Jerry's Map
jerrysmap.com
jerrysmap.com
Probably someone else must've also watched this in the past few hours or days.
The Baader–Meinhof phenomenon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion
Cities: Skylines have been in my wishlist since shortly after it came out but I never got around to playing it until about a month ago, and... didn't like it at all. It felt too "micro-manage-y" (for the lack of a better word) while also having the pressure of the ticking time.
Needless to say, I was very disappointed after looking forward to it for ~10 years.
Another chill medieval town building game is Manor Lords. It has some management but overal is laid back.
I think what inspired this was the LOTR in paperback that my sister had, because it had maps inside the cover.
I remember the book of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Darger or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwarf_Fortress or Cataclysm DDA .
And weird games as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nomic .
I like this. I like that his system pushes the creative process forward without relinquishing the actual creative part of it (making the map tile).
I highly recommend trying it out for yourself!
Do your D&D campaigns track gold coin weight?
Either way, this sounds like it would have been weirdly fun as a kid. Very imaginative even if it doesn't sound like it at first glance.
I have this recurring dream of a city - it's a mix of various places I've been to and it's surprisingly consistent. It bears the closest resemblance to Riga, Latvia - only thing is I've never been there. Funny how that works.
In my grade school years, I made many maps of my imaginary world. By high school, I was putting them into my computer, one 16x16 grid at a time. Had to make sure the edges matched up. Then I wrote code to print them on the Epson MX-80 dot matrix. The poster-board I tiled them on was still in the basement, though many of the squares were falling off.
It was easier after I coded a moving 64x64 buffer.
And that reminds me of the time when I saw him in passing in a corridor at King's Cross Thameslink and my hand was halfway up into a wave before I realised that he wouldn't know who am.
"an elaborate set of rules and randomly generated instructions"
... so which one is it?
What’s marvellous about this work is the antithesis of AI and computers, the artist and the process are what’s fascinating about it. Generative map and art programs are a dime a dozen. Those have value in their own way, but it’s different from this. There’s no need to conflate the two, most things do not need or benefit from AI.
For the individual, though, you do you. You can't automate self-expression.