Hi there!

The way I found this forum was rather indirect: On some other forum I frequent, someone, for some reason, posted a list of all his bookmarks with "possible nerd interest", and this pearl was among them.

I was really happy to find this forum, as I am getting ready to DM a D&D-campaign for some friends. Obsessive-compulsive as I am, I don't really feel good about it unless I have a complete, total, zoomable world map. The idea is to not only have a map of the continent, but being able to take that same map and zoom in until I can point and say "you are exactly there, under the shade of that tree".

Ok, obviously that is complete madness, and I've given up on that level of detail, but the fact remains that I want it to be as detailed as possible, and ideally "all in one"; I mentioned obsessive-compulsivity (is that a word?), and whenever I draw two seperate maps, one "scaled-up" and one "scaled-down" version, I always worry that they won't be perfectly aligned, that relative distances will have changed etc. So zoomability is really what I seek.

I made a quick map in AutoREALM, although lacking skills it didn't turn out too great - for example, when I used the fractal option on the continent's edges, they contorted quite a bit, changing the intended shape (which did, in at least some cases, admittedly, create some kinda cool peninsulas ), and the line even ended up crossing itself at points... well, I'm sure I can work it all out! But if anyone has some great pointers for AutoREALM (apart from the Users Manual I found in the tutorials, nice find), or has some better "create an entire world"-software to recommend (which should ideally be free, I'm a poor student! So I'll probably have to pass on FractalTerrains, sadly), I'd certainly be grateful!

(That's not to say I haven't trawled the forums quite a bit already, and I have found plenty, but additional advice would be appreciated... additionally? )