Oh my god the rabbit hole of old Russian maps… I was looking at the Gnomeyland icons by Gregory B. MacKenzie – as one does! – thinking of adding a few icons. So then I start looking for old Russian map symbols. I’m looking at an old article on trees and forests. But how to find more examples? I’m not interested in just trees and forests! So, next stop is Old Maps Online and searching for *Leningrad*. After all, wouldn’t the rich old Russians be mostly interested in maps of the areas they already knew? That’s the 1% for you… OK, found something! So, who’s this Matthäus Seutter dude? Sounds German. And he has a Wikipedia page. I love the Internet. Look at all those extra links! I love the sound of “Digitalisierte Ausgabe”. So now I’m clicking on one: Transylvaniae, Moldaviae, Walachiae, Bulgariae nova et accurata Delineatio, Magnam Partem Hodierni Theatri Bellici ob oculos ponens / opera et fumtibus Matthaei Seutteri, ... Who doesn’t want old maps of Transylvania!? Too bad the resolution isn’t too good. But wait! I also love the sound of View item at National Library of France! This is awesome because you can *really* zoom in!
an old article on trees and forests
View item at National Library of France
OK. Now I just have to create those damn icons. Or fix myself some lunch.
What I want to do is implement Erin D. Smale’s Hex-based Campaign Design (Part 2): encounters. The first step will be to add more settlements to my Gnomeyland library for Text Mapper. Click that Random map link to get a random terrain using his process described in Part 1.
Hex-based Campaign Design (Part 2)
The map Historia Imperii Romano-Germanici has little pictures galore, including little *camps* instead of towns.
Historia Imperii Romano-Germanici
#RPG #Maps
(Please contact me if you want to remove your comment.)
⁂
Meanwhile in Russia they are just about to ban Wikipedia. Maybe once they ban the whole Internet, these old maps will become useful…
– AlexDaniel 2015-08-24 14:30 UTC
---
Hell is other people. Ugh!
– Alex Schroeder 2015-08-24 16:00 UTC
---
So, Wikipedia was blocked for a few hours in Russia. Then they changed their mind, Wikipedia is not blacklisted anymore.
But here is an interesting note. The difference between commercial and non-commercial organizations has never been as obvious. GitHub bent over and stopped displaying some of its content to Russian IPs. Reddit bent over as well, same thing, some content is not displayed for Russian IPs.
And Wikipedia? Well, their answer can be summarized by this picture:
Анус себе заблокируй, Роскомнадзор.
Block your own anus, Roskomnadzor.
Анус себе заблокируй, Роскомнадзор.
Анус себе заблокируй, Роскомнадзор.
Way to go.
– AlexDaniel 2015-08-25 14:05 UTC
---
The situation in Russia, in the Ukraine, and all the other former Republics of the Soviet Union make me dread the coming years. I’m just hoping that nobody does something really stupid. For now, we’ll just note that the US wants to send F22 fighters to Europe. ¹
– Alex Schroeder 2015-08-25 19:26 UTC
