Welcome! Bienvenue! Willkommen!
Thanks for visiting and welcome to the Winter 2026 Map Thread — Bastogne edition. The map serves as one of the pillars of the forum's role-play allowing players to be able to situate themselves in relation to the other players. The map has changed regularly since the forum's earliest days in 2003 as an Microsoft Paint side hobby, to more professional looking map editions that have been built in more complex image editing software such as Gimp and Adobe Photoshop. The first map I did for the community was in October of 2009. After which we've had different mapmakers depending on personal commitments or general fatigue with the project. Since my first mapping period, we've had other respected community members such as Yujin, Taley, Cantignia, and Great Engellex. I started mapping again for the community in November 2019, just before the anxiety and onslaught of the Covid-19 pandemic. How long I decide to continue to do this is a bit unknown, but so long as everyone is happy with my work, I'll continue to plug away at this. I try to maintain regular updates, but I cannot always promise that as sometimes my personal life gets busy and hectic too.
The map has evolved through different scenarios, different geographic takes, and different ownership. I try my best to keep the map fresh, and change graphical style from time to time depending on my own feelings with the project. Creating for this community at this scale is not easy. In fact, I believe we have some graphic artists in this community that regularly upload far superior maps in my honest opinion. The difficulty is the balance between the scale of this map, the ever-changing player base, and the frequency of map requests that make high detail nearly impossible without the map becoming a full-time job. Each map cannot be outsourced to AI because of how particular each request is. These maps are often drawn and edited by hand, which for me is on a MacBook Air trackpad. The work is voluntary, tedious, and typically limits my own contribution to role-play on the forum with you all. So your patience is appreciated, and equally, your suggestions for improvement are welcome. Hopefully the map is something that can inspire you, or give you motivation to role-play with us.
If you have questions, comments, or concerns, I hope you leave them in this thread. If the discussion gets too lively, we can separate it into a new thread so don't worry about spamming or derailing conversation or requests.
Map Rules & Guidelines
The rules for the map have often changed from time to time based upon the needs of the forum or the needs of the mapmaker. This can sometimes make the rules difficult to follow, remember, or understand. Instead of rules that read like Napoleonic Law, I've decided that a less precise rules and guidelines outline would be more helpful for the forum membership. If you have problems, or ideas for the map rules, feel free to discuss them in this thread, and as always it can be moved into its own thread if the topic is quite large.
The map has evolved through different scenarios, different geographic takes, and different ownership. I try my best to keep the map fresh, and change graphical style from time to time depending on my own feelings with the project. Creating for this community at this scale is not easy. In fact, I believe we have some graphic artists in this community that regularly upload far superior maps in my honest opinion. The difficulty is the balance between the scale of this map, the ever-changing player base, and the frequency of map requests that make high detail nearly impossible without the map becoming a full-time job. Each map cannot be outsourced to AI because of how particular each request is. These maps are often drawn and edited by hand, which for me is on a MacBook Air trackpad. The work is voluntary, tedious, and typically limits my own contribution to role-play on the forum with you all. So your patience is appreciated, and equally, your suggestions for improvement are welcome. Hopefully the map is something that can inspire you, or give you motivation to role-play with us.
If you have questions, comments, or concerns, I hope you leave them in this thread. If the discussion gets too lively, we can separate it into a new thread so don't worry about spamming or derailing conversation or requests.
The rules for the map have often changed from time to time based upon the needs of the forum or the needs of the mapmaker. This can sometimes make the rules difficult to follow, remember, or understand. Instead of rules that read like Napoleonic Law, I've decided that a less precise rules and guidelines outline would be more helpful for the forum membership. If you have problems, or ideas for the map rules, feel free to discuss them in this thread, and as always it can be moved into its own thread if the topic is quite large.
- There are no concrete rules for getting on the map. Apply immediately! The mapmaker may refuse to add you for a certain reasons including but not limited to a small number of posts, a lack of activity, poor post quality, or failing to play well with others. None of these have definitive qualities, they are subjective by nature and will come with stipulations to help you improve to get added on the map as soon as possible.
- Observe the locations of other players and do your best to link up with similar cultures. This helps maintain a certain «je ne sais quoi» that keeps the map and the role-play logical.
- Please collaborate with other players whenever possible. I encourage people to use this thread to not just make requests, but collaborate with others in form of asking questions, vetting ideas, and finding out what is possible. It's better that you place yourself next people who understand your role-play theme and appreciate i
- Don't make more than one nation. You can multi-account and play with more than one, but it's discouraged. Time is a valuable commodity, more time spent on other side-projects means less definition one your main project and we prefer quality over quantity. One-hundred single sentence posts will never be as amazing to us as a singular one-hundred sentence post. It's not a hard rule though, so have your fun!
- You can change your nation borders. Arbitrarily, the mapmaker can say enough(!) and put a pause on your changes if they are growing too many. This includes adding a colony for your nation as they aren't especially too different from changing your borders. Sometimes it's not allowed if you've gone to war and adding more territory doesn't make sense to the narrative.
- Your nation can be deleted. This can be done by you, or by the mapmaker without warning. Naturally, the mapmaker probably won't remove you unless you are inactive. Your role-play is part of the community storyline, and so it's also possible you cannot delete yourself if your narrative is too important. We'll speak on a case-by-case basis for problems where you might not be having fun and want to change, but your nation is too important to delete.
- No NPCs. They can only be created by consequence of role-play. While some exist on the map for special reasons, no one is special enough to just get their own pet project added without broad community support.
- Try to fit in with the community! We take ourselves some what seriously, so no meme names, meme leaders, meme cities... try to make yourself look like you fit into the community. If you come from Nation-States like most of us, you don't have to have the same account name.
Notice on deletions: If you have to go away on a secret mission with the CIA or Direction générale de la Sécurité extérieure—I believe this really happened to us once—, or perhaps you live a more normal life and are just taking a vacation abroad for a month, or have a school trip lined up, or have a lot of work deadlines and probably won't have to time to post anything... or even if your mental health is in a bad place due to the stresses of the world we live in... we have a special thread called the absence thread. You can make a post in that thread to let us know why you are away and when we can expect to see you again. So if we know you are gone for four months, we know not to delete you from the map for next four months because you are coming back!
You can access that thread here:
You can access that thread here:
Getting on the map is quite easy, but to minimize errors and make sure you get the look that you want, there is a basic format example below. The mapmaker won't follow every little detail that you provide as I have some artistic freedom, and it saves me time to do things in a uniform manner that fits with other nations rather than copy-pasting something direct from your application. If you recall from earlier in the post, the map is complicated, and has to fit everyone's nations. So, keeping things uniform is important for update speed. The map changes with every iteration. That means sometimes what you want to role-play doesn't match with the space that is available on the map. We encourage you to ask if space can be made for your project if it's too crowded where you want to go. This typically happens in the "European" region. If we cannot make space for you there, we can likely still give you ideas for how to fit in.
Application Template:
Application Template:
- Nation Name: Your Nation's Name Here
- Local Name: Foreign language name? Write it here.
- Location: Short description of where you are [+picture is preferable]
- Capital City: [Name + Location]
- Picture of your national flag: [.jpg, .png, or .gif is preferred]
- Extra comments: If you want to make sure something is depicted especially, or a random request, feel free to add it here. No promises though.
( ! ! ! ) Once you've posted your application you need to start RP and making posts! Play as if you are now a member! You will not be mapped if you don't start playing because that indicates to me that you applied, but then forgot about the forum, never figured out how to RP with us, or quit. So in order to make sure you don't leave that impression I highly recommend you follow this checklist:
✓ → Create an encyclopedia thread, it doesn't have to look pretty, but make sure good information is there
✓ → Make a diplomatic affairs thread, typically expressed as an embassy
✓ → Make a domestic news thread
✓ → Keep playing! If you do all these things and then poof(!), I'll figure you decided to quit and move on. I won't map anyone I think isn't playing.
If you need any help or have questions you can ask in this thread or one of several other welcoming threads. You can ask in the shout-box as well and someone will likely PM you in the next 24 hours.
Once you've done that, don't just wait to be mapped, keep role-playing! The more you play, the more urgency I have to put you on the map! There is not much incentive for the forum to need to know where non-playing nations are. On the other hand if a nation is actively participating on the forum, it is far more important to get them on the map so people know where they are and how to judge them in a geopolitical sense. The more you play, the faster a map update is likely to happen.
✓ → Create an encyclopedia thread, it doesn't have to look pretty, but make sure good information is there
✓ → Make a diplomatic affairs thread, typically expressed as an embassy
✓ → Make a domestic news thread
✓ → Keep playing! If you do all these things and then poof(!), I'll figure you decided to quit and move on. I won't map anyone I think isn't playing.
If you need any help or have questions you can ask in this thread or one of several other welcoming threads. You can ask in the shout-box as well and someone will likely PM you in the next 24 hours.
Once you've done that, don't just wait to be mapped, keep role-playing! The more you play, the more urgency I have to put you on the map! There is not much incentive for the forum to need to know where non-playing nations are. On the other hand if a nation is actively participating on the forum, it is far more important to get them on the map so people know where they are and how to judge them in a geopolitical sense. The more you play, the faster a map update is likely to happen.
The Map (Bastogne 1.0) : 24.9MB
This is the current edition of the map. It is a reflection of past requests and current role-play. The most current map will always be on display on this post, and on a random post in this thread when it was introduced. Older versions of this map (Ardennes Edition) will be available through links provided only on this post at the very bottom.
If there are mistakes, feel free to kindly make me aware of them, and they'll be fixed on the next map release.
Previous Editions:
Previous editions for the Ardennes version of the map can be found below.
Ardennes 1.2 - Released 29 October 2025
Ardennes 1.1 - Released 06 July 2025
Ardennes 1.0 - Released 24 April 2025
If there are mistakes, feel free to kindly make me aware of them, and they'll be fixed on the next map release.
Previous Editions:
Previous editions for the Ardennes version of the map can be found below.
Ardennes 1.2 - Released 29 October 2025
Code:
https://i.imgur.com/tWlL2IJ.jpegArdennes 1.1 - Released 06 July 2025
Code:
https://i.imgur.com/qSrUiJR.jpegArdennes 1.0 - Released 24 April 2025
Code:
https://i.imgur.com/G7NanpT.jpeg
Last edited:
You had a lot to do, and you did it 
