World Map for DnD 5e campaign

[TrueBacchus]

Hello there!

I recently started up a fresh DnD campaign through Roll 20 (An online DnD site), and created a crude map of the world to start off. I've been searching for someone to help me by creating a better quality and more complete version of my original idea. Below are the images for two of the continents, the starting island, and then a general placement of the three continents along with a drawing of the third continent.



This is the Eastern Continent. One main idea in this world I've created is that it doesn't conform to normal rules of reality, so while it is probably closer in position to where Northern Africa would be, it has it's own personal range of climates. The poor shading in white represents a snowy climate, light green represents grassland, and dark green represents forested areas. The areas circled in green are small port towns, the one's in pink are capitol cities for the particular provinces, and the one in the middle with pink and orange is a very large walled metropolis that covers that entire mini pensiula to the yellow line. The brown lines are bridges that connect the sections of the continent and the colored lines around the edges of the continent are the borders of each province.



This is the much larger Western continent, which again doesn't completely follow the rules of reality. The yellow represents a large sand dune desert, the brown represents a large forest of dead and decaying trees, light green again represents grassland, and the living sections of trees are labeled by what type of trees they are. They also show what type of climate exists there; I like to say it's a condensed version of Eurasia's eastern half, with the North being frigid cold and snow with harsh landscape, the middle and largest portion being a more medium climate suitable for people to live in, and the southern most section being a harsh and condensed Jungle that causes whoever lives there to be cut off from the rest of the continent. The places circled in black are villages, with the one in the pine forest being especially small, the city circled in blue is a very large city with high walls that contains most of the remaining population of the continent, and the city in light blue is a Jungle tree city much like the Ewoks or the Elves in Lotr. The long line separating the dead and live trees that is represented by red and white stripes is an immense wall with many tall towers that outlook the land to the west. The entire western half of the continent, from the wall to the coast, is covered by a layer of dense fog that sits just high enough to cover the volcano's cave entrance.



This is the starter island, deemed the Pirate Metropolis. The island is fairly large and covered in cliffs and lush greens and palm trees. The main feature of the island is the huge blown off tip dormant volcano that stretches from the western side of the island to the eastern side, both sides leading directly into the water. The section on the right side is a long thin sand dune area designed in a way to prevent a head on assault of any enemy fleets.



This is most crude image of them all. The northern continent on here is a representation of the Norse culture and area in the world. It covers nearly all of the northern tip of the world and is mostly uninhabitable. The brown represents large snow capped mountains, the dark green represents pine forests, the light green represents grassland and barren snow hills, and the light blue is water. The blue X's are small villages and the purple X is a large norse city. As indicated by the "Random Islands Here", there are, by cartographer's choice, any random assortment of much smaller islands and perhaps a chain of islands covering most of the open ocean.


Overall, the world is supposed to be around the size of Earth, perhaps a little bit larger, where one grid square is equal to 200 miles (100 sq by 100 sq where one grid square is 70 pixels)


Style

The style of the map I want is a realistic fantasy styled map that leans more towards the fantasy side. Something along the lines of this: http://caffeineheart.deviantart.com/...irin-149387055 but angled similar to how the concept images I provided look, so you can get the sense of scale for some of the larger elements like the Western continent's volcano. The work doesn't need to be super professional as it will only ever be seen by me and my party, but I wish for it to be nice to look at as for this campaign I will be using the world map quite a bit.

It you are interested, let me know! I haven't posted on the forums the required amount of times for Direct Messaging, so just leave a response below and we'll talk from there. Thanks!

[roguecartographer]

Hey, I am thinking about working on this with you. I went ahead and made a brief sample of what the map can look like. It has no cities and I didn't do your isometric view of the mountain, but that can be added. Are you still interested? Just to let you know, your original request of "one grid square is equal to 200 miles (100 sq by 100 sq where one grid square is 70 pixels)" would mean an image size totaling about 450 MB (absolutely huge, 7000x7000 px). There is no need for an image that big (unless you are directly putting miniatures in real relative size on there). I have rendered this image as 3000x3000 px with ~50 px per grid. We can work on the exact size if you like, this was just a mock-up to show you what it could look like.

[TrueBacchus]

I'm definitely still interested in getting a map for my campaign. The base design looks good, though the western continent was originally meant to be how it's portrayed in the image I posted, rather than turned 90 degrees so you could see the mountain, but also see the rest of the continent. I can understand you turning it in this image since you used a smaller map size. Since I am using the online DnD Roll20, I do actually intend to show real space and place tokens on the image. The original size requirement was what I figured out would be needed to create the size of the planet I imagined. The eastern continent is also slightly smaller than I made it seem in the size comparison image, but the western continent is definitely way larger than the eastern, the northern looks great for it's size. Also, the Pirate Island is way far out in the ocean, away from the other continents, and closer to the eastern than to the western.

Thank you for creating a concept, though and I would love to work with you on this.

[roguecartographer]

Alright, awesome. I am glad to get feedback. I will work on another rendition with the continents placed more like you want. I had turned the Western Continent 90 degrees to try to get it to be larger than the eastern. I picked square map based off your 3rd image. If you are okay with it being more rectangular, then it will be easier to represent the relative sizes. I will get to work on making the appropriate changes. Once we get the general shape down, then we can work on details like rivers, hills, mountains in more detail and such.

[roguecartographer]

Before I go through the efforts of detailing this. Are these roughly the size and placement of the major landmasses that you want?

[TrueBacchus]

Yes, that's much closer there where I wanted them. The western continent could go down a bit more, maybe having the top aligned with the river on the left side of the eastern continent. The pirate island could also go up just a tiny bit, and some smaller islands could be added in the empty space, not too many, but enough to make it feel populated. The sizes for all the continents are perfect, though.

[roguecartographer]

Here is another landmasses that is not square, but rectangular. I think the sizes are little more like what you want.

[roguecartographer]

Sorry I didn't respond earlier. I didn't see your response to my first landmass map. But I finally checked in depth on this thread (not just through the subscriptions), and saw that you had posted. I moved the western continent down and the eastern continent up a bit. I also moved the pirate island down. I then added some more random islands in that blank space around the northern island. Let me know what you think and I'll start working on getting the land to match what you wanted. Future updates will be more quick. Let me know if you have any more thoughts on terrain or biome types for your continents.