Hey all...

Been a member here for some time, and have been looking over (read: drooling over) much of the work that's been posted here. Along the way I've tried to learn a thing or two as well .

I've been working away at a map for a game world I'm working on and, well... I've finally reached the map, and the look that I want to proceed with. I have so many "newmap-##" files stored away it's ridiculous.

The map I've gone with is what you see below, and the style I'm going for is the hand-drawn approach, with a hint of a style they use for the world map of Aden from Lineage 2, which you can see here.

What I love about that map's style is how it's very hand-drawn, but with each point-of-interest specifically drawn out as a sort of "icon" on the map. I don't know, but to me while playing that game, I would look at the map and think "Hmm.. I wonder what that place is?" and then venture off to find out. L2 has a beautifully rendered world with some fantastic settings for those of you who may not have played it.

Anyway! That's the look I'd like to go for overall... even with the very subdued hues sorta hinting at the type of environment in a given area.

Here's my work in progress:


What I'm stuck on now is basically filling it in. There are markers you can see, which are the locations of towns and villages, etc. For now, that's what I'll be working with 'til I can get around to sketching out the actual drawings for each. Much of what will be created is still sorta "vague" ideas in my head of the overall look/style/theme of the locations, so I don't really have anything concrete to build off of yet.

Here's where I'm running into a road-bump, though..

Scale... and all that stems from it.

For example.. how large to represent mountains on the map? Things of that nature. I'm thinking the scale of the world will be where each square on the grid overlay is about 50 square miles. That's a lot of land, though, and I'm wondering if it might be overkill. While this is going to be a fantasy world and, so, not "bound" by the rules of ours necessarily, I'd still like to keep things reasonable. If I intend to have a small town the equivalent of 5 miles away from a city, I'd like the map to more or less accurately represent that.

So... I guess at this point, I'm wondering if people here who have faced a similar quandry with their map projects could provide some tips? Any rules of thumb you can recommend? Tips, tricks and the like?

I would be very appreciative of it.... Might even name a location on the map after you!

Thanks for reading!