The Dungeon Master's Guide proves just how spoiled I've become with published D&D adventures doing everything for me

"Yeah, they say I have a knack for worldbuilding. I've got a lot of heat right now." While self-aggrandizing in a perfectly droll manner, the guy chatting up Emma Stone at a La La Land pool party is my hero right now. He's got a knack for worldbuilding? Well let me tell you, the D&D 5e Dungeon Master's Guide (2014) makes it apparent just how hard worldbuilding can be.

It's not my day job, but I've drawn a map or two in my day. They were always on a continental scale, kind of like how you're picturing The Lord of the Rings' map of Middle-Earth right now. Long coastlines. Major rivers. Mountain ranges. A few large dots to indicate cities and such.

When it comes to the Mapping Your Campaign section of the Dungeon Master's Guide, it recommends hex paper—though the book provides none. For scale, it recommends starting up close and zooming out, or starting far out and zooming in. A hex (short for "hexagon," a six-sided polygon) scales well for this process, whether you're zooming in or zooming out. Dungeons and cities are often portrayed on maps with squares. But at the province level, it switches from squares to hexes.

The close distance is the Province Scale. Here, one hex equals one mile. That's one mile from one edge of a hex to the opposite edge. Although for movement purposes—and where your token sits on the map—it's one mile from the center of a hex to the center of the next hex. This is good when you need to track your players' movement in hours.

There's a snippet of a map around Daggerford in the Forgotten Realms, drawn by the incomparable Mike Schley. But I'm feeling old school lately, so I looked up the hex map icons from the D&D world of Mystara, the first hex maps I ever saw. Those were back in the 1980s, which was the 20th century. (I'm helping orient our younger readers.) Those hex maps were simple, inorganic, and sort of an eyesore. But there's a beauty in their simplicity, which you appreciate even more if you're drawing one yourself, like I did here. Here's my unnamed province, each hex hand drawn to imitate the rubberstamped hex maps of the Reagan era. 

Zooming out, the next level back is the Kingdom Scale. I didn't draw anything at this scale. The Province Scale map was more tiring than it looks. But at the Kingdom Scale, the hexes are no longer one mile across, they're six miles across. Why six? Because you can travel at a normal pace of 24 miles per day. Twenty-four happens to divide nicely by six. That's why. 

Zoom out one more time and we're at the Continent Scale. Again, this is the scale of most maps found at the front of fantasy-fiction novels. That's another reason why I'm drawn to them. Continent Scale maps are what got me through The Lord of the Rings, The Wheel of Time, and A Song of Ice and Fire. Even in video games—when video games came with foldout maps—the first thing I'd look at was that pullout map of Morrowind and Red Dead Redemption. And of course, D&D adventure books come with maps. The pullout map of Ansalon in Dragonlance: Shadow of the Dragon Queen is one of the most gorgeous maps I've ever seen across any medium.

Having said that, here's a Continent Scale map of an unnamed land I've made for the purposes of combing through the 2014 Dungeon Master's Guide. I drew mine on a blank sheet of paper instead of hex paper. Sorry. "Does not follow instructions" was on more than one of my report cards growing up.

Drawing a map really bogged me down. I'm glad to have done it. But I'm not going to use it. What I am going to use is that foldout map that came with the Dragonlance adventure. Not to mention that book's Province Scale map of the Kalaman Region and Northern Wastes. I can't even imagine how long it took fantasy cartographer Francesca Baerald to pen this thing. It's a monster. A beautiful monster. She's done this a lot.

I appreciate this step of the Dungeon Master's Guide. But it's a lot of work. I'm guessing, however, that getting through this entire A World of Your Own chapter is a lot of work. But with the D&D 2024 Dungeon Master's Guide hitting store shelves on November 12, we've still got some weeks to familiarize ourselves with the old ("old") 2014 5e DMG before the new one changes the game.