We are really enjoying playing games in Ulthmar and I’m currently writing Wild Night 5. 

If you have no interest in Ulthmar you might want to scroll to the end of this post to a potentially interesting link to an archive of an old rpg magazine.
 
There is only one thing that, for me, I don’t like about the setting and that is the map of the city itself (as set out in the scenario ‘Wild Night in Ulthmar’ which you can find in the Sword and Sorcery Codex.)
 
Firstly, there is nothing wrong with the map for what it is – a simple map for a sample scenario intended as a one-shot to show one sort of setting the Codex can do well. But when running several games in Ulthmar, some things become apparent.
 
The city itself looks…well…not like a medieval city. The river is too small for a waterway that close to joining the ocean. The river is too enclosed by the city itself – the city should be divided into two halves by a large river emptying into the sea. And worst of all the harbour is in totally the wrong place. If you are exporting grain the warehouses, docks and harbour should be on the river itself. In the existing map the grain would have to  be unloaded from the barges and then transported through part of the city to reach the harbour.
 
Now, as I said, the map in the Codex is totally fine for a one-shot. And I realise that many people wouldn’t give a stuff about where the river goes – it’s just me, I realise that. Blame it on the fact that I live in a city whose very existence was dictated by a river that fed the growth of the city by maritime trade. That and a love of old maps of cities.
 
Now I really hate drawing maps, so I was happy to find I still had copies of the UK rpg magazine ‘Adventurer’ (remember that?) Over several issues it featured a fantasy city of Scatophagium. ‘Scat’, as it was generally referred to was a very D&D style city with lots of ‘D&D-isms’ baked into the city; so BRP me didn’t use it back in the day, but I always loved the map. Issue 5 from December 1986 had a map over two pages in the centre of the magazine. It has been duely torn out and will be the map of Ulthmar from now on.
 
While not totally perfect it is lovely to look at and at least I don’t have to draw a bloody map!
 
If you want to view the city of ‘Scat’ there is an archive of ‘Adventurer’ that you can find here;
 
https://archive.org/details/AdventurerMagazine04/Adventurer%20Magazine%2001/
 The map is in Issue 5. There are nice pictures of the boats and ships of ‘Scat’ in Issue 9. ‘Adventurer’ published some good scenarios back in the day, COC as well as D&D scenarios set in ‘Scat’ and elsewhere. You might find something here of interest. Also, it’s a glimpse of UK roleplaying back in the 1980s – a different world.

Last edited by Gruntfuttock (Yesterday 2:39 am)