Eldrydia -- Topographical

[Peter Toth]

Hello Eilathen,

First of all, I apologize if I offended you with the remark accompanying my original post for this thread, or if you felt I “misquoted” you.

That said, I specifically chose not to refer to your post nor provide a direct quote because I wasn’t at all referring to your post in particular; rather, I intended to make a general statement, a self evident truth, about what I’ve observed in general on the Guild—that more members prefer artistic style maps as opposed to atlas-style. Because your thread was fresh on my mind, I chose to use that particular example to provide the evidence for my argument, even though I’ve noticed a plethora of similar past examples on the Guild. Thus, the caution for the misrepresentation of information should go both ways, as I also felt misquoted by your remark.

In a sense, my remark was no more than an ego defense mechanism designed expressly to protect me from the agony of disappointment should my post be interpreted as mediocre, or should it garner no interest from potential commissioners. You can’t blame me for this one. I’ve been struggling for 43 years to earn a decent living and support my family, yet, despite my diehard, industrious efforts, I can never manage to transcend the poverty line. In a sense, I’m residing in what foreigners would consider an “affluent country,” yet the tragedies of poverty, homelessness, and disease are simply more subtle and well concealed due to the biases of your local media.

As a result of my financial dilemma, I cannot afford a top-of-the-line computer or Photoshop, and I am strongly opposed to accepting pirated software, as some of my friends have suggested.

Moreover, I suffer from an excruciating neurological disease, with associated cognitive decline, that makes achieving everything at least twice as difficult as one would expect. Despite my harrowing predicament, however, I refuse to simply surrender!

Rather, I vow to persevere and to make valiant efforts to find my niche in the business of conworlding/world building, in a solid effort to escape the grips of abject poverty. I would prefer, however, to achieve at least the slightest modicum of success before I’ve suffered enough cognitive decline to preclude any further chance of success. In other words, I’d prefer to climb my mountain before the symptoms of old age make it difficult or impossible.

I apologize for being so direct and personal, but I felt compelled to share my story so that the point is made crystal clear.

Thank you for understanding.

Peter

[rdanhenry]

Given that an atlas-style map was an Atlas Award winner for 2019 (2020 award), I don't really think that it's accurate to say that there's any strong bias against them. They are less commonly posted, to be sure, but often receive more attention because of that. I agree with Eliathen that it isn't a suitable style for a D&D or other pseudo-medieval fantasy rpg map, just as a typical "fantasy map" style would be a poor choice for a modern-setting rpg map or a nation-state simulation game, but that is a matter of the right tool for the right job. It is no slight on a hammer to say that it isn't good at turning screws. Note that this is as much a matter of what such styles tend to provide information about as it is the look-and-feel issues.

As for this particular map, I do think that the color change is for the better, though for my tastes you could put a little of the red back into the roads (and adjust the key to match what's actually on the map). I definitely think that the rivers could use some color to aid visibility as well. I actually think that the text looks good, with a few exceptions: the slanted text is fuzzy and this is because you are running into GIMP's less than stellar handling of text. There are plenty of little things you can do to make your next effort better: if your computer can handle working at twice the dimensions (and therefore quadruple the area and memory requirements), that's a good suggestion to follow. But this is a good map as it is. Oh, and since the resources seem to be important to your world-building, maybe add a symbol (metal ingots or a pickax) to the gold and silver locations.

[Repporio]

I'm absolutely in love with the relief map. You can make some proper magic when it comes to realistic topography when it comes to Wilbur.