I met Anne McCaffrey some years ago and she urged those in attendance to compile and keep a list of names which we could draw upon whenever we needed one. That practice has stuck with me all these years later, and I have lists of thousands of names I can use.

That's what I do, too. Unusual last names are good fodder for fantasy realm names of people or geographic places, though I sometimes tweak the spelling. I keep a notepad list on my phone that jot down names as I encounter them. Every so often, I paste the list into Excel where I can make notations when I use a name.

Thank you for the tip -- I will check out Fandom.com. I actually started my own wiki about my world of Adnati on my WordPress-powered website. I use a plugin called Yadawiki for the wiki functionality. The Religion section is the most developed, followed by Geoscience. (History so far covers ancient history but not so much "modern" history.) I have tons more plotted out in MS Word docs that have not yet made it onto the wiki, much of which would have to be kept private until players learn those elements of the world.

Now that I am finally starting to learn CC3+ and FT+ (after owning the software for about six years but being too intimidated to learn it), I can finally start doing some mapping. (I decided about six months ago to start watching the tutorials and surprise, surprise, learned so much more than I did on my own with the PDF manuals.)

I don't actually have any players at the moment. Just having fun worldbuilding. But I have a fully fleshed out concept of how the players will meet, the circumstances that get them into a group and kick-off the story, and the major elements (and end goal) of their campaign arc.

That’s beautiful!

no, I haven’t figured out how it will all piece together. I think it works well with Sue’s other styles — Marine Dungeons, Forest Trails, Creepy Crypts… But I really have to experiment and see.

Here are two samples with the full range of Solid Bitmaps 10 through 90, plus a solid black polygon. The first is Sue's first suggestion and the second adds her second tip.

Edge Fade, Inner - Edge Width 2.5, Inner Opacity 80, Outer Opacity 25

Edge Fade, Inner - Edge Width 2.5, Inner Opacity 80, Outer Opacity 25 plus Glow Radius bumped to 0.5

I think bumping the Glow radius to 0.5 is nice. And these are working nicely, so I don't think I will try importing other water fills to see if any of them work. I'm leaning towards Solid 90 because for my poor eyes at least, I really have to zoom in on the pure solid one to see the stonework behind the water.

Thank you for your help, Sue! Looking forward to plotting out my main city's sanitation system over the next few weeks. Sewers make for such great adventure options -- emergency exits when you're being besieged, or for plotting out heists. I imagine a lot of crime lords dump a lot of evidence (and bodies) in the sewers...

There were already separate threads seeking advice on the Parchment Maps and Jerion Shading approaches. I wanted to share a little about my technique for the Mike Schley style, including things that I would do differently next time.

I wanted to have some contours consistent with the other maps, so I opened the Jerion export and copied one of the contour areas onto the Schley map, just where the Jerion contour colors started to turn brown (I think around 5,000 or 7,000 feet in elevation). Playing with a technique that Ralf showed in the Jeriod shading demo, I moved that contour to a contour sheet and changed the fill to the Solid 10 fill. I added Edge Fade, Inner and Transparency effects to that sheet. I then created a second contour sheet with the same effects, and did the same thing with a somewhat higher elevation (I think it was around 11,000 feet in elevation). That worked well. I liked how it gave shading and depth without being too intense like a bevel effect would have done.

Here's what I did next that I would do differently next time. First, I look an even higher level of elevation and did the same thing. But instead of putting it on a contours sheet with a Solid 10 fill, I put it on a Land Features Hills Background sheet and changed it to the Hills Background fill style. I also added a Transparency effect to that sheet. And then I did the same with an even higher elevation, putting it on a Land Features Mountain Background and changing the fill style to the Mountain Background fill. At this point, the file got massively big. I think it had a lot of nodes to contend with. Next time I try this approach, I might still do the two Solid 10 contour imports, but instead of also importing contour lines for the hills and mountains, I will draw them on using a JPG image of the original export as a rough guide for where to draw them.

Here are a few zoomed in maps in the Jerion shading style:

I have been looking forward to seeing what you do since you first claimed Elkton.

Also: DD4 things! Squeeee!

Per Quenten's suggestion, I have been playing with the Line Styles for the roads. I didn't try creating a custom one, but I did try some of the other presets, and they didn't really work. I also tried checking the Paper Scale checkbox, and that had weird effects when I zoomed in.

Here's an attempt that sets the roads to be solid and leaves the guided routes as dotted lines. I like that it makes it a bit clearer which ones are actual roads. I will also put it in my WIP gallery to make it easier to zoom in. Thoughts?

I agree with Kertis. I don’t think the mountains need to pop. The beauty in this map is in its subtlety. It’s lovely. You could slightly darken them if you wanted, but I think they would well as they are.

Ralf did a Live video where he designed crenellations using a line style. (Has some odd effects when drawing circular crenellations on a round tower, though.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnjFECIl7ZU