Here Be Monsters - Maps, tokens, handouts and other paraphernalia thread

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > Here Be Monsters - Maps, tokens, handouts and other paraphernalia thread

Effectronica: May 31, 2011; Fallen Rib

Bucnasti posted:

I'm pretty sure that's exactly what this thread is for.

I agree with Effectronica's assessment about mountain ranges and such. The other thing you should look at is rivers and water ways. They always flow from high ground (your mountains) to the oceans in the most direct path possible. For pre-industrial civilizations rivers are the lifeblood of the world, they provide water and fertile land for crops and they provide the only method of quickly moving goods inland. Cities and towns build up around rivers and seaports and those are where cultures are born.

As for software, I haven't used Campaign Cartographer or at least 10 years, but when I used it, it was very complex and very expensive, more tool than I would suggest for most people. There are plenty of free alternatives to Photoshop that give you much more flexibility than MS Paint. GIMP is always an option, but something like Paint.net might be better for a casual user.

The only thing that Paint.net really needs to be ideal IMO is a couple more curves in its line tool, but it's really handy to have.

# ¿ Jun 1, 2015 21:41

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# ¿ May 17, 2024 16:04

Effectronica: May 31, 2011; Fallen Rib

Father Wendigo posted:

This is a bit more abstract than most, but I'm curious if there's a right way to simulate planet or moon swelling and cracking within from the sudden release of a great amount of semi-solid liquid into the planet's core from a pocket dimension.

what kind of liquid?

# ¿ Jun 8, 2015 05:30

Effectronica: May 31, 2011; Fallen Rib

Father Wendigo posted:

Something fictional, like a shoggoth or the slime from Ghostbusters 2. I know how dumb that sounds and I should probably wing it, but I figure it's worth a shot.

_{Looking back, 'stupid' was probably more accurate than 'abstract.'}

Well, what kind of temperatures and pressures can it handle? If it would stay a liquid under essentially arbitrary conditions, then you'd have at the end an overall bulging based on the total volume applied as a thick shell, and in the interim, devastation as the crust is raised and lowered as the liquid evens out. Cracking the planet would then require enough liquid to increase surface area beyond the ability of plate tectonics to handle.

Actually destroying a planet by scattering wouldn't be possible with such means, though I'm afraid the rest will have to wait.

# ¿ Jun 8, 2015 13:50

Effectronica: May 31, 2011; Fallen Rib

Harrow posted:

I need some map-related help. Unfortunately, I don't yet have a picture to show, so I'll have to describe with words.

Mostly, I need help deciding which way rivers would flow. The continent I'm working on has a mountain range running north-south in the middle-western part that's creating a rain shadow to its east, leading to a fairly large desert in the center of the continent. Obviously, most of the water is going to end up on the western side of the mountains, because that's where the rain's coming from, so most of the rivers should be flowing westward. Would there ever be an eastward-flowing river from a setup like that? Basically, I'm trying to find a way to have a city on the southeastern edge of the desert with some sort of water source that I don't have to handwave with magic.

Yes. Rivers and lakes can also be fed by groundwater and aquifers, and if the mountains are high enough for snow, snowmelt will also feed streams. The Colorado River is largely fed from these sources, for example.

So a little detail about rivers:

This is a map of the major watersheds of the continental United States. Watersheds are areas of common drainage. You can see that North America is dominated by the Mississippi's watersheds, with the Rio Grande, Colorado, and Columbia also being important, in terms of rivers. You can also see the outlines of the Appalachians and Rockies in rough form.

The areas that aren't dominated by a river are divided into three types. The Great Lakes come together in the Saint Lawrence eventually, but the majority of the drainage consists of small rivers and lakes that converge on the Great Lakes before heading out to sea. California, New England, the Mid-Atlantic, and the South-Atlantic Gulf all have a series of small rivers that run more or less directly to the ocean. The Great Basin, meanwhile, is an area between the Rockies and Sierra Nevada, which is an endorheic basin- one with no external drainage. All water in the Great Basin (mostly from snowfall in the mountains) either evaporates or fills an internal lake, of which the Great Basin has two major ones (the Great Salt Lake and Lake Tahoe).

So you have several different ways in which this can work.

# ¿ Jun 12, 2015 18:40

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