My first continent/world map, currently unnamed and currently in progress

[JamminTK]

Hello, everyone!

I'm starting a Dungeon World campaign fairly soon and wanted to try my hand at making my own map from scratch for it. I haven't had the official first session yet, which will be when the group picks a name and starts placing some more features, like cities and other major manmade landmarks. This is also basically a first pass at the major land features, for which I'm looking for some feedback. I'm probably my own biggest critic on it, and I'm already thinking of how I can trim down the width of the rivers and fix the mountains looking so puny. I also haven't really placed any climates, really, so forests, deserts, etc aren't there yet in any fashion.

To make the map, I used my Surface Pro and Gimp. Everything was drawn freehand on the tablet. I took about two or three hours to get it to look like this, but I expect to spend a lot more time with it over the next week or so.

EDIT: I've made a new version with classic fantasy mountains rather than the more realistic overhead view, a couple new water features, and a great background texture made by Jon over at Fantastic Maps that is provided CC by NC. I bumped up the reds and yellows in it, but otherwise I haven't modified it.

[ChickPea]

Firstly, welcome to the Guild!

Can you give us an idea of the size of the area on your map? It's hard to judge from what's shown.

My first impression is that your land shapes are very smooth, and I would expect them to be a lot more rugged than what you have. Your rivers probably are a bit wide, unless this is a small area, so reducing them down even to just a single squiggly line would work. Don't be hard on yourself about your mountains. I think they look great! In fact, I think right now they're the best feature on your map (not sure if that'll please or displease you!)

Does the Surface Pro run a full version of Gimp (I mean, it's not an app, or anything like that, is it?) There are some tutorials in the Tutorials/How To section that cover generating land shapes with a natural, ragged shape. It might be worth your while trying out a couple for practice to see if you can get something that looks a little more natural. There's one tutorial from Rob A here that might work. Or, there are a bunch of PDF tutorials here, and a Quick Start guide here.

[JamminTK]

The surface Pro I have does run a full version of Gimp, though the higher DPI of the screen can make using the program a bit rough (Gimp doesn't respect Windows's UI scaling settings)

I agree that the landmass is much smoother than it probably should be, and will probably be one of the things I change next, after the rivers. I mostly wanted to get the general shape of everything laid out first, then go in for more detail on another layer. I also like the way the realistic mountains look, and was pleasantly surprised with how they came out, but when I started putting the map against a parchment texture (this is, of course, a fantasy based tabletop game it's being made for after all) they didn't look as nice. As for the rivers, I think you're right about just making them a squiggly line. I also think that the rivers, much like the coastlines, are much too smooth in the map's current iteration. I think my next step will be to thin out and roughen up the rivers, then I'll start working on the coastlines. Another small part of the reason I did everything so smoothly up to this point is that I plan to keep things moderately vague until the PCs get to certain locations, at which point we will fill out the map together.

The map's size hasn't really been determined yet, as I haven't really talked to my group about the size of the world. I imagine though that the consensus will be that the PCs should be able to get across the land by foot in a reasonable timeframe, but the land shouldn't be trivial to navigate. If a moderately in-shape person of about human height can walk about 50 miles in a day over easy terrain, you could maybe cut that to about 20 miles per day over unpaved terrain including stopping for meals and such. So maybe this map should be about 1750-2000 miles long horizontally from border to border? If it was 1750 miles wide, it would be around 1500 miles tall. That sounds pretty good as an initial guess for what my players will like.

[kacey]

Good on you for being able to pull this off in gimp on a surface pro, you must have really good eye sight, I can't get past the teeny, tiny little buttons, and find it really difficult to change brush size on those little sliders. I find PhotoShop is much more touch friendly, otherwise I would use gimp more often, it has some features that I really prefer, hopefully they get on board with tablet PC users sooner then later, then you're job might be a whole lot easier... Anyway, it looks like you have big plans for this map, it will be neat to see how it progresses, can't wait to see what it looks like once you roughen up the rivers, and coast.

[JamminTK]

Good on you for being able to pull this off in gimp on a surface pro, you must have really good eye sight, I can't get past the teeny, tiny little buttons, and find it really difficult to change brush size on those little sliders. I find PhotoShop is much more touch friendly, otherwise I would use gimp more often, it has some features that I really prefer, hopefully they get on board with tablet PC users sooner then later, then you're job might be a whole lot easier... Anyway, it looks like you have big plans for this map, it will be neat to see how it progresses, can't wait to see what it looks like once you roughen up the rivers, and coast.

I actually found a theme with larger icons. picking brushes is still a pain, but using hotkeys helps for everything else. Here's the link

I've redone the rivers a bit and added some highlights to the coasts.

I think that even though coastlines normally have a lot more detail and are a lot rougher, I might end up leaving them as-is. I haven't really been happy with the results of trying to roughen them up so far, but I'll give it another shot.

[arsheesh]

Hey there JamminTK, I think this is a great start. While I agree with ChickPea that coastlines are generally a bit more jagged, this map looks a bit more stylized and so the coastlines seem to work within it. I like the conical mountains and shading, simple and effective. Keep plugging away at this, you're doing well so far.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[JamminTK]

Thanks, I'm going to label the map some and add some forests and other important areas sometime next week once my players can all get together. I'll keep posting updates as they happen though.

[Robulous]

As a matter of interest, did you do the line-dash effect around the coast by hand, or using a pattern?

[JamminTK]

As a matter of interest, did you do the line-dash effect around the coast by hand, or using a pattern?

I did it by hand. Everything on this map was handmade. I didn't use any special brushes, patterns, or filters. The only thing I used that may not have been handmade is the parchment texture, which, like I added in a previous post I got from Fantastic Maps (which has been a great resource for me with this map)