River Alenm (and side arms) - ancient river clan map on wood

[Wingshaw]

Nice style - it looks authentically primitive, and I'm liking the names.

I notice this is in the finished maps section, but I hope you are still open to suggestions.

I'd say, first, the wood looks rather fresh and new. If you were able to age it a bit (make it darker, give it a rough-ish texture). Second, could you run a displacement filter over the burnt lines? That would make it look like the lines are burnt into the bumpy surface of the wood, which it doesn't quite do, at the moment. Displacement filters are a bit trickier than other PS filters, but if you don't know about them I'm sure there are plenty of tutorials online. Third (and probably less important) what about replacing the white background with something (eg wooden wall planks, dirt/stone floor).

[descalon]

A couple of comments:

I am new to the guild and am very impressed with the variety of ideas I have already seen for creative map making. I think your use of the photograph of the wood, especially with burned wood effect, is a great idea. I think TheHoarseWhisperer's suggestions all make sense, the only suggestion I might have is that you may not really need to even have a background, you could crop into the wood giving the entire image a the wood grain effect.