Thanks for the welcome and the advice. I have already unpacked the new programs and started digging around in them.

I've been lurking around for a couple of weeks, but it was RobA's GIMP tutorial for artistic regional maps that pushed me over the edge (which was inspired by Pyrandon's city map tutorial). Like I said, I have never (successfully) created a map using software so I don't have anything to post, yet. When I finish the tutorial I'll vomit my results.