Worldobuilder By Inkwell Ideas for Maps

A few months ago, I picked up a whole suite of software for mapping and world building. I have to tell you, the Worldographer software is excellent. I use it for my books, my blogs and my campaign. It couldn't be more handy. They have a collection of software, but my favorite is Worldographer. It basically does everything I wish it to.

You can pick up new icon packs from Patreon, as monthly subscription. My campaign is Roman themed, so I haven't partaken in that yet. I did purchased the e1 Icon pack when I bough the software. It allows me to make maps that look a bit like the Greyhawk campaign map. I love it.

You can give it a try with very few limitations from the store section of their main site. The free version doesn't nag or limit you too much. It is mean to just give you a taste.

I can't help but tinker. My setting is a peninsula with a vast savanna, I needed acacia trees. The set of icons I had didn't have any, so I modified a regular tree into one using the GNU Image Manipulation Program.

It reminded me of modding Civilization Icons. You need a transparent background. Did you ever try that? I used to have great fun adding dinosaurs and Veritechs to the game.

Anyway, back to my campaign. I have a large Romanesque city. Romans lived in villas and apartments. The software had a half dozen choices, but I need to populate a massive area. Repetition stands out like a sore thumb, so I got modding.

In the first version of my city, the buildings looked very medieval. I decided to make the whole area more Roman by making most structures either ramshackle wooden or Spanish tile like.

  
You can see those Spanish like rooves from 35,000 feet. Nice.

Then I wanted new villas. Just two choices didn't give a lot of variety.

I now have 4 or five variations. Square or rectangular and so on. One thing I discovered while working is, if you leave the courtyard area transparent, you can trees and other structures to the yard. Nice touch. The other thing is you can use the software to flip, rotate and scale the same building so even a copy doesn't look exactly like the one next to it.

For my last trick, and this is completely outside of the scope of Worldographer, I decided to add my party.

It is completely useless for game play, but I thought it was a nice trick. I have two wagons and 5 horses, to match my party. If you zoom in too much, there is zero detail, so the trick loses it's charm. But I enjoyed giving it a shot.