Kore: A Map For A Forum Game

[nutranurse]

I am a pretty avid poster on the civfanatics forums, specifically in a section devoted to a special type of forum game called 'Never-Ending-Stories' (no relation to the book). These games pit players against players against NPC's as they play... whatever the moderator feels like having them play as, though in most cases it is as various polities that duke it out through the ages. There are a surprising amount of rules that go into these games so as to keep it from just being a bunch of nerds faffing about (though in the end that is pretty much the gist of what occurs). I am about to start hosting my fifth (4.5, really, but that's a minor detail) game where the players have a 'fresh-start', i.e. they lead whatever race they create from the stone-age to a modern era, and for that I needed a new map.

I am using StarRaven's excellent brushes and pretty much everything else has been of my own mucking about in photoshop. I went with StarRaven's brushes/a handdrawn elements as opposed to realistic renderings because I wanted to evoke a Tolkien-esque kind of fantasy world. Kore is, after all, a magical place. What I am stumbling on, however, is what to do with the rest of the map past rivers, forests, mountains, and hills.

[RobA]

Hi! Thanks for sharing!

Pulling on my River Police hat (<-- Note the avatar...), I see a one minor infraction repeated a few time - namely that lakes will only have one (natural) outlet. You have a number where there are two or more outflows. Also just noticed the one little lake at about 11 o'clock that has no outflow...

Figured I'd mention these in case you want to fix them... no worries if you don't however, and it is a magical place which can make exceptions to any number of "real world" anomolies.

Very much like the colour palette, too, btw.

-Rob A>

[nutranurse]

Ah, rivers--the bane of everything I ever do with maps. Yeah, I was unsure if I was going overboard with the rivers (I put in way more than I normally do). I can and definitely will the amount of outflows.

[Lukc]

I would recommend you add different kinds of flat terrain: wooded steppe, grassland, scrubland (semi-arid) and deserts (arid). That will, of itself, give you a lot more variety.

For a "Civ" game you could also use layers to mark the availability of different raw materials through the ages. E.g. flint and obsidian and mammoths and things right at the start

[Tigon]

And, for a follow-up, perhaps a map or two of the progress of the various "nations" in play.

[nutranurse]

So I've finished the forests (save for the northwestern-most one, I am thinking about turning some of it into a swamp). Next on the list is getting to those offensive rivers!

[nutranurse]

Alright, I've got more in the map. Specifically I throw a blanket parchment texture over the base land-color layer so as to make the desert in the north-central not appear so jarring. I hope it still fits with the handdrawn style. I've also started to take you up on that suggesting, Luckc, and added a bunch of scrubs, scrubby forests, etc. scattered throughout the land.