All around, there is the Deep Country. It stretches forever growing ever more odd, it is the past.
Above there are the stars, glints of The Golden Lands. It is beyond our reach, it is the future.
Below, there is The Underground. A labyrinth of mystery that connects all of time.
At the center there is Bastion, the present. The current year of 810 sits at the dawn of electricity.
Everything is here, it is the only city that matters. Skies swirl with smoke, people always making their move, innovation always abound. It is the pinnacle of modernity and advancement, the new built upon the old at every turn.
Everything may be here, but everything is also complicated and interconnected. From what it was, to what it is, to how it's being misused, nothing is accomplished simply. Traveling between each point of the navigation map will always present an obstacle, from toll booths and entertainers to cult protests and dangerous lifeforms.
The setting of Bastion and the world it sits within are the creations of Tabletop RPG writer Chris McDowall, detailed in both “Into The Odd” and “Electric Bastionland” sourcebooks. Like others in the Old-School Revival movement that call upon the style of the first editions of Dungeons & Dragons, these books leave ambiguity in their lore in order to facilitate the creativity and improvisation of the Game Master. Thus, nearly all of the lore supplied in these maps is original, merely built on the given foundations.
There is no map of Bastion, the center of this setting. In the sourcebooks it is like an amoeba of indeterminate size, depth, and complexity. While this wild and wacky unpredictability is intrinsic to the feeling of the setting, I personally require more structure for my players regarding where they are, where they’ve been, and solid possibilities for where they may go next. I’m no city designer, and expansive lore is difficult, but I had a particular idea in mind.
Introducing another pen, paper, and dice game of creativity, The Quiet Year by Joe Mcdaldno. This game is about the creation of a community while you chronicle the happenings of it over the course of a year (in-game). Sorting playing cards into stacks of each suit shuffled (each suit represents a season), players take turns drawing a card, reading the corresponding prompt and fulfilling it until the season depletes, moving to the next. It could be an issue for the community, it could be a new discovery, or it could be a retroactive question regarding the nature of these people. This development is then representatively doodled onto the map. Then that player can make a decision to make a discovery, start a project, or call for discussion. Each player is equal parts dispassionate experimenter and abstract representative of sentiments in the community, and unless a discussion is called, you are forced to watch your fellow players make decisions outside your control.