I have decided that a small blog is a better way to keep track of progress than the repo’s wiki page. So, welcome to my hobby project to create a vector map of Faerun (possibly extended to Toril) during the time of D&D 3.5e (~1376 DR). The idea is to approximate the iconic drawing style of the official 2001 map using a combination of svg path generation scripts and filters and then apply them on an svg map, containing only the outlines of geographic regions/features.

Ideally this should have the following benefits:

• Simple Editing: Changing existing features of the map or adding new ones can be done in an SVG editor.
• Small Filesize: With some clever encoding of the visual map style even high detail maps should keep a small filesize.
• High Quality Zoom: SVG enables creation of detail maps without getting pixelated results.
• Merging of Different Sources: Detail maps of specific regions exist and the vector format should aid in the combination of different map sources.
• GeoJson, TopoJson output: Vector data can be used in online map interfaces like Open Layers

Some looming problems are:

• Difficult to approximate styles: Some styles will require extra geometry beyond the outline (e.g. mountains), the trick will be to keep it at a minimum.
• Merging of map sources: Often detail maps do not agree with the original map of Faerun, discrepancies will have to be solved on a acase by case basis.
• Expanding to Toril: While the Faerun continent is sufficiently covered by maps, it will be challenging to come up with information on the other continents.