I love to draw maps but don't have the time to hand draw much anymore so I go looking for inspiration. One of my biggest inspirations is our very own little planet earth. What I do is find an interesting area and either mapquest or google map it and then do some print screens and a little cut and paste into MS Paint until I come up with something like this.



For me interesting maps include water and varied coastlines. Lots of jagged coast with peninsulas and inlets. Usually the final map won't be just what you see above but will be modified in areas according to my tastes.

And with the sorry state of geography education in this country these days, none of the players will know they are really adventuring in Michigan.

Well, except Vreck.

Here's one based on an area of Canada with a buch of lakes.

And finally one based on the Chesapeake Bay

nice captures...

I used to use some Topo maps I picked up cheap for some locals for actual adventures. Some maps stores clearance out seldom used maps and they often had some interesting geology that makes for fun questing. (I was almost a Geology major for a few yers until I went Materials Science/Metallurgy so the descriptions of rock formations from me tend to be someone .... ahem ..... involved and detailed, with the goal of providing clues to the players about what might lie ahead...

Neat!  I used to spend most of my time getting tready for a game by drawing maps up.  Cool little shortcut there....

Downtown Archeronapolis, based on Indianapolis by Robb

http://www.public.asu.edu/~rbeachle/RMEIndex.htm