Community Map!

[HoneyBadger]

Inspired by Agrajag's random map efforts, I've decided that it would be very cool to have a map that we all have a chance to contribute to.

This will allow a bunch of ideas that have been floating around, to find a home, and for us to have our own unofficial equivalent of Greyhawk *TM*

Firstly, it's going to be a 1500 province map that will be divided into 6 sections of 250 provinces each. The smaller maps may then be further divided. This will allow for consistency throughout, while still enabling ease of use for the casual gamer and multi-player.

Each of the early ages nations will have a specific starting location on the main map, and will be balanced somewhat by where they start. Early Mod nations will also be included, providing they work, or can be made to work, in the current version. If this becomes successful, then middle and late age versions will also be a strong possibility.

With the addition of a 6th hero slot, I'd like a set of heroes specific to this campaign setting, for the various nations.

Everyone may pick as many or as few provinces as you like-although I really hope everyone will consider making atleast 1 province. It's your chance for a little kingdom or queendom or republic or theocracy or barbarian stronghold, all your own. You may have as many as you like, too, as long as you finish and enter each one, before starting on the next. I encourage, if you do more than 1, to "build" them into a single more or less consistent area for placement on the map, with ties to the other province, rather than scattering them all over the place, but that's up to you.

What's required, to make a province, is the following (so far):
Terrain type (plains, steppe, river delta, hills, mountain/volcano, light woods/thick forest, jungle, swamp, badlands/wasteland, desert, tundra, glacier, shore/harbour, shallow sea/deep ocean, cavern, or special.).

location (give us a general idea, north, south, east, west, central, ocean, or lost world-this may change, due to the rigors of mapmaking).

Population (who lives there? if it's a tribe, what race? what's their technological level? are they farmers? fishermen? nomads? do they live in a central city, or are they spread out? what's their history and culture? what type of gods do they currently follow (that our Pretenders will displace), if any? and what are their rulers like? Provinces might be self-ruled, or lorded over by small groups of monsters/thugs, or a single SC) The poptypes for Early Age are available, and if you want to, you can even invent a new race/culture that hasn't been seen in the game yet, or "import" one of the nations or poptypes already present, and modify it.

Finally, after I have an idea of who's contributing what, and how much, then we'll lay out a map so you can see where your province(s) are located, and who you're next to, and then you'll be asked to help develope the ways in which your land relates to the ones around it, and it's overall place in the world.

You'll be pretty free to do whatever you want-and the more creative, the better-although when it comes to the military strength of your respective province(s), this will be monitored a bit, for balance and consistency.

I'm going to be writing up an overall Campaign Setting for the world itself, to give you an idea of what kind of world it's going to be, but it will be *very* open to interpretation.

I think this will be a fun way for everyone to get involved in creating something for Dominions, that we can all use, and all build on.