Paupus

[Karro]

Crap, I just thought of something:

Is it too far north for a desert of Arabian theme to be? I was thinking it could be a sandy desert on the southern part, but further up north, it gets cold? How would that work? There's going to be an obvious lack of moisture, so nothing would get frozen, so would it just be REALLY cold and sandy? There's obviously going to be ice around the northern edge from the ocean, but I'm not sure how this would impact my desert. Grrr, this is getting complicated...I guess I could make this a map of the KNOWN world, and not the whole one.

There are certain general principles on the placement of deserts (plenty of details in your Australia thread). Short answer: cold deserts are certainly possible (the poles are in regions where various effects can cause desertification, and the South Pole, in particular, is an example of a cold desert: precipitation there is very low, but it's so cold that all the water that does exist there is frozen.) That being said, a cold desert is going to have a very different flavor from a warm/hot one, and the culture that arises there is going to be different as well. If you want an Arabian-themed desert culture, I'd look for something a bit closer to the tropics to drop that in.

[crackerjake]

I've already got it on there, I'm just going to make it the known world, not the whole one.

[Karro]

I've already got it on there, I'm just going to make it the known world, not the whole one.

Good point; you haven't exactly drawn in a polar ice cap, so nothing's set in stone.

When working on my own map, I discovered that those desert-forming principles meant that I couldn't put a certain desert where I wanted it. So... I simply* shifted the whole continent southward, away from the poles, until it did. It had the added benefit of putting more of that continent in the temperate region where it really needed to be anyway.

*For certain definitions of "simply" that include the long and arduous wrestling with GIMP on a computer that's slower than it ought to be, but that's another story

[altasilvapuer]

I think I prefer the second of the pair, so far. The dots are far enough apart to not look strange, and they really help define where exactly the desert's boundaries are.

The hills also look pretty nice. My only thing I'd mention symbol-wise is that the mountain range is a little thin. You have a little bit of room that you could probably flesh it out a little bit, if you wanted to. Or if you want a relatively thin ridge (which I believe is possible; and if not, there's always that ubiquitously mischevious wizard friend of mine) it works pretty well as it is now.

I've found that the easiest way to figure out where my deserts, etc, are going to be is to lay down some quick gradients based on latitude. Korba has a couple nice examples of that here: http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=4812
Another good place to look is Karro up there's world map that he's building. (Here: http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=2463)

Even though you've decided that this is just the 'known world', which will likely have further benefits down the road in terms of the depth of the world's development as you start adding/discovering the rest, it still might be worth throwing a couple quick gradients or somesuch on there to get a feel for climates. Then you won't have any problems with climatological problems elsewhere in the map.

That, or you could just use my favourite excuse: "A wizard did it!" Sometimes life's more fun when you throw a pie in the face of the rules.

Can't wait to see more!

-asp

[crackerjake]

I'm drawing things for a purely representational value at this moment, I may go for realism when I draw up my next draft of the map.