexes	900 x 900	810,000 mi2
Regional	6 miles	25 Regional hexes	150 x 150	22,500 mi2
Local	1 mile	12 Local hexes	10 x 12	120 mi2

  Atlas Template: At 810,000 square miles, an atlas template a slightly smaller than Saudi Arabia and slightly bigger than Mexico. It would take about four-and-a-half atlas templates to map the United States.   Regional Template: At 22,500 square miles, there are 36 regional maps within each atlas template. Each regional template has enough area to map Togo or Croatia; it would take just over four regional templates to map the United Kingdom. Most sandbox campaign maps are rendered on the regional template.   Local Template: Each local map is just a hair over 120 square miles, and about 188 fit inside a regional template. A local map is big enough to contain Montserrat, Anguilla, or two San Marinos. It would take two local templates to map the Cook Islands.  

Coordinate System

The Trid world map is an equirectangular projection composed of 200 Atlas maps laid out on a 20 x 10 grid (which does a poor job of representing the planet's curvature but eases the task of laying out Cartesian coordinates). The templates above allow cartographers to zoom in from the world map to a specific local hex with no loss of fidelity using a simple coordinate system.     The world map above shows the atlas map grid ("J5" is highlighted in red). Within each atlas template are 36 regional maps ("D3" is highlighted in green). Thus, the regional map above is designated by the coordinates "J5D3".   Each 6-mile hex within a regional template is assigned a 4-digit number (e.g., "1216"). Extending the example above, we might get "J5D3-1216," which translates to "hex 1216 of region D3 within atlas map J5."   Regional hexes are divided into 1-mile local hexes, also assigned 4-digit codes. Locations smaller than one mile across are rendered on square grids with scales of 1/4 mile, 100 yards, 100 feet, or 50 feet per square. Encounter maps are more detailed and rendered on square grids measuring 10 or five feet per square.  

Mapping Software

The majority of Trid's maps are created with the following tools:  

• World / overland maps: Azgaar's Fantasy Map Generator
• Hex maps: Worldographer
• City, Village, and some Dungeon maps: Watabou's Procgen Arcana
• Drawn maps: Inkarnate

  All post-production work is done in Affinity Designer 2.