yeah, blender can be pretty scary at first, I had to read a 20-something page tutorial just to learn a bit about the interface and the buttons, but once you get the hang of it, it's pretty fast to do stuff, and by copying objects, you can make like 3 types of trees, and then copy them around and mess with their sizes, and you have a forest in minutes.
I'm thinking on using and ortographic camera (without perspective) so the char wouldn't have to be resized if it gets further away from it.
I think I should do around 5 types of trees, around 10 types of houses, a few grasses and stuff like that, and then I would only have to copy/paste them, and have fast maps that way.
and about the craybeast, it must be your inner angry black man telling you to do so.
(some people still call me crybest)