Fun with Maps

[jsears2002]

Hi all-

The community has been great in helping me with other dilemmas so I thought I would bring this question/idea to the boards (hopefully I didn't miss another post about it).

We are trying to make our own campaign world, and we wanted to start with creating the layout of the land (a map). We thought of going with a fractal mapper, or campaign cartographer.

On an old podcast, I heard about a fun method of another group that used paint, a piece of large graph paper, then some straws and handheld battery fans, to push the paint around to make different coasts, then added salt or baking soda to make textures. It sounds fun but messy.

Does anyone have any other ideas or methods that could be used for a fun way to make a cool map?

 

[Hand of Evil]

Plaster or clay, place on flooring tiles and shape, when dry you color.

 

[Janx]

Plaster or clay, place on flooring tiles and shape, when dry you color.

clay and paint sounds like a lot of work...but then, that is the point, to enjoy the building process (hence why painting minis is the major part of the fun).

in one campaignm my DM made the original map on notebook paper with a marker and pencil. one page per continent, and one world map. I then scanned them all in, cleaned up all the continent maps (putting water in the water spots, and replacing the marker with clean borders. Then I re-created the world map, using the re-drawn continents, I recreated the world map (getting everything scaled correctly, relative to the original). The DM liked it, and it became the official version of the maps.

I've also used the fractal mappers, like from IronyGames, which is now defunct.

 

[Hand of Evil]

You could use VUE too but a site to visit: http://forum.cartographersguild.com/index.php

 

[Hand of Evil]

Oh, if you want to spend 90+$$$$$$ see: World Machine 2 : The Next Generation in Terrain Modeling