Every great map starts somewhere. Mine starts with cardboard, a marker dropped blind onto a painted surface, and a fistful of dice. This post walks through the intended process of creating the map — not with the final wooden tiles, but with cardboard proxies, roughly half the size of the wooden hexagons that will eventually make up the real thing. This is a proof of concept: a chance to test the materials, trial the rules, and find the cracks in the system before committing t

Maps, Hexagons, and the Art of Letting Rules Guide the Brush Maps have long been tools for navigation and storytelling, but what happens when a map is not just a representation of the real world, but a creation of pure imagination? This blog is the beginning of that journey — a project that has not yet produced a single map tile, but already has a philosophy, a system, and a set of handmade cards ready to guide what comes next. The Inspiration Behind the Map Jerry Gretzinger