How do you Map your world

[Beholder Bob]

I also have 3 types of community - Thorp / Hamlet, Village / Town, and City / Metropolis.

I do stick to the 3E "standards" of city sizes and try to have only a select few metropolis, with most being village or town size.

I am using the core standards for size, I'm just referring to the map key I use. Having a different icon for each type made it too confusing (IMO). I reduced the icon down to 1 of 3 types (1st - small place with little/no resources 2nd medium size with moderate resources but not a major hub for the region, 3rd a major hub for activity in the region w excellent resources. The frequency is vastly weighted to the smaller settlements.

Bb

 

[adwyn]

I have two main map sets. For the first I made a bit map of the eastern hemipshere of my campaign world at 1 bit equals 1 mile. The map is divided into water and land only. Using this I can make smaller area maps, continental maps, what ever. Its primary purpose is to serve as a standard for my maps.

The second set are smaller unconventional area maps. They consist of the major locations with lines connecting them in a spider web fashion. Along each is a set of numbers; the first is the distance in miles, the second is the number of hours it takes to make the journey, based on distance and terrain. This second set is unninspiring but conveys most of what I need to know and works the same as most road maps.

 

[D+1]

I also have 3 types of community - Thorp / Hamlet, Village / Town, and City / Metropolis.

I do stick to the 3E "standards" of city sizes and try to have only a select few metropolis, with most being village or town size.

I am using the core standards for size, I'm just referring to the map key I use. Having a different icon for each type made it too confusing (IMO).

As the scale of the map you're working with increases you should be displaying only larger cities, if any. For example, if I were displaying a single map of a kingdom I'd probably show metropolis' and cities, maybe a few important towns but probably not all towns nor anything of village or smaller size, unless the importance of the village was seriously out of proportion to its size. By the time I get down to showing thorps with populations of 20 I figure the map had better be definitely on a VERY local scale.

 

[Hand of Evil]

I also have 3 types of community - Thorp / Hamlet, Village / Town, and City / Metropolis.

I do stick to the 3E "standards" of city sizes and try to have only a select few metropolis, with most being village or town size.

I am using the core standards for size, I'm just referring to the map key I use. Having a different icon for each type made it too confusing (IMO). I reduced the icon down to 1 of 3 types (1st - small place with little/no resources 2nd medium size with moderate resources but not a major hub for the region, 3rd a major hub for activity in the region w excellent resources. The frequency is vastly weighted to the smaller settlements.

Bb

I also have these standards (large city, city, town, village, and camp) but think about support for them. A cities will have towns and villages that feed it, these will dot the area around the city like planets around a sun. I use the following:
City:
out to 10 miles (day travel) d6 towns, d8 villages
out to 20 miles d10 towns, d8 villages, d8 camps
out to 40 miles d10 towns, d12 villages, d12 camps
out to 80 miles d8 towns, d20 villages, d20 camps

For large cities +4
Metroplis + 6

A Camp is a thorp/hamlet, combimed for ease but can also be a fort, keep, mine.

Anything past 80 miles is wilderness to me.

 

[Inconsequenti-AL]

I echo - Civ III can be great!

Someone had a thread about it a while ago which inspired me. I knocked together a random world using the ingame generator... saved it. Loaded it into the editor - then used that as my game world map. Picked a subcontinent (small one!) to start on and I'll use the rest if I ever needed to.

Had a nice feature that it felt 'random' rather than 'designed' by me. But tends to put the terrain in sensible(ish) places. I liked it and found it a really easy way to go.

Like others, I just detail what I need - but it's nice to have those other continents laid out if you need them! - normally, they'll get a name, races and a capital.

I do try not to turn Civ III on very often - can lose large chunks of time to that beast.

Shameless off topic pimping:
If you are into the Civilisation game, then I'd strongly recommend www.Civfanatics.com - those guys Game's of the Month contests are really well designed. 'Succession games' can be a lot of fun. Even if it is all very time consuming.
/Shameless off topic pimping:

 

[kigmatzomat]

First off, I cheat. I set my game on Krynn and use the Dragonlance atlas. Of course, I realized it was a dinky, teeny continent and have since rescaled it to fit my north american sensibilities.

I'm mapping out my new world and a thought occured to me, actually a couple of thoughts (my office got smoked)...
1) what scale maps do you use?

Varies. I've got a region map that is something like 1"=25 miles (aka 1 day by horse.) Then I have local maps of some areas that show all the villages relevant to the city or keep, usually no more than 50 miles across.

2) what are the key terrains you include on the maps?

Primarily roads, rivers, forest, mountains, swamps, and sandy deserts. I really don't care about grassland vs. rocky desert since they have similar impacts on travel times.

Cities are a matter of time and my imagination. The Atlas only has large cities, with the exception of smaller towns the Heroes of the Lance passed through. A fully developed world would have towns or inns 1 days walk apart along the main roads or at any location that would make travel difficult or a stop reasonable (edge of swamps, river crossings, an oasis, etc). Krynn is so ravaged by wars that I can ignore that in many cases and have long stretches free of cities.

I think of it as relevant mapping. The players don't need to know about all the villages and thorps that are out there if they don't leave their county. And then when travelling great distances, they really only care about the resources a village on the way has, not the village itself so you can often fast-forward through basic activities like picking up extra grain for the horses, additional rations, or just sleeping in a soft bed.

For continuity, I keep track of those villages so the return trip is similar, but I know that on a 3 month journey they might see 60-70 different inns and they really don't matter that much 90% of the time.

Is this overkill, typical, or not enough? If nothing else - it is fun.

Ehhh, I think you've gone overkill but it depends on your game. For 8 levels my players roamed around an area that was maybe a week's ride across. Only recently do they travel great distances, and then with trepidation. If you have a caravan-based game, you'll need that information in your head, though I think you don't want to go smaller than "small town" on most of your long-term planning to give you some wiggle room later.

Of course it really doesn't matter as long as you enjoy it. Make stuff down to 1"=100' if you really want, just realize that the players will be very "ho hum" where mapping is concerned. It really is a GM thing.

 

[Desdichado]

I'm a little more like barsoomcore -- I don't have strict scales with grids; I have "period" maps that are hand drawn on resume "parchment", with fun little embellishments like dragons, and ships and the North Wind as a puffy-cheeked face blowing a cloud of breath at the top of the map. Cities are drawn rather than "mapped", as little collections of buildings and the like. It's more about relative distance and location than exact dimensions.

I also don't do anything on a scale as large as you do. Most of the areas I map aren't too much larger than, say, the British Isles. That's plenty of distance to include all the adventure you could possibly need in a single campaign, IMO.

 

[Zappo]

I don't, because I don't homebrew any more.

However, back when I did homebrew, many years ago, I used hex maps with a scale of 30 km per hex IIRC. It was a good detail level and it meant that generally speaking one day of travel was one hex. I also had a single hex map of the world with a scale of 300 km per hex IIRC. The hexes were around 5 mm wide, or something like that. I recall that as the PCs travelled around, the 1 hex = 30 km map became very big.

 

[der_kluge]

http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=56985