New Project: Anchoromé Conversion

[MarkusTay]

First, a little background. Anchoromé is a continent in the Forgotten Realms. However, technically it is NOT a continent in the Forgotten realms (confused yet?) The name itself derives from an island Chain created by the Realms creator Ed greenwood to the west of the main campaign area (Faerûn). A product came out years ago called the Forgotten Realms Interactive Atlas, and that product showed several other continents (but not really the island chain Mr. Greenwood imagined). In the FR Campaign setting book that came out in 2001 a world map was included, which basically reconfirmed the basic shapes of those other continents presented in the FRIA. Most fans of the setting have accepted the western continent as Anchoromé (the name itself is setting-canon), but AFAIK it has never been made official. This is what it looks like in a truncated pic from the FRCS book -



This is what another (unknown) fan of the setting did with it: we in the community try to compliment each other's work by sticking as close as possible to other people's renditions in order to keep some uniformity, even though what we do is considered non-official (although some of my own work has become official).

Anonymous Anchorome' map

Now I introduce you the other part of this project - the continent of Laerakond, which mysteriously appeared to the west of Faerûn in 4th edition:



A lot of fans of the setting were... less then pleased... with the complete lack of detail. I decided to spruce it up a bit and give it a '3e feel'. I posted This Map awhile back here - I was rather proud of it at the time. Its mostly just textures I lifted from the official map, and mountains I re-formed from the official one to make them work for me. Its about half pasted bits and half-drawn.

Unfortunately a lot of folks still don't like Laerakond (the actual name the land goes by according to it's inhabitants). Not only is the shape a bit unrealistic, but I lot of people don't want the world map to change (and I can't say I blame them). Ergo, I am attempting to fit Laerakond into the existing continent of Anchorome. The idea is to get all the fluff to still work, despite the geography changes. I also tried to keep as close to that other guys model as I could - I just shifted his Lakes & rivers around a bit, and lost a couple of rivers where returned Abeir's bodies of water needed to go. Here is what I have done so far:

Current WIP

The settlements are really just placeholders for now - they may change as I tweak things. Ignore where I started to darken the coastline - that was an experiment that I unfortunately saved. I also can't help the unrealistic round lake - that is part of the setting (some primordial 'God' was cast down to earth there, or some such). I am trying to stick to the same color palette as the official 3e maps, even though I plan on changing the style, so as to keep the 'FR feel'. I'm going increase the resolution today (on a smaller area) and start adding in the mountains. Any comments/advice are greatly appreciated.

[Steel General]

Looks like an interesting project... I'll hold off on any critique's until you're a little further along.

[MarkusTay]

New WIP - a shot of the detail I'm working on.

I'm happy with the mountains thus-far, but not so thrilled with the forest. Of course I have a long way to go - right now I'm using RPGmapmaker's brushes - I will eventually make my own, but I want to get used doing maps with this technique before I start refining it. I tried to make the lake more plausable by giving the mountains a crater-like look. The 'wasteland' terrain color looks kinds stark - not sure if I want to add texture, or make a brush that can 'dirty it up' (with rock formations, etc..) - something that will give the impression of THIS.

I also have the problem of a 'fat' coastline (and rivers) right now, because I bumped the res up - I started to re-draw it all on another layer, but does anyone know of a simpler solution? I still have it on a seperate layer of course, so adjusting it should be no problem (if someone just tells me how).

[waldronate]

Ah yes. I remember the FRIA maps. The source material for the globe part was particularly entertaining to work with. I admit that I didn't do a great job on the Maztica area and the "unknown lands" on the marked areas. I had better source materials for some of those areas, but I didn't get around to using them (mostly I used a black&white physical outline for the "new areas" and then just drew over the areas from the map that showed the main mountain areas with a mountain-type brush). The artist that did the rough physical map to use in the world animation did a much better job overall than I did with the whole-world maps.

The 4e continent will fit in the existing Trackless Sea, btw. See attached (the green blob). It's an ugly fit, but the Maztica area is much, much larger. Having said that, your project sounds like an interesting one.

[waldronate]

One technique to reduce the thick line from rescaling is to select all of the land areas (or sea areas if it's easier) and then fill a new layer from that selection. Stroke the new layer on the inside (outside if you're selecting sea) with a stroke effect of the desired width.

[MarkusTay]

Thanks for the response - I will try your suggestion for the coastline.

I did a mock-up similar to yours when the 4e FRCG came out, but what I am trying to do with this project is to make it so Laerakond doesn't look like an 'add-in' - so folks who still want to use the older version of the setting can use the material on Returned Abeir in their games (without modifying the old world map).

I note your map has more Islands then the official one - a LOT more - whats the story with those? Also, did Zakhara originally have a huge peninsula rather then an island chain?

Thanks for taking the time to post those as well.

[waldronate]

Way back when (at the time that the FR Interactive Atlas was in development), I got a disk of source material scans that I used to make the maps for the FRIA's globe thingy. In that list was a set of black and white work maps showing land mass outlines, tectonics, glaciation, reefs, and so on. The source map I used for those images has major reef areas marked and they sort of filled in space between the islands in Zakhara in the rough outline I did.

The world map at http://thewertzone.blogspot.com/2009...en-realms.html looks to be from the FRIA globe set (done by an artist at TSR). It has pretty much the same configuration as the map I posted above and also has some very odd straight lines in the rightmost continent that were present on the "Areas of Special Interest" map from the source material set.

[Werthead]

Way back when (at the time that the FR Interactive Atlas was in development), I got a disk of source material scans that I used to make the maps for the FRIA's globe thingy. In that list was a set of black and white work maps showing land mass outlines, tectonics, glaciation, reefs, and so on. The source map I used for those images has major reef areas marked and they sort of filled in space between the islands in Zakhara in the rough outline I did.

The world map at The Wertzone: The Worlds of D&D: Forgotten Realms looks to be from the FRIA globe set (done by an artist at TSR). It has pretty much the same configuration as the map I posted above and also has some very odd straight lines in the rightmost continent that were present on the "Areas of Special Interest" map from the source material set.

Apologies for the necrothread, but I wrote the article you linked to above. I'm fascinated to hear that there were such sources for the world map. I assumed that TSR had given ProFantasy carte blance to make up the other continents any way they wanted, but this was not the case?

Are any of those source materials available or do they have to be kept locked away for legal reasons?

[waldronate]

I was provided with a couple of CDs of maps and other information with a "confidential" sticker on them. As I understood it, they came from TSR.

To the best of my knowledge, those maps weren't made public. I can't release them, that's for sure.

[Werthead]

Even though TSR don't exist any more? I know, WotC would have inherited ownership of them.

Still, fascinating to know there was more information there than it appeared at the time. The guys at Candlekeep (including MarkusTay up above) spent ages trying to put together a map of Osse before getting stymied because the 'satellite map' from the atlas and those weird lines turned out to be canon (or at least canon in 1999) and didn't fit in with what they were doing.