Michael Iantorno PhD Candidate, Game Designer, and Writer

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Hearth & Blade: Fan-Made Map

It seems that, despite not having an official release yet, the Hearth & Blade Pathfinder campaign setting has its first piece of fan-art. Russian artist Mark Kamyshin was kind enough to send us his interpretation of the world map (which turned out about 100 times better than my meager efforts). You can see the full-sized image on Mark’s DeviantArt page. Many thanks go out to Mark for...

Yavmir: Interactive Map

As I have mentioned on the blog a bunch of times before, I’ve been slowly working away at a new, interactive map of Yavmir. This map will eventually be used for a homebrew campaign setting entitled Hearth & Blade (formerly World of Ruin), which is steeped in rich Slavic folklore. Anyways, I finally have an interactive of the map online. You can take a look at it on the MashupForge page...

Yavmir Map Reconstruction: Complete

It has taken a few months of on-and-off work, but I’ve finally finished the terrain reconstruction for the new map of Yavmir. As mentioned in a few earlier posts, the goal of this project was to replace the old Yavmir map, which was no longer accurate and rather bland in style. You can check out a PNG of the map below. Add New   What’s next for Yavmir? Well, Matt and I are...

Vector Map Pack: Trees

Way back in March I posted a delightful little .eps file that included some vector mountains that I had been using for my reconstruction of the Yavmir map. Today, I present to you another useful tool for prospective map-makers: an .eps file that includes some tree vectors for use in map projects. I just finalized these designs yesterday, and you can see a quick forest that I plotted out in the...

Unearthed Update: Tomorrow Mike Problems

I’m off to Yellowknife on a work trip next week, but before I left, I thought I’d drop a quick Unearthed Update onto the blog. Nothing major: just a recap of some tribulations I’ve run into during this phase of development. As you know, I’ve been working diligently to place all of Unearthed’s enemies onto the world map. This process has been going fairly smoothly...

Yavmir Map Reconstruction: Mountains

As I mentioned last month on the blog, I’ve been investing some time into reconstructing the venerable Yavmir map that Matt and. I’m not much in the ways of “drawing things,” so a great deal of the work has been designing vectors that let me construct maps using Illustrator and Photoshop. It’s been a fun (big) little project, and I just finished a milestone by...

Vector Map Pack: Mountains

A great deal of my downtime lately has been dedicated to map-making. Nothing too complicated or mind-blowing: I’ve basically just been tinkering away at an overhaul of the original Yavmir map I posted last year. In an effort to simplify the entire map-making experience, I decided it was time make a set of vector mountains that I could use to piece together ranges. I’m not much of an...

Continental Breakfast

I know I’m not alone in saying that it’s stressful building a new continent. I’m referring to designing fictional worlds of course (although I’m sure doing it in real life would be tricky too). Attempting to give a landmass an organic-looking silhouette is frustrating. One walks the line between creating a shapeless blob and a squiggly jellyfish. And you can’t always cop out and make your island...

Michael Iantorno PhD Candidate, Game Designer, and Writer