I will begin working on my game setting once I receive the Profantasy software. However, to get started I am posting this WIP research to find out what other options and tools may be necessary for my project. As I begin work on each respective map I will review thread relevant to the type of map I am working on. Some threads I have found already and am book marking them for later reference. To start though I will post this initial research goals list here.

Types of maps to make:
1) Physical Map: A physical map that shows the physical landscape features of the game world. It will in general show things like mountains, deserts, canyons, rivers and lakes , forests and prairies along with other parts of the geography that is of interest.

2)Political Map: A political map not showing any topographic features. It instead focuses solely on the state and national boundaries of a place. This will include the locations of cities - both large and small.

3) Economic or Resource Map: An economic or resource map the shows the specific type of economic activity or natural resources present in an area through the use of different symbols or colors depending on what needs to be shown on the map. This would only contain KNOWN areas where resources are located.

4) Physical Map/Road Map: A physical map used to display all information needed to develop adventures. This map would show all known locations of importance that players may have knowledge of. The map would have a classic hex pattern overlay for quick travel reference.

5) Enhanced DM only Map: This map would simply be a combination of the maps mentioned above. It would also contain locations, borders and other information that would NOT be known to players, in general. Such information might be where the rough borders are between the various non-human races. Locations of natural resources that are UNKNOWN to the worlds races and are as of yet, untapped.

6) Topographic/Climate Map: A topographic map is similar to a physical map in that it shows different physical landscape features. They are different however because they use contour lines instead of colors to show changes in the landscape. Also I would like to incorporate a climate map into this. A climate map showing information about the climate of an area. It would show things like the specific climatic zones of an area based on the temperature, the amount of snow an area receives or average number of cloudy days. This part of the maps design would be incorporated into the topo map. Through the use of color coding I can quick ref this map for daily information or compare it to real world climate to give exposition on the weather.

As you can see this is going to be a massive project. I am sure I can not do everything with just the Profantasy software. So some of the questions I have are:

1) What do people use to make these various types of maps?
2) What software is used to work or convert data from a Physical map into a topographical map? or vice versa?

Thanks for looking at the initial concepts direction. I look forward to hearing feedback on where to go from here.