How do you map your homebrew?

[TheAuldGrump]

Fractal Mapper for the continents, then blowing up the map for the nations and saving under a new name so that the continents map does not get too cramped with detail.

Cities I use the tools for Fractal Mapper that are over on the Ancient Awakenings site. (TheFool more than doubled my use of FM. )

I use a roughly similar layout to our world, changing things a bit.

The Auld Grump

*EDIT* The sheets in the old TSR World Builder's Guide are useful, as is the Campaign Planner series by Ronin Arts. And Expeditious Retreat's A Magical Society: Ecology & Culture very handy indeed, and there is a free sample on RPGNow about... mapping! But be warned that it will suck you into buying the book...

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

I draw my maps by hand initially, the I scan them into Photoshop, and trace over the main details, hiding the "scan" alyer when I'm done. Then I layer on roads, forests, mountains, towns, text, etc.

For coming up with names, I keep a file for "name mining" and whenever I come across something I like, I add it to the file. Then when I need something, I go to the name list and pick out something I like. I can always use more and better names, and I'm not fond of names that are utterly out there - I like them to sound like they could be real places you could read about in a history book.

 

[Psion]

How I mapped my long running homebrew (driven by necessity and evolving technology -- probably not a prescription of any sort...):

I sketched the main continent on about 1/3 of a sheet of hex paper; the original was based on the ultima IV map.

I eventually transferred that handdrawn map to a much larger one, composed of sheets of taped-together hex paper on poster board, about 4' x 4'. Of course, I didn't have near the time to fill in all the blanks for that huge map, so it mostly remained white.

I eventually got CC-dos and did a hand-entered approximation to my huge map. Still remained rather blase as CC-dos was pretty primitive.

Of course, CC2 when it came around had a bit more features, and handled fills and shorelines a lot better. Eventually it started to look a lot nicer.

I never troubled to do nice maps of my loosely conceptualized other continents, so when fractal terrains came along, I pretty much scrapped those handdrawn outlines used fractal mapper until I found a world that made me happy with a blank spot big enough to put my existing detailed continent in and interted it.

Cities are difficult to map in detail, even with CC2. Fortunately, I discovered that the Forgotten Realms Atlas has a bevy on nicely mapped cities; I found that with a few alterations and rubbing off the serial numbers, you had dozens of dandy, well detailed settlements at your disposal.

What I do now

Fractal Terrains, CC2, and FRA are the "dream team" AFAIAC. When I am toying with a new world, I fiddle with FT until I find a world I like, export it to CC2, and add details (FT provides a nicely detailed contour map; CC2 lets you add political borders and symbols), and keep on using FRA for city maps.

This still covers a lot of area so I only put minimal details at the highest levels, and then calve of smaller parts closer to the starting area to cover in greater detail.

 

[Infernal Teddy]

I have continents, I don't have any details. Just country borders and landforms, nothing of smaller scale.

That's how my maps start off, then we just go in, and fill in the details as we need them, bit for bit...

 

[Bloodstone Press]

I draw the main land masses by hand. I use pregenerated city and town maps, though sometimes i draw my own towns as well. I've got a fat folder of maps that I've photocopied from old modules and gaming books that I use for most cities and large towns.

 

[Tonguez]

Get a map of Western Astralia turned sideways and stick it alongside a map of southern europe with a map of Rhode island jutting out the top

colour to suit and call it Continent # 1

 

[The Shaman]

I generated several random continents using Fractal Terrains 'til I found one that I liked, then imported it into CC2Pro - from there I broke it down into continents, and from there to regions.

 

[scadgrad]

I draw mine w/ pencil and then ink them, erasing the pencil marks after the ink has dried. I then scan them in and make any corrections to the inking in Photoshop. I then use a combination of Photoshop and Illustrator for adding place names, roads, city icons, wind rose, etc. When I get them to a suitable state of completion, I import into InDesign so that I can get a good border around them and make whatever sort of PDF that I wish. I like the old fashion B&W look of maps from the "old days" so I don't really like most of what I see in RPG products these days. My favorite mapping style is more in tune with, say the maps from the LotR RPG which are an obvious influence on my own. That's why I ink my own I guess. I just like the hand drawn look.

 

[VirgilCaine]

*EDIT* The sheets in the old TSR World Builder's Guide are useful, as is the Campaign Planner series by Ronin Arts.

Bought that one off of Amazon. But it didn't come with the map blanks.

 

[Arkhandus]

Well, you could take a look at the maps I have up so far on my campaign website (Rhunaria, in my sig) for an idea of what may be a decent level of detail. I used the Paint program from Windows to make some simple maps of certain general areas, and named only the major features (the biggest forests, biggest mountain ranges, biggest lakes, etc.), and drew some lines showing vaguely the borders of nations.

A lot of land outside the main campaign areas is unmapped and mysterious. Lesser terrain features, including cities and rivers and major roads, I mark on my maps of certain small regions or nations, and many of those lesser features remain unnamed for now, except of course important ones. Minor roads and trails are generally left out, but will be mentioned if needed as the PCs travel. If the PCs really want to go into an unmapped area or an unnamed part of the map, I just come up with the details when I need them.

For my occasional maps of a city (see the 'Map of the Freeholds Trelg and Goldbrook' on my webpage), I do something similar, marking and naming the important structures and the main districts or whatnot, and I may name the important streets. I don't bother drawing every tree, rock, patch of grass, or anything, just the buildings, general type of ground (grassy, dirt, cobblestone, etc.), park locations, farm/field locations, city walls, and maybe marking any city defenses around town, like ballistas or catapults on the walls.

Edit: Also, back when I was able to play in a face-to-face game (I play over OpenRPG now), I'd either hand-draw my maps or I'd make them in the Mapper program that came with the 2E AD&D Core Rules 2 CD-Rom and its Expansion. I'd use the Mapper to make broad maps of regions and sometimes a city map, while I'd tend to hand-draw dungeons and sometimes towns.