OBT Forum

Quote

- Albedo
- Greenhouse
- Axial tilt
- base average temps and max high and lows
- rainfall average per year
  I don't have exact numbers on these, but I've ballparked the equatorial climate as similar to that of Washington D.C. or Rome, with the poles being a touch worse than Earth's Arctic or Antarctic for cold & snow.

I'll keep albedo (reflected light) and tilt as for earth and base the equatorials off Washington.  Do you have average rainfall and temps for Washington so I don't have to search?

  ... I keep forgetting that I'm talking to a fellow native of the South Pacific, not a Yank.     Erm... This might help, but then again, it's Wikipedia, so who knows how accurate it is? 
  Then again, making that the benchmark might not be the best parallel - between Washington having such marked seasonal shifts, the equator being pretty much season-less, and the Sorens having chosen their settlement-sites with the conscious intent of having mild summers and snowy winters....     I'll try to refine that.

As to placing cities and nations, it is easier if I give you the base map and you mark where you want things. If you dont have a decent paint program, some scrawl will do and then I can place them in Campaign Cartopgrapher or in GIMP.

  I'd assumed that - the regional names were mainly to give you an idea of the respective areas' most well-known features, which I'd hoped would help guide the design process.   

  I'm looking at the test-maps now - I'll get back to you in a short while.

  Thanks!   

Found the climate data earlier, makes for a cool world.

  Which is why most of the settlements have congregated in the equatorial band, their ancestors' intentions about 'toughening up the breed' notwithstanding.  (Come to think of it, in those respects Soren's actually very much like Svoboda....)

  After printing out the 'Ico' version of your test map and using scissors and tape to turn it into a d20 , it's starting to grow on me.  I can always spread the five Baronies across both of the major continents, instead of keeping them all on the one (it'd lend a level of complexity to the campaign and its outcome, at that).  I've attached a .jpg below: could you please run another iteration of this map, using most of the same basic parameters you used for this one, but putting the poles in the indicated positions and increasing the roughness of the terrain by, oh, 5-10% from its current level?    (I was going to ask for even rougher before I realised that how much detail I'd lost by printing to a mere A4-size.  )

Done as orderd. 

Also, the image climate did not update properly on the last one, so this shows the cold areas better. 

North pole changes to Lat 30 Long 80.

... hmmm.
  Well, the layout of the land-masses works okay, but assuming that the greenish-brown areas are lower-fertility regions created by altitude and related climate issues, the increased rise-and-fall of the terrain might have been a mistake.   

  Hoping that the third time will be the charm:
- Please go back to the first run's settings for terrain ruggedness.  (We might end up going a little below that, even, but not on this run - let's see how the other parts shake out first.)
- It might pay to bump the average equatorial temperatures up by a few degrees, as well.  (You're right that this planet's looking a little too cool for my concept - especially by the looks of all those lifeless mountaintop regions.)  The D.C. benchmark was, what, an average of 20-25 C?  Nudge it up by 5 degrees (to 25-30 C) and let's see how we go.   
-  Maybe increase the precipitation by a few percentage-points as well?  This one's dealer's choice.

  Sorry to be such a pain-in-the-ass customer about this, Blacknova. 

Yes, I had a bouncing clown I called Knightmare on that one that got quite the regular beating...

Not bothered by making changes at all, I like to ensure people are happy with what I produce, that way more people will want my work.

Here is version 3

Like he has competition or his customer service is second rate...

These look really cool

That's alright, life gets like that. This might turn the trick, with a different temp scale and 30 degree tilt.

  ... and that'll do nicely, thank you, Blacknova.    If you could please whip up a 'space' view of the planet and PM me the exact numbers you used to generate this map-version, so I can plug them into a 'planetary profile' write-up like we've seen in the Handbook House X series, I do believe that should do it. 

  (If you feel the urge to create a series of sub-maps, showing each continent/sub-region like a planetary atlas, I'd eagerly welcome the added detail, but that's a 'nice-to-have', not a 'must-have'.  Once I've got the 'space' view and the planetary data, the current map should more than cover my geography needs for writing fiction set on Soren.  )