I'm in the process of making my own campaign setting, but there's a problem. Like the title says, I suck at making maps. I try to draw some kind of land mass, but all I really know is "Okay, this city needs to be next to the ocean. Okay, this city needs to be next to a forest." I have no idea in my head of what a continent is supposed to look like. After drawing a "continent", I look at it and note that it looks like some kind of bastardized trapezoid or the like, and quickly toss it. I don't have an eye for making rivers, or forests, or deserts. Reading the GM guide makes me believe that anything I'd draw would be wrong on every account.
So for those of you who have your own homebrew worlds and feel as I do, how do you deal with the map situation?
What I've done with my homebrew world was to yoink a generic world map that didn't have any markings on them and adding cities and such to it.
My map of Avalon (my homebrew world) looks like I had an epileptic fit...But I drew two large continents and about 4-5 smaller ones, divvied the continents into 4 or 5 regions, put in a few islands, and called it a day. I have smaller maps for each region which I fill in as the players explore, filling in forests and mountains if they need to be known about, tossing in a town as needed and never caring much about scale. If I have moments, I add a few more details for later use.
As far as topography, mountains are lumps, forests are kiddie drawn Christmas trees, and rivers are two sorta parallel squiggly lines.
Bottom line: You're the GM, you know the map better than anyone else, you can explain it if it makes sense to you. It's not Pictionary and you're not being graded. So take it easy on yourself. A bastardized trapezoid can be a landmass :P
Taking someone else's map leaves a bad taste in my mouth, though I guess I need to get over that feeling. I suppose there's no real need to show them the map unless it comes up. For now just do the whole "You travel over the hills and forests, until you reach the city of -----". It's just that a map makes my world feel so much more real. Gives me a feeling like I know this world, every inch of it.
Why not start with your trapezoid and trim pieces away until you end up with something serviceable? It could be an island that your PCs are on. Just work outward and go a bit larger from what you've started with when you need to and as you grow more comfortable at drawing maps.
Edit: Grammatical corrections.
I googled and found this.
Map generator
That's definitely a possibility. I'll just draw it a few hundred times until I get something "not terrible". Maybe I will just use someone else's map until I make my own. I think my players would forgive me.
The only randomized tectonic generator I've seen is this one. I spent some time at the start of the year conversing with the author and he was able to add a number of features such as save/load. I was hoping he'd be able to add a way to draw in your own tectonic plates and set them lose, but unfortunately that was a good bit beyond the project scope.
At any rate, play around with it and after a few dozen tries, you should start to see a few intriguing worlds pop up. Note that if you see a setup with potential, save it BEFORE you initiate continental drift as there's no rewind option. Also when you start the drift, you'll want to do at least 10-20 steps at a time to get a good feel for how mountains and islands will build up and wash away (save rivers for last).
If you're looking for something prettier, then you can try Fractal Terrain 3. It's made by the same company that created Campaign Cartographer. While its landmasses are based on fractals instead of continental drift, it has excellent painting tools for creating realistic coastlines and mountains. The only reason I didn't end up using it much is because I already had an existing world map and was simply hoping to reverse engineer it. If I was trying to build a new world from scratch it would have been great.
Lastly, check out this thread which was started by a professional cartographer. He gives a LOT of good mapping tips and I even added a few of my own later on.
Hope this helps!
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lots of stuff
That program thus far looks AMAZING. Not pretty, but I can MAKE it pretty. That's not true at all, but definitely something to play around with. Thanks very much!
Glad some of those tools might help, and thanks for saying so. Be sure to let us know what you come up with. :)
What I've done with my homebrew world was to yoink a generic world map that didn't have any markings on them and adding cities and such to it.
I actually made rough cut-outs of the seven continents, rearranged them into a new organic-looking configuration, and then drew a map based on it. But then, my homebrew may or may not be a distantly futuristic Earth. :)
@Soldier Solidus, I was going to suggest drawing stuff like cloud forms for inspiration, but Laithoron's suggestions looks cool too.
I've used the free software at Hexographer.