Master Plan #67: Mark Richardson on Cartography in RPGs

Ryan talks with Mark Richardson, who is by night a freelance tabletop games cartographer and indie publisher, and by day a badass Canadian geographical information survey machine. (That means he makes huge maps using very detailed software.) Mark's got a fresh perspective on cartography, coming from a technical, GIS background rather than a purely illustrative one. We sit down to talk about the art and business of making maps for games.

If you like the cut of his jib (and you should), check him out at @slavetothehat, his Green Hat Designs, and his upcoming Headspace Kickstarter!

Projects Mark has Made Maps For Include

• King Wen’s Tower: blackgreengames.com
• Urban Shadows: kickstarter.com/projects/1287928832/urban-shadows-rpg
• Project Dark: kickstarter.com/projects/wordstudio/project-dark
• No Country for Old Kobolds: kickstarter.com/projects/53201108/no-country-for-old-kobolds-a-dungeon-world-hack
• Other maps at his site: greenhatdesigns.com

Open GIS Data Resources

• Metro Extracts from Open Street Map database (Worldwide major cities): mapzen.com/metro-extracts
• Natural Earth – World wide data at Regional, Country and Continent scales: naturalearthdata.com
• Canadian GIS Data (Index of a sites across the country): canadiangis.com/data.php
• GeoGratis (Search for data/maps for Canada): geogratis.gc.ca

Other Links

• David Rumsey (Historical Map Collection): davidrumsey.com
• ESRI – The Company that makes ArcGIS: esri.com

51:29 / 25.3M

View on YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=CP_BYapSUpI

- Ryan