See this blog article by resident CC3+ expert Remy Monsen. Hopefully, that should help, but if you get stuck, feel free to ask here again!

While the size may seem wrong, by a strict comparison with some medieval European structures, this isn't for medieval Europe, it's for fantasy D&D, and is close to the scale size for this specific tavern as shown on Mike Schley's map of Saltmarsh in the Ghosts of Saltmarsh scenario book (Wizards of the Coast, 2019), assuming five-foot grid squares here. The appearance isn't quite the same as on that map, but this is an adaptation after all, and although there are a number of designs for the Wicker Goat Tavern online, I don't think there's an official D&D version, so some leeway is to be expected.

In the original adventure (The Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh, TSR's Module U1, from 1981), you were expected to create your own version of the town from scratch - there are a few guidelines for key points, such as Point 4: "Decide where the characters could stay when resting in the town between adventures (the best inn? the only inn?); draw up a tariff (list of expenditures) for their accommodation and food." But that's as close as we got to a description for the inn/tavern, which didn't even get a name back then!

That's not to say such points should just be ignored necessarily, and the heating and access points are useful considerations. However, if the final tavern is meant to fit to the size of the official Saltmarsh map, this is close enough to work for that.

Looking at the symbol and terrain use here, I think these could be used to create an illusory city too, or a literal ghost town, perhaps with some additional colour overlay effects, and perhaps some transparency about the symbols (less sure about the latter point, however). Or indeed a city of glass.

As Jim said, there's going to be a lot of personal preference involved here, heavily dependent on how you see your world setting developing, what types of civilizations exist in different places there, as well as how much time and effort you have available for designing and mapping it all.

Plus you're really asking two different, if related, questions - 1) the number of key buildings desirable for different types of settlement, and 2) what the appropriate size of different types of settlement can be for different types and numbers of special buildings.

The question of settlement sizes has come up on the Forum here before, and you might like to look over the comments on these two topics, both of which coincidentally came-up in late 2018:

Making a city with CC3+

Looking for advice on starting Village/Town/City size

There are also various systems for designing RPG settlements available online, some paid for (on sites such as DriveThru RPG), some not (such as blogs), as well as a number of random design systems, such as those on the Watabou site, although those provide primarily maps, rather than lists of the specific places you indicated as of interest.

Those should get you started at least, or perhaps help clarify what it is you want (or even don't want!) from such systems, from where you might feel more confident about creating your own settlement design system.

Good luck!

Sometimes getting things to stand out more means just changing the colour or line thickness a little (or font size for text). An outer glow of some kind can help, but it can also make things look too misty, which I think it what's happening with some of the smaller text labels presently. I'm not sure that brown colouring on the labels is working well enough, and even the grey labels could be a little clearer.

The general textures seem fine, although the desert edge is maybe a bit too abrupt (very obvious where the green coloration alongside the river ends currently). That seems to be accentuated by the line of desert-edge dunes north of the river too. The more wavy edge of the dunes south of the river looks more natural to my eye at least.

Yet still no cat... 😁🐈️

Monsen's right in that virtually everything that tries to equate the Forgotten Realms setting to anything genuinely geographic has been done by the fans only. Part of the problem is that the size of some of the continents were changed at different times, and as the setting developed through various novels written by different people at different times, there was never a single basis on which any of this was hung. It's extremely irritating!

Even the official TSR 1990 "Forgotten Realms Atlas" by the great Karen Wynn Fonstad shows nothing of any latitude and longitude lines, though she does demonstrate very clearly in that just how little of the planet had been even approximately mapped by that time.

The only thing I have come across is a mention on the Candlekeep.com site in their FAQs regarding a map in "Faiths & Avatars" (TSR, 1996) regarding where the equator is. I found that via this discussion post on the Forgotten Realms Wiki site, which mentions the same map shows the canonical lines of lat and long, though so far as I can tell, while there are some lines shown, none have labels attached.

Yes, this can be a problem with some of the topographic mapping styles, and it's not possible to solve them all the same way (as they don't all use effects that will work equally well with things such as transparency). Luckily, this one does work that way.

Back at the mapping, the fourth quadrant has now been completed, and various items tweaked to a greater or lesser extent that seemed to need them. Names have been added for the main rivers and uplands, as appropriate, and a few more smaller patches of woodland "grown" in parts:

Then I added the title, scalebar and compass rose, and did some tests with the texture options activated. This image shows both in place:

While that looked sort-of OK, I wasn't very satisfied with it, so I tried various alternatives, ultimately deciding to have two separate sheets with the texture on them, because doubling-up helps accentuate the "water-colour-paper" look, and I could also restrict the textured areas to the newly-expanded upper and lower map borders only. That's not possible with the all-map Texture effect. Which brought me to:

However, I wasn't convinced this was sufficiently clear, as apart from darkening the map in general, it also further blurs everything. So I'm now thinking to leave the texturing options off entirely:

A few more minor adjustments are likely while preparing the notes to go with the Atlas version. At present, I'm intending to add some bridges to help clarify where the fords are over the lesser rivers, for instance. This is though probably close to the final version now. Until I find I've missed something, that is!

Dee-licious! 🍳

So far as I recall from modelling the 8- and 6-rad armoured cars (i.e. also from period images and information), the aerials were fixed in position, and at a height above the turrets all the time. These are the early-war "bedstead" frame aerial types, not the later war smaller "star antennae" which were retrofitted to some models, incidentally.

Oh - and belated congratulations on your ascension to Master Mapper status @Lillhans ! Very well done!