Moderator: Cartographers
I like that idea. I was born in 1989. What kind of snake would that make me?perchorin wrote:I have an interesting idea--the Chinese Zodiac, as anyone who's eaten at one of their tasty buffets knows, is divided up into 12 animal signs--rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, rooster, dog, and pig. What is lesser known in the west is that these animals are further divided up into five elemental varieties: metal, wood, fire, water and earth into a--you guessed it--sixty year cycle. For example, being born in 1975 makes me a wood rabbit! Anyway, I have not the faintest inkling of how to actually make a map, but I think this idea has some cool asian-themed possibilites, perhaps arranged around a yin-yang? For more info (and to see where I got my more specific details) look here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_zodiac
I'd gladly collaborate with anyone interested in taking this further, thanks!
oh, I forgot to mention that the animals are also grouped together by characteristics they're said to impart to the person born in their year (as you can read about on the wiki page) further lending themselves to being grouped into nice even "continents" ^^
I'm not sure about that, Circus Maximus doesn't seem to be very popular. I don't think the continents would be hard to come up with at all, the difficult part will be making them interesting due to the extreme balance of the philosophy. Originally I thought of grouping them by element around a yin-yang, but that makes 5 12-territory continents and not very compelling gameplay. If we get real arbitrary we could group them together by some more random means, but I haven't come up with anything yet. Any ideas?My only problem would be the deal with the continents. Maybe make it like Circus maximus without any?