Suggestions on Building and Distributing a Large Scale Map

[nemesis702]

After a long period of editing on the wiki, I'm back to review the suggestions and comments so far.

I got a lot of help and inspiration for creating a believable map from this thread here.

Thank you for the quick reference. The scaling suggestions are very useful. It is nice also so get some definitive suggestions based on personal experience.

On my Arden Campaign map I used the "known" World of the empire... concentrate on important capitols and coast cities and ports, try to imagine what the natural, cultural and travelable borders of the area your group inhabit.

Well, I would prefer my players asking "what's over that mountain?" and not "what's on that other continent?"

I had been considering giving out map information in this method previously. It is a good idea for the purpose of giving a PC perspective, but half of my problem has been giving the players, not the characters, the reference they would like. The world is fairly well mapped out in game. Magic isn't really something we had as an advantage IRL. I am obscuring some information as well though. This is a good idea for in game, less metropolitan cities though.

In geography/cartography jargon "large scale" means "things are drawn large" not "large area covered". A map of a whole planet is has a large "extent", but in order to fit into any kind of reasonable sized map, it needs a very small scale. Also, the ecology is not consistent at a particular latitude, oceans and their currents can affect temperatures, and ecology is at least as much influenced by moisture as by temperature: Bangladesh is at the same latitude as the Sahara.

Any suggestion for a fair mix of both scale and extent then? It does not need to be the whole map, but I would like at least a transcontinental concept. The comment on ecology has more to do with the progression and migration of people. For a quick example, the Mesopotamian cultures found it very easy to grow crops that were native to their area in Europe due to a supportable climate there. This was much more difficult for certain crops during the colonization of sub Saharan during imperialism.

...in a global map, something is going to be stretched, squashed, or inflated.

How large do you feel a map can be to minimize this effect so that the change is roughly 10% or so? (arbitrary number)

If you want to do this properly, I'd recommend developing a base map with minimal styling to be reprojected as needed. A vector GIS format would be best, but you would have to use GIS tools for that. That's more tools to learn, but you'd be using the tools specifically designed for the job. You could project the base map as needed far a particular map, then style and add details. This is roughly how real world maps are made.

Could you link to any pages explaining this more in depth? Are there any free/cheaper GIS programs you have tried?

Thanks to all contributors so far. I'll continue to check for updates every few days.