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Status:
Draft
Well, I have started on the map of Gondal in CC3 and have the landmass and some outlines done. It is going to be a bit before that is done, but I have a copy of one of my research maps that I painted in order to better understand the continental layout. I now need to have that Force Majure of critiques give me a hand. The creation of side maps is one thing, but ladies and gentlemen, the map of the continent is our flagship. We must be absolutely certain that it is going in the direction that it needs to and not have some vital element missing. Certainly many people have written topics, creatures, locations and other assorted stories into the place. We must be certain that none of these are left out when we consider the geographical layout of this continent.
Thanks in advance for everyones assistance.
Raemann
By the way, here is the link to the higher resolution copy of the map www.aetherealplane.com/byswarm/gondal.jpg
OK - Sorry for being out for so long. My day job was getting in the way. Back from a conference in Vegas and I have this addition for the team to consider: The main Images are located at http://www.aetherealplane.com/byswarm/gondal4.JPG for the image file and www.aetherealplane.com/byswarm/gondal4.FCW for the CC3 drawing itself. I am marking both as BySwarm property despite any other markings which may be embedded within the files themselves.
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Please Place your cities!
Team,
I gotta ask your forgiveness on being out for so long. I have a rather demanding day job that around this time of the year becomes a day AND night job. On a positive note it took me out to Las Vegas this past week for a conference on Enterprise Desktop Management. And no, that has nothing to do with starships or aliens.
I have placed the latest release of the Gondal Map onto my site for download by this team. The links are above near the image. What I would like is for people to place the cities, landmarks, dungeons - what have you, onto this map so that I can flesh it out in reference to the already established locations. Now I realize that there may be additional editing that is required to the release of the map that I have presented so, please look it over and see how we can make it the best product that it can be. Thanks.
Raemann
Busy busy
I hear you on the busy time so don't sweat it. We need to set a minimum size for a city to appear on this large scale map. I'm thinking somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000.
It depends on the population
It depends on the population level of the setting overall. Since it is in the wake of the Collapse, I'd like to see a number of abandoned, ruined cities. I also like a population level more in line with historical europe and west asia - so 10,000 is a big town, capitals might be around 100,000 or more, and million-citizen cities are almost unheard-of.
As an example, given average productivity in medieval europe, you'd need about 100,000 farmers to grow enough surplus food to feed the 10,000 people in a given city. I've always assumed that magic reduced that number significantly, but if you have large-population cities all over the place, everything else will be farms, and I like there being swathes of wilderness between settled regions - especially for a Dark Golden Age.
We cold also go with D20's 'official' poplation breakdown, i.e. hamlet, thorp, village, town, city, etc. each have approximate populations associated with them.
Here's PF's take: http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/environment/urban-adventures
Settlement Type Population Range
Thorp Fewer than 20
Hamlet 21–60
Village 61–200
Small town 201–2,000
Large town 2,001–5,000
Small city 5,001–10,000
Large city 10,001–25,000
Metropolis More than 25,000
That looks good to me, and would put large cities and metropolises on the world's-eye view map, and then we can scale it down for closer looks revealing down to large towns when we zoom in
We can Zoom to other maps
In my plan is to have maps of each country. The points made above / earlier are quite germane. We need to be able to get all off the intermediate and medium sized cities on the map and when you are looking at a map the size of north and south america combined it is hard to see individual places smaller than one or 2 million persons in size. Frankly there is no city that will actually be any larger than a dot that would fit onto this map.
All of that considered it is still a good idea to reference the larger places and then insert more places as the sizes and impact that the given city has upon the region decreases. In completing this exercise we allow others writing to avoid obvious mistakes (such as suggesting that a party of adventurers traveled through Sascria on their way from Brug to Ras Madin). Additionally weather patterns often determine culture. Someone mentioned that the peoples of Rhyrgia are druidic, certainly they are not living in a desert climate.
Someone mentioned that there is a general loss of control for many managed territories and that the former masters are unable to care to the needs which they once addressed. Given that suggestion as a fact I created the mad with a central forest band which is extremely dense and lush. This area required magic to allow the leaders of the various far flung empires to effect their changes. Additionally there are mountain ranges and strategic passes that now are fought over more fiercely than gold. For in controlling the passage one controls the lands upon the other side.
With the map as a tool we can quickly reference the things which are taking place across the continent and insure that once stories begin to come out about an area they are consistent in their nature
Where do you want the equator?
One thing that will help allot is to know where you want the equator. From the comments about Rhyrgia being like Canada I see the equator somewhere beneath the presented map. I say this because of the distance from bottom to top of the map is about 2500 miles north by south and 2000 miles east by west. That said I would place the equivalent to the Tropic of Cancer just touching the midst of the Vennan peninsula in the south and the arctic circle some 500 miles north of where the map ends in the north. that would place Rhygia around British Columbia in reference.
Let me know if this sounds good.
That sounds pretty similar to
That sounds pretty similar to what I was thinking. I've thought about having the equator be somewhere across the very southern part of the map, but I think what you've described is likely more consistent with everything. It also gives us a LOT of globe to work with in the future.
This is a cool resource I was
This is a cool resource I was reading through to get ideas for map comments that sounded smart:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biome
It's just a list of biomes and descriptions of each, but it lets me know what words like "taiga" and "montane" mean :)
Rhyrgia
With Rhyrgia being a druidic-oriented society, I envision it being very forested. What do you think? Otherwise, I think it's looking good. :)
I agree about Rhyrgia - it
I agree about Rhyrgia - it could be a bit like Canada, transitioning to tongass and then tundra as it gets colder. For the Sarkan Tribelands, maybe it's more like Mongolia - crazy hot summers and windy, frigid winters, and seriously tough people living there.
Between the two lines of mountains parallel to each other, it seems that the land would be dry, with most of the water coming from rivers fed by rainfall in the mountain and hill-country, maybe like middle America, but without the massive aquifer-fed irrigation system.
Agreed on Sarkan Tribelands
With Sarkan in the north accepting the winds from the east it will be the first cooling / warming of any winds coming off of the ocean. That change would not usually be enough to cause it to receive a great deal of precipitation except during a monsoon season at which time the monsoons would build up over the Storm Islands and pick up energy as they made landfall. Once inland the weaker ones would dissipate by the time they reached northern Thuria and the eastern forests or Rhygia (is it Rhyrgia? I think I spelled it wrong on the prelim map). The stronger cells - force 4 or 5 would travel all the way down ot Marve and the northern forested band of Venna before being drained of their powers which would make the weather of Thuria much like the Serengeti plains of Africa. Thruians would have had elaborate sisterns and means to capture the water in order to maintain their infrastructure. It would be interesting to consider delving the depths of their immense and elaborate water storage systems.
I just love the comments by the way, for this is not MY map rather I feel I am molding it to the world that those which went before me have contrived. Certainly we have a long road ahead and many revisions so don't be afraid to say, "... ummmm, I don't think that will go with my vision of the [whatever] people". Better to get it right and deal with the pain now than to try later to "make something fit". Our gamers won't be fools.