Tarniss - the World of Dungeoneer

[thomden]

Years ago I made a fantasy card game called Dungeoneer that was published by Atlas Games (still in print). I mapped out and designed a fantasy world as the background for the game, to keep the lore and flavor text on the cards consistent. The world was based in large part on my High School D&D Campaign.

I've done many maps of it over the years. This one was made when I was really into creating height maps in 3dStudio max and using a combination of overlays, painting, and satellite photography as part of the texture mapping process.

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[thomden]

This is a detail of the borderlands between two warring empires: Dolmar and Ilbor Paiden. In the lore a wizard's battle long ago transformed the region to dust.
The texturing is quite a bit heavier than how I'd do it now.

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[thomden]

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Tarniss is the background world setting for the Dungeoneer card game. It appears in the flavor text, character names, and monster you encounter while playing. Tarniss was based on my middle school D&D campaign world that I developed all throughout high school, and into my early 20's as well. It went by many names, originally called Talindor. Fortunately I kept many of the notes, drawings, and maps in a binder. One of the few things I still have from back then.

This is the very earliest map drawing I have in my binder.

It has been a long time since I looked at this. It's surprising how many of the original names and much of the original contour survived through multiple revisions and development of the world. In the late 80's I got my first IBM computer, I don't know when I first drew a digital version of this map but I found this printout.

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You can see it's called The Empire of the Domains. A title that represented this was just one of many domains in the solar system. It was a little influenced by Spelljammer there were multiple planets, or domains, you could visit. Some had pretty wild geography and the planets were crazy shapes that look a bit like polyhedral dice. Maybe I'll post some drawings of that when they get scanned in.

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As a fantasy world made by a middle-schooler it doesn't exactly have an amazing high concept. Eldritch Lords long ago stole the secret of magic from the elves, turned against them, tore the world apart with their dark arts until they were overthrown by the free peoples. At one point a demon lord created a portal into Tarniss and spread a plague of demons who were beaten back through the portal which was sealed with an eternal lightning storm. It's essentially a Tolkienesque-D&Dish-vanilla fantasy world. But we sure had a lot of fun exploring it.

[CoffeeCartographyCo]

That's really cool! I've always wanted to design my own card game. I bet it's a lot of hard work, but it sounds like a ton of fun.

[thomden]

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At some point in the 90's I drew an inked version of Tarniss, which I was still calling Talindor. I had this idea of heavily illustrating the border with important characters and scenes from the world. I don't think I completed it because I didn't like how the illos were dominating the map. Looking back at it now it isn't half bad.

This is a photo copy in my binder, I don't know if the original drawing still exists or if I have it in storage somewhere.

[thomden]

That's really cool! I've always wanted to design my own card game. I bet it's a lot of hard work, but it sounds like a ton of fun.

Just do it! It's fun, not that hard and there are tons of resources online to make your own card game. The one advice I'll give is start small, do a simple game with a standard 52 card deck. Duplicate as much art as possible! You'll be surprised at how fast your art list can blow up out of control. And if you're not into drawing go with graphic design and shapes.