[7th Sea/Swashbuckling Adventures] The Glamour Isles

[jaerdaph]

Okay, I have two maps based on the Glamour Isles from AEG's 7th Sea that are finished to share. Both were done in CC3 with no post work. The first one uses the Sarah Wroot style pack from the April edition of Profantasy's Cartographers' Annual subscription, and the second one uses the Mercator style pack from the January edition of the the Cartographers' Annual subscription. I did these to show folks at EN World the different styles of maps you can make in CC3, and the power of the new sheet effects built into CC3.



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[pyrandon]

Very nice! Love the second one, especially.

[RobA]

Tiny comment on the first map,

Nigly little detail, but there are usually 32 rhumb lines from each center point marked on a map

-Rob A>

[jaerdaph]

Thanks everyone.

I'm ashamed to admit it, but I had to go to Wikipedia to find out what a rhumb line was! Fascinating reading:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhumb_line

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compass_rose

Thanks RobA! This is exactly why I love this forum - you learn something new everyday.

[RobA]

Don't worry -

I only knew what they were called cause I had taken a cartography book out from my local library a few months ago

P.S. Check your library, they are an excellent reference. My public library had 8 books on antique maps and cartography, plus a very large number of "antique" atlases for specific locals (i.e. "Historical Maps of Pooga-Pooga Falls")

-Rob A>

[Hoseman]

Those are great looking maps. Its very neat to see the same exact landmasses represented in two different styles. The second map raises a question about the Mercator style.

Do the colors represent some sort of political or cultural boundary, or is it simply a style choice? I'm not talking about your color use necessarily. I'm talking more generally regarding the use of color in classical Mercator style maps.

For gaming, I'm thinking the colors make for nice kingdom borders. Is that how most RPG mappers use them, I wonder? Is this sort of background info covered in the mapping guides that come with each month of the The Cartographer's Annual, or is it more just a guide to achieve the desired style?

[jaerdaph]

Hi Hoseman,

Thanks! Good eye - I copied the same landmass from the first drawing into the second drawing and changed all of its entity properties to match those of landmasses in the Mercator style.

The colors I chose for the political boundries were a personal choice, the most obvious being that I chose green for Inismore, the 7th Sea equivalent of Ireland. Colors like these are actually quite typical of many Mercator style maps. Looking at my John Speed's Atlas of England and Wales, he seemed to use a lot of yellows, pinks and purples for the political borders (in this case borders of the different English counties) too.

In CC3 terms, the political boundries can be any color in the CC3 pallete. The mapping guide included with the Mercator style pack from the Cartographers Annual includes full instructions for creating these political borders. These borders don't have to match up to the continents or islands either. They can divide landmasses, follow rivers, or just cut across an open plain. There is a very brief discussion in this guide about the Mercator style, but it doesn't really go into as much depth as would an encyclopedia article. So yes, it's more of a guide to achieve the desired style. I would suggest Googling Gerard Mercator and John Speed to learn more and see some sample maps of their related styles.

Thanks again.