You know, it'd have been amazing if TFA has not opened with that video. So instead of clicking the link to view TFA, you went off and dug up the exact same link in TFA???
The main linked article actually does not have that video; the article linked from in the description does have it. Not surprising that someone missed it.
I used to do things like this when I was a kid (less extreme, never more than a single sheet of paper), where I would create some natural features: a lake shore or river, maybe a freeway or two or a railroad and then start platting out a subdivision in the open spaces. It was a delightfully meditative practice and maybe I should start doing it again.
Not the person you replied to, but like them, I too liked to draw imaginary maps when I was a kid, mainly of medieval towns. I also tend to like the world-building aspects of strategy games, arguably more than the actual strategy parts.
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.
I actually had the same experience as you (own it, played it only a bit for similar reasons), but FWIW I believe there is a sandbox mode to just play around in.
Another chill medieval town building game is Manor Lords. It has some management but overal is laid back.
Oh you just reminded me of the joy of making maps for D&D. I only ever played two or three times, but I had notebooks full of detailed maps of dungeons, cities, whole continents.
I know Jerry Map (I hope that someday will be a exposition in Spain) because I love it, I love the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outsider_art. The people who maybe mad and they built a world with own rules.
It's a weird coincidence to me I just remembered Henry Darger again today, within the last hour actually. I had watched "In the Realms of the Unreal" (2004 documentary) in the theater when it came out. (I know it's only a coincidence because it's something I'm interested in thinking about, but it feels meaningful anyway.)
It's very similar to styles of generating lairs/dungeons in many TTRPGs. A lot of them come with various tables/dice rolls to help build a layout and then subsequent tables to give a general prompt for what goes in said rooms. It's an extremely satisfying routine, as you're not 100% beholden to every dice roll, but the dice rolls help prime the creative juices and give constructive constraints to the process.
Playing hexcrawl RPGs like Twilight 2000 with my groups has been great. The physical edition came with a custom deck of playing cards that had encounters and randomization tools printed on them - I can literally just draw a card and immediately create an encounter for the players.
The revision process makes it look like a satellite image, painstakingly updated by a single satellite, which can only cover so much per pass.
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.
First found out about Jerry’s Map over 10 years ago thanks to this video on Vimeo and it really stuck with me. Glad to see the project continue. Also I miss finding these smaller documentaries on the site, so many neat subjects covered before Youtube became the home of all things video.
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.
Oh that is a blast from the past - I had an Epson MX-80 printer as a kid connected to my first PC. Many fond memories of trying to make muti-page prints from it... And the dot-matrix sound is still embedded deep in my brain.
The card deck procedure is the most interesting part to me. It makes the map feel less like a drawing and more like a system Jerry is observing over decades. Maybe i need to follow his rules for a map of my own.
If you're interesting in something similar with a specifically made deck, check out The Story Engine's "Deck of Worlds", which is how I was introduced to map crafting via a rule system. Another alternative is a system called "The Quiet Year" which uses a standard deck of cards and written rules for generating a world and events with an eye toward using it for collaborative story telling.
Once upon a time, people worked on making imaginary maps https://www2.cs.arizona.edu/~kobourov/PROJECTS/maps.html to visualize datasets like TV and music recommendations. It was fun. In a 2026 context, one might use AI to post process the maps and make them even better.
My favorite part about this/what blows my mind is that his system has him editing singular tiles at any given time. He seemingly only gets to see what it actually looks like at intervals like 15 years apart. There are probably entire epochs of his system that he'll never actually see laid out because they've since been overridden.
Reminds me of _Journeys Into the Outside_ by Jarvis Cocker.
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.
I had the same experience when I ran into him at a bar backstage at a Blur gig in the mid 90s. My dad was friends with his dad in 1960s Sheffield, but since the bloke walked out on his family when Jarvis was 7, it wouldn't have been much of a conversation starter.
In high school I remember entertaining myself in class by using grid paper to draw little tile based maps. It’s like playing Minecraft by hand. I imagine the concept is lost to a lot of Gen Z or Gen Alpha by now. Too much imagination required.
There was another project I saw years ago that this reminds me of. It was a guy who had been running a simulated city/community for like 20 years. The whole thing was done on pen and paper and used complex rule system he had devised. Similar pre-internet outsider art vibe.
It would make an interesting map generation algorithm that could feed the card data and specified map tiles into an image gen AI system that would have to take the map tiles and try to follow the rules.
As I get older I’ve come to realize more and more how bad instant gratification is. There’s value and mental health benefits in doing things that are slow and take time and effort.
As I was coming back to the thread, I was dreading someone might be making this submission about AI. I miss HN from before it became AIN and other types of intellectual curiosity were drained out.
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.
Despite the negative reactions, I think this demonstrates how "make up some rules and follow them" is no longer intrinsically valuable. Likewise with coffee table books with a strong visual theme like, I dunno, cats wearing different hats. I can do that myself now.
For the individual, though, you do you. You can't automate self-expression.
You guys are welcome: https://marcmajcher.github.io/jerrysmap/
There's a good People Make Games video about this from a few days ago
https://youtu.be/Is8N7B9b0GQ
It's funny that I watched this less than an hour ago, and I click on hackernews and bam it's #1 on the front page.
Probably someone else must've also watched this in the past few hours or days.
The world is increeeeeeedibly small with likeminded people (sometimes at least, which is most of the times).
More likely, you could track people who visit the same websites across different apps and websites and feed them similar content on other platforms.
You're talking about 2 phenomenons that I love - the tendency to spot related things in noise due to bias, and hackernews community
> the tendency to spot related things in noise due to bias
The Baader–Meinhof phenomenon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion
reticular activating system
I remember seeing a video on Jerry’s Map from nearly 20 years ago.
This one of my most favourite youtube documentaries i've seen in a while
You know, it'd have been amazing if TFA has not opened with that video. So instead of clicking the link to view TFA, you went off and dug up the exact same link in TFA???
Oh, I see that there's two TFAs. The one in the description has the video, but this main one doesn't - http://www.jerrysmap.com/the-map
The main linked article actually does not have that video; the article linked from in the description does have it. Not surprising that someone missed it.
For me it doesn't. Perhaps it's a cookie setting? Anyway, lovely video.
I used to do things like this when I was a kid (less extreme, never more than a single sheet of paper), where I would create some natural features: a lake shore or river, maybe a freeway or two or a railroad and then start platting out a subdivision in the open spaces. It was a delightfully meditative practice and maybe I should start doing it again.
Same here. Was so bored I started drawing maps and inventing little stories in my head.
I think what inspired this was the LOTR in paperback that my sister had, because it had maps inside the cover.
you might enjoy cities: skylines
Not the person you replied to, but like them, I too liked to draw imaginary maps when I was a kid, mainly of medieval towns. I also tend to like the world-building aspects of strategy games, arguably more than the actual strategy parts.
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.
I actually had the same experience as you (own it, played it only a bit for similar reasons), but FWIW I believe there is a sandbox mode to just play around in.
Another chill medieval town building game is Manor Lords. It has some management but overal is laid back.
I should check that out. Thank you
Oh you just reminded me of the joy of making maps for D&D. I only ever played two or three times, but I had notebooks full of detailed maps of dungeons, cities, whole continents.
I know Jerry Map (I hope that someday will be a exposition in Spain) because I love it, I love the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outsider_art. The people who maybe mad and they built a world with own rules.
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 .
It's a weird coincidence to me I just remembered Henry Darger again today, within the last hour actually. I had watched "In the Realms of the Unreal" (2004 documentary) in the theater when it came out. (I know it's only a coincidence because it's something I'm interested in thinking about, but it feels meaningful anyway.)
> The entire process is driven by instructions on a card drawn from a special deck created by the artist.
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).
It's very similar to styles of generating lairs/dungeons in many TTRPGs. A lot of them come with various tables/dice rolls to help build a layout and then subsequent tables to give a general prompt for what goes in said rooms. It's an extremely satisfying routine, as you're not 100% beholden to every dice roll, but the dice rolls help prime the creative juices and give constructive constraints to the process.
I highly recommend trying it out for yourself!
Playing hexcrawl RPGs like Twilight 2000 with my groups has been great. The physical edition came with a custom deck of playing cards that had encounters and randomization tools printed on them - I can literally just draw a card and immediately create an encounter for the players.
The revision process makes it look like a satellite image, painstakingly updated by a single satellite, which can only cover so much per pass.
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 grade school I kept meticulous, tedious logbooks of ships entering and leaving an imaginary port for tax purposes.
What is your profession now? Accountant? Ship's Captain?
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.
First found out about Jerry’s Map over 10 years ago thanks to this video on Vimeo and it really stuck with me. Glad to see the project continue. Also I miss finding these smaller documentaries on the site, so many neat subjects covered before Youtube became the home of all things video.
https://vimeo.com/13596774
Whoa.
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.
Oh that is a blast from the past - I had an Epson MX-80 printer as a kid connected to my first PC. Many fond memories of trying to make muti-page prints from it... And the dot-matrix sound is still embedded deep in my brain.
The most Borgesian thing to ever be posted on HN.
The card deck procedure is the most interesting part to me. It makes the map feel less like a drawing and more like a system Jerry is observing over decades. Maybe i need to follow his rules for a map of my own.
If you're interesting in something similar with a specifically made deck, check out The Story Engine's "Deck of Worlds", which is how I was introduced to map crafting via a rule system. Another alternative is a system called "The Quiet Year" which uses a standard deck of cards and written rules for generating a world and events with an eye toward using it for collaborative story telling.
Dude, I was trying to remember the name of "The Quiet Year" for a while now! Thank you!
Glad I could help!
The rules make it feel oddly real
Once upon a time, people worked on making imaginary maps https://www2.cs.arizona.edu/~kobourov/PROJECTS/maps.html to visualize datasets like TV and music recommendations. It was fun. In a 2026 context, one might use AI to post process the maps and make them even better.
https://mapofmetal.com/ was always one of my favorite (and I don't even listen to metal).
My favorite part about this/what blows my mind is that his system has him editing singular tiles at any given time. He seemingly only gets to see what it actually looks like at intervals like 15 years apart. There are probably entire epochs of his system that he'll never actually see laid out because they've since been overridden.
From the first sentence and image on jerrysmap.com I seriously thought it was Jerry Garcia's doing for a second.
Reminds me a bit of the truck driver who's been building a scale model of NYC for 20 years. That crossed HN 3 months ago.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47657268
Reminds me of _Journeys Into the Outside_ by Jarvis Cocker.
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.
I had the same experience when I ran into him at a bar backstage at a Blur gig in the mid 90s. My dad was friends with his dad in 1960s Sheffield, but since the bloke walked out on his family when Jarvis was 7, it wouldn't have been much of a conversation starter.
One person, one map, five decades. That's not art. That's a lifelong conversation with yourself.
Looks like the OG fortnite map to me
In high school I remember entertaining myself in class by using grid paper to draw little tile based maps. It’s like playing Minecraft by hand. I imagine the concept is lost to a lot of Gen Z or Gen Alpha by now. Too much imagination required.
People Make Games just did a terrific documentary on this https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Is8N7B9b0GQ&pp=0gcJCUECo7VqN5t...
It's literally at the top of the post.
Well, in the secondary link, at least.
I didn’t notice there was a secondary link, sorry. For everyone else, consider this comment a recommendation to click through and watch it then :)
There was another project I saw years ago that this reminds me of. It was a guy who had been running a simulated city/community for like 20 years. The whole thing was done on pen and paper and used complex rule system he had devised. Similar pre-internet outsider art vibe.
I'd love to see the system he used for creating his if you can remember.
"Jerry began drawing a map of an imaginary city"
"an elaborate set of rules and randomly generated instructions"
... so which one is it?
It would make an interesting map generation algorithm that could feed the card data and specified map tiles into an image gen AI system that would have to take the map tiles and try to follow the rules.
As I get older I’ve come to realize more and more how bad instant gratification is. There’s value and mental health benefits in doing things that are slow and take time and effort.
I'm finding that too, investing in the process and the work is more satisfying than the outcomes
okay, but GP is also true. You could try teaching a computer to draw maps with this algorithm for procedurally-generated video games.
As I was coming back to the thread, I was dreading someone might be making this submission about AI. I miss HN from before it became AIN and other types of intellectual curiosity were drained out.
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.
Can't feed Jerry to the ai though
If he's been blogging as long as it says, he's already part of the collective
When articles like this are published along with photos and videos, in a way it is feeding Jerry to the AI.
Despite the negative reactions, I think this demonstrates how "make up some rules and follow them" is no longer intrinsically valuable. Likewise with coffee table books with a strong visual theme like, I dunno, cats wearing different hats. I can do that myself now.
For the individual, though, you do you. You can't automate self-expression.
how do you mean "intrinsically?"
Does every single thing need to be about AI? Really?
I mean, to be fair, some "super resolution" solutions for image generation do subdivide things into tiles to be re-done at a higher fidelity.