First map in a long, long time. Early WIP

[scottmale24]

Hi everyone! I'm gonna need a lot of help on this, and any feedback would most certainly be appreciated! Long story short, our current DM recently had a baby, which means our current campaign is "in hiatus". Somehow I was elected to run a campaign, and now I have a month to whip something together! Now normally I'd just have a few and make-it-up-as-I-go, but given how much effort our DM put into our game, it seems fitting to at least attempt to put thought and effort into mine.

All that being said, I haven't made a map since high school. So I present to you: Unnamed Worldmap 1! This is an attempt to flesh out landmasses in an islandy sort of world. Each color represents a different kingdom, with Red, Green, and Brown at war, and Blue being the neutral continent caught in the middle (and incidentally, where the players will start)

maprough.png


Again, any tips/pointers/feedback is appreciated! Also names, I could really use some help naming things.

[Barek333]

This looks nice for a background sketch map, I would just remove the colors, make the rest of the map and then color the borders. But that ofc depends on what type of map you want to do. I would suggest to look into tutorial sections, pick a style you like and run a tutorial.

Check here: http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=4987

There is a collection of tutorials depending on what you use (photoshop,gimp etc..)

[Chick]

Hi Scottmale24.

There is a great tutorial in the sticky section of Tutorials, called Quickstart Guide to Fantasy Mapping: http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=4276

From there, go to Hand Drawn Mapping for the Artistically Challenged: http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...ad.php?t=10655

Once you have completed those two tutorials, you'll be well on your way!!

[Ninkasi]

A big world needs a lot of names and I sympathize with your difficulty on that front. I've found that it's easier for me to start with suffixes. For each area that would have a dominant language, make up suffixes that mean country, city, region, etc. For example -port, -ton and -ville for cities, -land for countries, -shire for regions, and so on. I like to do a different set for each area that has its own language or had its own language relatively recently. I'll also create the adjective form (for example, someone from England is English -- so -ish would be a suffix, for example, the [blank]ish Mountains or [blank]ish Sea.

Once you have those suffixes, just make up word bases that you like and plug them in. So if you've made -rev a suffix meaning region, -li the adjective form, and -mur the city form, you might have the Dalrev region, the Dalli Mountains, and the capitol of the region, Dalmur. Or you might decide that's too boring and make it Dalrev, Vopli and Jiffamur.

Also keep in mind that instead of suffixes, you can do prefixes. For example, Kiswahili is the name of the Swahili language. Waswahili are the Swahili people. Uswahilini is the land of the Swahili people. So you could have naming conventions that look like Revdal, Lidal, and Murdal.

Hope that helps.

[scottmale24]

Thanks for the tips/resources! They're greatly appreciated!

Here's what I have so far. The first is a worn-out style that still shows the various kingdoms, and the other is a printer-friendly version with names (that I still haven't figured out).
map3.jpg mapprinterfriendly.jpg

[Deadshade]

What is the scale and where is the equator ?
I find it always surprising when a map cuts a kingdom/continent by a straight line like if there was nothing beyond. Yet if there are people living, they should have a map of the whole kingdom with the eventual exception of some "here be dragons" regions.

Of course this is what would happen in the equirectangular projection which makes appear the pole points as horizontal lines but I suppose that your map doesn't show the whole planet.