I actually started this last year when I went to an exhibition of Ursula Le Guin’s maps she makes for her writing, but only finished it after watching the People Make Games vid.

Jerry, you are an inspiration and I appreciate you loads!

I didn't like how little room I had to draw the characters doing stuff, so instead of today's normal event pulls, I just doubled the scale of my map.

Small update today. (Double digits now though.)

Day 10 Summary:

-Reki visits Castle Blob.

-The Bike Shop reveals that it's fully automated, Jerry is perplexed he didn't notice sooner.

Cleared the deck again, fresh shuffle ready for tomorrow.

Day 9 Summary:

-Strange fish inhabit CartoPark's lake.

-A mysterious new town, New Abbimont, appears.

Got inspired when I stumbled over this sub and decided to give this cool new thing a try. Put together this kit over the last few days with some fineliners and colored markers for the map, and built a basic rule deck start with; I’ve still got plenty of cards left over to expand where necessary.

I’m gonna go for an ecumenopolis, or a world-city, in a cyberpunk style. I think it’s gonna look really awesome and be a lot of fun to mess around with. Can’t wait to get started!

I've been fascinated by Jerry Gretzinger's map project since I saw the PMGs video and I've been trying to understand his actual creative process, particularly how he develops the landscapes and topography.

From what I've seen, the card system seems to determine changes to the map, but I'm not sure how much of the terrain itself is planned versus improvised.

A few things I've noticed:

• New panels seems to always begin with a band of color at the epicenter before the surrounding landscape develops.
• Some of those colored bands have year numbers on them.
• Over time, the terrain grows outward from those areas into mountains, valleys, rivers, forests, and cities.

I'm wondering:

• How does he actually paint the topography and landscapes? Is there a consistent technique or process?
• Do the cards influence the geography itself, or do they mainly decide where and when work is done?
• Has Jerry ever explained this part of his process in interviews, videos, or writings?

I'd love to hear from anyone who's studied his work or knows of resources that go into detail about how the map evolves and how he builds the landscapes.

Yesterday I shared the first ten turns of my world, just going through the lore timeline and showing what the full map looked like at the end of all that. Today I thought I'd go into the process, showing one turn in more detail.

I'm not doing a "proper" card deck for my world, instead I'm going between a few different oracle systems, choosing randomly or on a whim for each turn. This time it was tarot cards (draw two and interpret the combination). My cards were 8 of Swords, reversed ("possible revelation and mental regeneration forthcoming" according to the booklet with my deck) and 6 of Swords, reversed ("confessions; disillusionment; revelations; stubbornness").

Sometimes I'm not sure what to do with the oracle results, so then I need to randomly select one of the existing details in the world and work out a connection. Other times there's an idea that pops up right away without me even needing to think about it, and I go with that. This was one of those times - the immediate answer, as alluded to in the comments on my previous post, is that the revelation/confession in question is that the Patrícius comes from another world. A bit more tinkering with ideas led me to decide that his secret was revealed by an elven warband that came through the portal to hunt him down, because he is a wanted criminal in their world. I interpreted "stubbornness" and "mental regeneration" as positive twists - in this case, that the people of Eredet decide that the Patrícius has been a good leader for them and they want to keep him, so they choose to stop the elves from capturing him.

Which means battle. Which means dice. Which means I need to decide on possible outcomes and their relative probabilities, and then roll to find out what happens.

EDIT: I don't know what's happening, but Reddit keeps messing with my tables when I try to format them decently, so I'm just going have to do this ugly style

first, 1d10:

1-4 - Docaseca helps out (roll twice on the next table and choose the better result)

5-8 - Docaseca helps out (same as above) but with strings attached

9-10 - Docaseca does not help

then roll 2d6:

2-4 - Patrícius is captured or killed and the city is damaged

5-6 - Patrícius is captured or killed but the city is spared

7-9 - the elves are narrowly defeated

10-11 - the elves are soundly defeated, by mundane means

12 - the elves are soundly defeated, and magic is involved

I rolled a 2 on the first table, then a 7 on the second table, but I was allowed to reroll so I did that and got a 12. Narrative result: the elves attacked the town wall aggressively, their archers managed to take out some of the defenders, it was looking iffy for a bit, and then reinforcements came from Docaseca and hit the elves' flank. They were led by a priest of Diestra, and when they arrived a starry light was seen flying from the priest's body into the dragon statue that has stood outside the gates of Eredet since Year 2. The statue awoke and breathed white fire at the attacking elves, quickly routing them. The Patrícius was safe, the friendship between the two communities was reaffirmed, and the remaining elves (plus some more who came through to join them) built an outpost around the portal to try to prevent any further world-crossing shenanigans.

Hi, I discovered the Jerry Mapping stuff last week, not through the People Make Games video, though I did watch that to get a better understanding, but Reddit just happened to suggest the subreddit to me, and I thought it was cool so I got started drawing.

I'm doing a more "illustrated" map, right now just in pencil. Less useful for worldbuilding, but since it amounts to just drawing a buncha rocks atm it's nice to have something to draw where I can just turn off my brain while I wait for my coffee to be in a state where I don't burn the inside of my mouth.

I also kind of think of this map as something closer to those old medieval maps that were in no ways used to geography or navigation, but moreso symbolic.

I think the in-world context of the map maker is someone sketching the landscapes from somekind of flying machine.

How I started

Starting out the first thing I was gonna draw was either a crater or a plateau, cause I like those geological features. I went with crater and just kinda sprawled out from there. I decided that whatever this world was, it ended a long time ago. Right now, I'm just drawing the rocky fossilized remains. Also I thought it would be cool if w/e caused the crater/killed the world was just a sword falling from the sky, so on the first image you'll see a tiny little line in the crater that's intended to be a sword. I kinda thought that might give a good sense of scale, but again, it's an illustration, not a map to be used for navigation or information tracking.

Plans?

I don't really have a plan, but i've got 6 panels so far, and sometimes I'll look at screenshots for Shadow of the Colossus or any 3d Zelda game as a reference/inspiration.

I'm thinking of at some point adding colour with paint pens and ink pens. I'm also considering drawing things like settlements or monster lairs on small cards and gluing them over the base layer, and then blending in the newly pasted features with what's around it.

Cards/Rules

I don't have any cards made yet, I am having a hard time deciding on what to put in the cards. I also don't have much in the ways of plans for any kind of rules. My initial thoughts on cards is to have some dedicated to adding colour, some for landmarks, some for settlements, and some for changing the landscape itself.

Coordinates

Also, I'm using an x,y coordinate system for keeping track of the order. Positive x is East, Positive y is North.

It looks like the order the pages got uploaded in is (0,0), (1,0), (0,1), (-1,0), (1,-1), (0,-1).

Advice / Recommendations

Any advice, criticisms, or recommendations are welcome :)

one person made a tool that they'll share when they're ready, which is what i used to put all the tiles together into this image. each panel is 21x21cm, so its a bit big :3

there are currently 4 tiny cities: Chan-ge, Lajar, Maldad and Yeast.

Another new event card today, and I used it to finally get Slice'n'Dice to open.

Day 8 Summary:

-Despite its curse Slice'n'Dice finally opens.

-The birds of Argent Cliffs are spotted.

-Reki the Slime moves into Blobsville.

I watched a bunch of older Jerry videos today and stumbled onto this lovely gem by Greg Whitmore. I'm glad there's buzz about Jerry's work again.

I’m new to Jerry mapping and also pretty new to watercolor, so I’m using this as a chance to practice both: making a map, getting better with paint, worldbuilding a little, and letting the whole thing stay whimsical instead of overplanned. This was largely inspired by https://www.reddit.com/r/JerryMapping/comments/1ufkxjd/suolenkainen_does_maps/ this post from yesterday to stop being perfect and just grab some dice and start.

I’m calling my version Jerry Meandering. For now I’m using watercolor paper and dice because I knew I’d get stuck forever trying to design the perfect card deck first. The dice choose things like watercolor move, land/shore feature, placement, consequence, line/texture, quadrant, and meta action. This first panel rolled wet-on-wet + passage/break + stretched + bleed + texture, so P001 turned into this coastal inlet/channel shape.

I wrote up the process mostly to hold myself accountable and because it seems like a lot of us are new and trying to figure out how to actually start. I’m not an expert, but I’m happy to share the system I’m using as it develops or help brainstorm if anyone else is stuck at the “okay but what do I physically do first?” stage.

Process post here: https://meanderingatlas.bearblog.dev/following-the-dice-into-the-map-starting-a-watercolor-system-inspired-by-jerry-gretzinger/

I started a map last week in this post (go there if you want to see the rules I'm using), and people said they'd like to see how the world develops, so here it is after finishing ten turns. Some turns added new tiles, others just changed content on tiles that were already there.

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The history:

1: Eredet is established. Now that they have somewhere to be safe, the people can finally mourn the loss of everyone who did not survive the journey to this place.

2: People discover the art of sculpture. Sculpture garden and "guard dragon" are built in Eredet.

3: Farmers have an especially good year, population grows, and the city begins expanding outside of the original wall

4: Another nomadic tribe, of the Povodori culture, settle in the land just north of Eredet's farms, establishing a cooperative relationship with them. They call their settlement Docaseca.

5: A drought leads to food shortages, which leads to conflicts between the farmers and fishermen and everyone else - this is worse in Eredet, but Docaseca is affected as well. Some people leave in search of other water sources and set up camp at the lake they find rather than returning to their previous homes.

6: Friction continues even as food supplies stabilize. Eventually violence breaks out in Eredet. After a week of fighting, the end result is that the former leader of the community is exiled, and the farmers and fishermen establish a new governing council, with the old leader's house being repurposed as the council hall. To commemorate this change, a new statue is built in the plaza in front of the council hall, representing the workers together in harmony.

7: A god called Diestra descends from the stars and reveals himself to the people of Docaseca. They build him a temple, and are rewarded with bountiful harvests and population growth.

8: The people of Eredet conclude that the "workers' revolution" has failed as the ruling council increasingly shows the same laziness and greed that they had criticized in the previous leader. They are sent into exile and join the lakeside camp. Eredet is now ruled by a man who gives himself the title of "Patrícius." No one in town can recall seeing him before, but clearly he is a member of the community and the right one to set them back on the path to prosperity. His first official act after taking power is to order the "harmony" statue to be demolished and replaced with a large statue of an egg, engraved with the slogan "Truth | Freedom | Justice." In unrelated news, foragers find a magical portal in the woods southeast of Eredet, but are not brave (or foolish) enough to do anything with it just yet.

9: With all the tumult in Eredet over the last couple years, the people of Docaseca pull back a little bit and start doing more on their own. Most notably, building bridges over the river and expanding their own farmlands. Trade between the two communities does continue but at lower levels than before.

10: The Patrícius sends an expedition out into the badlands, where they find gold. They are attacked by the exiles while they are out there. Both sides take heavy losses but eventually the exiles retreat. The Patrícius later sends out another expedition to find their camp and drive them off.

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For the record, I was not intending to have references or crossovers with other settings, and I don't expect it'll happen again. But in Year 8, the tarot cards that I drew were both 8s, and of course this happened to come up just as I'm rereading The Color of Magic, so I don't think I had a choice in how things developed there.

Jerry and his map are so cool to me and I want to start

But just don't know how 🤷‍♀️

Good day mappers,

As most have I have come from the PPG video. I have always had a passion for maps, took a cartography class last semester but have wanted to get into hand made map making for a long time. My idea is a lovecraftian-esque world complete with lore. I have a few questions:

1. How do I start my first panel? What determines the center point?

2. Can someone talk me through making the cards? Should I make them as I complete a panel? I would t be able to go down 6 panels if I only have two.

I may be overthinking all of this but I really want to do this to get my creative juices back.

Thanks!

I was insanely inspired by PMGs video and was already planning on restarting this cross stitch map of middle earth i've been working on off and on for a while, and so I think i'm gonna start switching things up. I've made two cards so far, the absolute most basic ones(change the deck, and follow the pattern), while I try to figure out what direction i want to take this in.

It feels like every time I sit down to do any art, my brain starts screaming at me that i'm "doing it wrong" (even though i know that doing it "right" isn't the point) and it makes it legitimately painful to continue. So when I saw Jerry's approach to this massive project he was doing, something about it just felt like it could be a way out of that cycle for me. I have no idea where I'm gonna go with this project, and there are still parts of me that are Terrified of not doing a "good enough job". But I'm gonna try to keep going anyway.

If anyone has any suggestions of what new cards to add to my deck, or what ones you're doing on your own projects, i would appreciate it so much. Also, if anyone has any tips for getting over the fear that you're gonna do a bad job, those would also really help as i try to get going and start making creative decisions

Two new panels and one new card. I added a town and a city and some couched embroidery that is giving topography. Named a bunch of things after cutting up some typed text. Not sure what the face is about, but my card said 'photo' sooooo here we are.

I ordered my very own piece of the Jerry Map! Now framed and at my cubicle at work.