Antarctic Termite

Mid/High Casual - Divinus: The Deity Roleplay Mk.II

Okay, so after a long discussion debate argument catfight discussion with @WrongEndoftheRainbow, he's requested to take on the role of map-maker from the get go.

As such, unless someone was attached to it, we've decided to ditch the random map and will be having a new map, designed by Wrongend, that will hopefully be as diverse and unexpected as a random map, without any issues with functionality.

We're currently figuring out some ideas to keep in mind to ensure an exciting map. Please add to them if you have any important suggestions.

There should be...

-Land dispersed across many latitudes.
-At least one, or two, large continents with variable elevation and room for inland travel.
-Enough water to get between landmasses.
-Enough land to allow extended over-land interactions and reduce the dominance of water power.
-Landmasses covering several degrees of both latitude or longitude, allowing multiple climates on the continents with enough space in each to share if need be (cosiness not guaranteed).
-Islands, archipelagos, inland seas, large lakes, isthmuses, straits, bays, mountains, all that.
-A vague idea of tectonic rifts.

And that's all I can think of so far.

Ed: additions:

-An ocean on the equator and a large amount of north-south area to be a convenient antimeridian
-An accessible location for Mater Lei, preferably on the prime meridian, preferably on a beach (but not an island).

Mid/High Casual - Divinus: The Deity Roleplay Mk.II

That's a good idea. It's nice to have some deep inland areas. In your current map, there's a giant inland ocean which could be filled in to achieve that goal.

@BBeast

Time to get to work, then.

*Mater Lei walks past carrying a bucket and spade*

Mid/High Casual - Divinus: The Deity Roleplay Mk.II

ed: ninja'd

@WrongEndoftheRainbow How much do you enjoy naval empires?

Your map encourages island- or continent-grabbing, which isolates players until they develop sail and completely dispenses with the need for land travel once they do. Once you have the technology (and if you go the Polynesian route you will get it fast), oceans are a connecting factor, not a barrier. To some extent this is also a problem with my map, but maybe not quite so bad. There's a mix of land separating oceans and oceans separating land.

Also remember that not all overland trips are possible, never mind easy. Mountains, forests, deserts, ice fields and enemy territory are all obstacles that have to be mastered (and, in our case, can be manipulated!). You could try doing the same thing with water civs on an 80% water map, by some divine shenanigans, but it's much harder. Also, aquatic civs like mermaids will enjoy tactical supremacy.

People tend to play land civs, too (even when there's room for both), so land connections give us some lovely border disputes and cultural exchange. On a water map your borders are the beach and then how far you can get before you see how leaky your boat is. There should be island princedoms, obviously, but maybe not an entire planet of them (unless you guys want one!)

Some things to put to vote, though:

-Should continents be larger and rounder? This will encourage overland travel a la the Silk Road and Saharan trade networks

-Should some landmasses be inaccessible to one another without sea travel? This could let us have fun with old-world new-world dynamics with two or three continents taking completely different cultural paths (until sail). Enough land in between would do this too, though (Mediterranean vs. sub-Sahara, Japan vs. Britain, see large continents).

Mid/High Casual - Divinus: The Deity Roleplay Mk.II

Speaking of laziness, while I'm still too lazy to finish proofreading the OP, here's that random map again. It looked pretty cool for a first roll (there's a vaguely triangle-shaped continent to the left, and circular mountains), so unless @Kho already has his precious heart set on a map or anyone else dislikes its geography, or wants to start with an all-land or an all-water map, we can probably stick with it.

This time it's in a higher resolution and Robinson Winkel Tripel Robinson projection, and I moved it so that the sides cut through the meridian with the most ocean. _{Which, coincidentally, left the prime meridian 365 pixels from left and was a move of exactly 420 pixels. Blaze it.}

There's a red dot on a nice little peninsula on the prime meridian that might be an origin point of some kind. No, it's not Jvan.

Hider

Mid/High Casual - Divinus: The Deity Roleplay Mk.II

ANYWAY GUYS

If you're wondering why I'm so insistent on using random terrain for the empty planet (and if you didn't know that I am, well, I am), here's why. Forgive the equirectangular projection.

Elevation and water map

In my opinion, the only distinctive geographical features that developed on the blank Mk. II Galbar map were the Shalanoir region, the upper curve of the Ironhearts surrounding the Mahd basin (Venomweald/Firewind/Mangrove), and the updated Mesathalassa and upper Metatic. Everything else was just massive blobs.

Meanwhile, look at this thing! It has straits, isthmuses, islands, plateaus, inland seas large and small, more than enough ocean to navigate and land to explore. It even has one of those mythical ring-shaped mountain ranges everyone loves so much!

Given the extent to which gods can changed landmasses even with the nerfs I'm working into the OP, there's still plenty of room to make everything you want, but even the spaces you don't hand-craft still have shape and character. And we can settle on a scale for the planet, to boot, so people can actually get a vague idea of how large all these things are.

So yeah. Randomly generated land-and-water maps for me please.

maptoglobe.com/ryM58QXjM#

Mid/High Casual - Divinus: The Deity Roleplay Mk.II

@Kho Trust me, I don't want to write longposts either, and I will do my damnedest to enforce lighthearted posting if need be, but I don't feel like dealing with ultra-shortposts either and we do want to get players.

It should be okay if we drop it in Free and advertise both there and elsewhere.

'Course, we're only running in the casual section here because this RP only semi-intentionally blew out into Advanced section levels of writing, but whatever.

@Muttonhawk

Mid/High Casual - Divinus: The Deity Roleplay Mk.II

@Muttonhawk yeah I'd like it to go in Casual too, personally.

y'all wanna

vote?

Mid/High Casual - Divinus: The Deity Roleplay Mk.II

@WrongEndoftheRainbow You can make as many pretty maps as you want once the RNG Fate does its job.

Mid/High Casual - Divinus: The Deity Roleplay Mk.II

@WrongEndoftheRainbow We'll probably use either or both of these.

topps.diku.dk/torbenm/maps.msp

maptoglobe.com/#

Mid/High Casual - Divinus: The Deity Roleplay Mk.II

We could always excuse the extraordinary power used by Level 1 lite-gods at the start by saying that much of it had to do with Fate and Mater lending them the power necessary to create an entire universe to their liking. So the basic laws etc. of the universe will be created by the gods as with Mk.II

Unless Mater creates a basic intelligent species with which the newborn gods can go about playing and developing into different species.

@Kho

I'm... Pretty strongly inclined not to do either of these. The former sounds vague and inflexible, and I'm generally opposed to any kind of 'baseline' fauna. *

I think it could work if the world initiated as a cold desert or just water or seas of sand, the cool gods congregate in one area, create a small oasis of life, each one flexing their divine muscle, and then from there, life spreads to the rest of the planet. The outcasts, shy, and edgy, could go and make their own areas with pool tables and punk music, send just an ambassador, or act in the shadows.

Such area would work in a similar way to the initial "nothingness" of the previous divinus MKs, except once it is done and the world has life, this original land could become a permanent "godly land", legendary to mortals, coveted by many gods, so on. (though it would take some turns, or for example, if there is no god of seas, it could stay permanently as a land where sand separates continents instead of water, so on)

@Double Capybara

This is pretty much what I was thinking, yes!

*ed: Microbial baseline flora is good though, let's have some oxygen and stromatolites and methanogens and volcanic extremophiles and GOD I LOVE PROKARYOTES