(WIP) The Svadov Empire and surroundings

[Onomanatee]

This is my first attempt at cartography. I've been working on it on and off for the past couple of months, and would greatly appreciate any
feedback and critique you guys could give me!

Background:
I've recently started playing the Pathfinder pen&paper rpg with some friends. I'm the GM, and I'm currently learning the ropes with the Runelords campaign.
Hopefully, once that one is finished and I've learned a bit about being a GM, storytelling and worldbuilding, we can start a campaign in a world of my own
making. Creating a world is something I've always wanted to do, and this gives me the perfect excuse.
I'm a big believer in the creative power of randomization and collaborative work. So, I generated a random world map Donjon's fractal world generator.
(To be honest, I generated quite a few untill I found a nice looking one that wasn't to boring.) After that, I made my future players choose a few cultures,
and some basic ideas. I zoomed in on a small part of the generated map, drew the borders of the choses culture (A slavic mageocracy) and started building
a story, setting and geography for my world. The map below is my current (WIP) rendering of the lands surrounding Svadov, the starting point of my campaign.
I've chosen to create all my names using bastardized versions of words in a language group I deem fitting. For Svadov, I use slavic languages, and the culture
to it's east is based on Mongolian.

Setting
The land of Svadov is a fairly rich, forested area, beset by constant rains. The climate is temperate, with harsh winters in the north.
Svadov is ruled by a council of archmages, supported by a Senate. The country is young, created 4 centuries ago by mages fleeing a large scale religious purge
of any magically gifted people. From the streams of refugees, they created a coherent whole, and settled in the bay of Davrom, far to the east of their hated
oppressors. Using their more advanced technology and arcane power, they quickly assimilated the surrounding tribes in their growing nation. Over the course
of the next few centuries, the empire grew to the north and southeast, claiming more small tribes, all the while attracting refugees and tradesmen interested
in the prospect of a mage-led nation.

The southern coast contains a lot of swamps and murky forests, although the Svadovi have in recent years successfully claimed a large portion as farmland.
Especially the southwest, between the cities of Gospodra and Vylod, is considered to be the breadbasket of the growing empire.
The capital, Davrom, is built on top of, hanging from and hewn in the sheer cliff faces dominating the east coast. Behind it, mountains rise where wild tribes
still dwell. To the north, the Svadovi fight a war on two fronts. From the northeast, they face the death-worshiping, crumbling Duchy of Lem. To the west,
they deal with incessant border raids of the Hundred Kingdoms.

Further east, rich trading can be found throughout the Lehti bay, where goods are traded from the far-east. These goods float down on slow barges on the huge
Alku Ihana river, and the cities in it's wide, murky delta monopolize the exotic trade.

In the last few decennia, the mage-council has pushed for south-eastern expansion, to claim swathes of the steppe for cattle. The initial conquest across the
Cerberov range led to the assimilation and partial enslavement of the Rivvi tribes. However, across the Ogrodze river, they meet fierce resistance of the giant
steppe nomads, who call themselves the Tsologdo Khen.

The map



I'm trying out a few things here. It's all done in photoshop. I started by tracing a coastline, and filling in land and sea textures with some brushes. I've spent a
lot of time on the mountains, and though I'm quite happy with the style of drawing, I didn't know about ridges at the time, which explains the chaotic and
unrealistic form. I still need to add some hills and features to the northwest of the map.

For the forests, I've drawn about 30 different trees, and am copy-pasting them and filling in the background with brushes. I'm not quite sure about this.

The city, village and fortress icons are done for Svadov itself, but not for the nations surrounding it. I'm color coding it, and may attempt to draw national borders,
see if that works. I made the icons in Illustrator, quite happy with them. There's one for towns, cities, walled cities and fortresses.

As for the fonts, I'm using a font of the amazing Pia Frauss. http://www.pia-frauss.de/ I find it really hard to determine the correct size, angle and curve of the text.

WIP (Edited)

• Find a better font and improve icon visibility
• Decrease meanders of western river
• Add grass, steppe and farmlan textures
• Finish northeast
• Add sea elements
• improve forests
• try to add small drawings, such as ships, windmills, ruins
• Enter a legend of sorts, with a small text on some scrollwork
• add a border

Any feedback or critique is very much appreciated! Teach me!

[Straf]

I think the mountains are OK. I don't think that they have to have ridges - especially if millions of years of water, ice, more water cycles have eroded and shifted them. I may be wrong though but mountains are so much of a struggle for me right now I sort of think of them as symbolic of the type of terrain.

I like the rivers, for most the width corresponds with the meander 'wavelength', except the big river in the NW part whose name I can't read but appears to be Alku Ghana, but this is just nit pickery on my part - generally the wider a river becomes the longer the distance between meanders. A general rule of thumb is apparently 10-15 times the width between the 'peaks' of the meanders. However don't take my word as gospel on this, it's just one of those things I picked up from somewhere and could well be a load of Lem

As I mentioned earlier I couldn't really read the font very well. May I suggest using something a bit more straight forward?

But overall I think it's an excellent map, especially for a first go. My first attempts are pitiful in comparison. You've nailed the colours in my very humble opinion and managed to fit quite a lot of detail in there without cluttering it up - again something I struggle to do.

So have some rep from me, for what it's worth

[Onomanatee]

Thanks Straf! Very nice to hear.

Now that you mention it, the river does meander a bit to much. I'll try to change this with your rule of thumb.

I've been struggling with the font. I know something straightforward would be better for legibility, but at the same time
I want to maintain something handwritten. I want the map to look like something which could be made in the time period
in which the map is set (late medieval), so something type-written seems wrong.

By the way, what is rep and what is it for? I can't find any description of it.

[nothingbutblue]

Oh my gosh I love this. The colors and technique are beautiful, and I love the history and story (and the names! Svadov just sounds great on the tongue). I think the forests look nice, myself. Icons and names could use a bit of pop (I almost didn't even see the symbols at first), but I assume you're getting to that. Beautiful!

(PS the icons themselves look very nice.)

[SteffenBrand]

Well, you are definitely on the right track! *__* I don't have anything at this point to say except that you think carefully about the typeface. I had to read many things several times to actually understand.

Keep on doing what you are doing, I think this will be a beautiful map in the end! Repped! =)
Best wishes, Steffen

[Pixie]

Great fantasy maps are those that make for great lore without much effort. This map almost "creates" lore by itself. The fact that navigation between north and south isn't possible but almost makes for a great setting. An expanding state based between those two chains makes perfect sense and a great setting. Huge swaths of forest, steppe, desert, to the west makes for a great setting...

Looking forward for the next version! ... and keep developing that story.

[ChickPea]

This is a nice start and a very attractive map. Have to echo the comments about the labelling, however.

[Onomanatee]

Thanks a lot guys. I'll make a priority of updating the font and icons first, although the next update will have to be after
a small dungeon project and the November Lite challenge.

The north/south navigation and the land bridge (which, apparently, is called an isthmus) is indeed one of my favorite parts.
In my head, it's a heavily fortified area, with a beginning of a canal. It's one of the few areas I'd like to make a more
detailed map of, and I'd also like to place some extra embellishment or little drawing on the map to make it's importance
and intent clear. Not sure how I'd solve this. My first attempt were some small isometric drawings, but they were either
to large or to small.

[kacey]

Really nice start! It's hard to believe this is you're first attempt at cartography, it's looking really good so far. I do have one little nit pick tho, and it's that some of the mountains look like there tipped down to the right a bit. Abu Lafia posted some advice on one of Straf's threads that may have some tips on how to resolve it, you can find it here https://cartographersguild.com/showt...t=35896&page=7 just scroll down the page a bit, and you'll see Abu Lafia's post. I hope you don't take that the wrong way, the mountains look good, just a little crooked to me.

[sliceofmeat1]

It does look really good and I'm really impressed by the mountains. But as others already expressed, the names, especially those in the south-east corner of the map, are really difficult to read.