Weird maps: Three book reviews

It's Febreviewary!

Last month I set myself a 2026 challenge to learn a bit more graphic design and got some practise in by making a new TTRPG-aligned poster every day.

As part of that, I've been reading all sorts of art books to see how people put things together. Here are my reviews of three books of fantastical maps: Plotted, Strange maps, and City across time.

More reviews to come later this month.

 

Plotted: A literary atlas. 2015. Andrew DeGraff (illustrator), Daniel Harmon (editor and essayist).

This book takes classic English-language books and converts their plots into maps. As such it is full of exquisite illustrations, with some lightweight literary commentary on each one.

The concept is interesting, but it has hits and misses.

The good 

DeGraff has created some truly stellar illustrations, including in the graphic designs for the title pages. I like this title for Moby Dick in particular:

Plotted – Moby Dick (title). Andrew DeGraff.

The main illustration provided for Moby Dick is an exploded/cutaway diagram of a whale, labelled in the way that it would be butchered by whalers. It's a fascinating and compelling piece, if gross, and probably the book's strongest deviation from the 'map' theme.

Another favourite is the Library of Babel. This world of infinitely tessellating rooms really got my TTRPG gears turning, but that's as much on the original work, which is one of only a few Borges stories I've read (something I must remedy someday).

Plotted – The Library of Babel (diagram). Andrew DeGraff. 

There are some interesting design decisions. For example, charting the arcs of characters' lives towards marriage for Pride & Prejudice makes for a neat visual.

 

Plotted – Pride & Prejudice (marriage map; cropped). Andrew DeGraff.

 

The stretches

A repeated motif in Plotted is the tracking of characters, showing the paths they take through their fictive worlds. I'm not sure I'm sold on these traces. They look nice, but what do they add as an infographic? For people familiar with the work, I don't think it really reveals much. For people unfamiliar, it's just messy layers of lines that don't say much about the text.

Plotted – A Christmas Carol (map). Andrew DeGraff.

 

The trace technique is at its weakest in e.g. the illustrations for A Christmas Carol or Hamlet, where it just shows routes taken around a town or a couple of buildings.

On the other hand, it was a great fit for Around The World In 80 Days! I just think these character traces were over-used.

There are a couple of real stretches to force a text into the mold of the book's premise. Take the illustration for A Narrow Fellow In The Grass by Emily Dickinson. The source text is a 128-word poem, and Charted creates a graphic for it which (a) is barely a map, (b) goes well beyond the actual textual content, and (c) still doesn't have much to say. The book's front matter mentions that to some extent the artist and essayist just picked their favourite pieces of literature, and I'm guessing that's what happened here.

That's one of the things which made me conclude that a better premise for this project would have been to create a wider variety of pseudo-infographic non-traditional illustrations, some of which happen to be maps. Again, that Moby Dick exploded diagram (not a map) was incredible!

By modifying the approach like that you could avoid the pitfalls of the unremarkable character traces and forcing maps onto texts that are deeply unsuited to them, although of course you could no longer call it "a literary atlas".

In summary

The premise isn't as strong as it sounds, but the book is a visual feast regardless, and there are some stand-outs that individually make it worth taking a look. You'll probably get more out of Plotted the more of the texts you're familiar with.

 

Strange maps: An atlas of cartographic curiosities. 2009. Frank Jacobs.

This book lives up to its name. It's filled with all kinds of interesting things, from fictional islands to the Land of Oz to maps made of the North Pole before we knew what it looked like.

Strange Maps – The Land of Oz

 

The book is divided into sections, so we have maps of places from fiction in one, propaganda and political maps in another (the ten-state Australia is remarkable), etc.

Also abstract or fantastical illustrations of real places:

Strange Maps – Vancouver

 

My favourite map? Probably an 1834 visualisation of the world's major rivers descending into a fictional sinkhole.

Strange maps also contains the most full explanation of enclaves, exclaves, and fragments that I didn't know I needed.

Minor quibbles 

The book has some unexamined colonial language. That's unfortunate for something published as recently as 2009.

There are a couple of sections containing a lot of America-centric maps which mean little to someone outside the country. A 'cartographic curiosity' that you have to be from a particular culture to appreciate isn't very exciting. Having page after page of them becomes tedious.

The book is well-made; I only have one criticism in that regard. The large form factor makes plenty of space for the maps, but the downside is that this sometimes means a map on one page and accompanying text filling the facing page. And while often this is necessary to explain the broader historical context, sometimes the author struggles to find something interesting to say, using trivia and colour commentary to fill a huge empty page. Just leave it blank!

In summary

A fascinating book. Definitely worth picking up, although I wouldn't be afraid to skim bits of it to get to the best stuff. The fictional maps are visually interesting, but I particularly enjoyed the real-world absurdities:

Strange Maps – Market Reef

City across time. 2019. Peter Kent.

This is a children's book illustrating how an imagined city changes across the course of history, with cross-sections showing how archaeological objects are laid down in the strata.

I grabbed a copy because I'm a sucker for cross-sections, and I thought it might be useful for the dungeon archaeology project I have coming up. And it's definitely inspired me!

The book instructs you to “look carefully to see how the buildings people knock down and the garbage they drop create the layers of history beneath their feet”, and it knocks it out of the park.

Page spreads from City across time. Peter Kent.

I'm no judge of children's books, but Kent's writing seems perfectly serviceable. He is also the illustrator, and does a truly wonderful job with the visual storytelling.

The process of archaeological deposits being laid down as the city progresses through historical periods is shown with unbelievable artifice, often in the subtlest little minutiae, which the text never draws attention to. Post holes show up where structures were. Tiny objects are lost and buried. Features from former eras are re-used. Strata are dug into and disrupted. All of it is delightfully illustrated.

There is something very emotionally impactful about showing the accretion of history in a single place as people and civilisations come and go. 

The book opens with Stone Age people hunting mammoths and discussions of the misnomer 'caveman' and the role of caves as religious sites; it closes in a postapocalyptic future Earth where a dark ruined basement is full of things the post-fall people have collected, a site with a clear religious/burial role, and paintings daubed on the wall.

 

Cropped page showing a basement serving a similar role of a cave to prehistoric people.

In summary

City across time was one of my favourite books to read in the last couple of months. You have to bear in mind that it's a children's book, so you'll only get so much from the textual content, but I really appreciate the depth of thought and planning that went into the illustrations. And the results speak for themselves. This got me fired up to work on Dungeon Dig Site, and wanting to draw some cross-sections of my own.

Tick-tock-tock game design

Let's talk a bit about prototyping, i.e., creating the foundation of a game as the first step before iterating on the design.

I sometimes use a specific approach for this, which I call "tick-tock-tock game design".

The name (as opposed to tick-tock-tick-tock) is meant to evoke simplicity and granularity, procedurality and semi-predictability, and deliberate avoidance of symmetry. Specifically, tick-tock-tock game design is

• Minimalist: The game's complexity emerges from a small set of simple, interconnected processes and abstractions acting on each other. Additional complexity may be introduced creatively by the player. For example: The game has two stats and two actions, and the gameplay state is limited to a set of five possibilities plus some numbers.
• Clockwork: There is a core gameplay loop, precisely described, which you don't deviate from. The loop's particulars almost certainly involve randomness and player choice, but in general Z follows Y follows X. For example: The game is an escalating series of four-stage cycles where you ante up, make a bet, apply the consequences, then raise the stakes.
• Asymmetric: Although minimalism + clockwork permits a very high level of symmetry and regularity in principle, the game deliberately leans in the other direction. For example: The game has four stats, but they aren't equally important. The game has four actions with the same magnitude of effect, but one is only situationally useful, and another one has a cost.

This combination can be a potent one for engaging play.

I'll give a few examples from my current game project, Overzealous.

This is a solo TTRPG where you (an outsider god) want to be summoned into reality, but you're mismatched with a cartoonishly bloodthirsty cult who keep getting distracted by their own horrible havoc.

Poster by me. Art credits: Evlyn Moreau. Gordy Higgins. Adobe Stock. Lorc, CC-BY (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/), modified.

 

Overzealous is Minimalist. There are five stats. The two 'good stats' are Cultists and Imminence. The three 'bad stats' are Fervour, Divergence, and Monstrosity. You want to get your good stats high and keep your bad stats from creeping up too fast.

All the game's additional mechanics (random weekly events, the actions an outsider god can take, ongoing problems like your cultists turning into cannibals, etc) revolve around these essentials. It is very easy to understand the fundamentals and everything hinging off them aids further comprehension.

Overzealous is Clockwork. Stats matter at the values 0 and 13 (as starting points, points where you win or lose, etc). Stats change iteratively, each turn, with a random factor. The actions available to you have precisely specified outcomes.

After setting up, play proceeds in a tight game loop in which a turn begins, developments happen, actions are chosen, random events are rolled, and consequences are suffered. The loop only ends in a victory or a loss, with a little extra gameplay associated with either, much of the complexity of which is driven by player creativity.

Overzealous is Asymmetric. You want 13 Cultists and 13 Imminence so that you can win, but you need more Cultists than that if your cult has too many heretical ideas. Also, having high Cultists increases the rate of increase in all your other stats.

Fervour, Divergence, and Monstrosity are all bad, but Divergence is the worst because it can passively make it harder to win the game. All three stats can make you lose the game if they reach 13, but Fervour and Divergence matter more before that because they result in worse effects from the random rolls you make for cult shenanigans.

Ongoing problems in your cult can cause stat penalties over time, and there are 25 possible combinations for this, but in practise you only face a subset of ten problems the cult can bring upon themselves, with stat penalties appropriate to the nature of those problems. There's a wide variety of actions that you can choose between to trade off your stats, but they don't all have quite the same expected value or magnitude of effect, some are random, and some effects you might want aren't encoded as actions.

Why tick-tock-tock game design?

Minimalist and clockwork approaches are easy to learn and play and well suited to casual and solo gaming. The flip side is that they can be boring, and the kind of complexity they create can be limited in various ways, such as predictability or lack of verisimilitude.

But small deviations from a pattern feel meaningful (whereas pure unpredictable randomness circles all the way around to pablum).

To put it another way, wielding asymmetry means setting up expectations – the player can envisage a huge gleaming clockwork machine built on these simple bones, a game where a player is barely needed because everything proceeds in so orderly a fashion – and then subverting them. Having things go in different directions. Hiding better solutions amidst worse ones. Presenting a damaged machine to play with. Making things messier and more interesting in the process.

The earlier the better

I think it's best to bake this sort of thing in at the prototyping stage, where it will necessarily affect the end result, rather than try to get it right in later stages of design.

Accidental symmetries are possible, and in my experience if you're not careful when you are designing to thread the needle between symmetrical and chaotic, you can end up e.g. creating trap choices or areas of game-space which never get reached because the better path is so obvious.

This is all part of the game design vision where you avoid having equilibrium states or necessary actions or unavoidable penalties or slow death spirals. Early in the design of Overzealous I switched from ongoing problems causing a stat change of 1 to a 50% chance of a stat change of 2. It should be obvious why. It's less fun to just go around in circles, tick tock tick tock tick tock.

 

OVERZEALOUS: Playing the game

This post is adapted from an update I wrote for my current Kickstarter campaign.

Overzealous! Your cult has no chill. It's the upcoming solo game of cartoon zealot mayhem. In this post I'm giving an overview of the fervour-filled gameplay.

1. The game's start

To start, you’ll establish who you are as a god, what sort of world you are trying to enter, and what cult has started worshipping you. Most of these details are free-form, so you can create as full an introduction as you like or get right into the game.

For example, you might have fled a collapsing universe, finding that a secret society of malcontents at an observatory have learned your name from the stars. They call themselves The Exalted Circle Of The Infinite Spiral and are, at least initially, dedicated to summoning you.

2. The game's stats

Weeks pass within the world as you play. Each week, your cult may indoctrinate more people (as measured by a stat called Cultists). At the same time, their worship of you amasses more eldritch power for your arrival, which the game calls Imminence.

But this overzealous level of devotion has some downsides.

• Heretical ideas can spread in the cult (increasing Divergence, the amount the cult has drifted away from its purpose).
• The cultists can get more overexcited about bloodshed (increasing Fervour, the measure of zeal the cultists are experiencing).
• Ancient horrors can be drawn to the power being generated (increasing Monstrosity, the number of monsters hanging around being fed table scraps by your cultists).

3. The game's acts

As an outsider god, you are trapped behind the veil of the unreal. Your ability to reach into the world and meddle with things is limited. Each week you can attempt one action.

To win, you need to perform the Immanentising Ritual. This requires enough cultists and psychic potential built up (represented by the Cultists and Imminence stats).

Actions can change your stats, and may have side-effects. For example, you can send an avatar of yourself to admonish your straying cultists, greatly reducing Divergence but raising Fervour. Or you can expend a sliver of amassed power to snuff out some of the monsters hanging around the cult’s camp, substantially lowering Monstrosity at the cost of Imminence. Other actions solve problems, attract more followers, and so on.

The game has nine actions in total, intended to cover any number of situations, and the gameplay focuses on making good choices with them. If you need to, you can come up with your own action with an appropriate cost and consequence.

4. The cult's acts

Each week you’ll roll the dice to see what further trouble the cultists have got into on their own initiative.

If they have high Fervour, they could attack a nearby town, gamble on fights between their pet monsters, or start a holy war.

If they have high Divergence, they might sacrifice an unpopular cultist, merge with a sect of diabolists, or start raising the dead.

Events can affect your stats in various ways, or cause ongoing problems to develop.

You'll likely end up beset by long-term problems. Each week you’ll have a chance that a problem that the cult has unleashed takes its toll. For example, if the cult has a plague of cannibalism, you might get –1 Cultist and +1 Monstrosity when a cultist turns into a ghoul. If they are in the middle of a religious schism, you can get +1 Fervour and +1 Divergence as they passionately declare each other heretics.

It costs precious actions to resolve ongoing problems in your cult.

5. The cult's stats

You only need paper, a pen, and dice to play Overzealous. I’m including two downloadable printable extras to help, a stat tracker and a mini zine.

You can use the stat tracker to record changes from week to week, using a pencil, tokens, dice, chewing gum, or anything you can drop on the sheet. The book also includes a copy you can cut out or trace.

And in the spirit of the upcoming Zine Month, I’ve made a cute little palm-sized zine to accompany it, just for fun.

 

6. The end acts

Overzealous usually takes about half an hour to play, but you might take it more slowly to follow all the game book’s writing prompts. These have you record the events taking place and how you (as a fettered god) feel about your progress, and give room for creative embellishments.

If your negative stats creep up too fast, your cult can fall apart. If you manage to complete the Immanentising Ritual, though, you can enter reality, and win the game. How does the rest of history go? How do mortals react?

I hope you'll check out Overzealous on Kickstarter!

OVERZEALOUS: Inspirations, Illustrations

"Out-of-control fantasy cultists in a cute cartoon style" is a compelling idea, and I've had glimpses of it in lots of different media. That's how Overzealous, my solo game of cult mayhem, came to be! Let's get into it.

First off, if you haven't checked out Overzealous, it's funding now on Kickstarter! Take a peek:

Inspirations

I’ve mentioned that the idea was sparked by the cartoon zealot artworks made by Gordy Higgins, which he generously released into the public domain and which have informed much of this game’s look.

These little characters get up to all the things you would expect of unhinged fantasy cultists. In Overzealous, those are all self-inflicted problems and divergences from what you’d prefer their goal to be: performing a grand summoning ritual. I’ve adapted some of the characters to add a few more kinds of trouble they can get involved in.

Another inspiration was the video game Cult of the Lamb (Massive Monster). The ‘whimsical cultists’ dynamic and cute cut-out 2D style were big draws. The recurring motif I’ve adopted (a red dangling dagger) may have been subconsciously influenced by Cult of the Lamb’s recurring visual symbol of a crowned red eye.

I enjoy the humour that can come from having to rely on characters with poorly-aligned interests. The Elucidated Brethren of the Ebon Night in Guards! Guards! (Terry Pratchett) are a secret society full of petty self-important personalities.

My battered old copy of Guards! Guards!. Plus a little companion zine I’ve been working on.

I was also influenced by Sinister Hovering Orb (Penguin King Games). In that game, you play as an inscrutable eldritch entity with unclear goals, operating at a cosmic level yet interacting with mortals.

Speaking of humour, I’ve also been influenced by games that lean into bombastic, non-heroic jokery, such as Kobolds Ate My Baby! (9th Level Games) and Wizards (Markerslinger). You’ll see a bit of that kind of thing in Overzealous.

 

Influences

What about motivation for the actual gameplay design? My main design criteria for this one are

• Tactical play with well-defined actions and outcomes
• Easy to learn, quick to play, challenging, and replayable
• A flexible amount of self-directed roleplay journalling
• Actions and events that support the game’s tone

Of the solo pen-and-paper games I’ve played, one with all those traits is Dwarf Mine (Paper Dice Games), whose approach I learned a lot from.

 

Artwork

Overzealous has a bold, hectic, cartoonish look in keeping with its tone. My choice of black, white, and red means that much of the style is based in black-and-white artwork.

The core illustrations are by Gordy Higgins, and I’m also using many pieces by Evlyn Moreau, who has great cartoon linework, and a few illustrations from other artists.

Three gleeful cultists getting into trouble. Art by Evlyn Moreau.

(I’m committed to using no AI for any game project. I support artists by licensing their art, buying from their stores, and/or supporting directly on platforms like Patreon.)

The book uses a lot of eldritch symbols and other decorations, plus a set of glyphs associated with the game stats: Fervour, Divergence, Cultists, Imminence, and Monstrosity. For these I’m using art by Alderdoodle, Lorc, C M Gorynych, and Daniel F. Walthall.

Typography

Decorative text for headings and embellishments requires good typefaces. 

The Overzealous title logo uses the Moonrock and So Run Down fonts, with embellishments in Witch’s Scroll and a dagger by Lorc.

The thin, handwritten, slightly esoteric lines of Moonrock and Witch’s Scroll by Sophie Grunnet (Art SilverGlass) are a good fit for the project. So Run Down font by Raymond Larabie (Typodermic Fonts) blends ‘cartoonish’ and ‘cursed’.

 

OVERZEALOUS: Your cult has no chill!

 

⭕ You are a powerful entity ready to manifest as a benevolent god
⭕ You see a cult has formed to worship you
⭕ You try to guide them towards the summoning ritual
⭕ ...They're all bloodthirsty, bickering zealots

It's a shame your cultists are so

OVERZEALOUS

I've just launched the crowdfunding campaign for my solo TTRPG of cartoon violence and cult mayhem! You can become a backer now to help summon the game into reality, and get a print or digital copy of Overzealous.


Play the game as an exasperated would-be deity, trying to do make do with the cult you've been given. Trying to ignore that they've called themselves something like "The Exalted Children Of The Abyssal Mantle". Trying to shepherd your cultists into performing The Immanentising Ritual, so you'll be summoned into the world and win.

Standing against you are the bloody squabbles and bizarre interests of your cultists, counterproductive stabbings and spiritually-pointless sidetracks from the overall goal. These will increase inevitably increase the cult's Divergence, Fervour, and Monstrosity stats.

A tactical game for solo play, Overzealous has an irreverent tone and a loud cartoonish feel.

You'll get the game as a 42-page book with print-on-demand option, plus a print-and-play companion zine and page of stat trackers.

Caution: Murders. Religious schisms. Profanity. Cannibalism. Cultists summoning nameless tentacled horrors, then making them fight. Heresy. Deliberate plagues. The inspiration of poets. Hordes of the undead. Stolen artefacts. Mystic energies attracting ancient demons. Death spirals. Hobbyist grave-robbing. Blood sacrifice. Lots and lots of candles.

 

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