WIP - The World of Valys (first map attempt)

[lordfly]

So I've just purchased CC3 and City Designer because I've had an insatiable itch to do some "world building". I don't really tabletop game (I used to play Pathfinder with some friends a few years back, but I'm not good with all the numbers mechanics and instead just wanted to hear the DM weave the story). My end goal, eventually, is to produce something nice enough to be considered hangable as wall art for my office (thinking canvas, although who knows).

My idea for the world, in a general sense, is a very old world, full of many epochs of history, with the landscape showing it worse for the wear; lots of broken up continents, destroyed cities, countries rended in half by mad wizards, that sort of thing. Basically, disasters and magical follies bad enough to be seen from space.

But first, I need to make the world at all.

I started about a half dozen times with the color maps and kept getting confused with the various style choices and clashing art styles. So I booted up a black and white vector style. Foolishly, I upped the scale to something ridiculous (16000x20000 I think), and I can't figure out how to resize it to make the default sheet effects visible.

Anyways, here's the progress so far. I've only started adding in the main continents and land masses, with some doodling up north (I have a small town here named ScrubHalten and a few villages and lighthouses).

I'm looking for feedback and tips to make the map pretty, if not necessarily geographically accurate (although I'm a sucker for that too).

Thanks!

Valys.PNG

[Gold]

Hello, welcome, good introduction posting your map. Study about rivers, how they flow. You have an upside down river formation going around Scrubhalten. Turn the fork shape of your river the other way. The small branches of the river should come down from the mountains, joining to form a mighty river that proceeds down unbranching to the sea.

Also you might want to learn about map projections, globes, the spherical shape of a planet, if you actually want to design the "world" this is important because it affects how the landmasses are shaped on a flat map. A related question is "what is the scale of the map" and I see you are still considering what the scale should be.

However for a wall map to be printed on canvas, you have a good starting layout, if you are choosing to ignore map projections and the curve of a planet for this project. Good luck and I look forward to seeing more of your map(s).

[lordfly]

Hello, welcome, good introduction posting your map. Study about rivers, how they flow. You have an upside down river formation going around Scrubhalten. Turn the fork shape of your river the other way. The small branches of the river should come down from the mountains, joining to form a mighty river that proceeds down unbranching to the sea.

Also you might want to learn about map projections, globes, the spherical shape of a planet, if you actually want to design the "world" this is important because it affects how the landmasses are shaped on a flat map. A related question is "what is the scale of the map" and I see you are still considering what the scale should be.

However for a wall map to be printed on canvas, you have a good starting layout, if you are choosing to ignore map projections and the curve of a planet for this project. Good luck and I look forward to seeing more of your map(s).

Thanks fo rthe feedback! Do you have any "quick and dirty" resources about river flow? I get what you're saying, I think, but I'm curious as to why the forks are considered upside down.

[lordfly]

Hello, welcome, good introduction posting your map. Study about rivers, how they flow. You have an upside down river formation going around Scrubhalten. Turn the fork shape of your river the other way. The small branches of the river should come down from the mountains, joining to form a mighty river that proceeds down unbranching to the sea.

Also you might want to learn about map projections, globes, the spherical shape of a planet, if you actually want to design the "world" this is important because it affects how the landmasses are shaped on a flat map. A related question is "what is the scale of the map" and I see you are still considering what the scale should be.

However for a wall map to be printed on canvas, you have a good starting layout, if you are choosing to ignore map projections and the curve of a planet for this project. Good luck and I look forward to seeing more of your map(s).

Thanks for the feedback! Do you have any quick-and-dirty resources regarding river flow? I'm curious as to why my poorly-educated guess on how the rivers fork would be considered upside-down.

Edit: Ah i see, The river should be conjoining from various smaller rivers coming from the mountains, not forking after the fact. Makes sense!

[Viking]

Hi Lordfly,
Water always flows downhill and takes the path of least resistance naturally so rivers rarely ever split as they go downstream. They tend to do the opposite as different streams and rivers tend to join up into larger single rivers as they get closer to the ocean. As such it is much more likely that a river would have three branches feeding it from different mountain valleys than a river coming from a single source in a mountain would split into three rivers as it flows into the ocean. Deltas will do this like the Egyptian Nile for example but even it only splits into two main branches. Again looking at the Nile however it has numerous more feeding rivers upstream.

Edit:
Look into water sheds and drainage basins as well here