Heya, everyone!

This is technically my second post as I visited a topology thread to give some information about Finnish names but I'm still new around here by any scale. Actually I registered long ago (might have been last year, even) but just activated this account a few days ago.

I play and DM both WoD and DnD games every once in a while but don't really have any artistic talent or skills with image manipulation programs. I've never even liked my hand drawn maps at all ("Those mountains look so stupid "). I have had some experience with Photoshop but don't have that anymore. Can't afford it and while I don't consider illegal downloading to be stealing, I try to avoid it. Thus, I'm limited to Gimp for the time being and am happy to see that there are several nice tutorials here for that too.

So, I now spend some of my spare time with the lovely tutorials and try to come up with something even distantly resembling a map. So far this is my first and only try:



(though I think I've screwed up with rivers a bit. The version before rivers has a nicer look) It is related to a world designing project I am currently working on. The major geographic features of it are based on Europe as you might notice from that northern part. I'm more interested in designing cultures.

Anyways, I probably won't be posting any tutorials in a long while. I'll first spend some time looking at the tutorials and then will begin creating hundreds of "How can I improve this map/What am I doing wrong" threads.

I study software engineering at Metropolia University of Applied Sciences (Helsinki, Finland) and could perhaps some day even be able to contribute something. I might never get good enough with image manipulation but I'm sure that here are several niches that haven't been filled yet. (Amount of 3d modeled maps appears to be relatively low for the time being. And perhaps some scripting and generator coding at some point. Also, I've played around with the idea of coding a good online battlemap manager. OpenRPG and the like seem... lacking in many areas.)

Oh... And yes. I do tend to ramble like this. Geez, this became a long introductionary post. So... Uh... Hi!