Despite being one of the preeminent fantasy cartographers in the world, Italian artist Francesca Baerald flies under the radar for a lot of the game-playing public. Video game enthusiasts might recognize her map of Diablo IV for Blizzard or for Square Enix on Octopath Traveler 2. Dark Horse regularly turn her work into fine art prints or puzzles — like her renditions of Thedas from Dragon Age or the world of Horizon Forbidden West. In the tabletop world, you’ll see her work in various D&D and Magic: the Gathering products (Dragonlance, Planescape, Strixhaven), Draw Steel, and many Free League games including Dragonbane: Trudvang. Her work won back-to-back ENNIE awards for Cartography – gold in 2024 and silver in 2025 — and was also recognized with the Magnifico award at Italian convention PLAY 2024.

Speaking to Rascal over email, Baerald said that she always had a passion for fantastical places and creating her worlds even as a child. “At school, I enjoyed doodling small maps while listening to lessons, so you could say maps have constantly been in my childhood years,” she said. “I forgot about it until, many years later, I decided to sign up for a three-year evening illustration course here in Italy. I was doing it while working by day at a warehouse, but after the first year I understood I wanted to go all-in on art. I started creating my portfolio and began contacting small publishers in the gaming industry. Among the first collaborations I had, I was offered the chance to draw a map for a game; I immediately accepted, and since that day I haven’t stopped painting maps and exploring fantastical worlds.”

In the 13 years since that crystallizing moment, Baerald has also created a lot of traditional illustration, but drawing imaginary places is the practice that has taken over her life. Like many traditional artists, Baerald’s process is almost entirely physical, inks and watercolors on large-scale cotton paper. From there, she scans it and color corrects the work, while trying to maintain the handdrawn feel that translates into the final work. A single work can take hours, days, or weeks, both in terms of ensuring the minor details stay true to the canon in cases of work that builds on existing worlds, but also populating the frames and gaps with subtle references or charming decorations that evoke the feeling of the world. 

Apart from her skill, Baerald’s ability to strike a balance between a map as a store of information and as an art object is one of the reasons she is highly sought after. “I personally believe that a fantastical map should first evoke the world and invite the viewer inside the setting, then become a functional item,” she said. “Getting all information right on the map is essential, because a map must guide players through the lands, but the artistic side of a map is what evolves it to something more: my aim is always to create an artwork that would feel coherent in the hands of a character that lives inside the fantastical world, something that reminds you of an artefact.”

In her map of Dragonlance, for example, the border captures the world as much as the map itself. On the left, there’s Takhisis, the eponymous Dragon Queen featured in 5e’s Shadow of the Dragon Queen, surrounded by five chromatic dragons. On the right, there’s the oath of the Knights of Solamnia, who would oppose her. Beyond that, the frame itself suggests high fantasy and noble adventure in its styling. Baerald is able to do this with a certain amount of ease because she’s often a fan of the worlds before she works on them. Years before she was contacted by Wizards of the Coast to work on Ravenloft and then the official map of Dragonlance, she had already practised by drawing Ansalon, the main continent in the world, as “a personal work.”

It was a similar story with her work for Blizzard, as she had spent “hundreds of hours” playing World of Warcraft and their other games before being commissioned for their Exploring Azeroth book series, which may have led to her being contacted later for work on Diablo IV to draft a map as a special item for the Collector’s Edition of the game. And as usual, there are nods to the game stuffed in the crannies. “There is Wirt’s Leg hidden among some skulls and bones; there is a crow with an eye in his beak coming directly from the first Diablo intro cinematic; and there are a few more easter eggs that I will let you discover – I don’t like to ruin all surprises!”

This kind of work on worlds that have a lot of detail and texture to them means they often come with extensive style guides, world bibles, and, of course, existing maps. But Baerald has also worked on places that have never been drawn before where she’s given mostly text and art briefs, like her work on Coriolis and her maps for fantasy novels. Then, there’s her work on board games where she’s often working on the board itself, which is arguably the most important game piece or element. Her board for the Legends of the Five Rings game Rivers of Gold is visually stunning, with the chromatic finish that makes it glint in the light lending it that sought after ‘table presence’. 

“At the time of its original Kickstarter campaign, I had just started doing my first professional jobs, so I could only dream of working on such a great game,” said Baerald. “A few years later, the team at Cephalofair decided to create Jaws of the Lion, a more casual prequel to the game, and I was really surprised to get contacted to create a new map of Gloomhaven. That was the first time I had the chance to paint the iconic city.” Later, she worked with the tabletop publisher on the second edition of the game. “I had the honor of drawing a new version of the famous board,” she said. She was most recently tasked with drawing the maps for the upcoming RPG version of the massively popular game.

Baerald is now collecting around 250 different maps into one book titled Unbound that will be produced by art book publishers, Spiridon and Éditions Caurette. Alongside close-ups of some of the details, she’s contributed anecdotes and commentary. While Baerald has been a part of exhibitions, this will be the first time her work has been collected together in this form. After more than a decade of contributing to so many games, it’s a welcome moment of recognition for Baerald’s talents. 

Episode 43 of the Rascal Radio Hour invites Christopher Hutton from TTRPG Insider to join Chase in running down a dense couple of weeks for hobby news. Luckily, the pair of newshounds are more than up to the task of discussing two recent layoffs within Wizards of the Coast, UK Game Expo's news AI policy, and Renegade's relinquishing of the World of Darkness games license to White Wolf. That last item sparks a discussion regarding timelines and uncertain plans for the future.

Later in the episode, Chris found some interesting figures regarding Patreon's actual play ecosystem while a massive d20 rolled down a California hill, and a second PAX Unplugged convention taking place in Houston raises questions of economic viability and existential safety for designers and publishers.

Finally, a trip through the Question Dungeon sees the pair contend with questions about past predictions of 2025's three fantasy heartbreakers — Draw Steel, Daggerheart, and Cosmere RPG — and occupational frustrations with tabletop reporting.

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Here's an excerpt:

Chris: If you're a major company like Chaosium, you must decide it's worth adding [PAX South Houston] to your schedule, but it also offers another option for smaller people who can't get into Gen Con. That's that's always a net gain from the economic perspective because I've talk to a lot of people who wish they could vendor there. Gen Con is expanding in this next year, but is that going to be enough to account for as many people? What is that going to look like? We just don't know yet. Thankfully, the construction site should be mostly finished by 2027. So, it'll be economically interesting, but is it draw enough fans? I don't know.

Chase: See, this was the problem with PAX South whenever it ran. It started in 2016 or 2015 and ran until 2020. It was already sort of failing and was ultimately killed by the COVID-19 pandemic. But even in the couple of years leading up to that, a lot of people wondered about it having enough of an identity to draw people out to Texas, when they were already going to PAX East and PAX West and maybe even PAX Australia,

If you're a mid-sized or smaller company, conventions appearances can be expensive. Oftentimes they are good for business, but they are not good for making money. PAX South always struggled to have enough identity enough to draw people there instead of somewhere else if their finances were such that they needed to make a decision. Those same affordances are true for tabletop folks.

Paizo will probably show up, but if you're Kobold Press or Green Ronin, will you choose to go to PAX Unplugged Houston as well as PAX Unplugged Philly? I'm not sure if there will be enough draw to get people down to Texas. That said, I also have spoken to enough smaller folks, teams of two to ten people, who say every convention is worth it. They will happily add another one because they actually do make money at conventions.

Chris: The other question is the evolving political state of Texas, which is arguably increasingly conservative and holds policies that are not friendly to LGBTQ attendees [and exhibitors]. I've seen people who have said, I can't go there because they have very strong anti-trans policies. And I think it's a completely valid approach. I am so curious: would that affect it? Because at least a lot of the creator space is notably people of color and pro-LGBTQ in my experience. I'm not gonna say it's necessarily going to draw a conservative crowd, but could that create enough of a barrier?

Chase: As someone who who grew up in Texas, this is a constant contention especially within the state's large urban centers, which largely skew more progressive — or at least liberal. They are wonderful cities full of culture and food and lovely people and music, but they exist within a state whose legislature, whose congresspeople, whose elected officials on every level are the most horrendous conservative ghouls you can imagine. Texas becomes this weird dichotomy. You want to go to these cities because they can be incredible places, and Houston is one of them. Houston has been a city of music culture, rap and RB culture for at least 30 years now. And yet I can totally understand anybody, especially any queer people of color, who like look at going to Texas and go, nuh-uh. Absolutely not.

It creates an interesting question beyond the economics. I don't think it'll be enough that Pax Unplugged Houston is going to be the conservative show where you're only gonna get the folks who feel comfortable going there. That said, I have spoken to Soulmuppet, at least, and they said they will go there because it makes money, but also they have the privilege of people who travel to shows as white and can be cis-presenting if they need to in order to not draw that unwanted attention. People are going in there with their eyes open. But it's just another set of problems and considerations for smaller creators to do. It's just more work for them to do in order to make this work as a business.