Ereshka world map

[absinthesparrow]

(Two things: I think this is the right subforum for this, but if it's not, can someone please let me know? And for anyone who actually manages to wade through all this, thanks [especially if you comment ]. I'm kind of long-winded, not to mention stumbling through this process in what's probably a particularly roundabout fashion.)

Hi all.

I posted a couple of days ago with a map for my husband's D&D campaign, and the fact that he proceeded to hand me a world sketch (read: notepad with two large blobs filled with smaller blobs :p) and ask for a world map. I figured I'd post my progress as I went through, since this is my third computer-based map, and fourth map ever (and it might be a smiiiiidge ambitious... if this works out right, I plan to go from world to continents to kingdoms to the campaign-relevant cities to the campaign-relevant buildings. Yes, I'm one of those sorts. ), I thought I'd post the process in the hopes of getting feedback. I'm bound to go wrong quite a lot, knowing me.

I'm thinking the original kingdom map will turn out a little differently at the end of it, working my way down like this.

Any comments will be super appreciated-- I barely know what I'm doing. All I can say is I <3 all of the awesome tutorials on this forum .

So, to begin with, I have two sketches and some vague directions (followed by verbal directions later-- granted, most of the time his answer to any question was "I don't know, you figure it out." :p Which means I have to name everything too, blah.)

(the original sketches were on lined paper, but since I have no scanner and had to photograph them with my phone to get the pics, I colored over them in GIMP. Orange is his original layout, blue is my sketching more continent-like concepts onto it.)



Directions

World is slightly smaller than earth, one moon.

Upper polar ice cap: 3 port cities; no towns or villages; all are trade/supply cities; overland travel is hard but happens along coasts. (And later, verbally, that he wants a greenland type place; I'm thinking that if there's true ice poles at all, they aren't large)

southern polar ice cap: unexplored (apparently there's an Odd Place down there; sort of a combo bermuda triangle/shangrila down there.)

C5: wasteland. 1 large city in the north; ivory, bone, desert crops, spices; southern half of continent dragon graveyard. elves, gnomes, humans. (the wasteland aspect is due to an ancient war between the elves and the dragons, hence the graveyard.)

C4: Jungle; 4 large cities (ports); dense forest; mostly unexplored.

C3: varies. many settlements, largest cont. mostly human 80%, dwarf 15%, other 5% (one result of the continent-5 war is that the majority of the world population is human; either we breed faster or we just weren't involved, I dunno.)

C2: lush forest and plains; mostly human 95% other 5%.

C1: varies. mostly human 95%. starting cont.

So... I have to figure out how to get the climates right. He may not end up with exactly what he wanted, but then, them's the chances you take when handing off a project to a woman known to be incredibly obsessive, geeky, and detail-oriented. Muhahahahahahhackhackcough.

My first step is getting the continents laid out correctly. I'm using Google Earth to get everything lined up. When that pic is done I'll post it up.