Thinking BIG - 600 miles

[Sigurd]

I was told that these squares were 600 miles across (give or take).

Its a little hard to get my head around that much land.



Washington DC to New York city is, according to google, 229 miles by highway. As the crow flies it might be roughly 200 miles.

- So these squares are 3 times the distance from New York City to Washington.

Washington to Quebec City is likely about 600 miles as the crow flies.

London England to Berlin Germany is 684 miles by highway - 583 miles as the crow flies.

The isle of Britain is less than 600 miles nth-sth (548 by my inaccurate google earthing.)


I'm going to have to give the scale a rethink.

600x600 miles is 360,000 miles square.
The land area of Germany is only 216,998 miles.
The land area of Britain (Scotland, England, Nth Ireland) is 152,112 miles

So each of these squares is over twice the area of Britain and more than half again the area of Germany.

Sigurd

[Torq]

It just means one really giant impact crater. But thats cool too. It could possibly be the defining event in the planet's history, who knows.

Torq

[Sigurd]

My region is fairly simple because everything defined so far is natural and I haven't said how big each tree is .

I'm thinking that down the road we will have our jobs cut out for us to put cities, villages and roads in these squares. It also makes me wonder what will and wont show up in our views. When I'm thinking of the number of roads it helps to imagine Germany.


Sigurd

[The Cartographist]

Sigurd - Really good point. 600 miles is a LONG way. Which is why in an earlier thread I proposed we NOT expand the CWBP into new regions. There is SO MUCH to map right now, that we don't need to open up new areas.

I've also found (since living in the UK) that distances are relative. 100 miles is not considered very far in the States, but it is considered quite a long way in the UK. I think it's easy for Americans to think in terms of vast distances when, in reality, vast distance or large area is not needed.

[Sigurd]

I think we should try and make the most of the Wiki and other ways of presenting our various areas. With so much to do it seems silly to not do precisely what we most enjoy.

We should probably learn to think small inside of each region. Germany has how many cities, castles and whatnot?

Story should guide the development of a region not geographic happenstance.

Talking only of my situation - I had intended to have nothing but ruins. I'm going to have to think of some, perhaps monstrous, inhabitants. 360000 miles is a lot of space for one ruin .


sigurd

[Airith]

thanks for that post sigurd, I've been wanting to figure out just how much area we've been mapping, and your comparisons were awesome. Now I have to go back and add a bunch of places...

[Baziron]

London England to Berlin Germany is 684 miles by highway - 583 miles as the crow flies.

As far as I know, there is no real way to get from London to Berlin by car - at least, not without resorting to the tunneltrain, or the ferry.
;-) But that isn't sooo important.


But yeah, 600 miles is, maybe, a little too big. I figured that while scaling my map - I came to realize that every mm was three miles! Here's to marking cities on the map...

Edit: On the other hand, if each region is 440 n/s and between 220-385 e/w... it sounds more plausible. But then again, we have squares, with actually odd lengths.
So either we start handing out trapezes, knock off any scales, or just mutually agree on 440m n/s&e/w... (I guess...)

[Sigurd]

There will be anomolies
Personally, I'm not too too concerned with scale problems and anomolies. This is our first project and everyone is having fun. Thats more important.

squares are square
I hear what you're saying about the curvature of the world map Neonknight but rightly or wrongly, my section is a square. If the flat maps get finished people will spend far more time on the flat maps than the globe map.

I dont think we can affectively map thinking that every pixel is a third shorter than it is wide. Its just too hard for 12+ map makers to have different scales north-south than east-west. The global plotting in FT is a thing of beauty. The globes are cool and useful as regional maps. I think we have to accept that the squares are square because thats what we have to work with.

I also dont think we should change the scale.
Shrinking the world would change all the information generated in the various maps and make future measurements on something like google earth impossible.
Besides, there's a lot to learn in adapting to various land masses. I think its better to develop regions in a square than shrink the squares.

Adapt Region Names & Rethink
If each square is half again the size of Germany, we should probably develop our regional names a little bit. Unless this world has cars, european distances make much more sense to me. Cities and villages 12 miles apart etc...
Most people have coastline, I think we should look at settlement patterns springing from the coastline and rivers.

Perhaps we should trade regions after they're 'done' ?
One way to adapt to the size of the regions might be to have more people create into them. That would give genuine variety and maybe reflect the size better. How many different stories are between London and Berlin?


Sigurd

[ravells]

This is a fantasy world, and adventurers need vast areas of nothing in which to encounter monsters etc. Middle Earth (for example) had big regions of wilderness in it...I don't really see a problem with the scale.

-Of course if people want to have dense populations, they are free to do so.

[Avulsion]

Its just too hard for 12+ map makers to have different scales north-south than east-west.

Agreed. This is why we see so many real life country maps with "Not to scale" written somewhere. However, maybe we could fudge it by taking an average between the E/W and N/S distances on the maps, and make a scale according to that. For example, if your region is something like 440 miles N/S and 300 miles E/W, then you could make a scale based on a square map of 370ish miles NSEW.

The only side effect I can foresee is that the northern maps will cover smaller areas.

Here is a diagram that explains the idea. Notice the white squares are maps, and the yellow stretchy stuff is how they connect to each other. Imagine that they are wrapped around a globe and it makes more sense.