First attempt at Fantasy Mapping

[Edward Tait]

Greetings Hivemind,

I have had this seed festering for a long time and I have tried to revive it and jump in to learn Gimp and assemble a DnD Homebrew I call "The Adapted Realm". I assembled a bunch of different shapes and was able to draw out the attached and then add land and water (which I know needs some work, but again I am just figuring it out). I am very happy with what I got so far but what I am not so confident in is the scale of the center of the map. My thought would be the equivalent of 4-6 11x17 sheets that would be the northern hemisphere and the same for the southern. Should I consider enlarging the center land masses? The majority of my current homebrew is within the center of the map and hope to have players expand the lore of the other sections which are showing in the colored image (which is not finalized at all). What are some things that I should consider when it comes to scaling the map? Some of the islands I have ideas as individual city type areas. My goal is to present a decent visual of the world the adventures currently take place.

Thank you in advance for any input (good or bad).

NYT8er

[Kellerica]

You've got some lovely land shapes here, off to a good start!

Just a FYI, I moved your thread to the World/Regional section of the Mapmaking Discussion area of the forum, it's more likely to be found by people there.

[Edward Tait]

Thank you. Wasnt sure where would be the best place.

[jshoer]

I think the final answer depends on what you are trying to do -- what your campaign environment is going to be like, and what kind of feel you want the world to have. That's not the physics/realism answer, but it's probably the narrative answer.

One thing you could do is reason by analogy. For example, I see places in your continent that are reminiscent of Iceland, or the Great Lakes in North America, or the Nile River. You could take a look at those places and see how big they are relative to your scale, and inform what scale this continent should be. Or, for a socio-political version of that, you could look for an area on Earth that has a similar number of countries/cities/ethnic groups to what you want to have.

[Edward Tait]

Thank you for your feedback. Really have not decided what I am trying to do. I have a few adventures adapted into homebrew locations and thought I could let it just expand naturally. So basically I am laying out the world but what that will actually looks like will come from the other players (but with some boundaries to work within). Actually every line is from the real world and have a meaning to me. No Iceland, not really great lakes (but NYS), no Nile River, and sometimes my lines were exact and others exaggerated. I like you suggestion of going back to the places and see about grabbing some more detail other than the coasts and boarders.

Of course the more I think about the areas that are nagging me the more likely I am going to increase the size. I think my next project is to add a grid to help me show possible scale (although I dont plan on getting a map to exact scale just using GIMP, would need ArcGIS for that) but I have experience plotting on maps so it will help me determine what could be realistic within the DnD environment.

[Edward Tait]

Greetings,

So I have been playing around and started using RobA Tutorial (Using GIMP to Create an Artistic Regional RPG Map) (https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...ead.php?t=1142). Also been bouncing around some other online helps and have gotten to a point that I am happy with what I have gotten achieved already. Now tackling adding mountains.

As for the scale, I have played around with putting both a hex grid and square grid and have a good idea of what the final will be, but that will probably be one of the last things I add to finalize the world and then move on to working on the city areas.

Here is what I have so far and appreciate any feedback.

RobA2.jpg

[Diamond]

It's definitely a good start - a crap ton better than my first digital maps were. I like the layout of the continent. Is that big waterway splitting it in half some kind of rift/channel or just a REALLY big river?

[Edward Tait]

It's definitely a good start - a crap ton better than my first digital maps were. I like the layout of the continent. Is that big waterway splitting it in half some kind of rift/channel or just a REALLY big river?

Love your profile pic. Now go get your shinebox! LOL. Thank you for the compliment. The tutorial I followed has worked really well for me; but the mountains are being a pain and I have to keep going back and tweaking settings till I am happy (should be done in another year LOL) As of right now it is a very big waterway but want to work in a waterfall. The top area is the first set of mountains just above the 2 lochs that will actually provide most of the water to feed it. Nothing is finalized so plenty of room to adjust.

[Edward Tait]

So after playing around with the "Simple Mountains in GIMP" https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...ead.php?t=4335 I was finally able to get results that I am happy with to move forward.

RobA3-2c.jpg

[Edward Tait]

So went back and played around with different settings in creating the mountains. Some turned out reallly well (for me) and others need to be tweaked out some. But its time to move on to adding more items (forests, additional water ways, some populations, etc). And as I move forward in learning GIMP I hope to go back and adjust and add. But for now it works to give the realm some depth.

RobA5.jpg