The Continent
Hey you!
Tired of all of these quality submissions?
Sick of these jerk cartographers with their insane skill and artistic talent?
Done with comparing your own maps to theirs in disgust?
Don't you wish you had some mediocre maps to look at?
Well, stop wishing friend, because I've got the map for you. Finally, a map that is easy on the eyes, but not so pretty that it reminds you of your own inadequacies as a cartographer. Something that you can look at and think "not bad, I could do that". Not too beautiful, but not bad either - it's a perfect compromise. Pick the middle way. Pick the Handsome Unlimited way.
Anyway, onto the map. After deciding that my world map would be a simplified outline of landmasses, I started work on a detailed map of the continent on which my games would be run... for the foreseeable future, anyway. This map was heavily inspired by Ilanthar's Ersïa map - in fact, the only reason I'm not calling it outright plagiarism is because I can't actually produce something of that caliber. Shaded relief was unapologetically lifted from real-world sources (the Tarim Basin is impossible to miss), and only altered where I found the need for a different shape.
The map is intentionally devoid of labels and boundaries, which will be filled in as I go. For those familiar with D&D parlance, this is a very typical Points of Light world setting (wherein the world is untamed and mysterious, civilization exists as "points of light" built amidst the ruins of the past, and vast areas of wilderness lie between what few settlements there are). I will be using this map predominantly as a "big-picture" tool to fit together smaller maps and keep track of distant areas that have been mentioned. My players will likely never use this map - because the world is the way it is, most of it would be unmapped. The maps that they will see will be very abstract by comparison - although they don't need to know exactly what those mountain symbols on their map equates to, I do. Although they don't need to know what lies in the uncharted section beyond the desert to the east, I do.
Enough talk, congrats (and sorry?) if you managed to read through all of that. Here's the map:
Continent Master Flattened Merged Grid.jpg
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