Great start! As for how to put people in the picture, imagine yourself a roving band of settlers - barbarians, colonists, whatever. Ask yourself where you'd like to stop and settle, what you would eat, produce, and so forth. Where would some natural barriers be between groups - big impassable rivers or ranges, deserts maybe. Where would there be particularly high populations, and what surpluses and shortages might there be. Since its your place, if you don't see an answer you can make one up to make things more interesting. Such as - maybe you'd like that delightfully convoluted set of inlets and lochs to be a hotbed of trade... Well, juggle the latitude til it would be an okay place to grow a lot and sail a lot (can't learn to build sailing ships if the lochs are iced in!). (But then if you'd rather your people be fur-clad ice rigger-innovators, shove the whole landmass far enough n or s to gen the ice.). Artificially create some needs - over here coal, over there iron ore, limestone elsewhere. Self-sufficient states are boring.
Political borders would make some sense (ridge line, river) and would sometimes be arbitrary (geometrical perfection or random wiggles). If your people are fractious and varied, maybe there's a mix of dozens of statelets. If all are uniform, maybe there's but one or two political units. Or if you favor the odd ravening conquerors in your domains, maybe there's a zillion subdivisions of onetime independent units, now melded into one massive empire. See my drift? Tell a bit of a story, and the geography follows plausibly.
Mechanics? Use thin lines for borders, so as not to obscure much of that nice terrain. If you have discontinuous domains - enclaves, enclaves, colonies, etc, consider color coding by rims of color on the boundaries, to cut down on the needed text. Dots do well for cities on this style, and/or simple shapes, with or without outlines. There's a great tutorial on label placement linked to in the sig of _______ (mind blank - somebody'll know).
Reply With Quote