Regional map for new D&D campaign

So, I've started putting together a D&D campaign after a few years role-playing hiatus, and decided to throw together a map that isn't some god-awful chicken-scratch on notebook paper. Techniques used are gleaned from all over, including Ascension's atlas tutorial (GIMP version). land-masses were made in gimp, rivers, borders, etc... drawn in inkscape and imported into gimp.

Campaign is based in a "fantasy medieval europe with stereotyped civilizations" so the landmasses should be relatively familiar. I've tried grouping all the countries into overly simplified "nations" for my campaign.

I'm still tweaking things (and trying to figure out names for everything) so if you see any glaring problems, or can think of anything, just lemme know.

well, I can see you're not danish *lol* ... it looks good - however I'd variant the texture some more to give it more life :)

Yeah, grab the eraser, lower its opacity, and erase some of the little dot-hills to break up the constancy. Otherwise, good so far.

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Originally Posted by Ascension

Yeah, grab the eraser, lower its opacity, and erase some of the little dot-hills to break up the constancy. Otherwise, good so far.

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Good idea... I'm also toying with trying to figure out a good texture for deciduous forests.

That looks pretty sweet.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Ascension

Yeah, grab the eraser, lower its opacity, and erase some of the little dot-hills to break up the constancy. Otherwise, good so far.

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This better?

Much better but your rivers are way off. If you post a version without anything on it then (just the terrains) I'll do you up some rivers.

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Originally Posted by Ascension

Much better but your rivers are way off. If you post a version without anything on it then (just the terrains) I'll do you up some rivers.

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PNG format of landforms and seas can be found here. I would have uploaded it as an attachment, but it's ~12MB... and the .XCF is almost 300MB.

My biggest problem with the rivers was just deciding where rivers should be... not having any inland bodies of water left me stumped on where they would even spring from. Only thing I could think of were mountain-fed rivers (which is why almost all of them follow the formation of raised landforms... while not entirely realistic, it's slightly more believable than rivers seeping out of bare ground). I basically just connected dots from mountainous areas to coastal formations which looked as though they could be the mouth of a river. I haven't been entirely satisfied with them either, but it was a rush job to make sure the work-flow would work out, and that things didn't look horrid.

Any insights into positioning are much appreciated.

No prob, man. I'll do this up in the afternoon when I get home from work. I should have a post for ya sometime around dinner. Hope you can wait that long :)

Ok this is sort of a mini-tut on rivers.

Step 1 is how I think about rivers. I don't put the arrows on my maps because I can just look at things and tell what's going to happen - experience. For novices it's a good idea, though.
Step 2 is just roughing in the basic river lanes.
Step 3 is refining problem spots by either erasing mountains or darkening rivers valleys and flood plains and deltas.
The last pic is a reference pic to show how people draw rivers backwards accidentally.