Jim’s note: the New York Times last week ran an article on one of the very greatest contributors to TTRPG history, fantasy atlas-maker Karen Wynn Fonstad. You can take a look at it here. This kicked me in the mind with an overpowering Proustian rush and I returned to my copies of her atlases of Pern, Middle Earth, and the Forgotten Realms. Then I remembered I had already written about fantasy atlases on the TEETH RPG newsletter. And THEN I realised I could post it up here. And you can read that, below.
I own a surprising number of atlases. Some are straightforward atlases. You know the sort: large-format hardback books containing maps of the world. Others, like The Times Atlas Of World History, which I somehow own multiple editions of, are also grand acts of generalised erudition: formidable slabs of publishing achievement that have been iterated over decades of republishing to explain something with maps. In this case, the general history of the human race.
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Lost in the hills of Somerset, this Rossignol searches for meaning among the clattering of small plastic bones.