Well, I just had my first session as GM in quite some time a few weeks ago, and an old argument got dug up regarding the geography of our custom campaign world. Particularly about the arrangement of certain settlements and landmarks, as well as whether the party was moving west/east/north whatnot last time around. As GM I just handwaved it, but it's become an issue of having no visual media to present the area with.
I honestly suck at drawing, but I'd love to have a world map of some kind, especially since that kind of thing could be expected to exist within the world itself. Is there any software or whatnot that an artistically challenged individual such as myself could use to help?
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Well, I just had my first session as GM in quite some time a few weeks ago, and an old argument got dug up regarding the geography of our custom campaign world. Particularly about the arrangement of certain settlements and landmarks, as well as whether the party was moving west/east/north whatnot last time around. As GM I just handwaved it, but it's become an issue of having no visual media to present the area with.
I honestly suck at drawing, but I'd love to have a world map of some kind, especially since that kind of thing could be expected to exist within the world itself. Is there any software or whatnot that an artistically challenged individual such as myself could use to help?
Many. Depends on financials also. Campaign Cartographer is nice. I use a mixture of Dundjinni, Photoshop, Paint.net (not PS at work) and Gimp.
The Cartographer's Guild is one of my favorite sites and may remove the need for you to create one. Borrow someone else's and change names. Or adopt them.
http://donjon.bin.sh/world/
That thing has saved my buns many a time as I am an artist the equivalent of a 5 year old.
Take one of those and play with the specifics, you can then put it into photoshop and add labels or settlements.
Hope this helps!
Below is a link to ProFantasy Software, they make Campaign Cartographer 3 and other map making products. They are a bit pricey but if you can afford them they are really good. If you do go this route I would highly recommend going to YouTube or through their site to watch the videos as the software is kinda complex at first but once you get the basics down you can make some really nice maps pretty easily.
http://www.profantasy.com/products/cc3.asp
Many. Depends on financials also. Campaign Cartographer is nice. I use a mixture of Dundjinni, Photoshop, Paint.net (not PS at work) and Gimp.
The Cartographer's Guild is one of my favorite sites and may remove the need for you to create one. Borrow someone else's and change names. Or adopt them.
The site looks pretty interesting, I'll have to give it a look. Luckily the campaign world isn't too fleshed out, so it does leave room for me to add in stuff on the map as needed. Takes away a tad from the originality aspect, but it's not too big an issue.
http://donjon.bin.sh/world/
That thing has saved my buns many a time as I am an artist the equivalent of a 5 year old.
Take one of those and play with the specifics, you can then put it into photoshop and add labels or settlements.
Hope this helps!
An interesting toy, though luck seems to be part of getting a decent map.
Below is a link to ProFantasy Software, they make Campaign Cartographer 3 and other map making products. They are a bit pricey but if you can afford them they are really good. If you do go this route I would highly recommend going to YouTube or through their site to watch the videos as the software is kinda complex at first but once you get the basics down you can make some really nice maps pretty easily.
http://www.profantasy.com/products/cc3.asp
That program looks gorgeous, but as you said, it is a tad bit expensive. I'll definitely keep that in mind though.
In the past I've just used all sorts of things as maps.
- There are plenty of "world maps" in fantasy books.
- I've also just taken continents like Africa, Australia, south America and flipped them on their sides.
- Place mats at dinners often have local maps that I trace over and co-opt.
- small island like puerto rico or madagascar can be used to represent continents or much larger land masses.
- If you have a copy of Civilization (old video game) you can randomly generate maps and use screen capture to get a digital copy.
- Also a number of web pages have cartography tools you can make use of.
A piece of tracing paper is all you really need to copy a map. If it's not exact it doesn't really matter.