[unpaid]Wanna draw me a pretty simple map?

[Sigurd]

I don't know if this is 'simple' - the full file is 480 meg in size

This is a attempt at the mountain peaks of an island\continent.

Tell me what you think. This is sized to fit on a Open Office page (18cm wide). The size is very much reduced. I'm planning on being able to put out full page maps of any of the inner islands etc...

Obviously the island below the mist level has to exist too. I'm less sure about that. I left this blank so you can write names, scale, etc... how you please.

I invite anyone who wants to try and rationalize the geology of this . I think the lakes would never happen etc... but then this is fantasy . Still anyone who wants to kibbitz is welcome. The islands are distinct and I like the one dead center that looks like a hippocampus. I'm thinking about expanding this for my game too.

Any crits or suggestions welcome - from anyone.


Sigurd

[Sigurd]

This is the island I like - Don't know if its finished but hey.... I'm working to the Board file size limits. This is a full sized 18cm wide slice of the map. The finished work will be too big to simply post.

I have to get more memory. Need to learn about big picture file mapping.

Sigurd

[Rel]

It looks fantastic! This is obviously something way, way more intricate and pretty than anything I'd be able to create.

I guess that if I were going to offer any suggestions about how to change it, I would say that I'm looking for the peaks protruding above the mists to be slightly smaller and a bit (but only a bit) more spread out. The basic look of it is great. But the individual land masses being smaller with more separations.

I say all of that with no concept of how easy or hard it is for you to make changes like that. I certainly don't wish to seem picky for somebody who came begging.

[Sigurd]

The scale of the map is not set so come up with a size for a land mass you like and add a scale.


I'm guessing the continent is about as big as Germany but I haven't really thought it through. Feel free to shrink it to any size you like by changing the scale. All the little islands might be the tiniest of peaks and not reliably above the fog line.


I could take out islands if you wanted more distance between them.

We aim to please.

I can see how wider valleys might be more realistic. I think I need a better idea of the whole geography. I can move the mountain tops around but I have to try and reconstruct the island\continent completely and then add fog. I'm not really pleased with the height lines or the messy blue lake borders either.

There are many better, more knowledgeable mappers here. Lets give this 24 hrs for any other input. Maybe I can combine some good suggestions and avoid a revision or two.

Sigurd

[Rel]

Thanks again for all your work to this point, Sigurd. As far as a scale goes, I think that if the image you posted above were about a thousand miles on a side that would be about right for what I envision. In an effort to try and crudely illustrate what I'm talking about in terms of the number and size of the land masses, I rather artlessly modified your version. Here is a low res version of my modification:



With the thousand mile scale I mention above, that puts the bigger land masses at maybe 100ish miles across and the smaller ones a good bit smaller than that. I think that fits the scale of the world I'm after pretty well.

Obviously I'd love to hear any other thoughts that you or others have about any changes you'd recommend.

EDIT: Oh and, just to give a bit more territory to play with, I would be good with adding more such "islands in The Mist" in the southeast and northwest corners of the map to fill it out a bit.

[Sigurd]

Your picture didn't come through.

Oh and, just to give a bit more territory to play with, I would be good with adding more such "islands in The Mist" in the southeast and northwest corners of the map to fill it out a bit.

You're a DM after my own heart. One of the problems with the plateau idea and normal mountains is that you're selecting away most of the land mass for playing. I'm beating on the believability to give you more islands, never mind that the valleys below them might be too shallow to let your poison fog sink.

Getting a better idea of the underlying geography\geology would make this better. Most mountains I can think of form on the edges of tectonic plates - that means long island ranges not thick ones. Even Volcanoes seem to be long irregular lines. I'm leaning to something like south america but that will probably mean your islands will be further apart and more lateral.

I game tomorrow and I have prep of my own, not to mention life , I'll get back to this after Tuesday.

Sigurd

ps. I originally moved the islands around that way to give us room for a legend rule and rose in the lower right. .

[Rel]

Your picture didn't come through.

Hmm. I'm seeing it fine but I'm not sure if I'm doing it right. How do you guys host your maps and such?

You're a DM after my own heart. One of the problems with the plateau idea and normal mountains is that you're selecting away most of the land mass for playing. I'm beating on the believability to give you more islands, never mind that the valleys below them might be too shallow to let your poison fog sink.

Getting a better idea of the underlying geography\geology would make this better. Most mountains I can think of form on the edges of tectonic plates - that means long island ranges not thick ones. Even Volcanoes seem to be long irregular lines. I'm leaning to something like south america but that will probably mean your islands will be further apart and more lateral.

Yeah, I am somewhat afraid that I'm asking for a "sow's ear" from people used to making silk purses. Historically speaking, I've been more of a stickler for "realistic" land forms for my campaign worlds. This time around I'm focusing more on the outcome that I want (a few dozen tall plateaus that stick up at varying heights from who knows what sort of terrain below and all separated by valleys varying from short saddlebacks/land bridges to a hundred miles of lowlands) rather than how they got there.

I barely know jack about geology but I would tend to imagine that the real life tepuis got there more by erosion than by tectonic processes. Maybe that provides the explanation for how my plateaus got there. In fact maybe it's The Mist itself that ate away the surrounding lands.

One thing about The Mist and its behavior: I've been thinking of it less the way I would a normal mist as we know it and instead more like a liquid. The "Mist Level" is something that I think of more like "sea level". I mostly attribute this to the fact that it serves the geography that I want to depict. But a more physics friendly version may be that the poisons that make up The Mist are considerably heavier than air. Anyway, to me the effect of that property would be that it is less important what the underlying terrain is shaped like.

I game tomorrow and I have prep of my own, not to mention life , I'll get back to this after Tuesday.

Sigurd

ps. I originally moved the islands around that way to give us room for a legend rule and rose in the lower right. .

By all means, take care of first things first. I'm in no particular rush for this map anyway (campaign won't start for at least a month, probably longer.).

[Sigurd]

So this is the idea. Taking South America as a model (The final may change completely).


1. The mountains are a wall along a fairly inhospitable coast. Fishing villages & small political structures (Barbarians, single villages etc....) with little wealth.

2. Tall mountains are mostly clean on the windward side and into the peaks.

3. Unexplainable and geologically unlikely plateau culture atop the mountains above the poisoned plains.

4. The poisoned jungles (Have to decide a temp range) exist in the lea of the mountain and stretch to the far coast. Nasties, demons, Morlocks etc... have their own mysteries on the poisoned plain.

5. The mountain culture is very old and likely taken refuge from an ancient history in the jungles down below. They have very little to do with the coastal barbarians on the windward side of the mountains.

Sigurd

Crudest of crude sketch to demonstrate.

[MarkusTay]

Is this project still going on?

It seems like a really facinating concept for a world, and you've managed to alleviate most of the problems of 'Undersea' adventuring (I look at it as a regular world, full of islands like Earthsea, but instead of water you have 'the mists', which gives it creepy-cool Ravenloft thing going on).

In fact, you've managed to combine the best aspects of Underdark and undersea adventuring without all the hassles.

[Rel]

This project is still very much ongoing. As a matter of fact, we played a "demo" session of this game last night. I didn't trot out the maps at that time but I've made a rather crude but workable modified version of Sigurd's earlier map where I used GIMP to break up the plateaus into smaller chunks.

I'm pleased to report that the flavor of the world came across rather well in the session last night.

If anybody here has further thoughts or contributions for maps then I welcome them.