The beginnings of a new world...

[Ramah]

A note on distances (because I looked it up recently):
A healthy horse can travel an average of 30 miles in a day on a good road. Depending on the road conditions, I could see 20-30 miles/day being reasonable. That make your scale quite large with 280-420 miles between Kerrowyn and the Lonely Lass.

Where did you look this up? I'd be interested to see some information on things like that.

I would say though that 20-30 miles for a horse on a good road does not sound much. Somewhere in my mind is the number that the average walking speed for a man is 3-4 miles per hour on even ground. This would mean that it is certainly possible for a person to cover the same distance that you suggest a horse can. I would just assume that a horse could travel further than a man.
Probably wrong though. As I say, I'd be interested to see some information on this.

[deanatglobe]

Put a pack on your back and try and walk 20-30 miles in a day . 3-4 miles per hour is certainly not to bad a pace, but keeping it up for that long is tough.

[Zar Peter]

To the map:
The river in the mountain is a bit too broad from my point of view. Should be narrower at the source (unless there is a lake or something like that. It just doesn't look like a lake). Generally it looks quiet good.

To the distance: I think a horse can't go much further than a man can go (especially with the backpack) it just moves faster (but needs a brake every now and then). I have to talk with my sister in law about this, she's riding horses since she was 7 so she should know.

[karossii]

Well, in the game we play, the overland speed of a horse is considered to be 35 miles a day on average, assuming 10-12 hours on the road and any rests needed, etc.; so by that figure I suppose the map would be roughly 1250 miles wide (and tall since it square) - but this is meant to be a vast area which is only mildly civilized...that was intentional. There are small unmarked homesteads, farms, etc. to be found pretty much randomly between the noted area on the map.

As to the river; well it was initially going to be one of a pair of rivers that came from the mountains, which joined quickly on lower land at a lake, and then continued on the course you see. However lack f time (I was working on this in the final hour before we started the game) and lack of a steady hand with my mouse led to what you now see. I suppose I could revise it; it was intended to be representative of the pooled knowledge of the 7 members of the group when they met an sat down to figure out where they were going - it could easily be said that one or more remembered things incorrectly, and fix it on an 'actual' map. I would welcome any advice on making it better!

Thanks for all the input so far!

[Ascension]

At this scale the river would be way too fat for a realistic-type map. It has a great shape, though, and would like very fine on a regional or city scale map. A map of this scale (more in line with a nation scale rather than regional) would have a lot more variation in the geography...more hills, more rivers, more towns, etc. The small size of the image itself makes too much detail a problem. If you choose not to represent those things then it will look a bit odd so I would suggest a different style - something more along the lines of a line-art or hand-drawn map might be better and simpler. If you want to pursue the more realistic style then you're going to need more rivers as a minimum. My guess is that this is done in Gimp so look through the Tutorial subforum for tuts that have the word GIMP in the title. Forgoing that, just give us a name of or link to a map that you like and we'll help ya from there.

[ElfSpeaker]

Where did you look this up? I'd be interested to see some information on things like that.

I would say though that 20-30 miles for a horse on a good road does not sound much. Somewhere in my mind is the number that the average walking speed for a man is 3-4 miles per hour on even ground. This would mean that it is certainly possible for a person to cover the same distance that you suggest a horse can. I would just assume that a horse could travel further than a man.
Probably wrong though. As I say, I'd be interested to see some information on this.

http://wwwestra.com/horses/history_travel.htm

As the website states, horse can go much faster than this but they can't keep it up for long.