The World Of Oulo - An adventure in World-building

[Zarylin]

So, like a lot of people here (I'm sure), I became interested in map-making and eventually found this community as a direct result of playing and DMing a DND game. I got an idea for a world, and have been working on it for almost a year now, though mostly only in concept and in the theatre of the mind.

Well, after spending some time practicing on simpler maps, I've gotten to the point where I'm fairly comfortable with the art I can produce, and so it's finally time to start to mapping this world out, and perhaps more importantly, start sharing it with the community that has taught me everything I know.

So. Oulo is a flat world (Discworld convinced me that this can work in an interesting and quirky way, and not needing a globe is easier).

OuloNames.jpg
This is a bare-bones continental map, but there are names, so it's important.

OuloHeightMap.jpg
A height map, in the simplest style I could think of. This is the map that I'll be working my continental maps from, and is also a good rough starting point to show my players the world.


Also, I've done some basic work on one of the smaller continents, largely because I'm running a small beta test group game. I hope to keep them contained on this land mass for a while and merely use the time to flesh out the cosmos and history, but we'll see how that goes. So, Essnaloth:

Oulo-Essnaloth-Color.jpg
The trees and mountains are a set downloaded from the guild, and I believe are Gidde's. I like them a lot though, easy to work with, and they fit the scale fairly well. You can see by the compasses that I'm using a 5-point system, keeping the NESW directional system, and adding a 5th direction, "Corewards". Showing two compasses on this map helps demonstrate the continent's relation to the center of the world.

So, that's what I have so far. Hopefully I'll be updating this every few weeks or so with new details. I want to eventually map all the individual continents, though I can see not doing them until I need them for players. I also want to do some closer region/city maps, but they're harder, and I'd obviously need a lot more.

Anyway, I hope you like them!

[Gold]

Very ambitious (with your plan to detail map more continents and cities), clever set up (with the flat world and the 5th direction pointing to the center, no worry about global curves and map projections; though I wonder what happens to the water at the edges and what is on the other side of the coin?), and anyway your maps are cool looking. I love being able to show a world map to the players for broad context. And your continental map looks great to me, I like the coloring there. Very good. Congratulations. Thanks for sharing. Keep up the good work and develop more sections, and post them to share if you please.

[Azélor]

So... where is your giant turtle???
Nice height map!

Well actually I think that in the diskworld , the concept of north is rather inconsistent. The distance from the center is not. But the diskworld is an humoristic setting so physic is not a big concern. I don't remember how the sun rise and set in that universe, was it the movement of Alduin? You might need to think about that and other related things before players start asking silly questions like the one about the earthquakes .

I do have one concern, about your map elements overlapping. For example, the mountains are transparent where there is the river so we see blue where it's supposed to be brown.