If that sounds like it would be too obvious for your group, you could search for Pangaea (if you want just one mega landmass) or Gondwana and Laurasia (two still pretty ginormous landmasses).
For regional maps, it is easier to use some real-world terrain.
Me? I'm using the territory along the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers for a project I'm working on. I haven't worked up far enough to have the very recognizable Great Lakes yet. Not sure what I'll do there yet.
Good luck.
Simple, easy, and effective.
You could try using the actual Earth but with all the political boundaries erased to start from the terrain.
This is what I do. I also flip, invert, super zoom in, and otherwise move things so no one can tell. Sometimes the entire continent will be a small island in greece. Sometimes a small island will be an entire continent shrunk down, and spun 90 degrees.
You can even go into paint and move islands around. Putting the very visually obvious Hawai'ian islands into a circle for instance is fairly easy, and makes for an interesting set piece that no one recognises.
You could also try doing this with old maps. I can't remember where, but I found an archive online of a bunch of maps famous explorers used during the age of discovery. These had the benefit of being slightly off, and usually hand drawn. Giving it that "In game" look.
EX: Two photos from my flikr account illustrating this. Both done entirley in paint. Not much else on there is DND related, or even very interesting.
I also recommend a tool like Fractal Mapper (nbos software). Yes, it is a map rendering program and you said you're no good with those. But it damn near does half the stuff for you. There is a tool in it to create random landmasses, you don't even have to be able to draw it out. And if you don't like it, you re-render it again and again until it approximates what you were looking for. Or you draw out a rough shape of a landmass you want using straight lines, and when it fractalizes it looks very natural. Do the same thing and change the fill to water and now you have lakes. There's a tool for rivers too. And you can turn the flat map into a globe.
I'm looking for advice on how to make a world map for my campaign world. I can't draw worth a flip nor am I any better at those mapmaking rendering programs. Tips Please.
learn to use your MS WORD. It comes with your Laptop.
Thank you all for your input. As for MS word. I have windows 7 which came with a 60 trial of MS Word, but in order to have it permanently it would have cost me $200 dollar to get a full key. I instead chose to use Open Office.
My god...thats mental. MS Office comes with the Laptop. I got a Laptop for 250 dollars...that like saying a laptop is only 50 dollars.
This method is not ideal for everyone. I tend to make my world very big with broad, general information given to my players and then fill in the details as the go along. It requires a lot of thinking on-the-fly when a player asks an NPC, "Well why does the Karvic Empire hate the Gulhan Clan?"
www.youtube.com/watch?v=d16UsFUmV-0 ...
roguesdoitfrombehind4e.blogspot.com/p/ca...
But where do people get their physical maps from (without all the place names etc.)? I'm more interested ina small geographical area - something the size of an English county rather than an entire continent.
Any help?
once you have that, trace it onto non-graph paper, erase bits of the coastlines and such and make it more naturally chaotic- or not, depending on scale.
I like the idea of using real-world maps, possible a little altered.
But where do people get their physical maps from (without all the place names etc.)? I'm more interested ina small geographical area - something the size of an English county rather than an entire continent.Any help?
I use google image search.
Searches for stuff like "Unlabeled maps" or "Map of [location]".
Do you have any maps/locations that you've used yourself which are good for fantasy map-making purposes?
The pacific islands are awesome. Not many people are familiar with them, and they can be rescalled to be entire continents.
I used to browse this blog for some good stuff http://bigthink.com/blogs/strange-maps recently it has been into subway maps, but they still might be nice.
www.google.com/images?q=old+maps&btnG=Se... Then just browse around.
It also helps to do stuff like pick a country, i dunno.... Indonesia. http://www.google.com/images?um=1&hl=en&client=opera&rls=en&channel=suggest&tbs=isch%3A1&sa=1&q=old+maps+indonesia&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=
Pic 5, 6, and 8 all look "Useable" to me. Save the map. Open paint, and delete names that float around on it. Replace the white blocks with yellowed bits of ocean copied and pasted in. (I like 8 best). You can use the same tactics to move/delete islands, or grow islands bigger/smaller.
