Thoughts? How could i improve the map?

inkarnate

Oh, is this a map rate thread? Alright then. My map is shit and I know it's shit, can someone explain why it's shit and how to make it not-shit?

It's honestly not that terrible. I feel like the Mountains should be where the hills are and the Mountains to the left of the steppes should be hills.

By making it more like this

Help please god

I.....what?

i'm so sorry

What the hell is wrong with you people? Have you ever seen a map in your entire lives?

I guess the obvious problem is all the landbridges in the left. Why not just make Tadorar Toradaer an island?For the rest it doesn't look too bad in my opinion bruh.Personally I'd stretch the land out further to the east, rather than having the sea there it would just continue into the unknown? Looks a lot more aesthetic.

By the way, have you noticed that your map looks a lot like Haiti?

huh. thats pretty funny, i didnt notice. thanks

Thank you user

>too many rivers
No such thing

Too zoomed out for me to care about it at all, this seems to be a full PLANET with both poles and it's just 1024x768 with 22 cities and 3 labeled regions. There's only one possible thing that could make the map more empty and that's removing the labels/colors entirely to just have blank blobs. It's not far from being that already, and here's a protip, no one will care about a map that is just continent outlines with a few colors and geographical features here and there. For a map to be interesting it needs to have substance. There's no substance.

There is nothing to make me interested in any of the regions or cities. Scorching wastes? Wow, a desert! I can't infer anything from their positions/names/everything other than generic factions of which there seem to be FIVE. The red faction/region alone should have at least five political bodies.

Overall this map doesn't make me think at all, leading me to think that there is nothing to think about even with the details that aren't shown in the map. The names are unoriginal and can't see a shred of depth to any aspect of the world. There is nothing interesting about this map. If you want to improve it, start by not using the entire world to fit the wee handful of ideas you've had and instead concentrate those in one area, and zoom it in so you can actually put some meaningful work into those few ideas. Then you can expand it from there.

>The Endless Ice

Dope sounding name.

Why soo many windmills?

Also, how big is this supposed to be? I feel like the proportions are off.

That has stupid naming, and way too many rivers to be realistic.

Also manages to look tiny, and you're not even putting in towns and landmarks other than rivers?

Even for a river trading game, that'd be terrible.

2/10.

Rate the map my group has been using

>Rebels
>Having as much land as the Empire

How big is this world supposed to be?

Probably shouldn't call a place Ulysses due to the thousands of years of associations tied to that name.

It's not the whole world, just a region near the coast. It's about 4000 miles left to right

Well there's one river, and it flows to the sea. You're officially better than most worldbuilders

>4000 miles

Alright, valid criticism. Could you elaboraet on what you do with that map to make it better? I'm not opposed to trashing it all if neccessary, all I need to keep the campaign consistent is to keep the red area somewhat similar to what it is right now.

>4000 miles

Jesus fuck.

Great Lakes / 10

The Windmills are just representations of major farming areas. And yes, proportions are off for some things that I plan to fix as I add the details. As for size in canon it's supposed to take four days to get from Aria to that capital city to the west by walking.

Hi martin.

What do you mean?

Do me next senpai!

I've been working on this on an off for some time. I voluntarily avoided high peaks, I'll probably come back and add some more later.

I like it. Where did you make that map?

that is pretty

I followed a photoshop tutorial I found on the cartographer guild, I think I can find it if you want it. It's not fast work and, while not hard, it's time consuming. The map still has many sharp points I have to smooth out, but since it's layers upon layers upon layers it's becoming an hassle. Once I'm happy with the whole disposition I'll probably just flatten it and work out the kinks manually.

...

>incorporate fractal landforms
>think about the narrative your map is supposed to communicate
>less random looking distribution of high elevation areas
>don't clip island with lower image border
>less equidistant town placement
>don't use incarnate

There's enough substance on this one to actually discuss it so you've crossed that hurdle. In a physical/mechanical sense, the map is well made, clearly some hours of effort went into drawing and coloring it.

But with the names and bits of worldbuilding added, the nicely made map seems to just be an object to have things haphazardly thrown on with little care for the map itself, as if the map was made blank and then given to someone else who just needed a map to slap premade uninspired ideas onto. I don't see any synergy between the map and the worldbuilding/labels. They truly feel like they were made separately and then fitted together like forcibly jamming a circle through a square hole, it doesn't feel organic. This is the issue that randomly generated maps have, homemade maps are supposed to avoid that issue by having the content developed at the same time as the map so that they fit together. The purpose of the map being custom seems to have been defeated here.

The labels are the most lackluster part of it. You've opted for race=culture=region=faction, those things should not share borders. The factions and regions seem to be defined by the race that inhabits them which is a poor way of establishing diversity or vastness. It's cheap. None of the names are good. "My character is from Human Empire", "We received a letter from Land Overseas", "We are headed to the Dwarven Tunnels". What are these "warring kingdoms"? Are they so obsessed with killing eachother that the region is now called Warring Kingdoms rather than by the individual kingdoms? Is the world so strictly divided into ethnostates that "Human Empire" means anything? Where are the other human empires? Do the non-human races serve a purpose other than familiarity and variety? The brazen emptiness of the names leaves the world empty.

It's a well-made map that seems wholly unimportant to the world it contains, and the world it contains doesn't seem to have anything notable.

and I thought my map porn was bad

The US is like 50,000 miles across dude

the names are mostly placeholders. I've actually come to the map the other way around, let me explain it a bit.

The idea is that in the northern continent there is a big human empire (uninteresting, I don't care) bordering with the free lands, lands once belonging to the empire and lost to wars or secessions, lands becoming more roughe furhter you travel from the empire. The warring kingdoms are just like that, a coalition of kingdoms/barony/states in constant change, figthin each other and toppling power. It's not all war all the time, of course, but it's not so stable as to allow one power to topple the others.

the human empire sent expeditions in the past to colonize the southern continent, triggering contact with gonlin, elves (and outshoot of those races) and the aventi. A big bunch of shit happens in between, and now there's a mad-maxesque horde of blood fanatics around "the tiranny" living in a forgotten ruin of a giant city. The land overseas are colonies, in a state similar to that of the US before revolution. Elfes are lythe motherfucker living in a deadly jungle, who managed to teach themselves magic and took to the sky. Orcs are elemental-industry driven explorer and seafarers. I realize this may sound trite but I think it sounds good.

The fucking Earth is 12,000 km across my man.

rate my fap material

A friendly user gave me some good constructive criticism yesterday, so I changed stuff up a bit and tidied it up somewhat, and expanded it. Maybe it has even become a bit crowded...
Still, I would like to know what is good and bad in its current state.

TL;DR R8&H8

>rivers going from a mountain to a lake when the sea is right there
That said, looks pretty comfy, would locate humble beginnings in/10

you fuckin' what?

rate my WIP map please it's my second one

this is my first btw

This is a nice one. It's at a cozy scale rather than being a huge world with inappropriately few labels. The style of it is nice, although I'm not a fan of the font, it's too hard to read. At this small scale I would add more details, especially roads (those become very important when the map is zoomed enough to see villages).

I'm getting the vibe of a small-scale world with humble events, no massive cataclysms or geopolitical maneuvering, just petty feuds, normal life, and adventures. The magic seems to be low and dark, maybe more folklorish than the kind of magic that was made for gaming (that some people try to put into serious worldbuilding). Is it a late Dark Age/Early Medieval setting with an Anglo-Saxon theme?

seems very German, I like that. The names are pretty realistic if you know how things are named IRL.

>Flussheim = River Home
>Kirchheim = Church Home
>Reinburg = Pure(?) castle

the art itself looks really good, and the mountain range looks real in a way that mine never seem to.

Alright, Ill throw my hat into the ring. This is meant to be a vague "mappa mundi" type affair. This is the Bronze Age after all, so proper maps as we know them arnt really a thing.

>Fahrt

Honestly it's being used to run a generic fantasy hack and slash. I just liked the aesthetic. That's not to say that it WONT be used for something more substantial. I have things planned for even the generic hack and slash game for it to not be generic.

What you guys think of my map?

...

Incarnate's assets doesn't suit your setting at all.

any advice?

>Bath
>Nelson
>Prince Edward

user did you just look around the room and give all your villages the names of things you saw?

Its still a work in progress. Any body got ideas for town/village names.

>those tolkienesque mountain ranges

it‘s 40k km, the moon is around 10k

Where the hell are you guys getting all of these map editing programs?! These seem awesome.

I forgot I still need to add at least rivers. I have them planned this was just a transfer of another map.
Also it's like 22MB so I had to take a screenshot.

inkarnate.com/
you don't even have to download anything

God I miss when Inkarnate wasn't shit.

why so many damn square-shaped landmasses?

What was it like?

Pretty good, i like the scaled down style.

what software did you use to make this?

Advice on an arctic hell (think the warp if it snowed)?

I drew it in GIMP.

Man, why did the devs JUST Inkarnate so fucking hard?

That looks fantastic. What tool?

Someone, somewhen, took the time and effort to make this map.
I sincerely hope their goal was shitposting, because otherwise, I have no earthly idea what the fucking point would be.

>Goochland
Real mature.

Go back to /v/ and never try to worldbuild again.

>landmass has a penis
Come back when you're willing to take this seriously.

You have no idea how rivers work.

Your names are boring and uninteresting.

Post an excerpt from your "novel", I bet it's garbage.

mirin hard

fuck inkarnate

fuck hexes tooo

what tool is this?

White and red?

That's a toilet, mate.

I always have at least one village named Logton. Mostly because the name sounds so cozy

docs.google.com/document/d/13NSIFm0w56oTbdG2C_D07Fn0hnilX0oleTacNyEGk10

How do I fare oh mighty cartographers of Veeky Forums

The dividing mountains don't make much sense. You should probably just do a channel or something like the Iberian Peninsula. Also if you're going to make terrain vary based on it being the leeward or windward side of a mountain, be consistent in it

What should be on the leeward side, and what should be on the windward side? I am a total noob at map making

Windward gets the rain, so more rivers and greenry would be on that side. Leeward gets next to none, so it would be pretty arid unless it was by other water sources

I'm out of the loop, what happened to Inkarnate?

I was trying to make a not!europe map with roughly the same climate, so and suggestion on how to achieve that with how the map currently looks

dude it's fine to base it off of real geography, but you can keep it if you want, but south of that should probably have more rivers, or where you DO have the rivers, make it less arid, more Oasisey if that makes sense. just don't panic about it being like irl places, considering all the shenanigans that happened, I doubt players will be saying "Hmm this island here seems reminiscent of the location of the Rock of Gibraltar within the Mediterranean region" while they're busy trying to figure out how to save the Paladin from marrying the troll because he accidentally said "I love this" out loud within 50 feet of her and he's too autistic and honorable to tell her what really happened

Europe has 0 deserts, so have the Leeward side be close to a sea that supplies it with water.

Yeah I suppose I can make it more green around the rivers to make it less wasteland-ish

I know....