World maps and player feelings

[Black Roses]

Last time I started setting up a world for a central ToW campaign, I took the map of a Risk like board game (War age of Imperialism) where I changed the names and flipped it over.

However half my group actually complained at playing on what ultimately was earth.

I am building a new game where the players will be the Scout lance of a private Baron army where they will find clues for Lostech Prospecting. I stumbled on a Discovery channel show called 'What on Earth' about odd Satellite photos of weird things on Earth. Like most modern cheap TV docos there is a lot of hearsay and the answers are either inconclusive or dragged out because they are pretty simple.

For an example google image the Baikal lake circles, odd warm circles breaking thick Siberian ice. Looks great and mysterious from orbit, but could be natural phenomena or clues to a hidden lostech facility.

Many of the stories in this doco series I am stealing the details of to put in a series of clues the players can then use for start points of pursuing lostech sites.

The problem with using satellite images is I feel a bit low on wanting to use a hand drawn continental map for the domain of the Baron they serve and his neighbours. But at the same time using an earth continents satellite map may cause the same complaint to my players as I stated at the top.

So how would you feel as a player if you are being given a map including an earth continent, or a drawn continental map and satellite images of places on it?

[RunandFindOut]

What I tend to do since my drawing ability is fairly crappy is trawl deviantart for maps other people have drawn.  Then I tend to use a mixture of these maps, GIMP altered versions of them, and where it makes sense throw some satellite images at them as images of various features to be found on those maps.  Although where possible I have other programs that can act as a virtual tabletop and I'll use GIMP to drop a hexgrid on Google Earth images then stitch them together into an appropriately sized map.  That's quite difficult though and leads to enormous map files.  Real locations are MUCH bigger than their standard BT 2x2 maps most people seem to play on.  It really does change the game in good ways though if you can have a map that measures a dozen miles on a side and play out two forces that actually have enough room to USE long ranges and mobility to their advantage.

[Nargrakhan]

Because I'm an avid fan of the game series, and because it has an awesome random map generator, I tend to use the latest version of Civilization to generate world maps for my campaigns (and not just BattleTech). Beyond Earth probably fits better for Sci-Fi settings (alien landmarks).

I just use various game cheats and/or map editors to take screenshots/export the map into a bitmap image and whatnot.

I'm sure other games of similar nature can be used in a pinch (i.e. Age of Wonders 3 has a world map thing IIRC).

Once I used a SimCity map I got from a download archive for a Shadowrun campaign. Fun times. Relevance? Use a SimCity map for an urban combat setting.

[Black Roses]

Thanks for the replies guys.

Some nice ideas, especially some of the look for the Beyond earth stuff works thematically.

I think I will just have to take my time and build it slowly over a few months.

Before I can even start I need to prep the political rivals a bit more so I have a few key sites and resources for political conflict, then build the rest of the continent and plant my exploration zones.

Thanks again.