Completed Ytarria Hex map with terrain added

[darebear]

Finished my first version of Ytarria with terrain features added. I considered using different colors for the climate in the Muslim lands. Maybe on my second version. I assumed all areas of Ytarria are at least lightly wooded, except for the Djinn lands and the Great Desert. The wooded areas are exceptionally heavily forested. Hills and mountains have flora depending on the needs of your campaign.

Newest map is at the bottom of the blog entry.

https://darebearsminiemporium.blogsp...f-ytarria.html

[Pursuivant]

Very nice!

[Magic_Octopus]

This is awesome! Thank you very much for sharing. I appreciate your hard work.

[darebear]

Your welcome fellas. My intention is to add different terrain types such as rocky desert, badlands, steppe, stuff like that. Likely some named locations too for adventures.
You can check back periodically to see what I have added. It is very much a work in progress.

[acrosome]

Awesome, and something that I have long looked for. My own attempts got aborted in boredom.

I know that you said it's a work-in-progress, but just to be sure:

I think that you are missing some hills. Western Al-Wazif, the Cardien/Hazi border, and the island in Keyhole Bay stand out. I think that there may have been a supplement that put some hills near the Wazifi coast, too?

And I could be completely wrong but it sort of feels like southern Araterre and especially Bilit Island should be mostly tropical forest, doesn't it?

A suggestion: maybe use the widely-accepted three-dots symbol for ruins? It looks like the therefore sign- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therefore_sign.

A critique: it is difficult to differentiate national borders from rivers. The Megalan/Caithness and Cardien/Hazi borders are particular examples.

Also, I don't think that the door symbol for the dwarven halls works well. Either the usual town dot or something that looks like a cave mouth might be better.

Are you familiar with CartographersGuild.com? https://www.cartographersguild.com/content.php
I find it to be an invaluable source.

[darebear]

I agree with your critique. Unfortunately, I did not produce the original hex map template. Another fella did. The cities, rivers and borders are part of his document. So, I basically have to work with what I am given.

The islands are not done yet. I am working with Inkscape and generally learning as I go. For terrain, I consider the main map in the Banestorm book a very high level overview..basically what scribes think they know. I have been adding swamps, moors, light hills, badlands, oasis, forests, plateaus and other features as I see fit. My finished map will be far more detailed than what is presented. The continent is huge and there is plenty of room for all kinds of biomes which are not represented on the map.

For example in al-Haz I have added oasis, hills, arid plains, coastal jungles, a rocky/sandy desert near the al-Wazif border (with the caravan route going through it), and badlands areas for all manner of bandits and monsters to reside.

[sinleqiunnini]

Originally Posted by acrosome

A critique: it is difficult to differentiate national borders from rivers. The Megalan/Caithness and Cardien/Hazi borders are particular examples.

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.

Also, I don't think that the door symbol for the dwarven halls works well. Either the usual town dot or something that looks like a cave mouth might be better.

Easily changeable on my end by replacing the symbol with a custom svg - but I'm pretty sure I just wanted the darn thing to be done and didn't much want to faff about with non-stock symbology. I also think that at the time I had recently been working on an interactive webmap showing all the town locations in Daggerfall territory in TES II (and also one for Greyhawk's Flanaess) and the service there wouldn't allow me to import custom ones so I believe I decided to play within those constraints.

[KarlKost]

Hey, for anyone wanting to create fantasy maps for plays, I found this online one that is absolute fantastic. It has everything anyone could ever want an then some. You'll have details that you didnt even ask for! Im in absolute awe about it, check it out, I hope it can help

https://azgaar.github.io/Fantasy-Map-Generator/

[robertsconley]

Originally Posted by KarlKost

Hey, for anyone wanting to create fantasy maps for plays, I found this online one that is absolute fantastic. It has everything anyone could ever want an then some. You'll have details that you didnt even ask for! Im in absolute awe about it, check it out, I hope it can help

https://azgaar.github.io/Fantasy-Map-Generator/

I used this to play around with the climate zones of my Majestic Fantasy Realms. You can upload a height map of your setting and play around with various parameters.

[darebear]

Thanks Robert. I will look at those files.

Played around with the major rivers and Cardiel today. Cardiel is one of my favorite locations: a crossroads with lots of potential for both land and sea adventures. The landscape IMO is uninspiring though. The country is huge but barely populated, with most of it being featureless plains. Still need to add trails and some other minor sites of interest. Every land needs abandoned castles, wizards towers and other mysterious locations which call out for a visit. The named geographic locations actually have write ups about them, I will have to put them up with the map sometime.

Now that I know what I am doing It is likely I will start on my "canon" map later this week.

I am replacing the individual hex coloring on my first map where possible. Sadly a lot of the terrain is now part of the underlying image, so I cannot replace all of it. Cardiel, al-Wazif and al-Haz are converted to the format that I will be using in the future though.