Test map for D&D Campaign

[PsychoCircus]

Hello everyone

I'm creating a new (yet another one) world for a D&D campaign I'm starting soon, and wanted to make a map of the continent that the players would be starting out on. I thought I'd post it here for some opinions, advice, and general thoughts on it, and how to possibly improve it, as well as any glaring mistakes, either technical or geological, that I might have made. Any feedback you may have would be most greatly appreciated.

I found a wonderful tutorial here, I believe, authored by Tear and it helped immensely with the techniques I used to construct this test map. It was very easy to follow (I did run into a little confusion in a couple of places but that was simply because of some very minor issues common, and all too familiar to me in my own work, of tutorials that I've read over the years, which in NO way detracts from how great it is!), concise, and very well structured. Its a definite MUST have if you're just starting out doing maps, or are looking for new/different/more effective techniques to use in your work. I HIGHLY recommend it. There are MANY fantastic tutorials here, but this is the only one I've tried the techniques in so far, so worry not tutorial writers, I'm positive I'll be raving about yours soon enough!

Back to the point of the post, here is the map that I experimented with and am looking for comments/thoughts/advice/general opinions, etc on. Thank you very much for taking a look

000 New Map Experiment 001 Detailed Blank.jpg

[Sulla]

This is a good start. However, I feel like the river is insufficient. First, there is only one (again, if this is an actual continent rather than a small island there should definitely be more). Second, the river ends really abruptly (and one branch in the desert which is confusing). They should continue to the mountains, perhaps getting progressively more narrow and ending in a single blue line.

I look forward to future versions!

[PsychoCircus]

This is a good start. However, I feel like the river is insufficient. First, there is only one (again, if this is an actual continent rather than a small island there should definitely be more). Second, the river ends really abruptly (and one branch in the desert which is confusing). They should continue to the mountains, perhaps getting progressively more narrow and ending in a single blue line.

I look forward to future versions!

Thank you very much for the feedback! The more I've looked at it, the more I thought about the river thing. I'd actually included a couple of others but when I went back to play with details and such, I think I might have accidentally deleted the paths for them. The branch into the desert was intended to go into a forest, and it looks like I had the path hidden when I was fleshing out that area and made the desert bigger than my original idea. So yeah, the river is definitely a sore spot in my own opinion. Your opinions and feedback have been incredibly helpful, and will help me revise this in what will hopefully be a much better representation. Thank you very much for your comments, they help vastly!

[PsychoCircus]

I went back and did a little fiddling, and roughed in some rivers with the brush tool just to get an idea of the best places to put them, based on the elevation and such. More thoughts, opinions, or other feedback would be appreciated from whoever chooses to leave some. Hopefully this is an improvement, rather than a detraction of the previous version!

000 New Map Experiment 001.1 Detailed Blank Drawn Rivers.jpg

[Deeds]

(I'm just a starting bumbiling map maker, also using Tear and other's tuts, so keep that in mind) I think the ocean has a nice texture and the continental shelves look really good; maybe I would expect to see some islands (and there is the one on the top right) that represent the mountain chains continuing off to the north (for the respective east and west ranges); I think the mountains look good too. Along the same thought I would imagine that the two ranges converge to the south of the central bay, but could easily imagine a volcanic caldera or some other seismic/tectonic activity that did away with the range there (and not all maps use tectonics, mine don't).

I myself am struggling with rivers, but I think yours are mightily improved on the second version. I look at watersheds like this:https://www.cartographersguild.com/s...ad.php?t=28612 and drool; for now I just imagine my worlds as desert planets!

[XCali]

Hey. The land and sea textures you whipped up is great. The ocean shallows and deeper sea is done real nicely, you can even be more bold with the deeper sea(darker blue) But that is your choice.

I do feel the style for the river you made on the first image is better than the second, although I do agree with the others that there should be more if this is a continent.
(Try looking at satellite photos of the biomes you wish to include on this map and see how rivers behave. That is always insightful, especially realising the sheer amount of rivers there actually are on the real world. It just helps in how to think about a landmass and how rivers behave.)

[PsychoCircus]

Thank you all for your thoughts and feedback. Your comments are all helping me visualize this in a different direction and hopefully it'll all come together in a better looking project with the help. I think I probably should have made the canvas bigger to start with, that way I've actually got a little more physical room to play with and I can see things a bit better! In either event, it definitely needs more river systems and a good looking style to put them down in.

Thank you all once again!