This past week, I have been working on a 5e setting. That’s right, my first content for Dungeons and Dragons fifth edition.
Longtime readers might know that I am a bit of a Pathfinder fan. Until now, all content I have created for gaming has been for my own system, 3S, or Pathfinder.
Why an island?
I wanted to be free to invent the story, locations, and dungeon type stuff pretty much dependant on what the players get up to. This was why I felt I needed my own location. I came up with a smallish island comprising of three kingdoms.
I small set of little known islands might exist relatively unnoticed in any of the main established settings. So this could be in The Forgotten Realms or in Matt Mercer‘s Tal’dorei campaign setting or a few weeks from Wildemount. All that really matters is that we can start in a fresh new location that can morph seamlessly to match the adventure.
Evolution of the Three Kingdoms
I knew I wanted organic border areas and reasonably realistic geography the map I came up has evolved as I wrote down my ideas.
First Draft 
Second Draft
In the first draft, I was focused mainly on setting out the geography. After that I start to look at making a nicer map, adding a few interesting features and setting up locations ripe with story potential.
An island, somewhere pirates might hide, shipping hazards, and an idea of where the various core races congregate we added. Sometimes this meant adding a village, or town. Sometimes, it meant drawing new areas.
Hyperlocal gods
One of the features I wanted to add was hyperlocal gods with whom the party can try and obtain favour for a little bit of luck or a quick save from a TPK.
When I am happy with the pantheon of local gods, I will post them with the current map (still a work in progress).
The map (and setting) are free for you to use under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. Mostly because I have recently obtained a bunch of great assets under that exact license but also because I like to share.
More soon.
