New member here - Hacker News sent me here (or was it Reddit?)

[CeremonyGrove]

Hey all,

Nice site ya'll have going here. I will be mostly lurking, but I may post a few things here and there.

My cartography experience is limited to the program called AutoRealm, it's great for most of my needs (tabletop games and novel worldbuilding), but it's ageing pretty powerfully in terms of making high resolution (1080P +) images, so I'm joining up here to see what the cool people do

So if any of ya'll have software recommendations (free or paid (no ongoing subscription tho)), I'm all ears. I have yet to look into the tutorials super much so maybe I will answer this question somewhat myself, I don't know, but even so, I wanna hear from the members who've been around the block and have opinions.

[waldronate]

Welcome to the fray!
Find some maps that you like. Look at the tools that they used or ask if you can't find the tools. Look at the software discussion section, especially the long post on tools. Join the war between traditional media practicioners and computer folks. CAD vs. paint, tablet vs. mouse, pen vs. paint: we have them all hereabouts.
The first step, though, is still to figure out what you want.
Then, join the monthly challenge!

[CeremonyGrove]

traditional media practicioners and computer folks. CAD vs. paint, tablet vs. mouse, pen vs. paint

Hmmm. I really like the topographical color maps, or lineart style maps for printing in books or coffee-aged printouts.

Computer folk I guess? I have a tablet so there's that. Vector over raster simply so I can scale it to a plotter. Pen vs paint?

[Tiana]

Ah, what you're looking for in the next generation of mapping programs exists now. Other World Mapper does vector and has a topographic mountain tool now, so there's that. Wonderdraft is also popular as a single purchase program. Then there's the full suite of Campaign Cartographer and plug ins. All three of these are single purchase programs, though not free as I believe AutoRealm was.