> I'm getting the river moves at the breakneck speed of 0.8 miles per hour > at its most narrow sections, assuming it's navigable channel compares > to the Mississippi. :P > > I think I'm going to have to say that this particular bit of water is > MUCH narrower than shown on the map, or it'll be more like a very long > lake. I'll probably be deviding the widths provided by Campeign > Cartographer by about 5ish. Half a mile in some sections, 3 miles at the > mouth of the Smoke, and 4 miles at the widest point of the Conn that > they'll be travelling on. Just wide enough to make it rather challenging > to see the opposite bank :D
As has been pointed out - the slower the river speed, the more it will silt up and such. Have you heard of ox-bow lakes? Those are formed by rivers that meander, silt up, and change course (always seeking the easiest gradient possible) and leave the "lakes" behind. Also, if I remember my geology any where NEAR what I should, slower moving rivers tend to meander a LOT. If a map shows a relatively straight portion of river - it generally means that the water speed is fast enough to allow the water to more or less "drill" into terrain rather than letting the terrain force it to meander (I think hardness of rock, mineral content of rock as the minerals dissolve into the water etc has a bearing on it as well). One thing that I seem to recall is that depending on water speed and how much it erodes the land around it, that faster rivers tend to have "deeper" banks. By deeper Banks, I mean the height between normal ground level and the surface of the water. Always keep in mind that a river grinds away at the river bed and works via erosion to change the character of the land it goes through. If you're going to map out sections of the river - insure that you also include what appears to be "dry riverbed" areas next to the actual channel. These dry riverbeds would be either the high water area during winter melts or rainy seasons, or they would be areas that the river is shifting away from as it finds an easier gradient to follow (perhaps softer stone?). Trying to visualize the watershed concepts regarding rainfall and such. If you treat the river itself as a sort of "tree", the base of which grows on the lake or ocean, each branch of the tree collects water from a roughly rectangular region surrounding it. Thus, lets say you have one long "main branch" of the river that is essentially the trunk of the river. Lets say too that you have roughly 16 "branches" - 8 on each side of the river, feeding into the main trunk. You should be able to create something like 17 rectangles of watershed regions where the rainfall within that rectangle feeds the lesser river, and the lesser river empties into the primary river. Why 17? One rectangle for each of the branches plus the head of the primary river. I'll see if I can dig up my geography textbook if you want/need more information. Since you have CC, I suspect you've also seen Fractal Terrains Pro. The nice thing about Fractal Terrains Pro is that it will generate the rivers for you based on the rainfall generated by the program. NICE :) My only regret is that Profantasy hasn't created the means by which you can build a map, and import that map into Fractal Terrains - THAT would be awesome. Imagine being able to create a map of Yrth on CC PRO, then exporting it to FT, and then creating an animation GIF of the globe of Ytarria :) _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
