For this month, I am sponsoring the January Challenge with a copy of my ViewingDale app to the top three places by vote. If you win you can get it by download, get a boxed set through the post or decline and take just the challenge glory.

I proposed this idea a long while ago but it seems that there has been some call to arms to implement it on a thread "A thought occurs" so just to spice it up I thought some prizes and a challenge topic might give the idea more oomph and get more people in on the fun.

This months challenge is where you must make a map which fits into one or more other existing maps on the guild. The idea is to make either a small part of someone else map like a building in a city and map that building or to use the other persons map as a small part of your entry. I.e. you take somebody's village and make a regional map with lots of villages on it one of which is the reference map.

Ideally you could map something which has both an existing larger and a smaller map and bridge the two with your entry. I.e. find a house and a regional map and make a town in that region with the house somewhere in the town.

The challenge is not going specify which other maps you can use. You should have permission to use other peoples map tho. If your using something Creative Commons (CC) licensed or from our community world building project (The CWBP) then you don't need to ask as its all CC licensed too. I don't think it matters very much if more than one challenger uses the same reference map(s).

If your looking ideas I will suggest two; Ravells has mapped Tavor and I mapped some of the surrounding area and called it Tavoronia which is a map akin to what this challenge is all about. So it would be good to map some of the places in Tavor like Scant Castle, or the town of Malo for example. The basic layout of the castle and town should match that of Ravells existing map. Then there would be a sequence of at least three maps all at different scales.

In the "Thought Occurs" thread, IndustryGothica has a map of "Port Magalie" with some areas marked up which could be done in more detail. So take a house, a few houses or a street and make a map of that sticking to the same general layout of buildings.

Voting should be based on the general quality of the map but also should take into account the continuity of the reference maps too.

Note that my app is a windows only app and does need a good graphics card to run fast. It will run on one without but its a bit slow in that case unless you have a quick CPU. It can run under virtualbox if your on Linux or whatever but it wont be fast. There's a demo on the website to try before committing to the cause if you want to check first.

I'm posting a touch early as I wont be available to post for just a short while.

Oh and Happy New Year to y'all. Most normal people would be drunk at this point.