Here is Elkton, Alarius North Central.

The WIP thread is here.

Larger version in my gallery.

Good luck everyone! :D

You're worldbuilding here, even if it isn't a whole world. That's a huge task if it's done properly, but most of us manage with a very basic understanding of how things work on a very general level.

Manmade terrain, like farmland, will tend to be at the lower altitudes where there is fertile soil and water, so the river idea isn't as bad as you think. but perhaps it would be easier to place the farmland if you add the settlements and roads, since no one is going to farm a fertile valley that is hundreds of miles from the nearest large town, and which has no roads to transport the food to that town.

Settlements themselves will tend to be on the coast where there is good fishing or good access to oceanic trading routes, preferably both. Or they will encroach inland up the larger rivers, particularly if there are resources to be had - like timber, mineral ores or just to farm the land to feed a growing city at the mouth of the river. They can also arise along major overland trade routes, particularly where these cross natural barriers like rivers or either side of a mountain pass.

Wherever man isn't building cities or farming, the rest of the land will probably be far more dependent on climate and altitude. After all - why waste magic on land that is no use to man?

Forests have tree lines that respect both altitude and latitude. Deserts, with a few really obvious exceptions, tend to appear at 30 degree latitudes on Earth because of the lack of rainfall where the Hadley Cell circulation causes descending air. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hadley_cell Deserts also appear in places like Chile over a much wider range of latitudes, where a cold sea current flows up the South American coast from Antarctica and fails to fill the air with moisture, causing little or no rain to fall on that side of the Andes.

That's more than enough to be thinking about, so now on to the practicalities of making that swamp and marsh terrain work together.

Both of those terrains are placed on the same sheet by their respective drawing tools, called LAND FEATURES. So where they overlap the Edge Fade, Inner doesn't fade the edge of the individual polygons, but only the outside edge of both the polygons taken as one mass

The solution is to add a new sheet either just above or just below LAND FEATURES and call it something suitable, like LAND FEATURES 2, copy the sheet effects from LAND FEATURES to the new sheet, ok that and then move either the marsh or the swamp texture to the new sheet.

Here I have moved the swamp fill to the new LAND FEATURES 2 sheet, which places it above the marsh and fades the edge.

If I want them the other way around I might move LAND FEATURES 2 above LAND FEATURES in the sheet list, or move the polygons, each to the other sheet.

I think some of those things might also fall under the category of dungeon scale mapping, but I will add them to the growing list.

I have cart tracks on a dedicated sheet just above the road sheet. You could quite easily use those and adjust the sheet effects to make them more like sleigh tracks.

I can't help but think that I've gotten slightly side-tracked with portals and things, but it was fun.

Those are will-o-wisps, by the way ;)

Just to round off the end of this thread, this is the finished card.

Merry Christmas everyone! :D

I've updated the buildings so they look like this now. There's less bleaching, and more detail interest on both.

Hi Everyone! :)

Welcome to another new style development thread!

This time I will be working on a City style that is intended to be similar to the Darklands overland style in flavour, and to be published as two parts in September and December this year.

So, first off, I would love to know what you would like to see in a city version of this style.

Who wanted dead trees and ikky bits?

This looks as close as I could get to an illegal uncontained slurry pit among the consequently dead trees. Just missing the cart tracks, but since this is only a test site I won't bother with them right now.

I think this is as done as I can do it right now.

...

The Kristol Caverns are home to an undead dragon who is cursed to guard the bones of his rider, the Dragon King, for all eternity until the end of time, when it is believed he will rise again. There's plenty of gold just lying around, and intended to fund the King's last campaign (whatever that might be), but don't let the decomposed state of the dragon deceive you. If you look you can see that the remains of the man near his nose are far more recent than the bones of the dragon.

Smugglers have made use of an inaccessible part of the cavern closer to the entrance. Maybe they aren't even aware of the King and his beast, or maybe they found him, and that's one of them lying there in the dragon's lair.

...

Any suggestions for improvement (including to the story) that won't take more than a couple of hours to do are welcome :)

To go with the ribbon banners I'm making a set of wax seals. There's an alphabet and a handful of hand drawn seals you can see here.

I was wondering if any of you had any requests.

Things that have already been suggested include:

• blank
• axe, crossbow/bow, spear, warhammer
• dragon
• crown
• griffon
• sailing ship
• shield