It begins with thinking about how to facilitate the start of play. I needed: a rather large town and a rather small town, each with something to offer the other to facilitate basic trade. It also gives the PC's two distinct town-areas to explore (and myself two distinct town areas to develop). Since I'm going for a sandbox style of play, at least in wilderness exploration, I wanted to leave most of the map uncivilized, so both towns are located near the southern edge of the map.
I also needed places for the PCs to explore. On a map this small, one mountain range is plenty, and for some reason I thought of "Horseshoe Mountains," so that curved line up there represents what will eventually become mountains. Inside the "shoe" formed, those wavy lines represent a marsh-like area that will be home to all sorts of ruins and things.
The circles will be forests. I wanted two: a smaller, "friendlier" one, and a larger, Mirkwood-esque "dangerous" one.
The empty area in the middle of the map represents plains, which will have an American west "badlands" feel to them; I'm inspired by the scenes from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid where they're running from LaForge (the guy with the hat).
In this world, there are no elves or dwarves (both races having died out mysteriously in some forgotten ago). So the mountains and forests will be rife with ruins, remnants of those vanished civilizations, which hopefully will generate dungeons and other adventures.
The next step will be clarifying the image of the world in my head, as well as what purposes I want it to serve. Once that happens I'll be able to redraw the map in greater detail.
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