RPG Fantasy Map Concept

[Vokell]

Hello everyone.

I am a long time lurker, first time poster. I come here today for advice from those willing to give it for a map I am making. This map is going to eventually become a place that friends and I will use for stories and possible RPGs. I started out sketching a few concept worlds first, I won't post all of those, I'll just show you the one that I settled on:



From there I drew the outline of the world on a larger piece of paper and then scanned it on to my computer. Using Photoshop CS2 I played around with colors and eventually settled on an old world look. Then came the hard part, mountains and forests. As you will see I eventually came up with something for both, I used a tutorial from this site the make the forests I believe. Here is the current state of the map with some the nations on it already shown:


(**Sorry for the slight blur, the quality went down when resizing it for the web**)

The mountains are okay, but not great in my opinion, they don't really show the scale I was going for. The world, a continent in a world really, is supposed to be around the same size as North America and it's not really feeling like that with the current state of the mountains. The forests might not even be needed for something of that size either, but I may be willing to scale the size down to something more manageable since it does look good with forests.

I am hoping it is possible to get some tips and help with the mountains, I would like to see them be not so symmetrical and similar. I would also welcome any other comments and suggestions anyone has. Thanks!

P.S. I don't remember where I got the compass from, it's been on my hard drive for a long time.

[Valtharius]

I like the map! The shape of the continents, the colors used, the names. Great job! Only thing I would like to see is a larger map size so i can see the finer details.

~Val

[Vokell]

Thank you Valtharius for your kind words. I've uploaded the original size of the map in to my gallery now, plus I will post it here as well:



Hopefully the details of the map look as good up close to you.

[jfrazierjr]

Vokell, you should actually attach the larger image using the thumb-nailer instead. For one, the larger shows much more detail, for another, page loads are faster with small thumbnail images than full size ones.

Anyway, overall, I think it's really pretty cool. Are you planning on adding more to this such as roads, cities/towns, etc or is this the final?

[bartmoss]

Okay, I am the color blind dude here, that map looks really, really pink to me :-( The ocean, anyway; the land has kind of a sand color.

Surely that ocean is not really pinK?

[Ghostman]

Doesn't look pink at all to me. It's either your eyes or your PC screen messing with the colors.

[Vokell]

Thanks for the comments everyone.

Here is the map attached using the thumb-nailer:

rpg_world_map_old_world_colors_1.jpg

This is not the final version yet, I do plan on adding major cities and maybe major roads. Also I plan on adding names to various landmarks as well, like island names, mountain ranges and the bodies of water. As you can probably see there isn't even a name for the whole place yet.

Bartmoss, the oceans are not pink, they are more like a light grey with a slight texture to give it a wavy look.

[bartmoss]

Doesn't look pink at all to me. It's either your eyes or your PC screen messing with the colors.

Oh, definitely my eyes

[jfrazierjr]

Cool.. do you plan to add any color to it, such as a very slight green for the forests or leave colors as is? I am not real sure I can visualize in my head if I think it would look better or worse with a bit of color...

[Vokell]

An interesting idea, here is what it would look like with the green color I chose:

rpg_world_map_old_world_colors_2_small.jpg

Doesn't look too bad in my opinion, maybe I should try something similar with the mountains.