What's in a name...

I am at the point in my mapping project of assigning names to my cities, which is usually pretty fun...But I  was having trouble coming up with more diverse sounding locations that differ from places you might find in medieval England.  I re-discovered this gem of a tool over at the donjon website. It's a random name generator (character & town) that allows for influences from different regions of the world, adding some spice to your otherwise vanilla town names.  Drop-down menus offer other choices.  Check it out: Fantasy Name Generator

Creating A Brave New World

Dusting off some world maps that were stowed away in the corners of my hard drive, I created a hex-based version using Inkwell's Ideas Hexographer.  If you haven't used the demo version on the website, go try it...If you have, go buy it!  With a straightforward interface, it is quite easy to churn out a hex based map in no time.

Once complete, I used Photoshop to tweak and polish it up.  Each hex is 25 miles, but after thinking about it I'm going to change it to 50 miles.  This should make it comparable (roughly) in size to the upper half of England.

I intend to develop this into a usable campaign map, complete with a few fleshed out hexes and ready-to-go sandbox style adventures.  Keep an eye out for further developments.

Next Time:  Adding towns, cities & other landmarks.