The Land of Map

It's Friday and it's game night and for a change of pace I want to write about something on the periphery of the game but that actually has a lot of impact on putting together the core rules - the setting.  Most GMs will haberdash together their own settings for a game but most good game systems have an implied setting - even if it's just the one used in their examples.  I think that one of the reasons I'm taking so long on how to package the magic section for Beacon is that magic is one of the variable systems that can really be impacted by the setting (XP is another).  And by setting I don't mean the location, I mean the entire 'setting' package - the locations yes but also, how much treasure is out there, how much fantastic vs grit.  How many wand and healing potions would you expect to find? 

I like my adventures to be more gritty than fantastic - you are more likely to be exploring an old ruined temple than a mad wizards death-maze.  If you do run across a death-maze then it's probably only got one portal to the netherworld and a small number of magic fountains.  So from this you can assume that magic is somewhat uncommon in my preferred setting and therefore I'm not likely to have a long list of random magic items and artifacts in the treasure section or wish spell on the Mage spell lists.  Normally you'd be correct but I know that not everyone plays this way so should this go into a core 'rule book' or should it be part of a separate setting book so that the core rules can be used with other more setting appropriate material if the GM chooses?  Does this mean I should have a separate document for the spell lists so that folks can use the SRD if they prefer?  I don't know.  I expect I'll figure something out.

I have a map you know.  I made it in Gimp and it has layers (some, like the encounter layer, I'm not going to display to you).  Here it is.

The Land of Map