Completed Ytarria Hex map with terrain added

[darebear]

Indeed you are correct. The hexes in Inkscape are detected as individual-fillable features. The original map had some terrain features delineated via outlines (The Great Desert, The Great Forest, ect). Inkscape is able to either fill in full or partial hexes depending on where those outlines are. The map is a mishmash of fill styles. Not the best approach for sure. God forgive me, but I originally started the map in Microsoft Paint before I started working with the file in Inkscape.

The map is my first attempt at this sort of thing (electronic map making). I really did not have a plan for it...I am fumbling along trying to learn to use the program. I could have (if I had known at the time) used the drawing tool in the program to outline the various forests, hills and other features rather than fill in hexes one by one. That would make the map more aesthetically pleasing and would have been a hell of a lot quicker.

I have CC3 and for me it is an impossible beast to learn.

Eventually I will redo this thing from scratch, especially now that I have a better understanding of what I am doing.

[Joxer]

Originally Posted by sinleqiunnini

As I recall, this was an artifact of two things - that I chose to represent the countries in QGIS as polygons and not polylines and my wanting to keep the map BW+Printer Friendly. In retrospect, I could have converted the countries to polylines pretty easily and done cleanup, but I didn't.

There are shapefiles and/or geotiff files for those maps available? I am usig QGIS to relate the different maps in my Banestorm campaign. Started with Caithness map in the sourcebook and added other maps (Harkwood and other custom locations).
Just added the Ytarria map OP shared, but would love to have the original source.

Thanks and congratulations for the great job!

[darebear]

sinleqiunnini,

Could you do a version of the map which removes the borders (national and the great forest and the great desert)?

My original world of choice, since 1981, was D&Ds Mystara (Aka The Known World), a single map of one page at 24 miles per hex. Ytarria is huge compared to that campaign setting. Cardiel, al-Haz and al-Wazif are larger than that setting, and most of the land is just empty plains and a few hills. You could run a game in the Nomad Lands and never run out of things to do or see; at 500 square miles per hex the place is simply huge for folks on foot to traverse and explore.

Megalos was always appealing to me as a place to have a campaign. I need to work on that section of the map a little more.
The original file sinleqiunnini created is on my blog.

[Pursuivant]

I'd argue against trying to put too much detail into these maps. First of all, the scale is too big for fine detail. Second, ambiguity allows for GM creativity in placing things like towns and relatively fine-scale terrain like minor hydrological features and smaller areas of woods and hills.

[darebear]

I think many would agree with you. For myself, one of the main things which drives adventure ideas for me is to be able to picture the game world in my mind. Physically. The geography, lay of the land, ect. For whatever reason, that spurs my creative juices.

The main issue I had with Ytarria is that the map was basically blank. Featureless land on a macro scale. For some, that is not an impediment to their creativity. For me, it is crippling. In any case my intention is not to clog the map. Just to add some features which might be of interest to Players and GMs alike. I am slowly learning how to use Inkscape properly. When it is printed out on a color laser printer at 1200 DPI it actually does not look too shabby. Even with the varying terrain styles I was forced to use and my overall incompetence with graphics programs.

Added the missing pine forests which predominate the land in Northern Megalos, national borders and made some changes to the rivers and lakes..to help them stand out better. Added farmlands to Caithness, Cardiel, al-Haz and al-Wazif. Still have to finish the southern islands. Lost jungle temples, pirates, giant apes and cannibal Halfings abound.

I need to put a hard to reach plateau somewhere. Any suggestions? Thinking of making the Blackwoods bigger too...planting more trees eastwards towards Lake Acheron, maybe with a small mountain range too. Thoughts?

That being said, if anyone had ideas for terrain features or other things they would like to see incorporated on the map feel free to suggest.

[sinleqiunnini]

Originally Posted by Joxer

There are shapefiles and/or geotiff files for those maps available? I am usig QGIS to relate the different maps in my Banestorm campaign. Started with Caithness map in the sourcebook and added other maps (Harkwood and other custom locations).

https://www.mediafire.com/file/ct21i...files.zip/file

I didn't do any cleanup before zipping the folder; sorry in advance for any typos in the data or any issues with the polygons.

Cheers! Let me know if you do anything cool with them!

Originally Posted by darebear

Could you do a version of the map which removes the borders (national and the great forest and the great desert)?

https://www.deviantart.com/sinleqiun...lank-947130050

https://www.deviantart.com/sinleqiun...lank-947130060

I also DMed those links to you, but they didn't show up in my sent folder so I don't know if they actually sent. Hope you have fun with them!

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by darebear

Thinking of making the Blackwoods bigger too...planting more trees eastwards towards Lake Acheron, maybe with a small mountain range too.

IIRC, the Blackwoods is expanding due to Dark Elf activity, so full extent of the forest might depend on year. Remember, the GURPS 3E fantasy supplement was released in the 1980s, and GURPS Banestorm was released about 20 years later. Lots of events happened in the interim, any discrepancies in forest size might be intentional rather than being mistakes.

I'd be conservative with adding too much terrain to the map, since it's easier for GMs to add terrain hexes than remove them.

[darebear]

Sinle was kind enough to send me a blank version of the main map. My intention is to do a generic version, using that as my canvass. I am confident that I can produce something that avoids the blocky hex version that I was doing, which could increase the aesthetic appeal.

For the moment, I am still playing around, trying new Inkscape features (there are a zillion) while producing a map that is more interesting to myself personally than what is in the sourcebook.

[robertsconley]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

I'd argue against trying to put too much detail into these maps. First of all, the scale is too big for fine detail.

Unless you figured out how to draw mega hex grids at scale. ;)

[Joxer]

Originally Posted by sinleqiunnini

https://www.mediafire.com/file/ct21i...files.zip/file

I didn't do any cleanup before zipping the folder; sorry in advance for any typos in the data or any issues with the polygons.

Cheers! Let me know if you do anything cool with them!

Thank you for sharing! That's exactly what I was looking for!