I'll be startring a Traveller game soon, using the Pirates of Drinax campaign. The PCs, being hired for criminal stuff, need to have a somewhat criminal background. Thus, I'm making them take at least one career term (the final one) as a Prisoner, to reflect that at the start of the campaign, they're in prison for previous crimes. This gives me a perfect opportunity for a "strong start", wherein they're in the prison mess room, eating a meal, when a fight breaks out. That gets them into the action right away, allows them to setup bravery/cowardice character traits, and gets the blood pumping right off the bat as they start out in combat.

Of course, it'll only last a few turns, as then the gas rolls in to pacify the crowd, and the characters wake up face-to-face with their patron, who will have bought their prison contracts because he has a job they can do.

To facilitate this, I drew a (probably pretty basic) prison mess room map upon which they can have their riot.

Herein I will document my attempts to map the lands of a world called Skysea. This world is the setting for a TTRPG using the Genesys system by FFG.

Skysea is an endless plane of cloudy skies, populated sparsely by islands of floating land. These islands each have their own climate and biome, and the near skies around them have localized weather patterns, while the open skies have their own major patterns of wind and weather.

The setting of Skysea is a combination of elements from heroic fantasy and the Age of Exploration/Age of Sail. It is largely fantasy-tech, but with sci-fi additions like lightning collectors (used to generate power) and laser guns. There is magic, but it's practice is not common.

Think Flash Gordon, Indiana Jones, Heavy Metal (the movie), Blackstar (the cartoon), and Masters of the Universe (the cartoon, not the movie!).

On to the mappening!

I'm going to start by making a world using Fractal Terrains 3, and will be using Sue's "One Day Worldbuilder" process. I set FT3's World Settings to what I would consider pretty non-standard settings, but the idea is to generate a world full of islands, big and small, which I can then export individual islands into CC3+ for detailed mapping. Attached is the settings used, and the initial world generated (I iterated through a few until I saw a pattern I liked).

Next step: To edit the world in FT3, snipping out stuff I don't like, and fluffing up some that need a little extra help.

So this isn't a map, but I am not an artist, am generally unskilled at Photoshop, and I needed a logo for my new worldbuilding project. Plus, I wanted to play with some of the functions of CC3+!

Maps will be forthcoming after December, as I'm writing this world as part of World Anvil's WorldEmber event, in which I have to get 10000 words written about it within the month of December. After that, I'll have time to run some players in the new world! ;-)

Sue is the hero we need, but not the hero we deserve! ;-)

Okay, I think I've hit on a good compromise: I created a world in FT3 with standard world size settings, but played with the dials until I got a world composed mostly of islands. This actually gives me many to work from all at once. I'll trim here and fatten there, then run the One Day Worldbuilder process on the whole map. Once I have the map finished in FT3, instead of exporting the whole thing, I'll choose an island at a time to export into CC3+ for the rest of the treatment. Easy peasy, and I only have to run the FT3/Wilbur processes once! ;-)

Amazing work, thanks Sue!!!

WIP, still working on shaping some, no fills or erosion yet. All critiques welcome.

Thanks for the insights, as well as some name-dropped civs I can look up for personal reading/inspiration!

I do have the One Day Worldbuilder, and I have read and worked my way through it. Was very satisfied. I don't remember it saying anything specific about making narrower mountain ranges, but I'll re-read it again.

I've been told I should absolutely be playing that. One of these days...

In the meantime, it's good to look at products outside of the normal channels, for that way lies secret knowledge! (Sorry, been watching kung fu movies today)

Also, I will totally support the creators I'm personally familiar with. Joe Blow on DMsGuild? Maybe, depends on what he's offering. Fellow mappers that I talk to on forums/discord, you betcha!

Thanks Sue!

Indeed, I’m suffering a little “analysis paralysis”

I will try to focus on small pieces at a time. I was somewhat hoping to form the majority of the globe and then see where things fit, although again, I want certain things to work “right.”

So would you say that sculpting a world from scratch would be a better idea than letting FT3 generate one and modifying it?