Fenlon Style Great Lakes Inspired Region
I'm in the process of remapping the local region for my Adventurer Conqueror King (ACKS) game. Having a strong political/economic component, I made my first pass using Hexographer, with an idea of having some precise counts of hexes for various domains.
However, being a map geek, I found I really wanted something which also "looked pretty". I took a PNG of my hex map and imported it into CC3 and did a rough trace - I didn't worry about every little bend but wanted to make sure that the overall setup was preserved (i.e. be "good enough" for Classical/Medieval margins of error).
It's still in progress -- I've got the main features laid out and also have the locations we've used for adventure thus far. I've also overlaid a hex grid (not shown) to allow for hex-crawl.
The environment is inspired by the Great Lakes region of North America - specifically the Niagara Falls region. I went through the various annuals to see what would give, in my opinion, the greatest portrayal of something akin to the NIagara Escarpment and the Fenlon style was clearly the best - I always liked the way Peter Fenlon portrayed geography in his MERP maps.
You'll see one geographic oddity - there is a fairly straight river which branches off from a lake but is not the outflow river. This is intentional -and isn't a case of a lake with two outflows - it actually isn't a river but a canal built centuries ago in the golden age of the failing Corrin Empire which now rules this area only in name. This allows traffic on these Great Lakes to bypass the Escarpment and travel from deep inland (to the west of this map) to the core of the Empire and the seas beyond (to the south of this map).
I'm reasonably pleased with the result, though I'm not certain about the copses of trees I have littered about nor the effect of having a river cut its way through forests - I might try remapping those with the river breaking up adjacent blocks of forest.
Edit - I can't seem to attach the picture - you can find it here -
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0ByV6XZ08QOdCekVoSlBWTTJ0Ym8/edit?usp=sharing
However, being a map geek, I found I really wanted something which also "looked pretty". I took a PNG of my hex map and imported it into CC3 and did a rough trace - I didn't worry about every little bend but wanted to make sure that the overall setup was preserved (i.e. be "good enough" for Classical/Medieval margins of error).
It's still in progress -- I've got the main features laid out and also have the locations we've used for adventure thus far. I've also overlaid a hex grid (not shown) to allow for hex-crawl.
The environment is inspired by the Great Lakes region of North America - specifically the Niagara Falls region. I went through the various annuals to see what would give, in my opinion, the greatest portrayal of something akin to the NIagara Escarpment and the Fenlon style was clearly the best - I always liked the way Peter Fenlon portrayed geography in his MERP maps.
You'll see one geographic oddity - there is a fairly straight river which branches off from a lake but is not the outflow river. This is intentional -and isn't a case of a lake with two outflows - it actually isn't a river but a canal built centuries ago in the golden age of the failing Corrin Empire which now rules this area only in name. This allows traffic on these Great Lakes to bypass the Escarpment and travel from deep inland (to the west of this map) to the core of the Empire and the seas beyond (to the south of this map).
I'm reasonably pleased with the result, though I'm not certain about the copses of trees I have littered about nor the effect of having a river cut its way through forests - I might try remapping those with the river breaking up adjacent blocks of forest.
Edit - I can't seem to attach the picture - you can find it here -
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0ByV6XZ08QOdCekVoSlBWTTJ0Ym8/edit?usp=sharing
Comments
Was going to comment on the lake with the two rivers till I read your explanation :-)
https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/Ae6Bftm82PtFzgcZnT3D2qCotp_qSWKgXm0Mt2odZeSHeOQzOJKjVpGm2eqWMgbENg1F2iYEp7Y In this particular case I've added the resizing parameters to the "img src" code so that it resizes (width="800" height="600") and fits on the page better. Clicking on the image should take the user to the original picture of the correct size.
You might want to take a look at the posting guidelines for the forum which has examples on how to link to your maps, and the proper "etiquette" to keep the maps at an appropriate size.
Hope that helps.
Nice map, well done.