Lavivrus: Terrain for a Fantasy World Map

In the previous installment we looked at a technique to create interesting land masses for your fantasy world map. Now we'll see how we can put terrain textures on our map using Adobe Photoshop and Google Earth.

First I traced the shapes of the terrains on the Outdoor Survival map and filled each shape with a base color, matching closely the colors on the original map. The result came out like this:
One thing a noticed on a vacation to Kauai was how the eastern shore was lush, green, and moist, while the western shore was dry and desert like. This is also true of the continental US. I wonder if other parts of the world have a similar climate configuration?

I chose to use this climate model on Lavivrus, making the eastern shores greener than the western shores.

Now that the shapes of each terrain are defined I would like to add textures to them. I like the illustrative look of the original, but doing a map like that is time intensive. So instead I crack open Google Earth and scan the world for interesting terrain textures. Here is a sample from the Sierra-Nevada mountains I really like:
So I paste this into the mountains layer of our Lavivrus map in Photoshop. Then I scan Google Earth for other textures to get everything we need:
You'd think water would be the easy one, plenty of that on Earth, but I actually had to do an image search on the web to find a nice top down shot of ocean I liked. Google Earth worked great for everything else. For Plains I scroll over to Mongolia and find a nice little chunk of plains to grab. Desert I get from Utah, Swamp from Louisiana, and Forest from the Amazon. I thought a little frozen wasteland at the far north would be nice, what better place for that than Antarctica? Using these as overlays on each of the terrain layers I end up with this:
I softened the edges a bit on the terrain shapes, unfortunately this lost some details like those nice little forest paths, so these textures need some clean up, but it's not a bad start. Note: in describing my process I abbreviated quite a bit, because I do a lot of stamping, tiling, and fiddling with each of the textures to get them to look right. But this is something that just takes time and practice.

Next: generating fantasy names for places on your fantasy world map

Michael Chabon on the John Carter of Mars movie

Michael Chabon is one of the script writers on Disney's John Carter of Mars movie. In an interview with ERBzine he gives us our clearest indication yet exactly what Andrew Stanton is going to do with Edgar Rice Burroughs original Mars novels. How the script is going to translate the books into a form suitable for film.

As someone who works in entertainment (video games) I understand why intellectual properties are changed to fit the needs, the strengths and weaknesses, of a different media. As long as it is done with respect to the original property, and isn't changed for the sake of appeasing the director's own ego or some ridiculous marketing demands, it can work. Staying true to the spirit of the original is how you can embrace the fans of the original and bring in a whole new audience.

Spiderman 2 is a good example of this, and to a lesser degree X-Men 1 & 2 did it also. Take the original seriously and with respect, not as some big fat cheesy joke (like Batman & Robin, Starship Troopers, Godzilla...)

Here is the interview:
http://www.erbzine.com/mag30/3047.html

Lavivrus: Creating a Fantasy World Map

I'm astounded when I see maps that artists and designers are creating these days, like Jason Engle who does many of the maps for Wizards of the Coast. I use Photoshop (CS4) for most of the graphics I make. Sometimes I use Painter for softer painterly images, or rarely I use Illustrator for hard graphics.

To create a fantasy map I use this common photoshop technique:

Open a new file 8.5" x 11", 200 resolution, RGB
Select Filter: Render: Clouds
The result will look something like this:
Next, select Image: Adjustments: Brightness/Contrast
Set contrast to 100%
Slide brightness back and forth until you get shapes you like.
This will create convincing looking coastlines. The result will look something like this:
I see the white as land masses and black as oceans, you can reverse this if you like by choosing Image: Adjustments: Invert.

I do these steps a few times until I get land mass shapes I like, and then crop into the most interesting area using the Crop tool.

Here is the shape I've settled on with the "Lavivrus" map over layed so you can see how I'll be fitting it in:
Next: creating terrain.

The Original Campaign World

Forget Greyhawk. Forget Blackmoor. Way before the Forgotten realms, the original campaign world boxed set was Outdoor Survival by Avalon Hill.

I'd wondered for years about this boardgame mentioned in Men & Magic on page 5 as part of the Recommended Equipment to play the game. I stumbled across a reasonably priced copy on eBay in surprisingly good condition and have enjoyed reading through it. My mind wondered back to the early 70's and how this boardgame could form the basis for wilderness adventuring in the developing D&D game of Gygax and Arneson. It is firmly rooted in the style of gameplay of its day. No elegant "universal mechanic", instead it is a collection of rules that work together.

For someone like Dave Arneson who was much more idea oriented than a strict rules guy, this must have really helped him out to lay some ground rules for adventuring in the wilderness. I can see how the system could easily work with Chainmail without too much tinkering.

I've been considering the idea of using it as a base map for a new Swords & Wizardry campaign and it struck me how wonderful it would be to scan the map in and use modern digital graphics to turn it into a fantasy game world.

Just imagine it: Lavivrus, realm of ancient sorcery and high adventure!

This is Conan?

Jason Mamoa has just been cast as the new Conan. I'm not really seeing why. But then some weird casting choices before have turned out pretty good. Like Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. More often, though, it goes horribly awry.