Quote Originally Posted by Freodin View Post
That's looking quite nice, isn't it?

Perhaps you should, for consistency's sake, change the numbered markers to the shadowless style also... and you might try to play with their colouration a bit (change the glow to the same red? Do the numbers in red and make the glow black?).
(Question aside: is there a reason why the marker in the "Borderland" wood is called B2?)

Also, you seem to have missed the "County Ironbroke" in the change of label style.

But in every other regard, I'd say this is a very nice, clear and functional map now.
Yes, I noticed I missed one of the labels - thanks for that. I also need to check that they are all the same font size, as I lowered the size slightly.

As to whether I should change the numbered locations - yes I should, but I was also trying to decide at the same time how I wanted to handle the fonts map-wide.

I have several different types of labels:

1. General regions (e.g., "Misty Wood")
2. Towns
3. Rivers
4. Keyed locations (the numbers)

One option would be to render them all the same. Another option would be to render them all the same except for one feature (e.g., font size -or- color -or- layer style -or- font face). Another option would be to render them all different on more than one feature.

I want to decide a theme before I make these adjustments, but some advice would be helpful. Currently there's no rhyme or reason to these settings. At first I went with wanting the font itself to indicate that there were 4 levels of labels, but not deciding on how they should indicate that, I made them all different on most features.

I like the regional font face as it has that Lord of the Rings look, but it is an all-caps font and probably not appropriate for more specific features. The font I chose for the town labels has an old-fashioned, hand-drawn look to it, but it may not necessarily blend with the LOTR font. The other two fonts are plainer. A plain font is especially appropriate to the keyed locations, as it indicates something meta about the map, and wouldn't be on an "actual map" made within the world it represents. But still, there may be too much going on?

As for B2, that was just a special location key. This is a regional map for D&D. It's a world of my creation, but that world includes some locations from TSR's published adventures, the one shown on this map is B2: Keep on the Borderlands (hence B2). I'm running a campaign for my kids, and they will have returned from the Keep to start a new adventure north of the River Misty.

I agree the map is looking better and thank you for the help!