Researching the Map

I wanted the map for our world to be large, but obviously not as large as the real world. Think perhaps a large game environment, for example, Skyrim, Read Dead, Black Flag, Farcry for each continent. However I did still however still want continents, spread out like the map of earth, rather than all being together, like the map in Lord of the Rings.  We did like the way the Lord of the Rings map was tea-stained and faded though, and wanted to replicate this, the Assassins Creed Black Flag map also has these qualities. We wanted each continent to have a specific and individual look and feel, each being based on the lands rich history from the real world. For example, the West will have Native Americans and Cowboys, the North will have mythical properties and vikings, the south can have tribesmen and shamans, as well as Ancient Egyptians. and the East can have Samurai, Ninja's and assassins. This is the basic concept of how we would like our map to be. Its also interesting to me to reflect the lands and island layout, keeping similar to the actual land it is based on will help the reader automatically know what land it is. I especially like how Read Dead Redemptions map is loosely colour coded, to beak up the territories. This is something I may do in my map.