What does "Collaborative" Mean?

[Torq]

I was busy working on labels for my city map of Kwourin. Without thinking I labelled a cluster of buildings "The Pathmages' Compound". Then it hit me that part of what makes this project such fun is investigating how our visions are relating to each other. I've taken a concept that Mid came up with and subconsciously sought a place for it in my map.

So as a word of cautious advice, may I suggest we endeavour to think about things in this spirit when doing our maps. I think that even if at the end of the day someone has a well-realised and artistically sound region with a good backstory, half of the fun and purpose of the project will be lost if its a standalone product. A good idea before mapping or labelling a map, is to read through the wiki entries briefly. There are so many ideas there that are crying out to be taken up. I just read Venardhi's page on the ancient kingdom that once attempted to dominate Ansium and it made me want to go and put some more labels on my map.

Keep up the fantastic work you cartographical crazies.

Torq

[Venardhi]

Honestly, the "world building" is the whole reason I got into making maps in the first place.

It is also why I've been slacking off a bit on my map, though I have made quite a bit of progress that I haven't posted, mostly because I'm not sure it is the right direction for my map.

I plan to add a lot more to the wiki about cultures, creatures, races, places, etc. in fact I had a big page written up about the people left over from this once-vast empire that I lost when my computer lost power for a moment. But that should be up as soon as I get around to re-writing it.

I am putting in information that isn't all entirely related to my entry, and will probably need some editing once everything gets more firmly established in other regions, but for now I'm just gonna go hog wild and worry about the overlap down the line.

[Redrobes]

I am finding that the tile is so large that I am just getting my head around getting any kind of town and area detailed. Its too much to think about details from stuff larger than the tile. I reckon the effects of the world will be applied later and I will be engrossed in just one town for quite some time yet - probably a few buildings of that one town too. Its just all so big....

[NeonKnight]

For me I look at the world building as follows:

Let's look at the World of Greyhawk.

Anna is doing a wonderful job of mapping the world, but here's the rub. SHE ISN'T MAKING IT ALL UP! Its all been done before. The biggest example I have of this is as follows:

http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...1121#post11121

The maps of the Duchy of Urnst that Anna did up appear to based of the CC2 maps of the Duchy of Urnst that I map, which in turn were made off maps of the duchy made by someone else, based on WOTC/TSR maps of the Duchy from various products. For me the biggest clue that Anna's Map was based off my map was the inclussion of the community of Thallin (East of Leukish). Thallin was a community I invented when I wrote a Year One adventure for the Duchy.

At the same time, the maps of the Duchy cover's a large area

Now, with that said, I don;t worry about the area's being too big. Wasn't too big for us as the Duchy of Urnst, so shouldn't be too big here.

And as to collaborative. Collaborative is great. The things I did with Thallin, Leukish and later flooding the lower city of Seltaren was food for thought for future writers/adventurers. The Doings of the followers of Syrul and their plans for the duchy was seeds in the thoughts of others and the schemes of the syrulites I only glimpsed in Thallin and later Leukish spread across the entire western portion of the Nyr Dyv. Fun Times.

Further, other schemes, and goings on in my adventure where further fueled by adventures written by other authors details the fell machinations of House Terranor, and their demonic scions. Fun fun!

So, do I like collobrative? Hell Yeah!

I envision the path maes as not neccessarily dealing with physical travel but rather mental/spiritual, so it will be interesting to see what happens with them.

[töff]

All of our storyworlds at MysteryAndMagic.com suport collaboration. (They also support solo work).

Our largest and oldest storyworld is Worlde Arcane ... and (to try to be relevant here), we have a map library made by several people: http://www.worldearcane.com/cgi-bin/...gi?15977/16495

[Airith]

I didn't want to make a new thread over it, and it is very similar to the op. Can I get some tips on how to start city mapping? Hopefully with GIMP too.

As for on topic, I think we need more organizations or at least ideas being thrown out. More collaboration would get this thing moving

Also, the wikipedia is a search only, or at least i presume that, as in I can't just scroll through a list or part of a list of places or things or food even. Just wondering if there was some other way to sort it.

[Redrobes]

Also, the wikipedia is a search only, or at least i presume that, as in I can't just scroll through a list or part of a list of places or things or food even. Just wondering if there was some other way to sort it.

You can go to the menu on the left hand side and there is a link called special pages. Click that and it will present a long list of special pages. The first (I think without looking) of which is All Pages. Thats the index. You can also list by category too.

On the Real Wikipedia the index is too big. Everything has categories and categories of categories. Type in a search for "Category:Fundamental" and that takes you to the top of Wikipedia. Everything is under that. A few category links later and you will hit more sensible pages with possibly nice icons for topics.

[Torq]

I didn't want to make a new thread over it, and it is very similar to the op. Can I get some tips on how to start city mapping? Hopefully with GIMP too.

As for on topic, I think we need more organizations or at least ideas being thrown out. More collaboration would get this thing moving

Also, the wikipedia is a search only, or at least i presume that, as in I can't just scroll through a list or part of a list of places or things or food even. Just wondering if there was some other way to sort it.

Regarding tips for city mapping. The main difficulty with city mapping is layout. Firstly becasue its difficult to get it looking realistic and secondly becasue if you draw all the buildings individually it takes a massively long time. If you are starting with city maps I would recommend using an algorithm or brushes to set it out for you. You can always add individual buildings that you need. I use the rpg citymap generator thats been mentioned before on these threads. Its quite flexible too. There is also a building brush that RobA made for Gimp which I fopund very useful. Once you have the layout, then its a textures and lighting game which I think are the fun parts. So I think for a new city mapper my best advice (and probably controversial) would be not to draw the buildings themselves.

Torq

[Torq]

As for on topic, I think we need more organizations or at least ideas being thrown out. More collaboration would get this thing moving

I personally believe that the maps are the way in here to the creative process, rather than vice versa. I dont think that reading about a cool organisation will inspire you to make a map any more than the process of mapping something will inspire you to conceive an organisation from the ideas that the map throws up for you. But either way will do if they get the creative wheels turning.

Torq

[SpamValiant]

The RPG city map generator is indeed rather spiffy. If nothing else it can give you a good starting point.

If you want to produce a city of your own design rather than a random one, you can still use the generator to produce large fields of buildings which you can cut and paste as need to fill your own city layouts. Just create a biggish city with a few roads, loasds of buildings and nothing else and you'll get lots of bits to play with. Takes a little longer than using a random city, but it's still much quicker than drawing it all individually.

After that of course you can hand draw any extras or special buildings that you want.