Help the Cartography Impaired

[Greatwyrm]

Does anyone have tips or tricks they can share to help someone get jump-started on making a new map?

Here I was, part way through the early stages of working up my homebrew setting for a game I plan to start early in 2004. I was running along great on Sunday. Got the calendar together. An outline of a creation epic. The basics of the pantheon. I even had a good idea of the main countries and where they'd be situated.

Then I thought, "Hey, it would help me add some realism to the background / history to see where the countries were. Compete over resources. Wars. Naval power. Stuff like that."

That's when everything went south. I stared at a blank piece of graph paper and it conqered me. Bested again by my worst enemy -- the map.

Any help is appreciated, great or small.

 

[kiznit]

I might take a stab at this... Do you have any major geographical names for me? Dragonspine Mountains, the Dagger reef, stuff like that?

 

[Greatwyrm]

Well, no names yet really, but here's what I was trying to get to.

The campaign world is pretty much Earth sized. The primary area I have in mind needs two continents roughly the size of North or South America. They need to be separated by a farily large expanse of water. Something it would take at least a month to sail across if the conditions were with you.

The main area on the first continent is an empire made up of seven kingdoms. They were going to be arranged in a sort of "C" with the seventh kingdom in the middle of the C. I only wanted the one in the middle and maybe one other to have decent sea access. Maybe the others have steep cliffs or reefs or something.

I had also planned on having one or two mountain ranges bordering the empire. Also, one large Mirkwood-esque area nearby.

I didn't want the empire to take up a huge amount of area though. Probably no more than a sixth of the first continent. I wanted to leave room for wandering barbarian clans and possibly a different culture on the far side of the continent.

The second continent, to the east, is another matter entirely. One of the main themes of the campaign is a sort of Atlantis Rising storyline. So the second continent is open to anything. Jungle, desert, swamp, forest, tundra. Anything and everything is fair game.

I know it probably sounds crazy that I have all this stuff planned and no idea of where to put it. If you could give me a nudge in the right direction, I'd appreciate it.

 

[kiznit]

Okay, I don't know if I'm ready to tackle a whole planet's map, since I'm hand-drawing this, but I think I can work the main continent and it's surrounding islands. Do you want me to shoot around and name them for you (always the funnest part) or do you already have some names for your countries.

I don't hit up a scanner 'till tomorrow morning, but I'll try to have something up for you by the end of the day (tomorrow).

 

[Greatwyrm]

If you'd like to do a continent and island, by all means, have at it. Feel free to name islands/rivers/mountains if you like. I think it would be rude of me to turn down a request like that in return for a usable map.

 

[kiznit]

Sorry I've fallen a little behind... I should have something tomorrow.

 

[Greatwyrm]

No problem. I'm not about to complaint about free help.