Thanks for your replies, everyone. Sorry for the timing. I've been overcome by life events, nothing bad. My lawn tractor broke twice in different ways, auto tire trouble, a deep cleaning of the house demanded by Mrs. KertDawg, etc. Ha! I'm working on setting up the test. Stay tuned.

I cheat and simply don't mention population in my games. If a party walks into a city, it's "small," "huge," or something like that. Your average barbarian can't count to 10 let alone 100,000. I might have a number in mind, but it really doesn't matter much to me.

I will leave that to Xargun, as that is the owner of the maps. I also refrained from posting them here to avoid spoilers for the players!

I was asked to do everything but the roads, settlements, and labels. That left just the basics to do. I had a lot of fun doing it.

An interesting note: We selected SS1b as the style. I used that for everything including the symbols. I eventually split some things into their own sheets, like the hills vs mountain areas. I think I made my own river style based on the existing lake style. The point is that I used only what was in that style and nothing outside of it. Rather, I tried to do that. I somehow got some Darklands hill symbols in there. I don't know how that happened. It turned out to be good because the hills went well on that map. The downside was Xargun had to buy that annual. (Though I think one can never have too many annuals.)

As a child, my family went to Lake Erie for a short trip. At one of the shops, I saw on the wall a reproduction of an old depth map of Presque Isle Bay from the 18th century. I was fascinated. It was much different than the maps in my school books. It told a story with lines and numbers about the changes over a century of nature and civilization. Most importantly, I could see the actual bay in front of me, so it felt real. I wanted to buy a copy, but at that time we barely had money for a trip let alone a map.

Fast forward some decades, and I returned to that shop and bought a copy. My study and technical skills started when I bought the map, but my fascination started on that trip as a child.

How to make the mountains pop? I'm not sure they need to change. I kinda like it. Maybe a shadow of some kind, but I don't think it's needed.

I like it!

Sorry, yes it was the DMG. I didn't know one particular rule, so he handed it to me to use. I handled it /very/ carefully.

Congratulations! I for one think that's a big deal. Here's to 1000!

(I was going to write, "Oh, I don't think these things are important," and then write 2 more messages to follow up. 😆)

Have you tried JPG? I understand the thought that it's not perfect, but with the right settings I find that it works very well. Try different compression levels. I think that might be something worth looking at.

Good luck.

Saved presets sound like a good community activity. I'm not the keeper of CC3 legalities, but I can do matrix math! I use this effect a lot personally.

I think this is great. This sort of tells a story on its own.

I almost hate to say this, so please forgive me. I think a few clouds would give the map some extra depth, make it more vertical. It certainly doesn't need it, but I wanted to share the idea.

Again, great work!