WIP: Scalechanged Legacy - Critiques, comments, and advice sought

Attached is my first serious attempt at working on a world I may keep.

Little has been done so far; mainly the removal of many of the small sea-level "holes" in the coasts. I wanted to ask those more experienced cartographers out there if this globe looked viable for use as a fantasy world? I plan on plotting out currents and tradewinds, etc, in order to work out for myself where the climate zones would be.

What I'm looking for, before committing much more work to it, is whether this world has anything going for it that would make it difficult to use/worldbuild on.

Design conceits: I intend to use this for a Sword & Sorcery-themed D&D setting. I want a large amount of land, with little to nothing out in the seas. I definitely want a lot of temperate to tropical coast though, as I intend to have some coastal dwellers. As for environments, I want deserts, scrub, tundra, jungle, forest, mountains, and grassland. I want people to range from the great frozen north all the way to to the tropics, but everywhere should be "rough" to live in, as society isn't as advanced as a typical D&D game.

Woof, that was a lot, I apologize.

Any notes, comments, or advice on how the world is formed, whether it's viable as an ecosystem, and any interesting areas and what you might think to find there are welcome and appreciated. (I should have just said this first!)

Daisho
scl1.zip 472.3K

Comments

  • RalfRalf Administrator, ProFantasy 🖼️ 18 images Mapmaker
    edited January 2020
    Let me add a screenshot to this thread, so people can see the map more readily. Downloading an unknown zip from the web is always a bit fraught. ;)

    Personally I think the landmasses could use a little more variety, they are a bit "blobby". Have you tried a different fractal function for the world settings?

    But if you like the shape, they are certainly totally functional. Most interesting to me geographically seems to be the strait between the left and center continents and the surrounding lands.
    scl1.png 947.4K
  • Thanks Ralf.

    I apologize to anyone worried about the zip file. The forum wouldn't let me upload a .ftw file. I wanted to include both the .ftw and a screenshot, however it seems I can only upload one file per post. I'm not sure how other have done multiple screenshots in a single post before, but I'd love to learn.

    As for the world, the blobbiness is exactly what I was somewhat concerned about. I really like the straights, as you mentioned, but I want the lands to be "interesting". I may start over.
  • You can upload 3 per post.

    After you make a post with an image or zip.

    Click on edit, and browse to another one.

    Click add your comments.
  • In FT3, I would also use raise and lower altitude to make the mountains less blobby, and more along one coastline. Also add more island chains.
  • New and improved (not the same map as before).

    Still very early in the work, but I'm curious about the island in the southeast. I don't want it to block currents into and out of the inner sea too much. Any thoughts? Is it good where it is?

    As always, I appreciate everyone in this community!
  • Hmm... I'm not an ocean current understander person; however.

    The deep to the south of that island. There could be cold water plunging into it which could pull warm water from east of it, or through the narrows between the small island and the large continent.

    Or, there is a roughly circulr current on the surface in the large area south of that large continent. And water gets sucked in via the narrows or out fomr the deeps area to the south of the small island.

    Figuring out where the ocean rivers, cold, cool, warm, and hot, can determine where the flow goes,

    Note: my game world has currents that may not make sense in an oceanographic sense, but they create problems/fixes for certain nations. Which is more important to me.
  • 2 months later
  • edited April 2020
    I'm still working on a globe map for my D&D setting, and would like any thoughts, advice, criticism, etc from the awesome mappers here.

    My first few attempts didn't work out like I'd wanted, and I'm trying again. ;-)

    I used FT3, found a world with a range of mountains I kind of liked, and then went to town with the Raise/Lower Offset tools. I have not done any more editing/tool work than basic shape at the moment, and will only be using this map to gain outlines/topography for use in CC3+.

    The globe is 8000 miles in diameter (earth-sized), and I was going for a Pangaea-like continent with a wide Mediterranean-esque inner sea that touches on many climate zones.

    I have not started applying climate zones to it yet, but am hoping to get a wide variety to include extremes of hot deserts and tundra/icecaps.

    Any thoughts or suggestions, tips or criticisms?
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 39 images Cartographer
    How are you intending to progress from this stage - straight to CC3 and into mapping, or are you going to add rivers and such?
  • Posted By: LoopysueHow are you intending to progress from this stage - straight to CC3 and into mapping, or are you going to add rivers and such?
    That is a really good question. Every time I've tried to work through the process and get rivers, it's ended up with all kids of bad results. I'm sure it's me not doing it right, but it makes me sad when I get invested in a map and then it falls apart.

    What I want (eventually) is a globe I can use to pick places on and map in CC3+. I have several nations/species that I want to populate, with the majority of them being huddled around the inner sea.

    I'm thinking maybe the thing is just too darned big, but it's hard to translate "I need space to put stuff" into realistic continents at this scale, for me anyways.

    (Sorry. That reply kind of rambled, but I'm going to leave it in place...)
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 39 images Cartographer
    Ok. I know it means spending money, but for the direction you seem to be wanting to go I would like to recommend the 2019 Cartographer's Annual - November issue - The One Day Worldbuilder.

    I always feel a bit odd recommending it because I wrote it, and I'm not the trumpet-blowing sort!

    However, It will take you through the entire process of developing an FT3 world with some nice erosion and rivers, and show you how to generate either a nice image of your world or a topographical vector map of it in CC3.

    This is it, here: https://www.profantasy.com/annual/2019/2019-cartographers-annual.html#November

    It may be that you feel this is not the right direction after all, but we can still help here on the forum :)
  • Sue, plug your work! You should absolutely be proud of it!

    Thanks for the recommendation. I had been holding off on the Annuals because of dumb reasons (I haven't worked through all the essentials and tome for the pieces I've bought yet, and I haven't yet bought Cosmographer, which weirdly feels incomplete), but I'm going to put those aside and buy that annual.

    More here when next I map. ;-)
  • 29 days later
  • Would anyone be willing/able to provide some guidance on my currents/gyres? I am going for a relatively simple approach, following the advice of Artifexian from YouTube, but there's a few areas I'm not sure I have right, and a few I'm not even sure how to approach. Any advice would be welcomed!

    (P.S.: Ignore the filename, I always use borrowed names until I know what I'm calling it myself)
  • LoopysueLoopysue ProFantasy 🖼️ 39 images Cartographer
    Think of water draining down a bath plughole. The bath is rectangular, but the powerful current around the plughole is circular and not rectangular like the bath. Similarly, even though your ocean basins have angles the ocean currents are going to tend away from the corners where there is little or no flow potential.

    Something that might help is the famous Climate Cookbook by Geoff Eddy: https://astrographer.wordpress.com/bookshelf/geoff-eddys-climate-cookbook/
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