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Originally posted by Kiaransalyn

Initially that looks a dream job, but after a read it looks like you are only drawing maps to someone else's notes. In other words, the scope for creativity is limited to maps. The writer says what goes where and what the names are, and the map-maker gets to decide how many meanders the river has.

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Originally posted by Garen Thal

quote:

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Originally posted by Kiaransalyn

Initially that looks a dream job, but after a read it looks like you are only drawing maps to someone else's notes. In other words, the scope for creativity is limited to maps. The writer says what goes where and what the names are, and the map-maker gets to decide how many meanders the river has.

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Actually, map orders can involve even less creativity than that. A map for an adventure, for example, is redone from a hand-drawn map by the designer (usually on graph paper or similar medium). A regional map might or might not already have features decided, depending on what already exists.

Cartographers for roleplaying supplements are not, in most cases, the drivers of the creative process. They tweak and massage a crappy, hand-drawn sketch into something beautiful, inviting, and evocative. They take, for example, my four-color drawing and turn it into the awesome dungeon you'll remember a decade from now, or my triangle-mountains and make them into the interestingly-winding peaks of the border between warring kingdoms.

Cartographers are the visual equivalent of developers and editors: they make the designer's raw material into something memorable.

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