World Geography

[Puck]

I like the icelandic island at the top. The jaggy fjiord coasts look cool.
Now I don't know how hard it is for you to make changes, but here are several possible suggestions:

Flip the map so it is a mirror image of Med world; east is west and west is east. Same feel to the world, just a little different paradigm and maybe a little harder to recognize. (All the Greeks and Romans would have to wear spock beards, little daggers, and salute with clenched fists).

I would also slightly mess with the Mediterranean, maybe Spain, kind of the way you did with Great Britan so it is not quite so noticeably earth.

As a personal preference I would like to see the Northwest and Southeast chunks of land knocked out to allow for more ocean possibilities. This would allow for more coastlands and river systems, deltas etc. for people base their creations on.

All in all my favorite parts of the map are the parts you did freehand.

(Dang it those little smilie things arn't working for some reason. They would have come in handy here).

By the way how do you do uplode images into your text. I have a few pictures of things I wanted to add, but it kept asking me for a url. (As I mentioned I am not very proficiant with computer stuff).

[frogspawner]

Thanks for the comments.

Originally Posted by soltakss

Centre of the World. With deserts around it and surrounded by an inland sea, possibly not an island but with connecting land bridges.

No strawberry-flavoured swamps, though - sorry.

Originally Posted by Puck

Flip the map so it is a mirror image of Med world; east is west and west is east. ...
I would also slightly mess with the Mediterranean, maybe Spain, kind of the way you did with Great Britan so it is not quite so noticeably earth.
As a personal preference I would like to see the Northwest and Southeast chunks of land knocked out to allow for more ocean possibilities....
All in all my favorite parts of the map are the parts you did freehand.

By the way how do you do uplode images into your text. I have a few pictures of things I wanted to add, but it kept asking me for a url. (As I mentioned I am not very proficiant with computer stuff).

Can't claim credit for anything creative, essentially I just traced the old world map ascribed to Ptolemy (same one as RQ3 Fantasy Earth was based on), plus Mr T's "Islandia" map, and filled the gaps with a fractal line-drawing tool. Donkey work. (In AutoRealm, btw, which I haven't used much so I'm not sure how easy any flipping operation would be... )

Posting, I just clicked the "Manage Attachments" button, then Browse to get an "Upload file from my computer" and hit Upload (and ignored the stuff about maximum file sizes!). Never done it before, but it seemed to work, after a fashion.

I'll hold off doing anything more for a short while, in case anyone else wants to give feedback, or if anyone else has anything better. I thought Rurik might be working on one, since he mentioned he had Campaign Cartographer?

[Triff]

More water!

If we go for something like this, I'll resurrect my old Islandia plans with the old map, detailing that part of the world.

SGL.

[Triff]

This also looks fairly interesting for the geography:

ProFantasy Software - Fractal Terrains Pro - map making for game, historical and hobby mappers

We can go with a random world, or feed in the map frogspawner is working on, raise a mountain in the middle, paint a desert around it, and adjust the zones away from the mtn.

SGL.

[frogspawner]

More mountains, more sea/ocean, a sky mountain, and a flipped version. Does it look any better yet?

[Puck]

I kind of like the flipped one. Actually makes me dizzy to look at hard though. A little bit more messing with Spain(giving it a different shape, trimminig it down or stretching it out or something) might dull the easily noticeable Mediterranean bit though. The little sun thing is a kick. I am waiting for little teletubbies to come out around the sun mountain.
(Hey the smilies work at home. At school I cannot get them to work).

By the way thanks for the attachment thing. I tried it and this time it worked, at least sort of. I think the first time I tried it I was not authorized.

[soltakss]

I'd make the land around the Sky Mountain bigger and the seas surounding it bigger still. I had to search around to find it, so it's not that obvious.

I'd also make the mountain ranges stretching past the Sky Mountain wider to emphasise them more.

The flipped map is better as it doesn't look like an earth-like map.

[frogspawner]

I held back from skewing Spain. Who am I to criticize Ptolemy?

Besides, I still reckon using a recognizable fantasy Earth, clearly not the original one, is a bonus. Is there any point hiding it's origins, when people can trace them via this forum (or ask us)? We can gain the benefit of 'instant familiarity' by using known geography and a few pseudo-historical cultures. (Plus the link back to RQ3...)

Hopefully the dizzying effect is just the low-quality of the jpeg. The original can zoom to any view you like, without loss.

Frankly, I think the Sky Mountain is daft. But if that's what people want...

Currently it is 250 miles across the base, but still looks piddly. I'll try doubling it (that'd make it 500 miles high, too - is that enough?) - later. It's not really central either, since I put it where the Himalayas should be, in a vain attempt at realism. But there's two approaches to fixing that: 1) Move it to the Caspian Sea; 2) expand the map China-wards, so it's current location becomes central. Given that deserts are wanted around it, I'd favour 2.
Opinions?

[Rurik]

Been away for a couple of days and a lot has developed here. I do have to say I'm not a huge fan of basing the map on fantasy europe - is there a good reason to do so?

On the one hand we are designing a world very different than earth in the way myth replaces natural science and developing a distinct feel. To use earth geography kind of goes counter to the idea of making something distinctly different than bog standard middle ages earth resembling fantasy.

Just my two cents, I can live with it if need be, but am not taken with the idea.

[Rurik]

Originally Posted by Triff

More water!

If we go for something like this, I'll resurrect my old Islandia plans with the old map, detailing that part of the world.

Originally Posted by Triff

This also looks fairly interesting for the geography:

ProFantasy Software - Fractal Terrains Pro - map making for game, historical and hobby mappers

We can go with a random world, or feed in the map frogspawner is working on, raise a mountain in the middle, paint a desert around it, and adjust the zones away from the mtn.

I've got Campaign Cartographer 3 which integrates with Fractal Terrains, but not Fractal Terrains itself. It seems like a nice product and it is easy to make maps with CC3 from worlds made with Fractal Terrains (or so I hear - easy is a relative term when used in conjuntion with CC).

Do we really need Fractal Terrains though? It will make landmasses, but we don't need a spherical world with reality based geography and weather patterns for the fantasy project do we?

Whatever we do for a world, there is a style pack from the Cartographers Annual that emulates the style of the Islandia map we can use. Link here:

The Cartographer's Annual 2007