working from smaller to bigger

eleran

I am going to be starting a 4e D&D campaign when the books are released. I started working on a world beginng with the starting town and going out from there to a territory (part of a larger continent.

I knwo you can take a bigger map, grab a small piece of it and make its own map from there, but can you go the other way. Is there a way to map a bigger map that contains the smaller area I already have mapped out. Or do I need to make a continent sized map and draw in the area by hand I already have mapped out?

Monsen

There are several ways to do this.

You can start a new map with a bigger template, then just copy the elements you need from the map to the clipboard, and past it into the larger template, then draw the rest of your continent around it. Note that a map of a small area usually contain more detail than you would want to have on the larger map, so you need to be selective in what you copy.

Other way around is to just make a copy of the map file itself under a new name, then edit this map, delete the map border, and elements you don't need on the larger map, draw in new map borders at the appropriate location, and proceed to draw the rest of the map. You can probably wait with drawing the map borders until you know exactly how large the map will turn out if you wish, but until you add something on the map border layer, you won't benefit from the snap to border functions of many of the drawing tools.

Depending on how much detail the original map held, you may wish to just draw this area anew on the larger map though

eleran

OK, thanks for the suggestions. I will take those under advisements when it becomes time to expand the mapped area.

JimP

I make a set of maps whose edges match. Any example of this would be my world all pages.

My starting nation of Trillolara is an example.

surface map with Trillolara on it, the world all page with it on there.

I have a tutorial on how I added the smaller maps together so they would match.

Of course, if you want one large map, and a series of smaller maps, then my method wont be as useful to you.