Angry, Save My Map

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May 28, 2020

The “Angry, Save My Map” contest is officially over and the finalists have been chosen. And it’s time for you, my loyal – well, sometimes loyal – readers to vote for the cartographer in the most need of my help. The winner will receive a signed copy of Jared Blando’s excellent city mapping book, Fantasy Mapmaker. Signed by Blando, not me and a Campaign Cartographer software bundle from ProFantasy Software Ltd.

Below, you’ll find a gallery of the ten finalists I’ve selected. You’ve got one vote. Click the little star to select the best example of a cartographer in desperate need of awesome prizes to help their mapping game. Note that you must be registered and logged in on this site to vote. Note also that you can click on any of the images to go into a full-sized slide show mode. If you go through the slideshow, you’ll I have added my own comments to each map. Don’t let those influence your voting. It’s just that the plugin that’s powering this contest included a field for description and I view every text box as a chance to render a snarky opinion.

You can feel free to leave comments on individual maps if you want. But remember that real, actual human beings made these maps. Don’t make me turn off the comments and/or ban you from commenting on my site. Understand?

Note also that, if the map didn’t include an obvious title, I have given it a name of my very own. And if your entry included the name in a supplemental document attached to your e-mail, note that I didn’t read that s$&%. It’s a mapping contest, not an explaining contest. I ignored everything in the e-mail except the map itself.

But wait… there’s more. Because there’s a whole other gallery below that also needs your votes. Because I’m running TWO contests now. Let me explain.

Initially, I was hoping that people would interpret all of my double-speak and hinting and winking and nudging to understand that I wanted them to send me some really comical attempts at mapping. I wanted people to put in the effort, of course. But I wanted them to put in some misguided effort to produce some really good, laughable attempts at cartography. Apparently, I was being too subtle because most of the entries seem to take this whole thing pretty seriously.

The real problem, though, is that a few people sent in some really nice, pretty high effort attempts. Some were obviously using software tools, but showed some good design sense. And some were hand drawn and really nice looking. Because of the obvious effort and work that went into them – even software maps take hard work to produce really nice designs and layouts – I didn’t just want to dump them as “too good to deserve a prize.”

I can’t give away two copies of one signed book and I’m not going to try to implement some sort of booksharing arrangement between two different strangers on the Internet, but I can sure as hell grab a second Campaign Cartographer bundle and give that away. So, I’ve picked five finalists for a second contest for people who don’t actually need my help.

After you vote for your favorite cartographer in need of help, scroll down and vote for the cartographer who needs my help the least and I’ll send the winner there a software bundle of their very own.

Voting will be open until Thursday, June 4 at 5 AM CDT. That’s exactly one week away from the moment this gets posted. So get voting, will you?

Thank you to everyone who entered. Even though there’s only ten finalists, I wish I could have picked all of you. Because, seriously, you all need my help. Well, except for the five f$%&ing showoffs who forced me to double my budget for this stupid contest. Thanks for that.

The “Angry, Save My Map” Finalist’s Gallery

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The “I Don’t Need Your Help, Angry” Finalist’s Gallery

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20 thoughts on “Angry, Save My Map

  1. Whelp. Even the ‘bad’ ones are better than what I make. Good thing I didn’t enter, as I am probably beyond the help of books and software.

    The good ones just make me want to throw stuff at their creators. Money. Or rocks. Not sure.

    #Voted

    • I think you might be surprised at just how effective those Jared Blando books are. They’ve taken me from a complete inability to draw to… well, still terrible, but less so.

      Being a bit more serious for the moment, they’re the single best RPG purchases I’ve made in years, and I cannot recommend them highly enough.

      • I’ll take a look, it’s about time I invested some money in this hobby.

        I hear there’s a book on this site as well somewhere that’s supposed to be good..

  2. Absolutely awesome contest Angry. Mad props to all the entries as well as the finalists. Really interesting work all around, in the good and bad categories. Really great to see so many people get involved in this. Thanks for being an awesome space for this to happen in Angry!

  3. I love how in a typical tabletop way we managed to prove that even when the hints are blatant they aren’t picked up on.

    Angry basically asked for us to $<"( up and we managed to $<"( up on $<"(ing up by not $<"(ing up.

    • Angry most certainly did not ask anyone to pay. Not one thin dime. I was being snarky and that is all. I would not spend money that Angry Games didn’t have to spend.

      I am deeply sorry if I gave the impression I’m begging for money. That is something I never want to be seen doing.

      The only thing I’ve ever wanted is for people who think my site is worth supporting to support it as much as it’s worth to them. I am deeply grateful to my supporters for whatever they can provide, because it keeps the site online and allows me to keep doing this work.

      • I don’t think that was what EmeraldWind was getting at, at least that’s not how I read the post. I think it was that people were asked to submit maps that were bad but trying, essentially maps with a bunch of f- mess ups, but people messed up at messing up by submitting maps where they hadn’t messed up.

        • I misunderstood the “Angry asked us to $” perhaps.

          EDIT
          Or perhaps, a use of improper grawlixes caused a display issue in my WordPress app when I was reading the comment and the comment just stops after the first dollar sign.

          Come on, guys. Never use angle brackets in grawlixes. Some browser based apps get super confused depending on what immediately follows the angle brace.

          • Aw crud… I wasn’t thinking about that. I should’ve known better.

            Sorry Angry. I was too busy laughing at the silliness of the situation to properly think about the encoding issue.

          • Oh no! EmeraldWind #%!@ed up thief post about #$!@ing up at #$!@ing up by not #$!@ing up, by #$!@ing up at saying #$@%!

    • Yeah, that’s the fate of GM’s i guess. Your hints will never ever be picked up on ever again once you have sat behind a GM screen…

      Luckily we have each other to complain to 😉

  4. I have a problem with your selection, Angry. You picked too many good maps and now I can’t figure out which one to choose.

  5. Yeah, my maps would’ve been right at home here. Darn having-to-take-care-of-a-baby, mumble grumble…

    • Yeah I had to submit a map from my ongoing campaign for that reason. Too serious of course, but not good enough to qualify for the second category..

  6. Wow, my bundle of awfulness made it through! I’ve never been this mixed about getting a finalist spot though 😛

    Good luck to the other contestants and may the worst mapper win!

  7. Several I wanted to vote for. Mt. Rainyfrown and Gygax’s whatever some good chuckles out of me too. Good work.

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