In the next article, I’m going to propose some solutions for your consideration, broken down into pros and cons. But first, there’s the issue of georegistration.
Georegistering Jurassic Mystara
Regardless of which solution we decide upon, Jurassic Mystara will need to be georegistered. This means matching up the coastlines of the Master Set world map — or indeed my 2016 model — to the Jurassic Earth map as closely as possible. With the coastlines in place, we can lock in Jurassic Mystara’s georegistration, and then apply that to all of the other maps.
This is not a precise science: the maps don’t fit perfectly, so exact locations are slightly arbitrary. Nevertheless, the closer the placement is to the Jurassic Earth map, the truer the shapes will be on the globe.
There are a number of decisions to make even with this. Let’s take a look at these now.
The Brun Rotation Conundrum
CM1’s continental map of Brun is slightly rotated when compared with the Master Set’s world map, by approximately 2.2º. (You can see this in the image above, where the red outlines are based on CM1 — look at the south coast of Brun and compare the red and black lines.)
The question is, which version is correct?
Notably, all hex maps were based on CM1’s model (to a reasonable degree of accuracy). At the least, they were closer to CM1 than the Master Set map. In my 2016 model I took this to mean that CM1’s version of Brun was more accurate, and adapted the two extremities not on CM1’s map (the tips of Hyperborea and the Arm of the Immortals) by rotating Master Set Brun to fit.
I also used the larger scale hex maps to revise the continental outlines of Brun.
With all of this in mind, I’m inclined to keep this updated version of Brun.
The real clincher for me is that the 2.2º rotation doesn’t seem to give either version of Brun an edge when compared with the Jurassic Earth map; in fact, Brun is a pretty loose fit regardless of which map is chosen.
At around this time two years ago, I finished my Lining Up Mystara project, winding up 11 years of attempts to reconcile all of Mystara’s officially published maps into a single, cohesive whole.
The project ended with a precise 3D model of the world, with dimensions for the Outer World, the Hollow World, and the polar openings all locked in.
Fast forward two years, and I finally found time to begin codifying the results of the project, beginning with a series of world maps along with continental maps done in 72 miles per hex. Everything seemed to be going well, and all of these maps were progressing well.
Then a bombshell hit when I came across Lance Duncan’s Mystara Web Map project from last year. Together with criticism for faulty assumptions and geographical inaccuracy in my project (ouch), Lance joined the dots between Mystara’s inspiration in a map of Jurassic Earth and the projection of the Master Set’s world map. He argued that since the Jurassic map was drawn in the Mollweide projection, Mystara’s map was also in that projection.
At first I argued against this idea, on the basis that just because Mystara was inspired by ancient Earth (something that has been widely known for many years) doesn’t mean that it must be treated in the same way, and that the original designers likely had little or no knowledge of projections. Furthermore, Lance favoured following the Immortal Set notion that Mystara was ancient Earth, and therefore was the same size and scale. This is highly problematic, since it would mean reinterpreting the scale of the hex maps.
However, while all of these points are quite valid, they’re actually also irrelevant — at least as far as projection is concerned. This was made crystal clear to me when Lance posted some test pictures of Jurassic Earth-based Mystara (which I like to call “Jurassic Mystara”) on a globe. (You can view the Facebook posts here if they are not appearing embedded below.)
It comes down to this: regardless of the intentions of Mystara’s original designers, the shapes of the continents are based on a Mollweide projection map. It therefore follows that those shapes will only look “right” on the globe if they are handled in that projection. (Scale is a separate issue.)
Comparison
It’s very easy to check the veracity of this, simply by placing both my Lining Up Mystara model (which I now refer to as my 2016 model) and the Jurassic Mystara model onto the globe and comparing. (I used a standard globe rather than my 3D Mystara model in the interest of simplicity.)
Looking at the main hemisphere straight on. Shape-wise, the area around the equator is similar in both models. Alphatia tilts to the northeast; the difference in shape comes from the Master Set map, and can be ignored.
Focusing on the main continent of the setting, Brun. The 2016 model’s northern parts are clearly pinched, and not just at the poles.
A look at Skothar’s rather different shapes. The shape of Jurassic Mystara is rather different to the distinctive shape we’re used to, but it also looks a lot more like Asia.
The great Davania. Jurassic Mystara’s shape is significantly greater, while 2016’s is rather skeletal-looking.
To sum up: while the shape of Skothar may take some getting used to, Brun undeniably looks far better on Jurassic Mystara’s globe. What’s more, Davania is the huge continent we’ve always expected it to be. Overall, the continents are as large as you would expect them to be given their real-world analogues: Brun is composed of North and Central America; Skothar is made up of parts of Europe and Asia, with the rest of Europe in between, the Isle of Dawn being Britain and Ireland and Alphatia being Scandinavia; and Davania is South America, Africa, Antarctica, India, and Australia.
On the other hand, my 2016 model’s continents universally suffer from pinched poles, due to the erroneous use of Equirectangular projection. This was something that I noted back in 2016 that still needed to be fixed, but it goes further than that, affecting far lower latitudes than I had at first thought. Brun’s northern parts look squashed, while Davania’s Vulcanian Peninsula is rather small. Skothar’s Nentsun Peninsula is squashed into oblivion.
It’s easy to see this in hindsight now. I’m sure I should have realised earlier, because I’m quite familiar with the concept that the Equirectangular projection does not show the “true” shapes as you will see them on a globe. I’ve even written a tutorial on how to avoid this very issue. But I guess I was too close to the project to realise this myself.
Revisiting the 2016 Model
The inevitable consequence of these revelations is that I must revisit the results of my Lining Up project and revise my model to reflect the proper shapes of the continents.
While this may at first seem like a setback, on the contrary I view it as a massive step forward. After all, I’ve been searching for the proper projection for Mystara for years; my first assumption was wrong, but that does nothing to take away from my excitement at finally knowing the correct projection.
Make no mistake, this is a wonderful thing. It means that in fact not only the world map but also all of the hex maps have been mapped to a proper projection all along.
However, there are problems. Hey, it wouldn’t be Mystara if we didn’t have problems to work through, would it?
The main issues are:
Latitude — Jurassic Mystara places the Known World coastline further south than any of our previous models. Thyatis is at about 25°N. Moreover, the northern parts of Brun are also further south, with Farend coming at 51ºN. This compared to official figures of 30ºN and 60ºN respectively, which we were able to achieve in my 2016 model.
Size — scaling by the hex maps, Jurassic Mystara is over 36,000 miles in circumference. If this problem sounds familiar, that’s because we already dealt with it two years ago in my last project.
Projection — now that we know that the official maps are mapped to the Mollweide projection, it’s possible to georegister all of the official hex maps. Whereas before we had thought they ignored projections entirely, and therefore defaulted to Equirectangular, in fact that was not the case. The trouble now, however, is that moving the continents around on the globe — as we may want to do to fix the latitude issues — may result in breaking this connection. In other words, if we change the configuration of the world to fix latitudes, it may require all the hex maps to be redone.
In this new series of articles, I’m going to work through these problems, with the ultimate goal of creating a hybrid 2018 model of Mystara that incorporates Jurassic Mystara’s shapes into my 2016 model.
One last thing: if you’re worried that this will delay the 72 mile per hex continental maps, you can relax, as I still intend to finish all three of these maps. Eventually I will likely need to create updated versions, but I feel it’s definitely worth finishing these three maps now.
Do you have any comments or suggestions? Please feel free to chip in below!
One last word…
If you enjoy my maps and would like to see more of them, you may be interested to check out my Patreon.
About thirty years ago, my father bought two wonderful sets of books about the Earth. Along with our world atlases, I adored these books. (There are definite advantages to having your father be a scientist.) I loved to read about the solar system, gemstones, ice ages, earthquakes and volcanoes. But my absolute favourite were those that told about plate tectonics, and showed what the earth used to look like. I took these books aside, and kept them close on my own bookshelf.
Mystara fans will likely know why I was so interested in plate tectonics: one of the maps bore a striking resemblance to our favourite game world — so much so that it was obviously the inspiration behind Mystara’s world map.
Over the years, I tried to find the map online, but without success. Not for any lack of paleogeographic maps of the Earth, but rather because these maps have evolved quickly and drastically over the years, as the scientists who draw them incorporate new data and new techniques. Many maps came close, but none fit as well as the one I remembered.
Fast forward to the present, and I came across a series of articles by Lance Duncan last week, in which he reconstructed Mystara’s world map based on a similar map of ancient Earth (below).
This map is pretty close, but the isobars and rainfall data somewhat obscure the coastlines — it’s clearly not the exact map we’re looking for. It reminded me of my search, though, as well as alerting me to the possibility of finding it online in a scientific journal. Sure enough, searches brought up more maps similar to this one, but again none were quite right.
It’s at this point that I remembered the books. I asked my father to look for The Third Planet from the Voyage Through the Universe series. He found all the other books, but not the one I was looking for. It seems I had placed it in the proverbial “safe place”.
But surely, I thought, someone else would have these books, and be able to check. So I posted to Facebook (click here if the post is not appearing below):
Most crucially, I shared this post to the Mystara Reborn Facebook group. No one had the book at hand, but Richard Balsley suggested that it was Continents in Collision, a book in another Time Life series, Planet Earth, that had the maps in it. Again I asked my father, but it was not to be found.
Then a few days later Andrew Durston not only said he had the book — he even provided a scan of the page in question.
And there it was — the map that in all likelihood inspired Mystara!
It’s captioned as 135 million years ago, although it bears much more resemblance to the present paleogeographic maps showing Earth 150 million years ago.
Look closely and you will see that all of the major land masses are there, and they are largely the same as Mystara’s world map, which was provided in the Master Rules Set. There are a number of minor differences, but the resemblance is undeniable — even the mountains are in roughly the same places.
Continents in Collision was printed in 1983. (Google Books and Amazon.com both list 1st January 1983 as the publication date, although this may simply mean that the date is unknown.) The Master Set was released in 1985, but the Companion Rules Set as well as CM1 Test of the Warlords both included continental maps of Brun in 1984. Meanwhile 1983 saw the release of X4 Master of the Desert Nomads and X5 Temple of Death, whose maps may be considered to be derived from the world map. X6 Quagmire! followed in 1984 with the Serpent Peninsula.
So the timing is tight, but not impossible.
Lance Duncan brought up some quotes from Frank Mentzer about the origins of the map:
Some of the Suits wanted to create their own in-house campaign world for D&D (i.e. no royalties for a change) and thus Mystara was born. It started with a worldmap of Pangaea from Francois Froideval, twiddled by yours truly, and introduced in brief in the DM’s Companion and extended to the entire world in the Master DM’s Book.
Finally, John Tudek found the book on his own bookshelf, and provided me with a high resolution scan, which I tweaked to show the mountains more clearly.
John also checked the artist credit, and found that it was credited to Dr. Christopher Scotese — the same man who is still making these paleogeographic maps today. (He’s pretty famous for them, in fact.)
So what happens when you overlay the Master Set world map on this map? Let’s take a look!
To say the resemblance is striking would I feel be an understatement. It’s practically spot on; although the exact placing of the continents is not quite identical, the mountains are so close that I think we can say with confidence that it was this map — or at worst perhaps a very close relation — that François Froideval brought to Frank Mentzer back in 1982, and which they used as inspiration to create Mystara’s world map.
Further, we the loose fit of Brun in the above map compared to the other continents may suggest that it was perhaps done separately — as indeed you might expect, since it was published first, as noted above.
Taking a closer look, we can see that the coastlines of Davania are almost a perfect fit, with the two major exceptions: the Addakian Sound, and the Vulture Peninsula. Cestia and Everfeed are also missing, although Oceania is present. Davania’s mountains are very close, with the following differences: the Addakian Mountains have been expanded, while those north of the Izonda desert have been much reduced. Also the northwestern coast is free of mountains on Mystara.
Skothar’s coasts are very similar, although the extreme north is hard to make out. The small islands are almost all missing, however — including Zyxl in the extreme east.
The Alphatian Sea area has close versions of all the major subcontinental islands, including Alphatia, the Isle of Dawn, and Bellissaria. It also has a much larger-looking Ochalea, slightly off from its Mystara position.
Brun fares the worst, with quite a poor match. But does the Companion Set Brun map fit any better?
Well, no. Not really. It’s a bit of a mess, although the pattern of the mountains at least does line up nicely.
So what now?
You may be wondering: okay, so now what? That is a very good question.
In my opinion, we can use two things from these maps directly in today’s Mystara: the mountains, specifically the shape of the ranges; and the sea depths, meaning the extent of the shallower coastal shelves and the deeper oceans. Both of these are welcome additions to Mystara’s body of maps. The shape of the mountains should help especially with my current work filling in the hex maps for all three continents, but also with future projects where such knowledge will be very useful.
Of course, it’s all just guidelines, and I don’t expect any of this “new” information to override things that are already set.
The other point is a little more complex, and it’s to do with projections. We now know that the map that inspired Mystara was in the Mollweide projection. Which begs the question, what does this mean for Mystara’s world map? Should we also interpret it as being a Mollweide map?
As it happens, Lance Duncan has already done just that. You can see his treatment of this (centred on Karameikos, but also including the world map) over at his web page, where he has a great interactive Mystara Web Map. Out of interest, here’s what happens when you reproject the Mollweide projection proto-Mystara map into an Equirectangular projection:
Jurassic Earth in Equirectangular Projection
My own answer to this question is a definite no. Why? Because such a top-down approach at this point in Mystara’s lifespan, when every map so far has ignored the issue of projection altogether, and our primary concern is hex maps with a marked scale… would inevitably mean rescaling all of those maps at best, or at worst having to redraw them all — effectively throwing out everything we have now and starting anew.
My solution, as outlined two years ago in my Lining Up Mystara project, is to treat all of the maps as if they are Equirectangular projections. The reasons for this are twofold: it preserves the “top is up” aspect throughout the maps; and it preserves the north-south scaling of the maps, so 8 miles per hex will always mean 8 miles per hex — as long as you are measuring straight up and down. This last part is a bit of a cop out, but it’s also the best of a raft of bad choices, because no choice of projection can make the hex maps read 8 miles per hex in any direction; in fact, that is simply not possible in a 2D representation of a 3D ellipsoid.
It’s not perfect, but I believe we have a consensus in the community to go this route, since it makes the least trouble.
In short, Mystara is a uniquely complex world, with its polar openings and Hollow World also to take into account, and quite large sections of the world already mapped in beautiful large scale (8 mile) hex maps. For many of us, the world needs to be reconciled in three dimensions; for others, it’s not really a priority. With the Atlas of Mystara, I propose to walk a middle ground that satisfies both these groups.
I leave it to others to recreate the world anew from this inspiring map. And — I can’t stress this enough — I would love to see such a project happen. I’ll be the first in line to cheer it on, and indeed help out where I can.
Phew! What a day — what a week! — this has been. Thirty years on, and I’m still getting thrilled by Mystara.
Here’s to another thirty years!
Speaking of which…
With apologies for the self-promotion… It’s not Mystara, but if you’d like to see more maps from me and support my cartography, please check out my Patreon. It’s thanks to my patrons and other supporters that I am able to continue with projects like this and develop new skills and techniques to apply to all of my maps.
