The Garnok region of Baldimar

[RobA]

I modded the one you linked to from the dj forums to make it two headed.

-Rob A>

[jfrazierjr]

Thanks SG and Rob! I rather like the first one SG posted up, but the size of the heads are way to big and the haft is too short. I had found a few others and were thinking of doing a mod as you did Rob. In fact, I ended up finding something close to what I want over on RPGMapshare.


It's a bit ornate, but not ostentatious. I need to be really carefull as I want to make sure whatever I use matches in style with the rest of the map, so I think I will do a bit of modding to this one (need to add a spike up top and a "north" pointer) along with a banner perhaps. I think somewhere in the area of 25-40% original size will be perfect and not look like an attached image pasted onto the top of a "hand painted" map. I will have to play with the image to get it just right. I also found a few others in my old copy of the CSAUC (from a year ago), so I may download the latest to see if there are some new things available. Bad thing is that of the ones I found, the one's I liked the most were also the ones with the lowest resolution, so they are probably not usable. Also, if worst comes to worst, I can alwasy import into fractal mapper to draw the outlines, add a bit of color fill and then port back to GIMP to spruce it up a bit. Lot's of options.... to little time.....

[jfrazierjr]

Heh.. perhaps I have found a name for my region: "Ravmillerrobaknightarcanarobesgeneralprinterl and in honor of the top posters to the Guild???

Errr... perhaps I shall keep searching for a name.....

[Steel General]

...and if you wanted to be silly you could give the leader of the region the title High/Grand Expansipoobahmator

[torstan]

Glad to be of use. I like the way these hammers are coming along.

The forest is a bit heavily saturated compared to the rest of the map. Also it's a little odd to have the connifers individually depicted, but the deciduous tres all in one large clump. Perhaps it's worth looking at a style that has a coniferous forest as one large object? I'd also suggest fading out the white snow area to the north or smudging the edge. At the moment it looks a little bit obvious as a large spraypainted area of white. Perhaps either make it a hard edge and give it a clear reason - an ice shelf for example?

Just some thoughts. All the elements are starting to come together really well. I like the style you've got coming on here.

[jfrazierjr]

Glad to be of use. I like the way these hammers are coming along.

The forest is a bit heavily saturated compared to the rest of the map. Also it's a little odd to have the connifers individually depicted, but the deciduous tres all in one large clump. Perhaps it's worth looking at a style that has a coniferous forest as one large object? I'd also suggest fading out the white snow area to the north or smudging the edge. At the moment it looks a little bit obvious as a large spraypainted area of white. Perhaps either make it a hard edge and give it a clear reason - an ice shelf for example?

Just some thoughts. All the elements are starting to come together really well. I like the style you've got coming on here.

I have actually thought about making this an ice self with a cliff running most of the length of the top or possibly a large ice covered mesa in the far right corner... not really sure where to go with that yet though.... I also plan on bringing some of the brown from the lower mountains up a bit in addition.... I still have not gotten the whole thing done in my head as to what elements need to be here for the campaign, but will detail some of that below.

Any ideas on how to depict the conifers as a mass? My idea was to have them "mostly" be thinned individual tree clumps rather than a thick forested region. The end result is going to be that the large forest in the center of the map is actually fairly large, on the order of a few hundred miles in both directions. The whole maps scale is going to be somewhere in the 1000 mile range top to bottom. Of course.... the entire map is really meant to be landmap style rather than strict scale based since it's ultimately going to be a player handout.



History as I see it at the moment:
This area was once home to several small city-states which generally controlled the area within 20-100 miles of their immediate area on the plains and along the coast. The forest was of course home to a kingdom of Elves with two Dwarven kingdoms in the Northern and Southern mountains respectively. Gods warred, unleashed armies, meteors, and plagues, most elves retreated to the Feywild, the Southern dwarves opened their kindgom to refugees, mostly human, but a small group of Elves, Halflings and Dragonborn. The Dwarves sealed their gates and waited for the dust to clear. After several hundred years, the Gods fell silent. There have been several small skirmishes between the dwarves and other underground races, but recently, this is getting to the brink of a full out war. After hundreds of years of silence, the Gods have returned and announced that the time has come to open the gates. The players have been asked to attempt to bring reinforcements from the Northern group of dwarves either via overland travel or travel along the undersea (of course, the sea does not reach the full distances to either kingdom.

End result, topside is a vast wilderness and drastically changed in topology... of course, this also means tons of ruins but also tons of bad creatures. The map will be presented to the players as region existing 1200 years or so ago and it will be their job, in addition to other jobs, to find out the current lay of the land and report back threats and possibly act as ambasadors to any intelligent creatures, both topside and below. In addition to the war raging below the surface which they players must help deal with in some way, they may well encounter hostiles topside in sufficient number to bring war to thier homeland from a new front....

[Ascension]

Maybe it's just me but I don't think the fir trees fit the style in general as well as being completely different from the other forest. They're neat n all but I just feel that they don't fit. Maybe if you could do something like the other forest but instead of squiggly lines make something more pointy or angular.

my 2 bits

[jfrazierjr]

Feeling bored but did not feel like doing anything majorly time consuming, so I created a tree trunk brush and added trunks to my forest(removed the coniferous one .... will add back in when I think I can do it right....

[Robbie]

What happened with this guy? Ya gonna finish it? Those mountains look too good to shelve the project...plus I'd like to see what happens with that forest.

[torstan]

I agree! Definitely continue this.