Thread: My Life Story

Hi, newbie here.

I'm a huge fan of fantasy novels. My collection is small, but I hope to expand it further in the future. See, the problem is that on occasions, I would think of an idea for a story that I just have to write down. Then I wouldn't be satisfied with just a sentence or two, and will often try to expand on the idea. I am confident to say that I will never actually write any of them to the end, but it's a fun process nevertheless. However, it's hard to do much with an idea without a sense of the world it's based in. That's the reason why I made my first map.

I've only made about six maps so far, if you can call them that. Before I discovered Gimp, what I did was draw the map by hand, then trace with pen, and used that as a mold to make copies that I can doodle with. Pencil lead don't really scan well. I still draw maps by hand, but I trace the map in Gimp, which allows me a much needed margin for error. Bless the Saint who thought of CTRL + Z.

I don't really do much with the maps other than write down the locations, special area, and such. I tried to fill the map with details once, but it looked so ugly that I only did it one more time before I abandoned my attempts entirely. I've always been unsatisfied with my plain, ugly maps. I really want them to look pretty, but I have no idea how to do it. I am absolutely stunned at some of the maps I've seen and I can hardly believe that they were done with the very program that I've had installed for months, if not a whole year. Earlier, I was just about to purchase the Campaign Cartographer 3 program from Amazon, but the mediocre reviews gave me a pause. One of the reviews(well, review of a review) recommended this site, so here I am.

So yeah... where do I start?