Hi all,
I'm a geography/weather/astronomy/cosmology junkie, as well as a gamer, and I'm here to learn how to map well. I'm building a campaign for D&D 4e, and I have the world in my head, now I just need to get it mapped. My goals are large, i.e. make a map for an Earth-sized world, populate it, give it history, religion, weather, tectonics, etc. I study maps a lot, and appreciate good maps, but I can't draw worth a damn. I'm able to passably use the software Fractal Mapper, but that does not do a great job with scaling from earth-sized maps all the way down to local adventure-scale maps. So I'm here to learn, and to gain some tips and tricks on map making. In addition to Fractal Mapper, I've got GIMP, and I'm decently handy with that as well.