Unnamed Fantasy World

[Karro]

You need to do like a tutorial or something for those coats of arms!

[Tensen01]

I actually stole the outer shield border from an image in a D&D book so that's not mine and is copyrighted by WotC I'm sure.

But for the inside it's fairly easy. It's a layer with the the shield border on top, a white layer behind that with the inside cut out, a layer under that with a grey/white cloud render and grey-transparent-grey gradient set to multiply, and then under that the actual coat of arms which I also add gradients to give it a bit more depth.

But here's the .PSD file for personal use.

[Tensen01]

Okay, no actual map update yet, but I do have a question.

I noticed that all of my nations have river borders and such none of the nations actually have a land-bridge between them. How would this affect Politics? In specific Wars between two nations. Now, I know the rivers as shown on the map are a little out of scale simply so they'll show up, but I'm still worried about it being a hindrance to wars.

Oh, also, the Shield template works fine, it's just the thumbnail is weirded out.

[Karro]

You're worried that with rivers serving as borders, the river crossings would prove a hindrance to warfare between nations, making your world a boring, warless, peace-ridden place?

I wouldn't worry too much, honestly... That's never been a hindrance in the real world (where rivers have often served as a border... until one side or the other crosses the river to conquer the other's land). After all... a bridge is not the only way to move an army across a relatively narrow body of water. There are often good fords soldiers can march/wade across, or they can build ferries. Or, if all else fails, build a bridge yourself.

Over time, though, borders do tend to default to natural boundaries like rivers for the reason that (a) it provides a handily visibly line of demarcation and (b) it does tend to prove at least a minor hindrance to invaders, and even a minor hindrance affords some level of protection. That being said, I'd still say that it's insufficient protection to prevent wars altogether.

[Ascension]

Xerxes built a bridge of ships to cross the Bosphorus into Greece so I wouldn't worry about not having any wars. "He looked at me funny" is often enough to start something.

[Tensen01]

Thanks guys... it was something I was a little worried about.

Now I just need to develop the nations a bit more and figure out why their at war

[Tensen01]

Alrighty... not sure if I should keep updating this as all I'm doing is adding new places to the map and that's not terribly exciting... But here it is anyways.

[Karro]

I'd say update to your heart's content.

And looks good, by the way.

If possible, I'd change the font labeling Lake Vaerran to the same one used for other physical features, to keep consistent. You've got a lot of fonts going in this map, and cutting one out and keeping consistent would help. In fact, I think I'd make Mine, Sites of Interest, Main Roads and other physical features all have the same font since you're using different fonts to represent different nations.

[Will Phillips]

I'd say update to your heart's content.

And looks good, by the way.

If possible, I'd change the font labeling Lake Vaerran to the same one used for other physical features, to keep consistent. You've got a lot of fonts going in this map, and cutting one out and keeping consistent would help. In fact, I think I'd make Mine, Sites of Interest, Main Roads and other physical features all have the same font since you're using different fonts to represent different nations.

I concur. On both points.

Update as much and as in depth as you'd like. However, one thought might be to make separate maps for different topics so it isn't information overload on the reader.

For my current map, I'm aiming on keeping the info density rather low - as I'm planning on it being a wall poster sort of thing - and then creating a series of more modern, reference style "atlas" maps for keeping track of everything else that a worldbuilding writer needs to track.

"Okay, so this group is about seventy miles northwest of these mountains here.. that's what...? **opens 'Atlas - Geography'** Ah, the Tiny Dancer Marches. Nice. Hrmm. What sorta marches is that there? I forget? We talking buffalo roaming Oklahoma? African savannas? **opens 'Atlas - Biomes'** Oh, Mediterranean scrub land. Well, guess it's time for the half crazy olive farmer to show up in the plot line..."

[Tensen01]

Hmmmm... I might do that with the fonts... We'll see. Maybe it's just me being new but I like the variety of fonts

Yeah, this map is not the map the players will get to see. This is my personal main map... I'll probably hand draw the other ones or something to that effect. I do intend to let them see the full map without any labels though... Already have it printed out, mounted and laminated.

And that is way more detailed than I ever thought of getting...