There's a good article in Kobold Press's Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding by Jonathan Roberts about worldbuilding through map design. He also has a shorter blog post on the topic. He generally advises skirting the science (especially in fantasy) but offers guidelines about rivers, mountains, and climate to maintain consistency.
Cool, thanks!
Definitely get that book. Highly recommended for GMs, writers, anybody building a world out of their head.
But my players want them. I can't afford to have one drawn for me or to buy map making software. I've tried using some blank map images I found online and altering them with Picasa or Paint but I can't seem to figure out how to do that either.
I'm just griping. No need to comment.
Photoshop CS5+ and using the clone stamp tool makes modifying maps really easy.
Just never look at Anna B. Meyer maps, she is that brilliant you will be bound to get discouraged. Or incredibly inspired!
Civilization was already brought up, but in the context of using a random world map. I like Civ 5's actual map BUILDER where I can paint the world around, etc, and add in features and such... though this is a lot smoother if you have a rough idea in your head of what you already want.
I just hate maps: they make me go obsessive about locations to the point at which I can't have anything fun due to it not fitting the logic of the map.
See? I'm not the only one!
It's less being "wrong" and more being "consistent." If you establish that the Branmourn Forest is split in twain by a canyon that spews red silt every spring with the snowmelt, you just need to remember that you said that and add the necessary geographical features. (Notes are a GM's BFF.)
It's less being "wrong" and more being "consistent." If you establish that the Branmourn Forest is split in twain by a canyon that spews red silt every spring with the snowmelt, you just need to remember that you said that and add the necessary geographical features. (Notes are a GM's BFF.)
"Branmourn." I love it. When naming the wood ages ago two old men stood on a hillside:
1. Well, we've finally trekked to the far side of the ridge. Just below is a new woodland unseen by any in our tribe before.
2. What'll we call it then? And what's for breakfast?
1. I don't know what to name it yet. Meanwhile all I have is these muffins...
2. BRAN?! I HATE Bran! I literally MOURN the invention of this incessant stuff and you've baked it into stale muffins?
1. Mourn... Bran... YEAH, that's IT! Forever more shall this be known as the Branmourn Forest!
Anyway madam manager that is sound advice. Give a region some personality, then make a note of it. Remember to bring it up once in a while. In the case of the above-mentioned wood have the PCs get caught in a Crimson Flood or perhaps have them present in a town when it flows through the river and the local priest of Gozreh get's all antsy about the "omens" this foretells.
Fair enough. :D Knowing what your GMing limitations are *is* a hallmark of a good Game Master, after all. :)
I tried the macaroni method. Evidently you're not supposed to cook the macaroni.
More seriously, I sometimes get inspiration from looking at couscous as its cooking in the pot. I also get inspiration from looking at stream banks and pond edges... working along the principle of simply scaling up.
Frequently, though, plot or need drives map making more that hard science. That's where magic comes in. Which is very helpful.
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Addendum: When I was making up the area east of the River Kingdoms I just extrapolated existing geography and made some common sense decisions.
And then I added a volcano. Just for giggles. Turned out to be the best thing, because that singular volcano became the lynchipin for the entire backstory.
Point is, don't sweat all the details. Geology and geography is as much about the things that ought not to be there as anything else. Look at Devil's Tower in Wyoming. Its the magma chamber of an extinct volcano. Sure, there are other places like that nearby (the Black Hills are all about volcanic uplift) but Devil's Tower is the distinctive one. Its okay to throw in some randomness so long as you don't go overboard. Someone will come up with an acceptable explanation afterwards.
*I will add that if you go through the effort to start figuring out the geology of an area, that things like minerals and gemstones really start to explain themselves and that, to some degree, justifies the additional work.
One handy-dandy trick that's worked for me in the past is to remember that coastlines are fractal. If you need an Australia-sized island but know that your players will recognise Australia, just nab the Isle of Wight and change the scale.
Mountains tend to run parallel to coastlines, rivers flow towards the sea, lakes can show up almost anywhere but need both inflow and outflow, rivers tend to join rather than split (though it can happen), forests should be pretty much everywhere, and settlements tend to appear where multiple features meet (especially rivers), and countries almost always have a natural terrain feature as their border.
Do a first draft in pencil, rough out the major features (coastline, mountains, rivers, forests, plains) just using big blobs with either sketches or words to say what's a forest, what's a mountain. Then hand-copy that first draft into your second draft (still in pencil). It will change, but that's okay. Second draft should use recognisable symbols (triangles for mountains, little bumpy clouds for forests, whatever suits you). Now place settlements. Go nuts. Everywhere you think a settlement could go, put one there. At this stage your map will be pretty crowded, but that's okay. You have just placed every single village, town, and city that's likely to crop up. By this stage you're probably thinking "okay, that place next to that river at the base of those mountains is a mining town, that one where those rivers meet is a trade hub, and that one at the coast is a port". Excellent, you're already picking out towns and cities. Feel free to mark up your map to show that, but you can wait. Scan a copy so you can reproduce this version of the map. Now grab a fine-nibbed pen (a ballpoint works fine in most cases) and roughly trace over your second draft (again, it's fine if your map changes a bit), and pick a few of your settlements to put in. Keep adding settlements in pen until you think the map is crowded enough. Stop, and rub out your pencil.
There are lots of tricks to make a map look more professional (cross hatching is a godsend, so are "shadows" of taller features like mountains and forests), but by now you should have a perfectly serviceable map. I'd now recommend scanning it and doing any further tweaks (like colouring bits in) in a photo editor.
Pretty much the last thing you should do if using this method is pick your scale: today's continent is tomorrow's island.
Remember, though, that mapmaking is an art, and you get better with practice. Your first one might suck. Don't be discouraged, try again.
Y'know the other reason why I suck at maps? Layers. If I were any good at understanding and using online resources like Photoshop or if I could draw better than a 1st grader I'd be able to put 2 terrain types on top of one another.
In my home town there is a lot of marsh area, so on a region-scale map (1 inch equals 10 miles for example) you might have the area as marsh. However right in the middle of that marsh is a decent sized lake that folks go boating on, there's a belt of woodlands that carves through it and on the western edge there's some significant hills.
I cannot, for the life of me seem to express on paper this concept. Every map I make has a blob for forests or water, or humps for hills, or pointy hills for mountains. I don't seem to have the skill to express the epic vision in my head that even though said mountains are a small, 20 mile range roughly 30 miles wide surrounded by another 5 miles all around them by foothills, there are deep vales nestled in them. Some of these vales are thick with pine and birch that reach all the way up the middle peaks while others are sodden with peat bogs, meadows and moors.
Yep, what I draw never looks like what I imagine. EVAR. lol
Coastlines are pretty easy; just squiggles and bigger squiggles for bays and inlets. It's the inland details that I don't like struggling over. Paraphrasing Mark, hills are bumps and mountains are pointy bumps.
I've found a couple of maps online that I've decided to use (Oligocene Epoch stuff) that have mountains on them. If I can sketch them out even closely to what they actual map has I'll be happy.
Then comes the placement of towns and cities. And scale. Oh, scale how you vex me.
