A while back, I dreamed I was reading someone’s RPG-related blog. It contained a gorgeous map that looked like it was somewhere between Tim Burton and Fan Kuan. It connected major destinations (towns, mountain peaks, things like that) with roads; the roads had fields next to them, marking units of travel (hours? watches? miles? something like that). The roads were curly and bumpy, giving a sense of what the land was like. Away from the fields, there were wide areas of hazy, blank, mysterious white, punctuated by streams and occasional other landmarks unreachable by road.

When I woke up, I tried to reproduce the map I saw in my dream. This was about the best I could do:

A rough sketch, but you get the idea. Somehow both evocative and practical?

Seems like this kind of map could be useful in games where there are distinct landmarks, big expanses of ‘here be dragons’ in the middle, and a strong emphasis on travel. Maybe something like Ryuutama? Like, I could imagine a better-drawn map but still in that style could be great for asking players to describe what happens on each segment of the road, inspired by the markings on the map. Almost a nodal hexcrawl, I guess?

Anyway, seemed worth sharing.