Dining Room Table Cartography

We're only a week away from the first session of my Summer Adventure Games Enrichment Camp and my dining room table has been converted into workspace.  Last night I painted an old piece of formica (not my first choice of materials, but it was lightweight and free) to create a campaign map for the return of students to the teeming jungles around Bawal Bayan, The Forbidden City.

Here's my first go using cheap acrylic paint on formica 

The map will help us track the campaign-level action as the students are divided among the several competing fantasy nations of my homebrew Olde School Wizardry campaign world.

Each student will take on the role of a captain, commanding an expedition that sails to unexplored Ghult to seek riches and settle new lands in the name of their motherland.  This will tie our various games together thematically:

• Rounds of Settlers of Catan will be set on the archipelago west of Ghult.

• The Adventurers: Pyramid of Horus will represent the action of teams competing to loot ancient ruins on the mainland.

• Thieves of Cadwallon will be set in the unaligned settlement of Haut Port (that's "Highport" for you old A-series Grognards).

• Small World will reflect the struggles of indigenous races deeper in the interior of the fever-haunted wilderness.

• Dagger for Kids will see explorers return to the deadly ruins of Bawal Bayan (inspired by I1 - Dwellers of the Forbidden City).

By the end of the week, the student who accumulates the most gold (points) across the various games offered will be the winner and will receive the title of "governor".  We'll also determine the winning nation (team) by summing the scores of the players.

Added some lettering w/ sharpie -- next I covered it with contact paper and added two-inch gridlines and a compass rose

I'll also run a few rounds of a meta-game each day using the campaign map, setting up the action in the break-out games that follow.  I'm still working out the details, but generally each captain (player) will have the following choices:

sail the coast looking for new natural harbors

• disembark and establish a base camp

• fortify base camp against possible attack (by natives or other captains)

• pacify native villages

• establish plantations to generate revenues

• explore the interior in search of ruins, native villages, or mineral wealth

• search ruins for treasure

• prospect for gold

• raid the plantations or camps of other captains

from wikipedia

Anyway, I'll be sketching out the details this week (hopefully by tomorrow) so I can get them into an easy reference format for my players.