First post and First Map - The Realm of Zaia

Hi All!

I've been a long-time lurker of the Cartographer's Guild And this will be by first post and submission.

First off, a HUGE thanks to all the members and posters of the forums. Your musings and tutorials have been a great inspiration to me (especially rpgmapmaker!).

I was approached by a friend of mine several weeks ago to create a map for a game world he was creating. He had seen some of my older maps and really liked them. But honestly, I cheated when I created them. I would take relief maps of real places and tweak them, placing text and terrain objects on top. While (I think) they looked good, I've always wanted to create a map from scratch.

Well, here it is! My friend gave me a map that he had started in Campaign Cartographer and wanted to know what I could do with it.

The first thing I did was redraw the entire map in Adobe Illustrator. It is so much easier to edit elements and text in Illustrator (IMHO). Once the rough draft was completed I exported it to Adobe Photoshop where I tweaked it to what you see here. And I have to mention rpgmapmaker because of his awesome tutorials, this map is here today!

If you are out there rpgmapmaker, YOU ROCK :), and also, I would love to get a hold of your brush set in a CS5 format. The one you have posted here are for an older version of Photoshop and are not compatible with CS5 :(.

Anyway, I look forward to any feedback/criticism.

Thx!
'nog

Necrominog, kudos! That is a fantastic first map. Truly awesome work. And I agree - illustrator is fantastic :D

Way to de-lurk! I quite like this, especially as a hex map! I've recently become more interested in the "hex-crawl" as an RPG mechanic. Problem is, most hex maps I've seen are, from an aesthetic perspective, boring. Yours looks quite nice though.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

Woah, that's an awesome hex map!

I like the shape of the territory.

One question: In the left map, The Sundered appears to be a massive typhoon, while on the right one it looks more like a crater. Was there any particular setting change during the conversion process?

@arsheesh. I'm a long time fan of hex maps. All the way back to the first Greyhawk map. At first I wasn't sure how the map would look but it has grown on me. I'm actually adding the hex feature to my next project.

@Klaus, originally the Sundering was supposed to be a storm and the craters were to be an underlying element but my friend liked the craters so much he stuck with them. I don't know the full particulars of the campaign world just yet. But once he's done with it I'm promised a copy :)

A very impressive first map! I'm looking forward to seeing more. :)

Very nice conversion. Welcome to the guild ! One suggestion perhaps try lowering the opacity a little more on the grid... Food for thought.

I actually had the map printed (24x36) and, once I get a copy to my friend, I'm thinking the grid and the legend in the lower left look a bit horsey. May need to do some revisions to this one. First need to mail it off.