Hi, I'm Adrian Avinicci a writer who hopes to be an author someday!

[Avinicci]

I've been doing world building on a fantasy setting for a while and have a decent mental map and some truly atrocious hand drawn maps to go with my writing. Unfortunately when I'm working on travel times and city layouts that's not really cutting it so I did a little browsing and found this awesome little community who make some really kick ass maps, way more detailed than I was hoping for.

I'm a very visual guy and get a lot of my inspiration from ruminating on ideas so making my own maps would help me out a buttload. Any pointers or guidance for making detailed maps on the city, regional, and global scale would be awesome!

[Deadshade]

Greetings.
I cannot really answer this question because there are thousands of posts here dealing precisely with that question and it is impossible to resume.

So perhaps just a handful of hints.
- there are subforums having precisely the same distinction that you did - global, regional, cities. As the techniques are different, read them.
- there is an awesome subforum having tutorials. Nothing better than to do and redo some of them by yourself.
- some of us do parts or all of a map with handdrawing. But the majority is using software at least for some steps. There is a megaton of more or less specialised software but they have all in common a quite steep Learning curve. Especially for one who never used such Tools. Arm yourself with patience.
- I think that Photoshop (licence) or GIMP (free) is a must. Start Learning one of these. Campaign Cartographer (licence) is very easy to learn and is specialised in fantasy cartography but it is 2D and doesn't look realistic at large scales.
- the techniques to do city maps are easier than techniques to do global/planetary maps especially if you are aiming at a realistic believable style (climate, mountain ranges, rivers, biomes etc).
- But perhaps most importantly if you go down this road, don't expect to do detailed and highly realistic maps in a few months

[Chick]

Hi Avinicci, welcome to the Guild!