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I opened a thread, long ago, on this topic looking for advice on what type of software or tools to use to go about creating the style of maps that I believe that folks are thinking of here. Several folks helped me at that time, and I would like to return the favor with the benefit of my research.
Personally, I feel that a good graphical atlas of your world would be a powerful tool in the way of making your MUD an "advanced" placed.
The tool that I use is called Campaign Cartographer 2 Pro. Taking a look at the publishers site () gives a great idea of what this can do for a fantasy world of almost any theme. Basically, they offer a real Engineer's CAD program that has been broken down into a user friendly format for would-be designers. Onto that frame they have added a zillion features and pre-made items all geared towards the gaming industy.
The pre-programmed features allow me to build maps in short time.
The pre-made graphics are all customize-able....thus insuring that my work will not look like a cookie cutter version of the next guy's work.
The CAD feature of "layers" provides the key component....control of information. With a simple hide/show you can toggle cities, terrain, political boundries, hidden areas, secret stuff, north-lands, south-lands, in-the-middle-lands.....basically, the same map produces a pile of tools:
A vague geographical map open to the public on the website.
A shadow-box map that shows political boundries...I can update this depending on almost real-time clan wars.
"blow-ups" of regions that can be e-mailed to players when they join the clan that rules over that region.
A master mack-daddy map that the admin and build staff can use to plan and coordinate world changes and future expansion.
I do not mean to sound like a paid ad, but I find the tool to be something that definately can help boost a game world to a higher level. With the right tool, you can better address the issues many have mentioned in this thread.
~Mandrake
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