Demonsub is Five Leagues From The Borderlands

One of the fun things with this game is that it asks you to make a map of the area you’ll be exploring. When I discovered this I was pretty excited and started playing around with some ideas even before I got to that part of the book. 

The game does give a framework of how to build your map, like rolling for number of settlements and size, add a delve, an unexplored location, and add enemy camps but it’s up to you where to place them. It also asks to break the map up into areas, such as hexes, to give an idea if you need to travel to a distant location or not.

The author, in a recent blog, gives additional thoughts on creating your map. This, I believe, is new to third edition.

In the Facebook community many people are using Inkarnate, an online map making program but it turns out it won’t run in a browser on my iPad, you need to run it on a PC, which I don’t use. Someone else did mention a random online map generator with slight customisation called Perilous Shores, which I tried and quite liked. I ended up using the github version which worked better on the iPad. I used this program to generate the land and terrain.

I used the iPad image app Pixelmator to create and place icons and text onto the map. As new locations are found during play I can go back into Pixelmator and add or remove stuff to the map quite easily as everything is its own layer.

So here’s the map I came up with, which I’m pretty happy with. I did try a coloured in version but I like the black and white one better.

For each of the settlements there was a further roll to determine the nature of that settlement. 

Starting from the top of the map we have;

Gateswood – a small hamlet that functions as a market town once per week for the many small farms that surround it. 

Hillsend – a small fortified outpost defending the road through the Barren Hills between the Untamed Coast and the lands to the west. Although there are enough soldiers to defend the outpost there’s not enough to venture out and mount any concerted action. The Warband will be starting near here.

Tydemouth – A scattered fishing community rather than a village.

Shieldstown – The largest settlement in the Untamed Coast, a walled town fortified with enough troops to form an adequate defence, for now. 

The locations of three camps are also known, chosen from a list of enemies in the book, matched to my miniature collection. There are also three hideouts which are unknown but may be discovered in play, and added to the map later.

I’m looking forward to tracking my progress on the map and adding many new discoveries in time. I’ve printed out the map and will be tracking my location by marking on it in red pen. I love this idea and it really feels like I have a whole land to explore.