If you're ok with Gimp or Photoshop, take a real world map which has an appropriate scale, and plop it down as the bottom layer. As you're working, or if you want to use a smaller section of your overmap, you can increase the transparency of your upper layers to give you an immediately useful comparison. This is especially helpful if you want a world map with a non-rectangular projection.icyshadowlord wrote:The world of my campaign setting is somewhat similar to Earth when it comes down to the amount of continents and how much water there is, so yeah.
Start with landmasses, then do mountains and hills, then rivers, then cities. Deserts are generally created by a mountain range's rain shadow or by high pressure areas called the horse latitudes.
When you break those basic geography and climate rules, do it purposefully. Have a reason why the landscape doesn't conform--that desert in a tropical zone is a mournland-style magical catastrophe, that river that shouldn't exist is fed by a mystical spring guarded by marids, etc. This way fantastic places set themselves apart even before you label them. It's ok to tell me the forest is magical because you labelled it "the magical forest", but it's better to show me the forest is magical because it stands out in some way from the other forests.
Concept the world's geography a couple of times. You probably have some idea of locales, political entities, conflicts and adventures you want to include, so put down a couple continents and see how well those ideas actually fit on that map. If you've envisioned a desert caravan adventure or encounter, but there's an obvious sea route between the locations you're using, that caravan isn't going to make any sense.
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