[quote=@Shorticus]
One more thing... If you want something better than MS Paint, there IS a free option that's turned out to be pretty good for me.

So, look into the program called Paint . Net (putting spaces so you don't get a bad link). It's a free program that works pretty well for mapmaking. You can make separate layers for terrain, for political colors, for cities and names... Etc. I highly recommend it over MS Paint, though it does take some practice to get used to.

This is an example of what I was able to do with the program. NOTE: I did not draw the map itself, but just colored in the area my nation in a roleplay claimed. You'll notice there's a certain degree of transparency for the yellow as it sits over the map itself, so you can make out the parts of the terrain which are jungly, etc.

[img]http://i.imgur.com/VwsoAqq.png[/img]

If you want to take a peek at the program, I think www.getpaint.net is the place to go.
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Ah, Paint . NET! It's been a loooong time since I used that. I did have it on my desktop computer, and it's what I used to use for graphics, but when I moved house a couple months ago I lost the power lead, and thus I got stuck with my laptop. If you want a [i]really[/i] good graphics software for free, use GIMP. It's completely free, and the power of it is just amazing. It [i]does[/i] save in an .xcf format, but you can save in other formats by using File > Export as...

Just putting that out there. I kinda go crazy when people talk about graphics XD