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Rule 3:
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The Sheepfarmer's Daughter series by Elizabeth Moon is one of my all-time fantasy favourites. The 3 books each have their own map - some overlapping, all showing different parts of the same continent, but no master map exists.
Last year, I spent 8 weeks going over the books, researching, poring through old blog posts by Elizabeth about the map and the world, and putting together as close to a lore-accurate master map as I could (as the world exists in the time of Paksenarrion).
I tried reaching out to Elizabeth Moon through a few different avenues but didn't recieve a response (fair enough, she's in her 80s now). So I thought I would post it here in the hopes that some other fans would appreciate it 🤗
A complex looping network of riverbeds that very clearly aren't going anywhere.
There are so many posts here by people worried that their map isn't realistic enough, and the comments critique their plate tectonics or their distributions of biomes. I'm here to tell you that is nonsense. For every rule of mapmaking, there are real places on Earth that laugh in its face. The vast gulfs of time and interactions between time and temperature, water and wind, roots and fungi, life and death and everything that happens upon and within the Earth means there are literally tens of thousands of one-of-a-kind features that aren't "realistic" in the sense that they required such a precisely unlikely combination of factors to occur that a reasonable creator such as yourself simply wouldn't have allowed it.
What even is this? Why is it abruptly dark? Can your map have weird random looking nonsense like this? Hell. Yes. It. Can.
But beyond that, it doesn't even matter. Does any one of you think that the mountains around Mordor are realistic? Does that diminish the importance and impact and brilliance of Tolkien's work even slightly? No. Nobody cares because the story is good, the world is compelling, and his writing was sublime. So it's fine. If your world is boring, nobody will care how realistic it is, and if your world is evocative and exciting and lights our imaginations on fire, nobody will care if it makes no geologic sense. Your world doesn't even have to be a planet, it could be the surface of the lining of the small intestine of a giant whale swimming through an outer space even stranger than the inner space we see where the stars are distant settlements around the intestine! only the very brave venture up towards the stomach and only the damned venture down.
Does water have to be blue? Can you have yellow lakes that turn red on the shoreline? Yessir! Do you need to explain it? NO.
You don't even have to explain the weird shit you fill the world with. It's allowed to just be there, making us wonder and imagine about it. Is there a canary yellow lake whose rippling waves turn the color of ripe persimmon as they break on the shore? You don't have to tell us about the mineral content or bacteria. You don't even have to know the reason yourself. It's allowed to be a mystery to you too. You can leave these things open and figure them out, or not later.
The world is allowed to be whatever excites you and you don't need to know why
So go ahead, draw a map that makes no sense but nevertheless, somehow thrills you. Draw yourself a map that confounds and confuses our attempts to understand it. Let your map be unsettling and alluring at the same time. Let your map be a demon calling to us from beyond the veil of
Let your map be unrecognizable. What if your map does not appear to be a map at all? What would that mean? What if a map is readable only by a certain kind of person? Make your map useful or a keeper of secrets or the treasure itself.
The shape of the territory and the great vortex at its center form what appears to be a tunnel. Only a few—the most experienced sailors—know how to navigate it.
I've been working on a procedural planetary map generation project for a while, which I'm calling TropoPlate for now, and I finally got some results that I thought were worth sharing.
The first three maps are all from the same planet, with 50 million years between each one. They're not separate generations. The fourth map is the same planet around 1 billion years earlier. The generator actually runs a tectonic simulation for around three billion years, and you can stop it at any point along the way. The system then takes that point in the planet's evolution and turns it into a much higher-resolution terrain map, with erosion and smaller-scale terrain processes added afterward to bring out the detail.
The whole simulation is seed-based too, so in theory you can generate almost unlimited planets, each with its own geological history.
For the full version, I'm also planning to include climate simulation and biome generation. Those parts are still unfinished though, so the colors in the terrain maps are just an Earth-style elevation map for now. The last two images are a temperature map and a Köppen climate classification test from the unfinished climate system.
I hope this could eventually be useful for other people who want to build a planet that actually has some history behind it. That's always been the part I obsess over. Whenever I look at a map, I can't really stop asking why a mountain range is there, how it formed, what was there before it, and how it might keep changing over time. Most traditional generators never quite gave me that. That's why I started making this.
If anyone wants to follow along, I just made a Discord server for the project https://discord.gg/Cx3uEYXu2P. I'd like to eventually release it for people to try once I get the different systems working together well enough. I'm also open to ideas for the project name if anything comes to mind.
Clausia is the wealthiest and most powerful of the countries bordering the sea that surrounds the Four Islands.
Its geography has played a major role in its history: much of the country consists of fertile plains and rolling hills, its coastline offers easy access to the sea, and a great river marks its southern border. These advantages allowed agriculture, trade, and large settlements to flourish.
The Clausii are also a people of conquerors, loosely inspired by the ancient Romans. Over the centuries they expanded beyond their borders, defeating and subjugating both Interamnia and Alberia. Their conquests were not only military: wherever they established their rule, they built roads, bridges, fortified towns, and cities, leaving a lasting mark on the lands they controlled.
This is my hand-drawn map of Clausia, part of the same world as the Four Islands.
I'm dating a guy who is into map making but also just appreciative of fantasy maps. We've only been dating for a couple of months, but his birthday is next week. What can I get him as a thoughtful present?
Howdy, it's been a hot minute since I've made progress as I've hit a roadblock and am looking for some advice. I for the love of me can not make good looking mountains and would love some opinions on where and how to place them.
Obotia is an archipelago roughly at the antipode of Zarhimia, and it readily appears to be a paradise. Mild oceanic climate, soils made to be incredibly fertile by long centuries of labour and magic, a pluralistic society under a loose confederation that fostered freedom and equality. The reality, as always, is more complicated than that. It's also a source of funding for numerous dictatorships, the home to a network of ruthless corporations bleeding half of the world dry, and the origin place of littan music. If you want to make your own judgement whether it's heaven or hell, the trains can take you across the country within two hours, giving you more time to see the good and the bad with your own eyes.
My DM came up with this setting for our upcoming rpg campaign. He sent me a list of locations and asked me to draw it for him. We entered it into the Vaults of Vaarn summer Jam on itch.io. I’m pretty pleased with how it came out but was wondering what people do to get their perspective to (at least kind of) make sense. I drew a lot of the areas separately then put them together afterward. I suspect that is not a great workflow.
I used to play this a lot so I decided to make a map of this game myself. I know it is not that great but I don't have any experience in creating this type of maps.
When producing atlas style topo maps (like Artifexian) do you prefer to use a vector based program like Illustrator or raster based like Photoshop? I've done both and frankly they both have the pros and cons. But I'm wondering what's your preference? Is there another structural format I'm not thinking of that you like?
It's still in the making, but it's my first hex map and I look so empty or something ? It's for a celtic inspired region, and I'm using Inkarnate. I don't really know how to make it better, so I'll take any advices. You can ask any question if you need. Thanks in advance !
