Sounds very much like a dragon's been right through the symbols already - ruins, fires... 🐉

Indeed. And bulls, so representing the adventures of the Argonauts beckons. Theoi.com link for the uncertain or confused 😊 🔥🐂

Video shows, like many public performance activities, require a lot of preparation and practice at first, but they do become easier with increased experience. You might find it helpful to start from a script - even a rough sketch of the things you need to cover and in what order - to help get the pattern of what you're wanting to do fixed in mind, and then try running it through a few times to see how it works without recording, what the timing's like, and so forth. Even then, you may find it needs several takes to get the video right, which of course is where editing comes in. Plus post-production editing can add written captions or diagrams for things needing extra emphasis or explanation. The whole is a very time-consuming process overall, so you should be prepared to spend several days at least (or the equivalent amount of time spread over a longer while) getting to the point where you're happy with it.

Once you've done a few such videos, you should find it's getting a lot easier, and taking less time and effort in advance, which of course is how regular video shows operate.

Thanks very much @Loopysue ! Haven't checked back here since I posted due to other things getting in the way this evening. Hadn't realised I'd done a "Ralf" (i.e. found a new bug while simply trying to map)!

@JulianDracos - If you follow my instructions above for now, that should be enough to get Text Along A Curve to function properly again, until whatever's happened in the Update can be fixed formally, whether you're using Update 26 or 27 currently.

Being a cheapskate, I have only the lower-cost PDF Legendary version of Barbarians of..., but like a lot of the simpler-mechanic Sword & Sorcery style RPGs, it looks quite fun (never tried it for real, however). Good to know there are still people prepared to adapt and amend rules-systems this way though. When I began with RPGs (mid-late '70s) that was the norm, though I know that's much less common these days.

There are a lot of handy random name-generators freely available online now. There've been several mentions of some on this Forum over time, so if you get stuck, you might try a search here for those - or simply an ordinary web-search for "random name generators". You'll likely find more than you can possibly use (even if most are ostensibly for fantasy gaming)!

It's something to remember when you make your own drawing tools and name them, not to make the names too long to still read in this dialogue.

So does the silence mean nobody knows ("Will this potentially then create alignment issues for text on strongly-curving arcs? Such as a circle, semi-circle or narrow-end of an ellipse? Or indeed one that curves in different directions (like a long name on a river line, say)?", or is experimentation still underway? Or have I simply misinterpreted what had been said earlier?

Either way, can we PLEASE get the default setting for Text Along A Curve presented so one can actually write text along a curve without worrying that the text will end up inverted, reversed, confused, and probably feeling seasick? The fact the default reverts back to chaos every time I reopen the program is getting REALLY tedious, as I've been using the command a lot lately.

If I need text reversing (can't imagine why, as noted already, but...) or inverting, I can worry about what commands need adjusting on such an occasion. If I have a curved line I want the text to be written along so it can be read the same way up as the rest of the map, I shouldn't have to be worrying about altering the default settings just to achieve that basic operation.

Interesting map.

Like Sue, I wondered about the coastline too. It looked a little like some of the automated random map designs that use a hex-map base to generate their outlines; it seems you'd done the earlier analogue version of that!

The river lines seem a little overwhelming currently, and for a map of this scale, there are probably too many. From how you'd prepared the original hex maps, that's likely unsurprising, as you'd be drawing each in far more detail than a continental map would need.

There's an art to working out what should be preserved when scaling-out like this, from a regional/local level to a continent-sized area, which generally devolves to settling on those few, major features to keep, and greatly increasing the smoothing of elements such as coasts and river lines. Not often easy to decide, however, particularly when you're heavily-invested in each little detail!

The relative sparsity of the mountains and forests seems about right for this mapping-scale by contrast, and is perhaps what leads to the rivers and coasts not looking quite right.

Maybe add a few names for some of the larger inland seas?

Both look good to me!

Some of the expanses of farmland look like scaled skin - civilisation built on the back of a dragon, perhaps? 😉🐉

You could perhaps fade-out the outer edges of the whole, maybe using an overlay sheet with a large Edge Fade Inner Effect, to get away from the "edge of the world" look of too much in the map's centre compared to the periphery.

Text in banners might be too elaborate for this map; probably worth trying just text at first (you can always add banners later if that still seems needed).