Continent map (fantasy) - constructive criticism appreciated!

[jl3141]

Hey all!

So I'm doing my first homebrew setting for D&D (3.5 E6), and have started on a map of the continent (first map too - first time for everything. Designing the geography is a lot more fun than I expected it to be!). Just found out about this forum, and would love to hear any and all feedback you lovely people would have for me.

I don't know if any of the world politics / history are relevant, but I'll give some of the basics just in case. The Astherian (human) empire is the dominant one at this point; Tuvesh is another human group (splintered off from the Astherians not all too long ago); the Zensuur are an empire of lizardfolk that have lately been on a worryingly hyper-expansionist binge (due to the BBEG's machinations); the Baegrim are the dwarves, and have been around / stable for the longest by far (way back when, the other dominant empires at the time all collapsed in a huge war, and the dwarves were the only ones to avoid the massive collateral damage); the Northern Steppes is technically unclaimed territory, but full of nomadic orcs. The Darishyn and the Qa'Lun are still sort of question marks right now, but are there as placeholders to avoid the "one race and/or continent = one homogenous culture" cliche. I'm happy to give more details, but I don't know what's relevant.

Again on a "not sure if relevant" note: the campaign is starting in Tasden, the capital of Astherel, when the Zensuuri are just starting to mess around in obvious ways (they'd been doing a lot of infiltration-y stuff beforehand but without much movement).

Well, huzzah and all that! Here goes.


EDIT: I'm a few versions in to editing right now - here's the most updated version of my map. Anything else to consider at this point / any other resources or advice to offer would be greatly appreciated!

Valetas map v4.jpg

[RazielKilsenhoek]

Hey there! Welcome to the guild!

I have two things I would like to point out on this map. First, the rivers. We have people here who are part of what's called the River Police. I was surprised by this when I joined not too long ago. It turns out rivers have very specific and predictable ways of flowing, and tend to follow certain 'rules' as a result. An easy to understand explanation on this can be found in this tutorial.

The second thing I would point out is that the edges of your continent seem very smooth, almost round. There are several tutorials on how to do this differently on this website, though it depends on what you're using to design this. What program are you using?

Aside from those things, I think it's a good start. Hope to see more from you on here!

[jl3141]

Hi, thanks for the response!

I did try to keep an eye on the rivers, but got lazy and missed a few things (like assuming the ones that would drain north from the mountain range and the ones that would drain south would be connected). Does this version fix the big river problems, or is that article still worth a read?

Valetas map.jpg

As for program, the map was hand-drawn first and then colorized and detailed in Gimp. I figured it was a bit too round, to be honest -- I kind of did out the political structure in big blobs, then just drew a convenient circle around it -- but I'm not sure about the best way to add detail. Any references you could provide would be really helpful.

Thanks again for the feedback!

[RazielKilsenhoek]

No problem! It looks a bit better but it's still worth checking out that tutorial. It's not too long and explains several pretty basic rules. One of the biggest ones I think applies to your current map is that rivers tend not to fork out much. If there is a fork, they tend not to go in completely different directions. Lakes in-land tend also to have only one river leading out of them. It's all explained in the tutorial, and won't take very long to read.

As for the borders of the map, I'm not familiar at all with GIMP. I've always used Photoshop, and should probably check out GIMP sometime soon as there are quite a few tutorials for that program on this website that I'm not sure how to replicate in PS. How to apply more detail to the edge of your current map also depends on how your current file is built up, in terms of layers. I tend to go overboard with layers, but that makes the filesize kind of big. Plus, the shape of the land itself is usually what I start with, like with my current map:

Attachment 65192
Attachment 65193

Start with big blob, then use a much, much smaller sized eraser brush to carve out the edge. How much detail goes into it is up to you, but like I said: I'm not familiar with GIMP so I don't know how editing what you currently have would work, exactly.

[jl3141]

Thanks for the feedback! The rivers tutorial was actually super useful, a lot of it felt like common sense until I realized I had missed quite a few of the things I was taking for granted. It's far from finished yet, but for now, I'll post the current version with updated rivers -- I think they should be good now(?)

Things I'm working on improving / adding at the moment:
1. Making the continent shape more "random" (for lack of a better word)... less like a circle with slight deviations;
2. Same thing but for the political borders, which right now are a bit oddly smooth (but I'm waiting on this until I figure out more of the history, since switching from an arbitrary straight line to an arbitrary squiggly one isn't the biggest improvement, and it would be nice if I could have actual history informing where the borders end up);
3. Working out the continent's biomes (I could really use a hand with this one -- I've found a few sources saying what types of things appear adjacent to each other, and a bit about how mountain ranges affect climate, but any more resources would be very appreciated).

Anything else to consider at this point / any other resources or advice to offer?

EDIT: new revision, see below!

[jl3141]

Whew! Okay. New map, new style, new many things. I've left off borders for now, until I work out the exact new places they go, but I've made a lot of the other suggested changes - you've been super helpful. Any more thoughts?

Attachment 65809

[RazielKilsenhoek]

When trying to click your attachment link, I'm directed to an error "Invalid Attachment specified. If you followed a valid link, please notify the administrator". I'm guessing something went wrong, so I can't really comment on it =P

[Azélor]

Whew! Okay. New map, new style, new many things. I've left off borders for now, until I work out the exact new places they go, but I've made a lot of the other suggested changes - you've been super helpful. Any more thoughts?

Attachment 65809

just repost it, you were disconnected

[jl3141]

Weird. Does this one work?

EDIT: With added border lines (first approximation) and more terrain symbols. Valetas map v4.jpg

[RazielKilsenhoek]

Wow, that is a very drastic change from your initial version! But I like it a lot. It is missing the color the first one had now, which is fine if you're okay with that. If not, I would suggest giving the different countries a colored outline along the borders. It's very subtle but clearly seperates the nations. I don't know how to do it in GIMP, though. Here's an example of what I meant:

fBQ1e0y.png

I can explain how I did it in Photoshop, maybe you can figure out how to do it in GIMP. I started with an ocean layer, then a white landmass layer (which I gave a black outline so it's easier to see). Then I made another layer for the black border lines:

QEw7EGE.png

Then I made a seperate layer for each 'nation' or province or whatever you want colored, and started coloring them in. I wasn't worried about going over the line into the ocean, because it's easy to select the landmass, invert the selection and delete whatever's outside of it on each nation layer. Make sure the layer with the border lines is on top though, so the colors don't go over it:

Oyn3xlD.png

Do this for all nations, making sure no two neighboring colors are too much alike:

CodQ4xY.png

The next step is where I'm not sure how GIMP would do it. Photoshop has a function called Feathering. It takes a selection and basically dulls it, making it less jagged while also adding transparancy to the edges, depending on how much you feather it. In this case, I selected the contents of a nation's layer, feathered it 15 pixels and deleted it. It comes out as such:

uMUwLDA.png

Do this for all of them and the center is completely empty, while having a fairly nice (in my opinion) colored border along the edges, setting them apart in a subtle way. Top picture is the final result. Sorry for spamming so many images, I just thought it might look nice on your map, since you had colors for each nation/section/province in your initial one. Hope it's at least a little helpful, and that GIMP has similar functions, should you wish to try this. If not, I could give it a shot for you in photoshop and send you a transparant .png for you to put on yours!

EDIT: Could you tell me what icons you used for your cities? They look really nice!