The Ultimate City of Greyhawk Map?

Regular readers will remember that, back in college I made a set of hand-drawn maps of the city of Greyhawk, based on the sketch map found in the front of Gary Gygax’s book City of Hawks. A few years ago I found them and scanned them, and they’ve been available on this blog since then (over to the right in the “free downloads” section).

About a month ago, Alfons H., out of the goodness of his heart, cleaned up my scans, replacing the hand-done labels with easier to read text. That was a terrific surprise, coming out of the blue as it did.

However, now I (and all Greyhawk fans) have been gifted with yet another iteration of those same hand-drawn maps I did back in the 1980’s. One Alex Camacho and friend took those scans and turned them into this work of absolute full-color 17″x22″ beauty:

The one he originally sent me had some modified names to suit their own campaign, but he very graciously altered the labels back to the originals. So now we have a full-color map, based on Gary Gygax’s original, that will fit the map key for the blue “City of Greyhawk” boxed set, all in one piece rather than four separate pages. I took the file to Staples and got an absolutely gorgeous glossy print out for $25. I might just get another to keep flat (and laminated), as I’m going to have to fold this one to take it with me as I game. But this is now my “official” City of Greyhawk map for my own game, and I cannot thank Alex enough for his efforts.

You can download the .pdf file off to the right in the “Free Resources” section.

Written by 

Wargamer and RPG'er since the 1970's, author of Adventures Dark and Deep, Castle of the Mad Archmage, and other things, and proprietor of the Greyhawk Grognard blog.

15 thoughts on “The Ultimate City of Greyhawk Map?

  1. I was flabbergasted when he sent me this thing. What a terrific early Yuletide gift!

    Of course, the *real* ultimate map would be the one that was used in the actual original campaign. But I'm afraid the odds of that are pretty long…

  2. Wonderful work, Alex (and you too, of course, Joe)!: thanks for sharing this.

    I think it's time that I got my plotter working again 😀

    Allan.

  3. Heeeeey, what? Nice, glad I spotted this – been off the blogs for a while, seems I came back at the right time. I'll have to see how this intersects with my personal move/add/changes. 😉

    – DYA

  4. Is there a sound effect for gobsmacked?

    It is a very beautiful map. I shall print it out and hang it next to your original GH maps.

    But, you task me, Joseph! 😉

    Aye, aye! It was that accursed City of Hawks' map that razeed me; made a poor pegging lubber of me for ever and a day!… Left me to dream of finishing my own map…

    Swerve me? The path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails, whereon my soul is grooved to run. Over unsounded gorges, through the rifled hearts of mountains, under torrents' beds, unerringly I rush! Naught's an obstacle, naught's an angle to the iron way!

    Ciao!
    Grendel-Ahab

  5. I'm happy to see it so well received. It took hours of total work stolen here and there, when the wife wasn't looking. When she saw the finished product, she asked, "Why'd you make a map out of Jay Leno's head?" :/

    The picture of the map printed is actually 34"x44". A friend had access to a plotter at work and decided to blow it up as large as the plotter would print. The great thing about working with vectored shapes and editable text is no resolution is lost when you expand the map!

    I would like to ask a favor though from ya Joseph. If you could transfer the file to your server, that would be great. The site it's sitting on right now is actually my wife's business server that I use occasionally for just such a file (too big for email). I'll have to remove it from there eventually and I'd hate for anyone to not have access to it.

    One final note. Since I'm anal-retentive, I couldn't let the map go without the distance key and greyhawk logo so I added them back to the map (making it 23mb). Enjoy!!!

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