Baldur’s Gate, world map, by TimEatsApples.

Man, Baldur’s Gate. I must have played it through half a dozen times by now. It was one of those games that just blew my mind when it came out - the scope and scale of it. The ability to wander off to the east when you were told to go south, and just beat on gibberlings for a while. I don’t remember if I played this or Fallout first, but both were formative in defining the type of game I wanted to play.

Originally I was going to draw a map of Candlekeep, but that seemed a bit too easy, and might have required some actual artistic ability on my part, to draw turrets and flowerbeds and whatnot. So I decided to see how much of the world map I could remember. I went ahead and added joinable NPC placements too, just for kicks - I think everyone’s right, except I can’t for the life of me remember the name of the cleric who’s turned to stone at the Nashkel carnival. Something Nordic, anyhow. I never took her, for some reason.

I’m quite pleased with the map itself. The south-west corner’s always been rather vague for me. I know roughly what’s there, but not how it all fits together. And I’m sure there are nine screens in Baldur’s Gate itself, but I haven’t a scoobie’s what’s in the upper-right corner. Maybe there are only eight, after all.

Submitting is very cathartic, because I can finally go look up what’s really where and all the many ways I’ve gone terribly wrong. And that darn cleric’s name.

[Josh says: I know what you mean about the carthasis, because I’m still intending to get back to work on my detailed Hyrule overworld and having to studious avoid The Legend of Zelda in the mean time is a weird mental strain.  It’s not like I’m even that likely to encounter it on any given day or even week; just knowing that I can’t look is enough to mess with me.]