Sandbox: The Map, part 2

So I was working on the Map some more. I've come to a few specific decisions.

1. I don't want the islands to be too big. Each hex is about 5 miles or so. Irony games wanted them to be much larger so that each island was about the size of the British isles. That's too big for my needs. I'm good with many, small, islands.

2. Rather than the rigid 10 x10 grid, I am going to arrange them a little more chaotically. This is more aesthetically pleasing, but, that's not the main reason. The main reason is because I love world maps more than I thought. Originally, I figured this huge archipelago was in the middle of some sea and there was a main land somewhere. But, as if my mind simply rejected such a notion, a thought burst to my mind in a spray of flowers and sunshine. "What if these islands are the only land masses on the entire planet."

Do. Not. Compare. 

3. Doing a world map in Hexographer is doable, but not easy. Nor is arranging the islands from the one picture I have. I can do it, but I think I need to move it into fractal mapper to make it work. Making larger, hexographer based island maps (as opposed to maps of island chains or the world map) will be better. So in the end I want one ("pretty") world map, seven ("pretty") chain maps, and 100 or so maps of the individual islands. For now, I will focus on the world map, and then chain and island maps as they become necessary.

4. I'm going arrange the island into 7 chains plus another "group" of islands known (for now) as the "wild islands". The chains are geographic, not political, and have names familiar to people I've played with before. They are Aesir (northern), Eden (east-central), Mageddon (western), Nod (eastern), Sheol (south-central), Shinto (southern), and Zion (west-central). The wild islands are scattered all over the place. This arrangement puts Aesir, Nod, Shinto, and Mageddon in the cardinal directions and Sheol, Eden, and Zion in the middle.

5. The original Irony maps are already pre-set up with 3 nations per map. Quick math will tell you that means right at 303 nations. I may not need that many, some 'nations' may exist on more than one map, but I like the pre-set borders. Especially because several of them have 'contested' areas. In other words, areas where active wars are taking place. I need to have an easy framework to build nations, and I think I do, but more on that in another post. I am going to ignore the names of cities and towns from the original Irony maps. The maps were good, but the random name generator was horrid.