The Implied Setting of Carcassonne

Carcassonne is a really great little German board game, in which you score points by building cities and roads with map tiles. It's been around over a decade and won some awards, which it deserves. I've only recently discovered the game on my iPhone, but I've been playing probably too much of it.

This is what the map from Carcassonne looks like.

Right off the bat, anyone who grew up doodling maps in their math notebook as a child will realize that this is a very odd map. The proportions are obviously stylized, but ignoring that, what I refer to is the layout. There are roads leading to nowhere. There are cities built right next to other cities, but enclosed within their own walls. Furthermore, almost all of the cities have massive fortifications, regardless of size, with the only exception being a small number of towns built at road intersections. There are a number of huge church-like buildings sitting outside of the cities, some connected by roads, some simply built in the middle of a field. Whatever city planner organized this whole thing should be taken out and shot.

However, I think this would make a hella fun campaign setting for some faux-medieval RPG like AD&D or Warhammer.

HOW TO USE YOUR CARCASSONNE GAME TO MAKE A MAP FOR A CAMPAIGN

Step One: Set Up

First we need to explain why the hell the map is so wonky, with all the walled cities so close together. Here's what I thought might be fun, which I call the Carcassonnian post-Lichocracy.

A thousand years ago the Lich died, and left behind just mind boggling stockpiles of death weapons. None of the cities in the Lichocracy, having been fortified heavily with massive walls and death ray towers, and designed to be self-sufficient in case of a siege, was willing to let any of the other cities take the Lich's place, and have the firepower to back up their independence. Cold war sets in, and each cities government struggles to improve their own position by the threat of violence, without actually using violence, for fear of the entire kingdom into a sheet of glass.

Adventure Seeds: Smuggling people from one city to another; Sabotaging a death ray tower (does it still work in the first place?); battling escaped monstrosities left behind by the Lich; political struggles between cities; growing resentment against mummified monks leads to cities uniting in undead prejudice and throwing off the power balance

Step Two: Make The Map

After you finish a game of Carcassone, but before you remove the followers (wooden tokens use for claiming areas during game play, for those who have never played) to tally up points, make your fellow players wait while you photograph the board extensively. Later, when you begin drawing your game map, fill in the blank spaces as you'd like to make the geography work, and to fill in blank areas on the map. I would suggest using two mile to a side squares.

• Cities are, obviously, cities. The smaller two tile cities, the ones shaped like pillboxes, are thus about four square miles. The largest cities can be truly massive. Whenever a city tile has the blue-and-white bonus point shield in them, on that location is one of the Lich's death ray towers. The number of Followers placed in a city is a measure of that city's political clout.
• Roads are roads. Their layout is caused be byzantine zoning laws under the Lichocracy. Followers on a road indicate a large population living outside of the city, either a small village, a bandit army, travelers outpost.
• Cloisters are monasteries containing the remnants of the Lichocracy, the peaceful mummified monks who worship the deified Lich. A Follower on a cloister indicates they are secretly working for the return of the Lich, while a Follower-less monastery is willing to look forward to find a place in the world.
• The green fields are wilderness. Grasslands mostly, and light forests which grow in the canyon like spaces between the cities. Facedown Followers are spooky graveyards.