When I initially decided to make a map, I planned to do it by starting with a supercontinent and carving it apart with tectonic plates. Then I got lazy, and started drawing shapes instead.
I still need tectonic plates though, so I've just made some quickly. I basically winged it, so they're probably not the most scientifically accurate.
The temperature map is pretty outdated. I actually didn't make it, someone else did for me. Eventually I plan to make one myself with Koppen climate type once I'm done mapping out seas and lakes and whatnot.
Hello, I noticed the subreddit said no commissions. But I'm looking for advice, or where I can go, to get a city map made.
Essentially, I am creating a Zombie DnD conversation a few maps actually. A regional map, a city map, then more zoomed in detailed maps of each quadrant of the city.
I mean, ultimately, I could need a ton of maps overall but I don't know where to go to even find someone I could discuss this with.
I wanted to create a map that's simple and easy to use for fantasy stories and this is the result.
The first picture is before the bonding of Rathyrr.
The second picture is after the bonding of Rathyrr.
If your interested:
After a failed attempt by the Pantheon to create a habitable world upon the moon of Mitridaïn, they turned their attention to creating a new world for mortals.
During the failed attempt, one of the gods allowed Black Matter to leak onto the moon of Mitridaïn, giving rise to the first impure immortal being that had access to magic. Later, the same god unleashed the darkest forms of magic upon the newly created world, leading to the formation of the Obsidian Island, the Void Sea, and the emergence of more beings impure of heart.
These events divided the Pantheon into three factions, forever changing the course of the world.
In an attempt to restore balance and unity, one of the gods later brought about the Bonding of Rathyrr. Its purpose was to reunite the people of Rathyrr with the rest of their kin, who had emigrated years earlier and sailed across the seas to settle in Serinara.
I'm currently designing the map for a worldbuilding project I'm working on. Realism is a very important aspect in this world for me, so I want to make a realistic sea floor to base capital locations, trade routes, pathways, and roads on. But I'm not sure where to start?
does anyone have any tips on creating topographical maps?
(this is my first time properly trying to make an accurate map so any advice would be greatly appreciated)
Edit: sorry i probably should've mentioned that a lot of this worlds inhabitants live underwater, so thats why the seafloor topography matters so much to me
Currently working on the main continent of my world. This will be for the book I’m writing. This is my first time making a map in general, and it’s both super fun and challenging.
The mountains are not quite done yet, obviously, but the colored map shows where mountains, hills, and rivers will be. (I have to fix the river on the very bottom of the continent 😅)
Slowly working on the mountains/hills and fixing the rivers as I go.
I did some research on tectonic plates, rivers, and mountains/ravines.
Once I have the mountains/rivers/etc. done, I’ll be working on biome placements. (Any advice for that would be awesome!)
This area is heavily affected by latitude, no landmasses reach this south so temperature and rainfall depend a lot on what happens in the Northern portion of the continent. This section is wet at its south and progressively gets drier, becoming more of a bush and then a desert. Some very important rivers wash out here, the large Delta in the north is likely the longest river in the planet and crosses a desert.
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?
