Disclosure: I am totally new to world building and map making and have almost no artistic talent.

I started to work on a world which has been in my head for some time, and I've only put to paper a couple times. It is a fractured world where the main travel between the land masses is by water. The center-most island is where all the factions gather in neutral territory and conduct all sorts of actions (business, politics, etc.) between themselves in peace. The island is mostly surrounded by smaller islands (Horseshoe Islands) which act as a barrier, and are primarily used as recreational spots. Their strategic value is undisputed as the shallows only allow very specific routes to and from the island for sea faring ships. Outside of the Horseshoe Islands and to the West or South East are the Peak islands, each with a large mountain peak as their recognizable feature.

The rest of the world consists of larger land masses and islands strung around the area. Dwarves (west-most Island), Elves (North-east of center island), and Humans (south of center island) each have a "capital continent" on a larger land masses. They all co-mingle within different parts of the world, and within their capital continent. The purple swirls on the map denote two maelstroms which are left-overs from the cataclysm event.


I started with a quick and dirty pencil sketch on a 6 x 9 inch drawing paper, then scanned the image at 300 dpi and imported it to GIMP to do the crude lining with the standard paintbrush. I feel like I need to spread the islands and the continents apart a little more to give it a grander scale. Water travel should be taking a considerable amount of time (think Age of Sail travel times), but not overwhelmingly daunting to discourage trade. I would still like to add detailing such as mountains, forests, etc., but I am not sure how I should proceed. The image size is currently 2537 x 1795 px. Should I be enlarging this or keep it as it is, and just place the real detailed work through regional maps?

I would like to use this as the world map for a home-brew D&D campaign and use regional maps as handouts. Any suggestions or tips are greatly appreciated!

First Stage Pencil.jpgFirst Stage.jpg