Alone on a Map
A downloadable game
You are a renown cartographer that has been tasked with creating a comprehensive map of the entire world. To do this you have divided the world into 36 quadrants and will label the most important Landmarks.
---------
Alone on a Map solo tabletop role playing game about discovering landmarks and creating a map.
This game uses a standard deck of playing cards, 2 six-sided dice, writing implements, a grid, and an optional coin.
A grid is provided at the end of each PDF document, but there is also separate grid PNG available for download.
This game is a hack of Alone Among the Stars by Takuma Okada and is heavily inspired by Tiny Islands by David King
----
Basic Info
Players: Solo
Tools Needed: Standard Deck of Cards, 2d6, Writing Tools, Provided Grid. Optional Coin
Session Length: >1 Hour
-----
Actual Play and Videos
Seth Triberry - A playthrough of Alone on a Map
-----
For a Sci-Fi / Space version of the game check out Alone on a Galactic Map
8/29/21 Update: Added a plain text and ePub version
3/9/22 Update: Added Transparent PNG
If you have made a map and would like to show me please @ me on Twitter my handle is @KadenRamstack and I would love to see it!
Download
Click download now to get access to the following files:
Comments
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.
Creating a map with this manual is fun in itself, and is also an interesting way to generate a world to explore in a more traditional roleplaying session. On a side note, I truly appreciate the epub and plain text downloads.
Had some fun time trying some worldbuilding and discovering places on the map. Discovered that my mapping skills are nearly none, but I am happy with my map and what I wrote. It is hillarious, my mountains and trees look very close and using colors made it even worse. I even managed to draw in the wrong squares and needed to correct my notes after that. Would be a perfect map to hand it out to players to confuse them and have some fun with it.
As a side effect I had some interesting thoughts about what counts as a landmark. I had drawn some clubs for a lot of empty fields and once I was discovering a vulcano I was wondering what other landmark could be remarkable besides a vulcano in the same field. Quite inspiring for future sessions with other systems for landscape or map descriptions.
Just played through my first session of this and was inspired to make a hack/reimagining of it using tarot cards. Would you have any qualms about me making it available for download? (with credit to you and Takuma, ofc)
no problems at all! Go right ahead!
thanks for the quick reply! it's been posted
https://wrentheforrester.itch.io/the-lonesome-cartographer
Just got this as part of the bundle, and I think it's pretty good! Though I'm not sure if there's a way to possibly get a transparent version of the grid? In case if someone is more digital leaning.
Besides that this is a good guideline for world building!
just added the transparent png!
Oh sweet thanks! Wasn't expecting it but thank you!
omg, I just made some days ago a lost and found game in which you are a map! And now I find this <3
I need to try this one! <3
I haven't done much worldbuilding before, but this was a wonderful and simple way to start :) My map certainly isn't a masterpiece but I'm really happy with how the randomized options inspired the journaling aspect.
Thank you so much! My own map for the game was a bunch of chicken scratch :)
An elegant way to generate a map with plenty of geographical elements and cities/towns etc, and a great twist on the Alone game mechanics. For a smaller map, use d4s instead of d6s and a 4x4 map.
This could be hacked to generate city maps as well, maybe dungeons or odd haunted mansions too. Very lovely!
Thank you so much for the nice review!
Fun game that helps with world building!