Are there any good guides for filling in a small-scale or regional map, say on the level of Pennsylvania? Global tutorials are great for mountain ranges and rivers, but at the scale of smaller regions there are new factors that come into play like the separate ridges of a mountain range, smaller water bodies, wetlands, and cities.

For example, I made a nice world map. I followed pretty detailed tutorials using GIMP and Wilbur for heightmaps and getting rivers right. I was pretty confident in it. Since I did a lot of the hard and detailed work in GIMP I decided use Wonderdraft for some fun and fast maps.

Then I decided to make a regional map of some random area. It had some rivers and mountain ranges. I thought it would make a good sized area for an adventure for a role playing game. When I calculated the scale of it based on my global map I realized it was the size of the United States! This was way too big of a map to show the details needed for local adventuring area.

Grey Wolf Region.png

So I decided to zoom in and use something that would be about 100 miles by 150 miles. It's hi-lited in red in the larger map above. Something that corresponded to the size of about a dozen counties in a corner of Pennsylvania. But in doing that, I realized my global map was almost useless besides giving it the corner of a mountain range and a few rivers. So here's where I'm at with it:

zzzzz.png

I get stuck because there are such clear tutorials for shaping the planet, and I use the old DnD Worldbuilder's Guidebook, but even that's weak on what to do when you drill down to this level.

How do you decide what scale to set your maps at?

Any advice on how to start filling in the smaller scale map is much appreciated!