This is the central region of the campaign world, tucked nicely between the Overlord of the Occident, the Empire of the East, the Necromaster Up North, and the Sultanates of the South. Between those various powers is a squabbly region that just can't get its act together. That's where the adventurers start.
Does anyone with a better eye for geography see anything that is obviously wrong with this map? Any opinions on how many active volcanoes I can get away with? Should the Littleass Swamp shoot fire and be home to Rodents Of Unusual Size? I'm thinking yes. Or possibly HELL YES!
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Any opinions on how many active volcanoes I can get away with?
ReplyDeleteAs many as are necessary. You named your world "Cinder" after all.
Should the Littleass Swamp shoot fire and be home to Rodents Of Unusual Size?
I think "hell yes" would be appropriate. Also, perhaps, "why do you even need to ask?"
Any towns or keeps in the area for a base of operations? Perhaps a nice little "free" city full of cutthroats and pirates on the coast a few miles away from the "starting dungeon"?
Any towns or keeps in the area for a base of operations? Perhaps a nice little "free" city full of cutthroats and pirates on the coast a few miles away from the "starting dungeon"?
ReplyDeleteOh, yeah. All that sort of stuff. Towns, villages, castles. This map was meant to just be the broad geographic features. I put the dungeon on the map because the campaign world is literally centered on the starting dungeon.
Littleass Swamp has fire-geysers - that implies that the area around there is volcanically active, at least...
ReplyDeleteYou probably don't want an active volcano in the middle of a forest - unless it is only active in the 'erupting a couple times a century' sense - due to the time it takes for trees to grow. Though a rain forest - or a forest of superfastgrowing trees that feed off of rich volcanic soil would probably be fine.
It is to be sincerely hoped that on the final map, the swamps retain their names of "Littleass" and "Bigass".
ReplyDeleteDoes anyone with a better eye for geography see anything that is obviously wrong with this map?
ReplyDeleteDo mean "wrong" as in "wrong" or "wrong" as in "not wrong enough?"
Because if you're asking what I think you're asking: why are you asking it? :)
River(s) don't drain the mountains.
ReplyDeleteNot much river without swamp to place cities on esp near ocean. No lakes. No river canyons for the exciting chase/combat while going through the rapids encounter.
Not enough volcanoes :) Need some geysery hotspring land like Iceland. I don't know what Cinder is all bout but it sounds like there should be some Plains of Ash somewhere.
If you want to have microgeysers in the middle of a forest, you can have microgeysers in the middle of a forest. Anybody complains, remind them they're not playing a geologist. :)
ReplyDeleteDon't worry too much about reality. In my opinion, the only thing thats good for is inspiration (in games anyway, reality is just fine by me for livin' in). If you're worried that players will balk at weirdness in the landscape, just remember the Halloween episode of Simpons with Xena: "Anytime you see something like that, a wizard did it."
ReplyDeleteThe haunted pine forest doesn't make sense where it at. It is right in the rain shadow of the mountains. This making a lot of assumption on what outside of the map so your milage may vary.
ReplyDeleteWhat I would do is curve the eastern range up towards the north so it running from the southwest to the northeast. The resulting gap between the mountains and coast fill with the pine forest.
Put in a mountain pass between the forest and the desert.
Also you may want to look at Wikipedia for information about the Deccan Traps and the Siberian Traps. If you take up my suggestion then the mountains will forming a slight semi circle. This could be a perfect place to setup a geologic trap. Which is basically an area of the crust that went entirely molten and later solidified.
Rivers flow from a higher elevation to a lower elevation. Your rivers seem to flow from west to southeast, they shoud flow from mountains and foothills to seas and oceans. It seems you have one river flowing from the west (left side of map) that branches out into a three course river delta. Judging by the appearant scale of the map based on the distance of mountains to shore to desert in the mountain range's rain shadow then your river coming form the west is going to be as big as the Mississippi, Amazon, Nile, Yellow, and Mekong rivers combined, very wide, deep and fast flowing, basically impassable. I would continue the mountains around behind the big forest (NW) then break the Bigass Swamp river and Littleass Swamp river off to far west river and swing them back around through the Big forset to start some where close to the new mountain arc you just extended. But YMMV, it's your game.
ReplyDeleteAs to the volcanos look up the Pacific Rim of Fire on wikipedia and you see that it has 450 volcanos in about 40,000km which works out to about one volcano per 88.5km (53 miles). The Pacific Rim of Fire is very active, I'd guess you could double the frequency of vocanos (1/25miles) but more than that might make the land seem more like Hell itself than a terrestial planet. (Sorry I didn't have this in my other comment) IMO
ReplyDeleteThe river pattern for the big ass swamp is ok. While it is true that rivers system look mostly like a tree with it trunk as the outlet. What many don't realize that given a broad shallow bed rivers will form a braided pattern instead. This forms the basis for pattern seen for swamp.
ReplyDeleteHowever for the little swamp, I would sever the river connection with the main river feeding the big swamp. I would have the river for the little swamp coming down south from the foothill then curve to the southeast before hitting the little swamp.
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ReplyDelete