Royal Scribe
Royal Scribe
About
- Username
- Royal Scribe
- Joined
- Visits
- 8,807
- Last Active
- Roles
- Member
- Points
- 3,198
- Birthday
- February 5, 1968
- Location
- San Francisco, California
- Real Name
- Kevin
- Rank
- Mapmaker
- Badges
- 16
Reactions
-
[WIP] - Lumadair: Birdseye Continental
Added some more. Only put in Lumadair's capital city and a few notable landmarks, not the other cities that were in previous versions of this map. Do you think the font size for my labels for cities/landmarks is too small?
I'm glad Sue chose to use a default font that can do accent marks because when I do the global map, there are a lot of accent marks. Mostly in names derived from Elvish, because Elves are fancy that way, like the French.
This map is 6,109 miles wide. I used the technique that Ralf showed of creating a 1000 x 800 map so that symbols would default to the scale of 1, and then resized it. I assume I should do the same when I start my global map, which is 25,000 miles wide.
-
[WIP] - Lumadair: Birdseye Continental
Reworking the mountains, replacing all of the ridges and ripples so they flow together better to my eye.
Here are a few different tweaks. Thoughts?
Version 1
For the snow-capped mountain, I replaced the scorched alpine fill with a tundra fill, and redrew the snow to be tighter around the snowy ridges. Also added an ice fill between the ridges. I should probably add some ripples onto the tundra terrain but should they be snowy or arid?
Version 2
All of the changes in #1, but I drew a hill polygon around the mountain. Not so sure about this one.
Version 3
All of the changes in #1, without the hill in #2, but I lightened the tundra using ADJUST HUE/SATURATION effect (Lightness +50%)
Version 4
Same as #3, but I added the Uneven Ground texture over the mountain.
-
[WIP] - Lumadair: Birdseye Continental
Before attempting to do my entire Earth-sized world in the new Birdseye Continental style, I wanted to practice on a smaller bit of land, the tried-and-true Republic of Lumadair. I find it helpful to have the exact same FT export used for so many different styles -- I can toggle through JPGs of all of them while the coastlines remain identical, for better comparison.
I won't have time to do more work on it for several more hours (it's the start of my workday here on the Pacific coast), but I figured in the meantime I would seek feedback on my progress so far.
First, for perspective: Lumadair is in an equatorial climate. Very equatorial. Fractal Terrains tells me that the equator runs right through the middle of it. The latitude runs from -10 degrees on the southern side to +10 degrees on the northern side. Here it is circled on a map of my campaign world:
(After doing some terraforming to turn some landlocked great lakes into seas connected to the oceans, I made some adjustments to how it's viewed. I discovered that rotating the longitude perspective by 90 degrees allowed the main landmasses to all appear on the map without wrapping around. And I flipped it because I liked how it looked better that way, so FT will tell you that the top of the map has negative latitude numbers, with positive ones on the bottom half, but since that's not displayed, it's easy enough for me to mentally adjust.)
There are more images of Lumadair in my galleries if you want to see the terrain and symbols in other formats.
Here is Lumadair so far in Birdseye Continental. Haven't drawn most of the forests yet, nor water depths. I want to redo all of the mountain ridges and ripples to make them fit together a little better, and also be slightly less linear, even though they should still more or less be going in the same direction.
Here are the mountains in northeast corner up close. I tried to use varicolor green ridges to show lower mountains covered with trees, but I'm not sure how well that worked. I might experiment with adding a chameleon or drawn hill beneath them to give them more height. The snowy part is for a mountain that is so high that it is perpetually snow-covered. I think it's the third highest on my campaign world? I think the highest is about 30,000 feet and this one is around 25,000 feet. But I think I want to adjust the snow terrain to be a little tighter to the snowcapped ridges. Thoughts?
I do like how the swamp turned out. The main rivers have a default width of 3, but I added more branches with widths of 2 and 1. (This swamp map also shows an experimentation of putting a ridge on a chameleon hill.)
-
[WIP] Wizard's Tower - Interior
Added the missing pews and lounge furniture to the Fourth Floor:
And now, up another flight.
Fifth Floor
This floor is entirely for guests. Why would a wizard need plenty of guest rooms? Maybe he or she is the party's patron, and they come back periodically to receive instructions for their next adventure. Maybe adventurers periodically visit to have the wizard identify the magic items and artifacts they've found, or to help explain mysterious prophesies or other adventuring clues they've discovered. (Great opportunity for lore dumping!) Maybe the wizard's old adventuring party all decided to retire together in the tower.
There's a hallway closet between the internal stairs and external door. Another WC and bathing chamber. A small guest bedroom on the eastern side. And then two spacious guest suites on the southern side.
The southwest suite has a spacious living room with a double window, along with a separate bedroom with a "king sized" bed. But the other guest suite is for the real VIPs. Not only does it have a fireplace and working sink in the living room, it also has a private balcony with views of the river and the rear of the cherry tree garden.
These suites come are handy when adventurers visiting the wizard don't want to be separated. (Never a good idea to split the party!) The suites are large enough to accommodate the typical-sized party, assuming a few are willing to sleep on the couches or pallets on the floor. And for very large parties, the stone door separating the two suites can be unlocked to create a double-sized suite.
Onwards to the wizard's bedroom and workshop...
-
[WIP] Wizard's Tower - Interior
Thank you!
I admit that I drew from a lot of different sources. The base is CA186 Creepy Crypts (2022), which I used in preparation for when I get to the basement/dungeon section. The main fills for the walls and floors of the tower itself come from CA149 Beaumaris Castle (2019), and the windows are from that, too. Most of the furniture comes from Dungeon Designer 3, but some are drawn from CA14 Symbol Catalogs (2008), and some of the fireplaces are from Shessar's free supplement. Some of the outside vegetation comes from CA141 Japanese Temple and CA143 Asian Town (both 2018).
Normally when designing something for the Atlas, I try to limit it to just a few styles to minimize the chance that others might be missing chunks of it. This time, I gave myself free rein to create my wizard's "dream home."




