World Project

[BISHDP]

I have been creating my world, mainly for the uses in my D&D campaign, for about 12 years now. I have many maps, all hand drawn at not of the quality that I would like, and my world is rather fully fleshed out. Now, after a hiatus of about 7 years, my friends informed me that they would like to start up our campaign again. I have decided that now is as good a time as any to re-forge my world unto better quality maps and, thanks to you all, I now have the means to do so. I have three or so months before we begin, so I mean to use my time wisely.
B&W.jpg
Here is the B&W outline for my re-forged world. I feel that, like it was in medieval times, the world should not be fully explored yet. So I have centered the map on the “Known” world. I am not sure as to what scale to use yet. I was thinking the scale would be roughly the area of the Mediterranean. The southeastern kingdom is supposed to have five countries in it. The other continents are not nearly as set in stone as the southeastern one as throughout all the campaigns I have run in this world, none have been outside of the southeastern continent.
Test 2.jpg
Here is it a bit further along. Still playing with the mountains. Whatcha guys think?

[jtougas]

The land forms are very good (I'll bet it's going to be fun writing up all those little islands ) Those mountains are truly epic as well. I'll be watching this

[BISHDP]

Thanks, Jtougas. I spent a little time today after work brushing this up and here is what I have now. Time to start adding trees.
Map1.jpg
For those of you geography and climate buffs, this area is situated in the southern hemi with the lower tropic line running through the northern continent. That gives us a desert to the west of the mountains up there and dryer areas to the east further down south. Hadley cells and all that. The southern most areas are frozen flat lands before it truly gets to the antarctic. I decided it was similar in shape and size to earth. Easier that way. No need to re-invent the wheel. Let me know if anything seems off or could be done better/differently. Thank you all for you help.

[arsheesh]

Hi there BISHDP,

Just wanted to let you know that I posted some feedback for you over at the tutorial thread.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[jtougas]

This gets better and better. The colors are wonderful as is the texturing. (did I mention I LOVE those mountains? ) I am by far no expert on any sort of "actual" geography. (I tend to just happily ignore things like that and put stuff where it makes for the best story) After a quick glance however you seem to have one or two "orphaned rivers" Fine with me but a member of the "river police" might be by.... Anyhow this is a great start to what will surely be an incredible map !!

[BISHDP]

I actually think I will reforge the mountains. At the very least I want to blend them better into the land and redo the western most peak of the northern range. It looks like flat on top due to too much white. I also am considering duplicating this map in a "ancient parchment" look for distribution to the players. Any suggestions on a good tutorial or approach for that? I could also use a better way to do the water.

[jtougas]

I actually think I will reforge the mountains. At the very least I want to blend them better into the land and redo the western most peak of the northern range. It looks like flat on top due to too much white. I also am considering duplicating this map in a "ancient parchment" look for distribution to the players. Any suggestions on a good tutorial or approach for that? I could also use a better way to do the water.

I like the idea of a player handout but you might want to consider only doing a section of the map at a time. The easiest way to do parchment is with a GIMP plugin that creates the base parchment for you. There are of course other ways to do it as well. Then you could simply threshold your landmasses to a black and white duplicate that layer a couple of times and put it on the base parchment with multiply selected as the layer style. It should look similar to faded ink. You can of course play around with the opacity and other filters to get it to look just how you would like. As for the water I think it looks very good the way it is. I like the subtle division between the deeper water and the shallows. I hope this helped. Keep up the great work.

GIMP Plugin

[jtougas]

I actually gave you the wrong plugin. (Although the one I did link too is very good as well. HERE is the one that I use. (I've had it for so long I forgot where I originally got it from... ) Also I did a very quick example of a parchment effect for your map. This is just running the parchment plugin taking your map and thresholding it to black and white and then using "select by color" to select all the black and hitting delete to erase it. I then placed this as a new layer onto the parchment base. Hopefully this will give you some idea of how it could look. Of course you can play with layer styles and opacity to get different results.

world project example.jpg

[arsheesh]

I actually think I will reforge the mountains. At the very least I want to blend them better into the land and redo the western most peak of the northern range. It looks like flat on top due to too much white. I also am considering duplicating this map in a "ancient parchment" look for distribution to the players. Any suggestions on a good tutorial or approach for that? I could also use a better way to do the water.

I actually gave you the wrong plugin. (Although the one I did link too is very good as well. HERE is the one that I use. (I've had it for so long I forgot where I originally got it from... ) Also I did a very quick example of a parchment effect for your map. This is just running the parchment plugin taking your map and thresholding it to black and white and then using "select by color" to select all the black and hitting delete to erase it. I then placed this as a new layer onto the parchment base. Hopefully this will give you some idea of how it could look. Of course you can play with layer styles and opacity to get different results.

world project example.jpg

I agree with JT that RobA's tutorial for generating parchment is a good way to go. As to blending it, A2area has actually discussed this in his phenomenal Israh tutorial. I drew some of the inspiration from my Eriond tutorial from him btw.

Cheers,
-Arsheesh

[BISHDP]

Thanks guys for the great plug-ins. Here is my map at this moment. I have reworked the mountains and the ocean, though I am still not really satisfied with the ocean. I think the mountains came out a lot better though.
Tan'et.jpg
I think I will now play around with Arsheesh's tutorial for trees until I am happy with them and then add them to this map. After that, it will be time for labels.
I completely agree with you, jtougas, it would be best to hand out bits and pieces of the map in parchment form. I figure I can zoom in on my map, copy that section to a new file and antique it for handouts and more detailed area maps. Thanks again for all the help. You guys are great.