D&D, Diablo, Warhammer and Beyond: The Fantasy Cartography of Francesca Baerald

Francesca Baerald’s UNBOUND collected more than a decade of fantasy cartography into a huge 320-page art book, that has already smashed its Kickstarter target.

There are artists whose names beome inseparable from the games they work on, and others whose work is probably familiar even when their name may not be. Francesca Baerald belongs firmly in the second group for many.

The Italian artist and cartography has spent more than a decade creating maps for some of gaming’s biggest worlds, with credits encompassing Dungeons & Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, Warcraft, Diablo IV, Dragon Age, Game of Thrones, Dragonbane, Gloomhaven and Warhammer. Her clients have included Wizards of the Coast, Blizzard, Square Enix, Games Workshop, Fantasy Flight Games, Free League Publishing, Dark Horse and Penguin Random House.

Now that body of work is being brought together in UNBOUND, Baerald’s first major cartographic art book.

Launched on Kickstarter on 9th September, the campaign has already raised around £60,000 from more than 320 backers, approaching three times its original funding goal after only a couple of days,

UNBOUND runs to 320 oversized hardcover pages, measuring 42 × 30cm, and collects Baerald’s own selection of favourite artwork. Maps from projects including Diablo, Final Fantasy, Horizon Zero Dawn, and A Song of Ice and Fire sit alongside her personal commentary, anecdotes, and material looking behind the scenes at how she creates them.

At a time when much professional game artwork is produced digitally, Baerald is very deliberately a traditional artist, working primarily with watercolour, ink, acrylic, and oils from her studio in the Italian countryside. This phsyical approach gives her maps a distinctive identity and are both a functioning game tool as well as fantastic illustrations in their own right. Filled with architecture, decorative borders, tiny settlements, terrain, and details that encourage you to study the map rather than simply use it to determine where the next adventuring is happening. So UNBOUND being an oversized book is a fantastic move, and bound to be poured over in detail.

Baerald has worked professionally in cartography for more than 13 years, creating over 150 maps during that time. She has gained considerable recoginition in the tabletop games industry, including winning a Gold ENNIE in 2024 and a Silver ENNIE in 2025 for Best Cartography, and again being nominated in 2026 for her work in Chaosium’s Pendragon Gamemaster Screen Pack.

UNBOUND comes in Standard, Deluxe, and Limited Editions, with the latter two intended as campaign exclusives. The Kickstarter runs until Friday 9th October, with a delivery date expected to be arround June 2027. Standard and Deluxe versions are also being offered for pre-order through LiberDistri. UNBOUND is co-published by Editions Cauetter and book designer and publisher Spiridon Giannakis.