That is, if I can figure out how to upload the attachment and actually, you know... attach it!:confused: :mad:


EDIT::: I've ressurected this rather than repost the map and create redundancy. THe map is in post 21, sorry. Also, this should be in design and development, but back in the day, when I made this thread, well....

In case you are curious, the area I have been elaborating on today is the patch of 'grasslands' just east of the massive forest that occupies a huge chunk of the northern continent.  the map is obviously a work in progress, I hope to have a better version up within a few weeks, depending.

Everything has been on standby on this project for a couple of months as life overwhelmed me and stifled my creative urges.  The eastern Savannah/Pepper Plains (THAT name seems goofy as hell) wound up being the unintended focus of my RQ campaign some months back thus the extra attention.  I will need to fact check some of the minor details (like names...) later.

Neat, a bit sparse. I think, but it will grow.

Nice looking map. What did you use to make it?

I hired someone. We are supposed to meet about the empty spaces and start popping cities and ruins and stuff on it.  My players are horribly horribly spoiled....

I like it. It's just the right size to accommodate all sorts of adventures indefinitely, while hinting of things beyond...

Nice use of water. Many people forget the topographical importance of water. It's good for political & geographic boundaries, as well. How do the two large continents interact? I don't know, but it's bound to be interesting.

It's also nice when geographical features by themselves imply setting features. A valley in the midst of a massive mountain range has just got to contain something mysterious and isolated.

Have fun.

Well, the southern continent is home to the Tenebrian Empire, which several hundred years ago tried to invade the northern continent. They got quite far before being stopped, but the difficulty of trying to maintain control over their vast territory caused them irreperable harm. The Tenebrian Empire is a shadow of it's former self, but teh eastern side of the northern continent is still heavily influenced by the Empire, with several warring states each calling themselves 'The Tenebrian Kingdom'...

Ironically the stuff I've been talking about today, in the Eastern Savannahs is also the location of the biggest and bloodiest battles of that Era. While the human and orcish tribes of the Savannah themselves were no match for the might of the Tenebrian's, that was where the Siti Elves decided to draw a line in the... well... grass and say 'Enough'... though their motivations remain unclear given that their 'nation' was more than adequately protected by the woods... perhaps they feared the hungry armies would carve the woods around them to kindling?

There are severe tensions in the far north along the border of the self proclaimed Tenebrian Kingdoms, where their advance was slowed at the cost of an entire culture as the Spadans turned their small city-state into a nation totally dedicated to warfare. Centuries later the Spadans still fight a war they could never win, and refused to lose...

Hrm... now the Northern 'kingdoms' on teh West coast are acendant, though the mighty Nornsan Empire ended ages ago, and are dominating the southern continent by trade and superior magics in alchemy and engineering....

Of course, both continents have huge chunks of barely used territory, that forest, for example, is easily the size of Europe, and its counterpart in the south (the Sea of Grass) is larger still and virtually unused except for a few nomadic tribes and even fewer isolationist castles of the so called 'Fortress Elves'.

Sounds very interesting. How did I know the southern continent housed an old empire? It's just intuitive, I guess.

The scale is obviously bigger than I thought, but loads of "empty" space can make up for that and keep it from getting too busy. And the history you mentioned is appealing in that it gives some cultural background to present states and tensions, while not overloading the reader/player with millennia of minutiae. But then I'm biased against massive timelines, much preferring a region's history to have one or two iconic past events or eras (whose effects on the present are immediately relevant) rather than some interminable and irrelevant Roster of Happenings. Invasion & colonization are definitely in the former category.

And kudos for the "Tenebrian kingdoms." Many modern fantasists like to portray everybody rebelling against empires and underestimate the tendency of peoples to emulate them and even to claim to be their successors. It's always richer and more "believable" when things are complex instead of black-&-white.

Well, the Tenebrian Empire is only a century or so older than the Nornsan Empire from, well, the north. Of course, the Tenebrian Empire also outlasted the Nornsan so....

Analogs, and only roughly:

Tenebria is sort of Mongol/Han and Nornsa was very much a Charlemange analog, specifically Versilimatu, the founder.  Of course, neither is meant as an exact analog, just as Spada is not Sparta, the Reve are not Vikings... merely that I adopted the historically functional models when designing my made up cultures.

one thing I struggle with in laying this all out is both putting stuff all over the place but not actually filling up anything.  Ideally I set up JUST enough detail to inspire people to fill in their own corners while not leaving any area neglected enough to be functionally empty.

This is a newer map, not clean exactly since I made some notes on it, but that's bound to be pretty cool for you guys. The red square on the northern continent is where I've been working. That's the Eastern Savannah area, which looks pretty smallish on the map, but hey...

It took the characters in my campaign several months to travel by river to that region from the Eastern Coast... south portion of the eastern coast, but still...

Did the forum software delete my image? Damnit, this sticky thread is useless without the image!

Quote from: Spike;499635Did the forum software delete my image? Damnit, this sticky thread is useless without the image!

Save it as a PDF and attach it.

Well, i thought it was attached as a jpeg originally... but I can't see it now, hence the comment.

I'll see about re-attaching it... gah? twelve hours or so?

Upload it somewhere else, and then link to it. That's what actual normal people do around here.

RPGPundit

You do realize you are telling that to someone who was posting on this forum for almost a year before he got comfortable with the quote function, right?