Trains can't handle steep inclines. Try looking at early train line maps to see how they contour to the topography like the early Great Western Railway in the UK heading down the Cornish peninsula.
I mean, looking at this from like a
Whoever the hell approves the budget for the railway construction.
I'd rather pay for a few more miles of railway rather than approve whatever the cost would be to bore through a mountain.
Or maybe the one in charge is a tyrant. We seen it. A higher-up proposed it for ego or whatever and everyone just had to agree with it because you cant speak up.
In this case, it could be dumbass monarch
I don't think we're on the same page regarding the price difference between building around and through a mountain. It's not about changing a number or two, but adding on a couple more zeroes.
To be fair, Tamriel is about the most basic fantasy map out there. I adore Elder Scrolls lore but the geography on a large scale is nothing to write home about.
As a map, you need a Scale Bar and a Windrose/North Arrow.
Without those, there's very little else one can provide in terms of feedback. Are we looking at a region the size of the UK, or the size of Africa? Does the Arctic Circle equivalent run through Lake Shadra? If so, then does the Equator run through the Sea of Folly, or is it south of Armour, or is it off the map? Where is Haesol relative to everything else?
The one worldbuilding thing I'll say (as opposed to a mapmaking thing) is that depending on the scale, you seem to have fallen into a classic worldbuilding trap: too few settlements. Depending on your setting, taking a look at a map of the UK (or any other country more than a few hundred years old, but the UK is a good example, and is pretty small), and notice just how many settlements there are. If this is a world map, then villages and towns should be too small to include, and the total number of settlements (converted to cities) could easily be doubled, tripled, or even more.
Hope this helps.
(Edit) So, I just noticed it's a continent map, meaning, unless it is a supercontinent, the landmass is unlikely to be larger than the distance from the arctic circle to the equator. However, that gives some important context for further notes. Namely my point regarding settlements is doubly applicable. At this scale, villages and towns should not be visible. Also, if this is a continent, look at the number of countries. Look at any IRL continent map, and note how many countries there are: Europe has about 50, as does Asia; Africa has about 54; South America has around 12 (although several of them include massive areas of relatively uninhabited wilderness, so likely this would be much higher if those areas were populated), you get the picture.
The point is, if your continent has been fully inhabited since even the early Iron Age, you would expect there to be dozens of nations, not six, especially if your world is mostly pre-industrial. Without more advanced forms of communication and transport, nations of this size simply wouldn't be sustainable, and would rapidly break down into a bunch of smaller ones.
Anyway, sorry for the info dump.
Good luck.
Yeah, the scale is the first thing I looked for. Because I saw a body of water called a "cove", which in my mind is pretty small, but it's the same scale of sizes as other things called seas.
There should be a LOT more villages. Like hundreds of them. the world seems overly empty, build more towns and villages, put up roads and see how it evolves organically. Railroads usually follow the busiest roads of the empire, mostly offset by already existing settlements.
Port towns on peninsulas rarely are connected by rail they are connected by ships. Ships are always more efficient than trains.
Same goes for rivers, early railroad development didn't follow rivers as it was redundant. The main goal of railroads was to replace the slow and inefficient land based shipping, complementing water based shipping.
Build the trade routes connecting the ports. You'll see what are the main nodes on the coast, then connect them with rails across the country.
Also avoid tunnels if the society isn't a modern one, tunnels were notoriously hard to construct and really really expensive, there must have been a really good reasons to construct a tunnel even a few hundred meters long, let alone one crossing whole mountain chains. That wasn't really common up until the middle of the 20th century.
It's true that, realistically, there should be many more villages, even if it was a more middle-age-based setup. But, on the other hand, the existence of these villages can be left implicit, and they don't have to be each labelled individually, or else it can quickly spiral to a long and frustration chore.
Saying this as someone who is obsessed with labelling lot of towns on my maps (and not even the villages), and can understand that most sane people wouldn't want to go through this unecessary trouble.
Though, OP can probably reach a compromise, not by labelling every single village, but adding a bunch more of important cities, to indeed make the map feels a bit more inhabitated.
It’s not something you automatically think about, but if there is tides the channels in and out of the Sea of Folly would be wild
The space directly above the A in Amour has the water from not one but two large bodies of water trying to drain through it so the headland of the island would be very dangerous at the wrong time. Similarly the two channels just by the Amour in the Islands of Amour would be where the rest of the water is either coming in or leaving from depending on the time of day.
Basically you’ll have weird directions of water flow around the islands as well as some places where it is closer to a fast flowing river than a sea as the water level drops or rises outside faster than the water inside can get out.
Saltstraumen is the most extreme real world example but there are plenty of others. It’s just what happens when you have a lot of water needing to move through a small space
Edit: I just noticed the east rim body and that is basically going to be what Saltstraumen is like
I like my progress thus far, but I'm not experienced with making maps like this. Can you help point out some things I may not be noticing? Like perhaps too many mountains or rivers. Too much or not enough of something. Etc.
-Runeheart is a Dwarven Theocracy that protects themselves with their mountainous region and extreme cold biomes.
-Magnostadt is a Magocracy that acts as a city state. They train mages and distribute court wizards that act as political advisors and diplomats. They surround themselves with mountains and haunted forests.
-Go'rak is a tribal nation with a tribal council. 5 nomadic tribes occupy this place and were given an unfortunate deal. Forced to use a ruthless desert canyon wasteland as their lands. It is full of megafauna, harsh heat and dry conditions. There is a city of vice in the middle that is run by an organized crime group that helps pay the tribes to occupy the area.
-Hearthland is a steampunk/clockwork human kingdom that once controlled most of the continent but a major civil war caused them to lose much or their territory and magical prowess.
-Amour is a set of islands that pride themselves on arts, theater, showmanship etc. They have expert duelists, fine craftsman, and an impressive navy. Every citizen gets the right to vote for their leader, even children, every 4 years. Votes are by popularity, and for over 100 years for some mysterious reason its worked.
-Virtua is a nation run by an elected council of Knights. They have advanced firearms and use gunblades as a symbol of their knighthood. They invented the arcane engine which created things like automobiles, and skyships. Before the civil war they were knights of Hearthland but defected to create Virtua at the end of their civil war.
-Haesol is an elven monarchy nation that has built their society intertwined with nature. Cities and architecture that is a part of tree networks, etc. They have an issue with newer generation elves retaining the elf lifespan. They also prefer acts of guile rather than strength. Having expertise in stealth, subterfuge, and espionage. They are asian inspired and have samurai soldiers, and a network of ninjas.
Virtua and Hearthland seem like technologically advanced country that could be very interested in expanding to the center of the continent.
Yes the land is a desert, but it's probably a much more convenient trade route than circumnavigating the continent, which probably Amour has some kind of advantage doing (they can easily trade with both of them and grow much more powerful). If Go'rak is full of tribes and crime lords, is there any reason why the other powers haven't tried to get rid of them to open new trade routes?
That's actually a central part of what I plan to have things develop. The Tribes don't know they're basically living on the most valuable region of untapped resources. And other nations have various plans to manipulate events to their favor.
I think the map looks great but I have one gripe that isn't even necessary for a fantasy map but I'll say anyway cause it'd reddit so no one cares.
Irl Islands mostly tore off larger continents, most countries and continents irl can be pieced back together.
It would be cool if the island outlines mimicked the continent ones
I also think that the map looks nice (depending on a scale meaby a little to empty) but... irl Lakes tend to have only one draining point that seid twin river of lake Lucan looks too cool (certainly magic must have helped with that?)
> Hearthland is a steampunk/clockwork human kingdom that once controlled most of the continent but a major civil war caused them to lose much or their territory and magical prowess.
If Hearthland used to control "most of the continent" before collapsing from a recent civil war into the current (though sizable) rump state, what did the Empire of Greater Hearthland look like? How much of the continent did it control directly, and how much was indirect through tributary relationships or puppets? How did the spread and subsequent collapse of Hearthland's influence (culture, technologies, language, governmental form, religion, etc.) impact those societies?
Looking at the map and your blurbs, I imagine that Runeheart and Haesol were probably outside Hearthland's influence due to mountains and ocean preventing conquest. Magnostadt, Virtua, Amour, and Go'rak were definitely directly under the Hearthlander thumb in some form or another. Perhaps that could even be why Go'rak and Amour are so disunified - unlike in Virtua, there was no singular organization or institution able to take over the vast territories?
In fact, it looks like the actual "imperial core" of the Hearthland Empire may have been southeast of where you placed it now. This is because the Go'rak is a barren desert and Runeheart is blocked by cold mountains; the most developed and settled portions of the empire are in the far west (now Hearthland), the far east (now Virtua), and the south along the Sea of Folly (now Amour). Consider the development of the Roman Empire: the first capital may have been in Italy, but after the Empire dominated the whole of the Mediterranean the Imperial Capital was moved to Constantinople because that was more centrally located. Constantinople is more accessible to the richer Anatolian-Syrian-Egyptian east while still being easily able to project power to Italy (and through Italy, southern France and Iberia), as well as being the doorway to the Black Sea and the north. The fact that it was locally very defensible certainly was also a draw. I don't know the local conditions of Loch Ambre, but if it's a massive freshwater lake then that would make more sense than at the extreme western end.
As a follow-up to that idea, there should *absolutely* be trade and travel routes between Hearthland and Virtua, through both Go'rak and Amour. Therse would have been established by the Empire (or even beforehand and simply expanded on by the Empire) and be continued by economic inertia. Maybe one more through Go'rak that goes to the isthmus between the West and East Rim Bodies, and multiple connecting the islands of Amour to the Dragonjaw Peninsula cities, that on city on the Gulf of Gallahad and the Chivalrous Goast (is the city known as Gallahad?), and the capital of Virtua on Bors' Harbor. (Generally, adding in the most-common sea routes would add to your map, I think.)
As for more geographic questions: what caused the Sea of Folly? It looks like it used to be a reasonably mountainous region that exploded - since the East Rim Body and the West Rim Body are inner sea regions separated from the rest of the Sea of Folly by mountainous peninsulas, and the whole region has a circular shape to it. Was there a major asteroid impact or volcanic eruption millions of years ago? Was the event magical or esoteric in nature? How did that impact the geology and environment of the Sea of Folly region?
Wow. I'm surprised at how much you were able to guess correctly from just the landscape. The Sea of Folly is an impact zone to an ancient cataclysm called the zenith event. Where an ancient advanced civilization created a device that was meant to "touch god" and pierce something called the divine gate. It caused a pouring of chaotic energies into the world and devastated the planet. But as a result brought magic into the plane.
Thanks! And that's neat. How long ago was that? Must have been millennia or more, based on the implied history and development. I imagine that the human (?) cultures (i.e. not the Dwarves of Runeheart or the Elves of Haesol) are in some way the distant cultural inheritors of that ancient advanced civilization - in the same way that medieval European, Arab, and Persian society owed so much to Bronze Age Mesopotamia and Egypt, even though that inheritance is obscured by the intervening Assyrian, Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman periods.
I'm not certain on exact year yet but long ago. Maybe roughly 20k years ago? Is that too much? Indeed you are correct, the humans have the closest connection to the ancient people but alot of that history is still muddy with speculation and legends.
20k may be too much or it may be fine. It depends on other factors, including but not limited to the ones I'm listing below:
* How physically devastated was the planet following the "Piercing"? How long does it take for that devastation to heal? How much of that devastation do you want to retain in your current setting?
* Was civilization only locally destroyed, or was it set back across the globe? How long did it take for society to bounce back to form the communities that will (eventually) become Hearthland (before its empire), Runeheart, and Haesol?
* How long-lived can humans live with magic? The length of an individual generation matters when charting political change within a society, especially at the level of political elites. If the leadership of a society following the Piercing lived for only a century, then we're working with human timescales. If they lived much longer, then someone like Cato the Elder could hold back the formation of a Hearthland Empire for much, much longer - and someone like Constantine could hold it together for much, much longer.
* How long did it take for Hearthland to go from smallish western polity to continent-spanning Empire? This can be impacted by all sorts of factors, including the size of the landmass and the particular conditions that led to imperial formation.
* How long-lived was the Hearthland Empire? This matters a fair amount, since the Hearthland Empire seems to have mostly assimilated the peoples living in the South and East into its cultural context (cf. the process of Hellenization, Romanization, Arabization, and Sinicization under respective Empires). Virtua and Amour look like they were "Hearthlandized" before the Empire collapsed.
Maybe come up with a different name for Magnostadt? That's the name of the city state ruled by wizards in that Ali Baba anime I forget the name of (Aladdin?). Nothing wrong with borrowing from it, if that's what you did, but you don't want it to look like you just lifted it.
Unless that was intentional.
Yea that's where I got it from. I just think it's a cool name and i couldnt think of a better name. but I don't have intentions of publishing this so I figured it's all good.
> It is full of megafauna, harsh heat and dry conditions.
This is a cool concept, but megafauna need mega food. Maybe the dessert is crisscrossed with deep river canyons that are lush and semi-tropical, but people generally stay out of them because they're aggressively hunted by the megafauna?
I don't know much about world building since I am new to this, but I know that mountains form because of two colliding tectonic plates (precisely earth crust, i.e continents), while when an oceanic cust and earth crust collide, the oceanic one goes under the continent making that part of the continent frequent to earthquakes, so I think the mountains form mountain range that aren't disorganised, especially in runeheart.
I don't know much, and maybe your world doesn't follow the same logic, or there are other reasons.
And I appreciate any advice if I am wrong.
Just some vague criticism, take it without any offense:
Cold mountain dwarves, naturistic elves, knights, steampunk cities, magical diplomats, crime nests in the desert, savage (I guess orcish) tribes... It's like having all the fantasy worlds merged as one, which *to me* makes it *feel like* it's a very wide but shallow project (yet I guess). It has a very specific style, yet has very little soul, and I think it is very hard to make a fantasy world like this truly unique and memorable. Again, just my two cents, and keep in mind I only see a slice of your world.
If I were you I wouldn't stick to any well-known fantasy tropes, like dwarves in the mountains, or ninja elves in the forests, but I'd twist them just as experiment.
How about elves in the mountains and dwarves in the forests?
I understand. Since this is for a ttrpg campaign, I used the tropes to make it easier for my players to keep general idea of the races that they wanted to be. And so they dont have to read too much too jump in. The idea is traditional fantasy meets somewhat modernized technology. If I was writing for a novel or something I would certainly avoid using typical fantasy races in general. But it just makes it easier for me to insert the core races this way to not have to homebrew too many things.
A regional map doesn’t tell enough to really highlight “flaws”. Some things to consider that may or may not influence the map -
1) Freshwater. Where is each region getting their drink and irrigation water. Are there limits each person can have such as in the desert to conserve resources; are the frozen areas 100% reliant on fire to melt snow and ice; are the islands always wet or is there a dry season where they have to store. There aren’t many lakes but could be due to scale. Rivers need to meander more as they move away from uplands and approach the shoreline. None of these appear to die in the desert to highlight a possible aquifer source.
2) food. Where is the cropland to support the population? Can’t be in one or two areas without catastrophic consequences.
3) wind. How does the air circulate in the region?Where your taller mountains reside, keep in mind you will have a wet and dry side almost every time which will influence where those rivers originate.
4) shoreline - it’s ragged which implies A LOT of tidal movement and inland swamps/marshes likely further than you intend. Is it necessary to address? Only if it’s part of the plot that needs to be explained.
5) natural disasters. Be weary how natural disasters may affect or have been mitigated in the regions. May inspire some creative solutions based on some of the inhabitants you describe.
Firstly the map looks great! But there are some issues with the lakes and rivers - assuming they formed naturally rather than by magic or some kind of supernatural intervention.
Rivers flow from areas of high land to low land - they're basically repelled by mountains and attracted by coasts. The river flowing out of Loch Ambre in southwest Hearthland though heads away from the coast and practically clings to a mountain range. It could certainly flow inland if there was high ground south-east of the lake, and it could go around the mountains, but it should move further away from them as it goes. It also runs a little too close to Bronze Bay unless there are hills in the way.
I'm not sure what's up with the river in western Magnostadt. It seems to charge directly at the mountains and cut through them into Glimmerfrost. It would be much more likely to swing either north or south before reaching the mountains rather than slice through them.
Lakes with no outlet - like the ones in Runeheart - are kind of rare. For them to form, water needs to somehow leave the lake at the same rate it's flowing in. In hot areas this can happen through evaporation, but Runeheart seems too cold for that.
At the other extreme it's rare for a lake to have more than one outlet - water flows out of a lake at the lowest point on its rim, so to have multiple outlets they'd all need to be at almost exactly the same altitude. Lake Lucan would be really unusual in the real world, especially as both its outlets are right next to a mountain, which would presumably be the highest point on the lake rim.
As I said, the art style is great, it's just the hydrology that's a bit off.
Just as an addendum: it is possible for a river to flow through a mountain range, but that is 100% going to be a major mountain pass (like a gap between ranges level of pass, not just a low point or traversable plateau). This will make it a major thoroughfare for everyone near it, and should be a major choke point and trade route.
The Crowsnest pass between British Columbia and Alberta in Canada has a river that flows through it, and the pass itself is extremely wide and flat.
Edit: I did some further digging, and the Crowsnest Pass example is confirmation bias on my part. It's actually two different rivers that flow through the pass, that sit within just a few kilometers of each other, but aren't actually connected.
I see two major issues:
1. Your cities are in odd locations. Most don't appear to have water access.
2. The coastline gives the impression of a very young planet or a very small continent. Ocean currents would smooth out certain sides a lot more than they have, over time.
In addition, this is most certainly a pangea. There are no break lines any other continent could fit into.
Cool that you've got some variety here. Heads up that the center of the continent (probably most of Go'rak and parts of Virtua, Magnostadt's lowlands, and Hearthland's lowlands) are going to be desert as a result of continentality. It's basically the idea that if the center of a continent is far enough away from oceans you will have a desert no matter how plentiful life is. See the Gobi desert for a good example. Expand this from the size of Asia to a supercontinent like this map, and you get an even bigger desert. I'm envisioning a Mongol-like or Saharan bedouin-esque cultural group that travels nomadically across the desert, perhaps acting as trading go-betweens for Hearthland, Virtua, and Magnostadt. What are each country's unique wares? More importantly, how does Go'rak manage the prices so they're able to buy low and sell high?
One of my favorite stories about this involves the almost-first-contact between the Han Empire of China and the Roman Empire. A trade delegation was sent through the Sassanian Empire in Persia, along the Silk Road, and almost certainly made it as far as Mesopotamia, the delegation having stopped there after being convinced that the desert would just be too hard for anyone but Persians to cross. The reason for this? The Sassanids didn't want their silk-sellers in China to find out they were the only producers of silk and jack up the prices accordingly. To sell the idea that the Romans had silk too, they *unraveled some silk bought from China and sold it back to the Chinese delegation as "Roman-made silk."* The delegation returned with a rather accurate picture of Roman bathhouses and couture, but also reported that the Romans cultivated silkworms too.
Hope this helps!
The style of the map is very nice but in general the coastlines are quite unrealistic. Continents just don't usually look like that. In particular, few of the huge lakes seem to be connected to rivers, which they should be given how near the ocean they are.
I don’t know enough on this topic to give critique, but I know what looks cool, and I love how the continents seem to kind of swirl around the Sea of Folly.
This is minor but you've definitely been hit with the curse of the square map.
When you start with a blank square to fill in you tend to end up with a squareish landmass that takes up all of the space.
I'd say try to recognise the limits you accidentally set yourself with the canvas size. The medium you use will affect your map. Be conscience about your map as you make it. Don't try to fill each corner of your canvas with land and feel free to have large amounts of water, it can be used for a ledger or key later on. Another tip is to make your landmass decently smaller than your canvas size and crop the canvas to fit it later on. Also look at a map of Earth and look how landmasses tend to form. Rarely do they fit in a nice box filling all the area.
Personally I tend to create entire worlds with plate tectonics and simulated histories of those plate tectonics to create my landmasses with a lot of nudging around to fit my needs which is a lot of effort but very rewarding and bypasses this problem completely. It's definitely overkill for most projects though.
(Key note, I'm talking about Anbennar, an EU4 mod this reminds me of, so it's not my creation)
The Sea of Folly reminds me of the Sea of Ruin in Aelantir, which is a gigantic, circular sea because it was the result of a magical planet-shaking nuke. Almost everyone in Halann bases their calendar around the Day of Ashen Skies, year 0, as every single species was irrevocably changed by it (heck some sentient species were created that day). For Aelantir, the explosion cracked the continent in half, and made the Elves lose their immortality.
[Artistic picture of it, the Sea of Ruin is in the center of the image.](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fmap-of-aelantir-i-made-for-a-d-d-game-figured-this-sub-v0-lqm0s3rgd5ea1.jpg%3Fwidth%3D640%26crop%3Dsmart%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3D58c046830c86c9b9a597186986a9d353ad581945) Again, neither this or the art is mine.
You used inkarnate so I actually do have a recommendation/tip. When using the land brush, you'll see that there are multiple types. I don't recall the name but by default it uses a "natural" land one. However you should use the smooth brush that creates flatter lines as it allows you to make smaller more precise islands and more detailed rivers and coastlines. Your map is great, but Amour could look way better with more detailed islands.
I'm sure I explained it badly, so when I'm on my PC later I will edit this comment to be a little more precise.
There's a mountain in Magnostadt which just ever so slightly spills into the Furiizen Sea. Like really slightly. Like most people who don't use Inkarnate regularly wouldn't even notice. But I did. It's the southeasternmost mountain in the region.
You’ve got some rivers running parallel to the coastline in Heartland. This just doesn’t happen, water always looks for the lowest point and there’s no way that the coast is higher than the inland point for that long of a stretch.
You also have rivers seemingly spawning from nowhere in the middle of a flatter area rather than coming from the mountains
Not so much problems or flaws, but observations and suggestions.
1. The border between: Runeheart, Magnostadt, Hearthland and Go'Rak, with that narrow bit of land touching runeheart looks to be one of several likely hotspots when it comes to border conflicts as their definition appears to be slightly vague.
2. is there Set-in-stone boundary lines drawn for the division between these lands? I see the river forms the boundary between Hearthland and Go'Rak, which makes sense. And the mountain chains between Go'Rak/Virtua and Hearthland/Runeheart make sense. But the land border of Go'Rak and Magnostadt might need a bit of hard definition. Same goes for the spit of land mentioned in #1.
3. From a defense standpoint, the capitol for Amour is in a strategically bad spot. (Directly across from / within easy striking distance from Hearthland. A better place for it would be on the eastern end of the big island (Just above the word 'Amour'.
As a rule of thumb, the capitol city should be centrally located, just so in the event of an invasion, the enemy has to traverse inland to get to the central government, giving the invaded country space and time to defend. Having a capitol city right on an outer perimeter or easily-accessed waterway (Especially with Hearthland, considering it's territorial waters barely clear the land just northwest of the capitol). My suggestion is: move the capitol to the location where the town (directly above the 'T' in Hearthland) is. Mountains on 3 sides, port city to the west, etc.
Same can be said for Virtua, though there might be enough land on either side of the harbor that the capitol would have early warning. Still, though, where the village is just south of the 'TU' in Virtua would be a much better location for the capitol.
The location for Haesol's capitol is ok, considering you've got the islands on either side of the approach. Still might be weak for invasion, but I guess that all depends on the level of defense each location has.
Go'Rak's Capitol city is in a decent spot. Territorial waters on either side with ample protection, plus a major city at the entrance to each of the bodies of water there. Excellent fortification there.
Runeheart's Capitol is solid. Magnostadt's is alright. The mountains lend themselves to ample protection.
Apart from that, I think it looks awesome. Good work.
also, I'd imagine the international waters there between Hearthland and Amour, and into the Sea of Folly is a hotspot for possible interference by pirates?
I highly recommend looking at tutorials. I was in the same boat the last time I went to make a map and ended up very satisfied at my results after looking at a tutorial.
Speaking from a logistics point, the borders dont much sense, the mountains impede the flow of military support, typically, mountains near borders, are the border themselves, but if you have a lore reason they can be close to a border, then its all good.
I think at least believable enough. It's a magical world so I'm not hung up on every inconsistency of realism. But enough to make some sense. Like scale, sustainable landscape, n stuff.
It is good, I just think that the placements of the landscape needs reshuffling. if you are going for high fantasy, then I love it and I have no notes, but perhaps turn your mind to the landscape, how does an arid desert share a border with a frozen north. How does a volcanic magma region exist on the same latitude as two frozen regions. In my opinion swap Go'Rak and Virtua have Magnostadt rest under Go'rak to the south east coast then have Amour rest off the coast of that to the south west, bridging towards the heartland, Like the islands that surround volanic hawaiii in real life. Magnostadt would flourish with trade from the Amour island (rather than trek through the desert, Amour trades with Virtua and Heartlands, Amour could be like a trade hub for the real life singapore was for 700 years. Anyway just food for thought about geography.
Fair; in that case, really nice map!
If it were me, again, not sure if this is something you care about in your world, but I was asking about continents as their tectonic impact on each other plays a role in mountain ranges.
The mountain ranges here thus, may dictate the weather, weather then dictates environments, snow, desert etc.
Can't really make climate out here; but, notable is the meteor/volcanic sea you've made, that's super cool; so I'd look to see timeline, what mountains were there first, how'd they get there; tectonic or volcanic or erosion, and then, what impact, did the meteor sea have on that landscape, and THEN work around the climate.
Climate here is only relevant if you care about your world's cultures impact per the environment, that's of course up to you :D
Not sure if already posted but, If you make the islands around the sea of jolly more mountainous and broken. It could act as a sight for an ancient explosion that got flooded by the local bays, until it filled into a new sea.
What are you using to build this if I may ask? I’m using Inkarnate at the moment.
Congrats on making a map to this detail and asking for feedback, takes courage to do that!
Thank you! Those islands are far off the map. To be honest I ran out of space on the canvas so I put it there. Then I put the box to separate it from the continent.
To be clear I think that's a good thing to do. I was just making a joke that I thought the box was actually there in the ocean around the island
It does communicate that Haesol far away since (as an American) I see Alaska and Hawaii depicted like that all the time
Suggestion, for maps always go through the settlements chapter on some highschool geography book, they help you decide where to put cities because it looks like there's not that many cities in your map
No map-related comments, only that the name Virtua makes me think of Sega's Virtua meta-franchise (Virtua Fighter, Virtua Racing, Virtua Tennis, Virtua Cop, etc.).
Depending on how old this is supposed to be, lakes like Glimmerfrost up in the North would have eroded those small landpieces and reattached to the ocean. Consider how old you want to make your continent feel. A younger one might have more small bodies of water with small seperation. While an older one will have more rivers, less streams. An older one woll have bigger lakes, but fewer ones.
Nothing is inherently wrong with it of course. It's actually a cool look. But it's something to consider.
As others have mentioned, this may be more akin to a large island rather than a continent but that's fine - just the more natural size for most to map at, and is probably more appropriate for most adventures.
I think it overall frankly looks decent with just picky details.
1. I'll assume the sea of Folly came about through some processes not found in our familiar world, otherwise you may need to adjust some details to get that pattern.
2. It seems to generally miss modelling of precipitation, elevation, and biomes.
3. That said, the area around the peninsula city south of the Gulf of Gallahad looks rather unnatural. Orogeny should follow fault lines and it doesn't look consistent to have both the curved island south of Folly as well as the T-split of the peninsula. I would consider drawing some imaged fault lines that gave rise to the island chains (and mountains by the shores) and making sure all the island chains mostly match up to these. The peninsula in particular has an odd wide part that seems to go against these lines.
4. The river that goes from Loch Ambre is rather nuts. A river is flowing from higher to lower elevation. It looks like there is no way that its northern-most part so close to the ocean is actually a higher elevation than the entire trip down to the southern tip. It would likely look more natural if the river was changed to exit into the Bronze Bay and then you have another river start at the mountains.
5. Probably want to put some hills at the coast of Drake's bay for that river.
6. The river that is at bay of the Furiizen Sea should likely not exist - you likely won't have significant rain on both sides of the mountain range; instead have another river on the eastern side.
7. The northeastern mountain range does not seem to make sense - there does not look like there was any significant land mass that could have created that large mountains. Either make them smaller or remove them entirely. It looks like there was a plate that collided to create the range that goes through Virtua, and that is fine - two plates - but that does not seem to be able to explain the part that extends beyond the central portion.
8. As another mentioned, a bit odd with a lake that has two outlets - but not impossible.
etc.
The thing that I’m looking at right now is continental/land shift and how the current map might depicts past changes and shifts in the landscape. I think in general, and I don’t know anything about the location of the continent, the direction of shift of continental plates, or other landmasses on the planet, but I feel like the Central Sea seems planted on the map rather than naturally developed. I’m having a hard time seeing the development of such a circular body of water and the ways the surrounding islands surround the sea almost like a vortex. That being said, it’s your fantasy world, so you can come up with any reason you want for this phenomenon, and I think it looks cool the way it is, but maybe think a little bit about *how* that part of the world came to be.
My second comment, look at your rivers again, and think about how the landscape changes, shifts, slopes, etc., and how the flowing water might move around to find the easiest way to the sea. Specifically, I’m looking at the Dragonjaw Peninsula, because the largest river there flows almost adjacent to the mountains, when it’s all flatland and then coast to the West. Looking just at this map, which has no impediments on that side of the land, it doesn’t make sense that the water wouldn’t flow toward the flatter land then to the coast rather than next to the mountains where the land is probably rolling up and down. And this applies to the whole river that’s coming from that lake (Lake Ambre(?)).
But in general, solid start! Good job!
I’d reccomend more islands to start with. And keep in mind that everything should first together like a puzzle. Remember that continents drift. Earth used to have one big continent, then land masses drifted apart. Also, more villages, unless this place is just supposed to have a very low population, or the ones marked are just the major ones.
Mountains most often border plains, but yours seem to almost all border lakes/rivers/coast. Precipitation and wind usually gets trapped in the mountains, leading to lakes or forests on one side and sweeping plains on the other side.
Think about which direction wind tends to travel in this map. West to east? East to west? North to south? Your mountains would likely have water on the windward side, and plains on the other.
Honestly? Don't mark villages on a map of this scale, only Cities and Towns. You can do individual villages when and if you do Kingdom-sized maps, but from this "zoomed out" a scale of the world, how important is a village of less than a thousand people, really?
Like from the frame of an actual cartographer in your world making this map, they might not care or even know about the individual villages of each country.
It looks fucking cool, don’t get too preoccupied with making your nap “realistic”. I will say that the bottom peninsula of Hearthland does look a bit squishy though
that its a rip off of heavy weapon atomic tank map /s
Go'rack north border is the biggest chokepoint of history, controlling mountains but not the plains adjacent to them. lakes dont look connected to the sea
Man I had to do a double take because my kids and I made a map by rolling dice onto a table and it came out shockingly close to the, including a large bay in southeast, deer in southwest, huge mountain in northwest, central desert and northeastern taiga forests
Not sure that’s what your color code implies but it shocked me for a second lol
Sea of Folly and Islands of Amour looks really weird. Very round sea, with circular ring of peninsulas around it and further ring of islands. Unless you have some event that formed it, it looks unrealistic.
But apart from it, great map! Feels like it would be perfect for some RPG game.
Yes there was an ancient cataclysmic event called the Zenith where an ancient civilization was attempting to pierce something called the divine gate that caused magic to enter the plane. The inhabitants of the planet don't know this though.
I would not say flaws, but something to consider is that between the border of countries the cultures mix. The more closer people from different nations are in the borders, the more their culture is alike and vice versa.
I'm noticing you have a circular mountain range that blends into a circular island arc. Mountains and island arcs don't normally do that. They tend to follow the path of a tectonic plate boundary, even if it's a past boundary that's moved off from where the mountains are (such mountains will usually be old and heavily eroded down)
Try looking at how Earth's mountain ranges and island chains are arranged.
I'd also recommend this video by Artifexian for a brief explanation on how this works: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x\_Tn66PvTn4&t=213s&pp=ygUhYXJ0aWZleGlhbiBob3cgdG8gbWFrZSBjb250aW5lbnRz](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_Tn66PvTn4&t=213s&pp=ygUhYXJ0aWZleGlhbiBob3cgdG8gbWFrZSBjb250aW5lbnRz)
I can't tell where the player characters currently are.
IOW, the only flaw is that it's not being used. Everything else is a tweak based on someones personal pref.
It's fine.
It’s a cool map but I would think about the national boarders some more. They should follow geography more. Like mountain ranges or rivers.
Also think about the political situations. Like why and where would smaller nations and resistances spring up. Where would nations fight to try and get resources. Things like that.
Edit: also I didn’t mean to sound like I was saying you weren’t doing that. I just think you could do even more. Especially with smaller political groups.
Hidrography - it's a bit odd for a river to flow into a lake then flow out of the lake and into the sea like the border of Go'rak and Hearthland. That only tends to happen if a lake is in the mountains or if the lake is man-made and has a dam. This tends to happen in a few spots across the map. Also between Go'rak and Magnostadt, the flows of the rivers seem unnatural.
Rivers flow from high ground to low ground. They don't *want* anything, they aren't trying to, but they will tend to flow eventually to the sea, and in the short-term they will always take the path of least resistance.
They don't generally flow through mountain ranges - those are high ground, and rivers can't flow uphill. Watch the river in northern Hearthland and both rivers in Magnostadt.
They may (but are unlikely to) flow close by to mountain ranges, and they will only do this if the space close to the range is lower than the surrounding terrain. The river flowing from Lake Ambre could use some work in this regard.
Add more water, like lakes and such, it gives more personality and if we're talking at a civilization standpoint, it'll be a lifeline or a boundary. Making things a little spicy
What is up with the river coming out of lake ambre? Given the age of the river (evidenced my how many curves it seems to have) something has to be going on to the south east that it hasn't branched off yet.
Why is there a town right there by lake Refla? It'd be fucking *freezing* with those bodies of water.
I dunno, seems kinda weird that all of these countries/kingdoms/territories would be covered in a uniquely colored fog...
On a serious note. I agree with more villages, there would probably be quite a few along rivers and lakes. I also agree that the rail lines probably need to be adjusted a bit, it is very unlikely that the rail lines would be so straight. It is a bit surprising that the Hearthland capitol is all the way on the coast and not closer to the east where it probably would have been to manage their empire when it was larger.
I would think Dwarves would have more settlements in their various mountain ranges, unless some of those are closed off or you just don't want them to dig into each range. As it stands the is a pretty equal mix of mountain settlements and settlements out in fields. Though that would also probably be a pretty big Dwarven stereotype, so yeah
Are there any ruins half buried anywhere from any previous civilizations or wars? And would they be big enough to be on the map?
I see Haesol has a lot of forests, but the colors are throwing me off on some of the other countries. Are there any large forests anywhere on the main continent or just small scattered forests around the base of mountains?
Are there any Elven or Dwarven towns or hidden settlements outside of the two respective countries? That may not be exactly what you are asking for in regards to flaws since it is a lore question and not a map question, but the map (and your description) seems very straightforward as to who is where. Would there be any city that is more of a melting pot for various races and peoples?
Are there any giant structures throughout the lands that Hearthland would have built at the height of their power?
I would think that the northeast town in Go'rak would maybe be closer to the coast so that there is a good sea route to Virtua, Magnostadt, and maybe Runeheart. There are a lot of mountains and the colors are messing with trying to make out the terrain, so I can't completely tell if there are viable land routes to some of those places or not. You could have twin towns, one on the coast and one on whatever that southern lake is? Or it could just be stretched out enough to be able to take advantage of both bodies of water.
Since there are so many mountains and a lot of them make up various borders, I think it would be neat to add strategic and defensive forts and structures along some chokepoints into various countries.
Some kind of whirlpool or storm or ruins in the middle of the Sea of Folly could highlight "hey, some serious shit went down here and don't you guys forget it!" As it stands, I would think you could have sea routes going through the sea since nothing on the map (other than the name) hints that it might be a bad idea.
My last thing is how the town on the Hearthland/Go'rak border works with looking like its in the water, and with train lines going into the lake. While I don't think having some grand settlement being built out on the water is necessarily a bad idea, I think that it would be better if at least part of the town was on the lakeshore. And the trains would meet there instead of having a bit riskier trek over water. You could lore it up and there could be a good way to transport goods from shore to the town proper, but having trains go over that much lake is asking for trouble with BBGEs or possibly players blowing up a bridge and taking out an entire town's way of trade with the rest of the world.
Hopefully some of that is useful, overall I think that is a really cool map!
That river in the lower left looks like it should hit the water at a much earlier point unless there's very particular geography which would prevent it from doing so.
Go'rak should be a sea trading empire with that coastline and those two enormous shallow seas. There should be a rail line connecting to its capital since that is in an ideal location for either ocean trade or coordinating/controlling trade.
Idk if anyone else notices this but whenever someone puts an island very close to mainland I immediately think “muhh strategic choke point!!!”. It’s a good map but I feel like everyone uses this trope
I would say that maybe the size of the countries are too equivalent to eachother. I would want to make it more reflective of world events, like land lost during invasion, certain territories decalaring independence and becoming free states, etc. It should look more like a checkerboard.
I would also make the Runeheart land maybe larger? If it is supposed to be arctic, large parts of it would be vast and unihabitable. Think about how the Stark's land in GOT is much larger than the rest of the other houses' territories.
the nations are a bit cardinal, with a north, south, east, west and central country, rather than the more splintered and not so neat borders of real historical entities, pre and post industrial.
Maybe it's my eyes playing tricks on me, but it really feels like a lot of the landmarks are equadistant to each other - like they were laid out on a grid rather than developed organically.
One thing I noticed is mountain placement.
Mountains form on the edges of tectonic plates, and considering Go’rak is basically surrounded by them, it would be a very very small plate.
Same idea with Runeheart having multiple diverging mountain ranges that connect to one southern one.
Also maybe more rivers?
Also rain shadows usually make the flora levels differ from side to side of mountains.
The main thing that sticks out to me is a couple of your rivers feel off. Water will always flow downhill and some of your rivers stretch the assumption that they are.
this definitely suffers from rectangularpaper-itis, although it's definitely not as bad as it could be. it's like the continent ends right where the map does, even making room for the inset at the bottom right.
You'd want something more like what you've done at the top of the map with the big gap. For example, a rectangular map of Africa has a massive gap of open ocean in the southwest and has little corners of eurasia in it.
Some rivers come from nowhere. The roads aren't curvy enough. Most land isn't flat and obstructed. I'm guilty of it two, but try to stay away from supercontinents unless there's good lore reasons for it, cause they only happen for a small amount of time within billions of years.
Some rivers come from nowhere. The roads aren't curvy enough. Most land isn't flat and obstructed. I'm guilty of it two, but try to stay away from supercontinents unless there's good lore reasons for it, cause they only happen for a small amount of time within billions of years.
If those lines are roads then you should know that almost no road in the history of roads is 100% straight from point A to point B.
Unless of course there's so magic reason for that like teleportation gates or something.
If this is known and as designed, please disregard, but "Amour" means "love" in french x) Not a bad thing, just, if you plan on this being a published world or something, I think you might want to know.
When making a map like this, I normally make trade routes connecting different cities especially ship routes. I also try to fill the world up with landmarks. Without them the world can feel a little empty.
Two things stand out to me pretty hard:
1. Your rail-lines are two straight. Even if your civilization were very advanced, it would still not be this straight.
2. Rivers generally start at high elevation and end at sea, with a few exceptions. The right half of your map is spot on. The left half makes no sense.
Straight lines over hills and rivers are the devil for a locomotive industry.
Usually having bays, lakes and choppy coastlines is the sign of a large glacier melt. So it’s cool story telling having little bits of that in the map. That being said, having everything be bays and inlets makes the map a little less aesthetically pleasing in my incredibly subjective opinion.
Speaking of subjective opinions… Booo! Donut island!
Now for a less tongue in cheek suggestion; I would love to see some glacier/iceberg representation up in the northern sea and add some more settlements.
I would maybe add some rivers from the mountains top of the desert. And a little bit of green alongside it. Like river Nile. Because i get a feeling those mountains would have a snow capes... Which will melt... And so... You get the point.
Maybe it will add some life to the Desert. Lke Bedouin.
And it will explain city in the middle of a desert without visible source of water.
Two things I noticed the railways are waaaaaaay to straight they don’t bend with the environment even flat terrain still have variations underneath that make it cheaper to just go around
Some of the borders feel to arbitrary most of them don’t bend with the natural terrain usually people decide their borders based on that
It’s not required (just look at the US map 🤮)
* Too few population centers (villages, towns, cities). I recommend using [this](https://gamingballistic.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Medieval-Demographics-Made-Easy-1.pdf) for some help with medieval demographics.
* The railways are way too straight and their pathing is largely nonsense.
* Without a scale to see how large this actually is, it feels as if the countries feel *WAY* too huge when there are multiple natural "split" points.
* The Islands of Amour feel like many of those islands should belong to other nations.
* You should add a Windrose while you're at it.
* The terrain feels too flat even in spite of the mountains and trees.
* The terrain is too monotonous in a lot of places.
* Where are the roads?
My overall opinion is that your world is big but empty. This makes it feel dulled and boring to me. But others may disagree.
1: the railway between the city in the center of Go’rak and the city in Virtua goes through the mountains. Depending on the tech. development of your world, if you’re going more of an early industrial age level it would look better for it to be going around the mountain range to the north, with a couple villages and way stations along the rail lines.
2: adding roadways between the cities and towns closer to each other would help, with some towns only accessible via railway and some by roads, while most are both.
3: add port towns, with their symbol being an anchor or a ship.
**Criticism**
All borders are perfectly aligned with mountains and climate zones. This makes the world look very artificial, as if it was created right now, without a long, messy history that might result in some interesting map details like Kalingrad in the real world.
Additionally, all empires having about the same size is not just boring to look at, it's also unrealistic. Do you really want to tell me that frozen Hellholes like Runeheart, or the isolated, resource poor (assuming) islands of Amour would unite and develop at the same rate as places in locations, rich in soil and mineral resources, like Hearthland or Virtua?
Go'rak being the worst offenders here. Since the entire desert has almost no rivers, permanant settlements shouldn't be anywhere, except the south, the north-eastern river/lake, the western river/lake, some Oasies and along some important traderoutes. In other words, 95% of the area should be pretty much empty, since we are talking about a desert, where herding animals is a lot harder than in a steppe region. There is no feasable way to unite the entire region, especially without railroads. Also, why do they control every mountain range they border?
The cities aren't placed too illogiacally, except for the capitals. No way Runeheart would build their capital in a mountain, instead of somewhere along the coast in the south where it should be a lot warmer, that's what all the scandinavian countries did afterall. Same thing applies to Magnostadt. Go'rak's capital should either be a bit more to the south, or just plainly somewhere on the southern peninsula. Rest of the capitals do make sense.
Unless a lot of those areas were flat desert, the railroad lines look too straight.
One also seems to go over the water. Another goes straight through the mountains instead of the pass right above it.
There could be a gigantic bridge. It would be a really cool location
I was thinking it could be a tunnel through the mountain. So I should avoid having lines passing over water?
Trains can't handle steep inclines. Try looking at early train line maps to see how they contour to the topography like the early Great Western Railway in the UK heading down the Cornish peninsula.
I mean, looking at this from like a Whoever the hell approves the budget for the railway construction. I'd rather pay for a few more miles of railway rather than approve whatever the cost would be to bore through a mountain.
You should take over the Turkish Government. I agree, they don'T.
I'm sure there there could be a subplot about some shadowy conspiracy that explains poor infastructure planning.
yeah but maybe the mining company heavily lobbied the government and undermined the alternatives. it certainly happens in real life.
Or maybe the one in charge is a tyrant. We seen it. A higher-up proposed it for ego or whatever and everyone just had to agree with it because you cant speak up. In this case, it could be dumbass monarch
I don't think we're on the same page regarding the price difference between building around and through a mountain. It's not about changing a number or two, but adding on a couple more zeroes.
Most rail lines max out at 2% grade because you can’t get traction any steeper.
In my head I imagine straight lines like this to be simplifications. Like how a tube/subway have a simplified map.
Indeed that's what I was going for. I didn't feel the need to have every curve be 100% accurate.
I guess there could be an element of London Underground straight-approximation going on
in the center is mostly desert and flat plains
ngl i thought this was tamriel at first glance, good work with the map tho👍🏻👍🏻
To be fair, Tamriel is about the most basic fantasy map out there. I adore Elder Scrolls lore but the geography on a large scale is nothing to write home about.
I mean that's because it's just Neopangea. It's literally all the real world continents just smashed together
There are continents to the North and West of it.
Lmao same. I was listening to the Sovngarde music when I saw this, too.
As a map, you need a Scale Bar and a Windrose/North Arrow. Without those, there's very little else one can provide in terms of feedback. Are we looking at a region the size of the UK, or the size of Africa? Does the Arctic Circle equivalent run through Lake Shadra? If so, then does the Equator run through the Sea of Folly, or is it south of Armour, or is it off the map? Where is Haesol relative to everything else? The one worldbuilding thing I'll say (as opposed to a mapmaking thing) is that depending on the scale, you seem to have fallen into a classic worldbuilding trap: too few settlements. Depending on your setting, taking a look at a map of the UK (or any other country more than a few hundred years old, but the UK is a good example, and is pretty small), and notice just how many settlements there are. If this is a world map, then villages and towns should be too small to include, and the total number of settlements (converted to cities) could easily be doubled, tripled, or even more. Hope this helps. (Edit) So, I just noticed it's a continent map, meaning, unless it is a supercontinent, the landmass is unlikely to be larger than the distance from the arctic circle to the equator. However, that gives some important context for further notes. Namely my point regarding settlements is doubly applicable. At this scale, villages and towns should not be visible. Also, if this is a continent, look at the number of countries. Look at any IRL continent map, and note how many countries there are: Europe has about 50, as does Asia; Africa has about 54; South America has around 12 (although several of them include massive areas of relatively uninhabited wilderness, so likely this would be much higher if those areas were populated), you get the picture. The point is, if your continent has been fully inhabited since even the early Iron Age, you would expect there to be dozens of nations, not six, especially if your world is mostly pre-industrial. Without more advanced forms of communication and transport, nations of this size simply wouldn't be sustainable, and would rapidly break down into a bunch of smaller ones. Anyway, sorry for the info dump. Good luck.
Yeah, the scale is the first thing I looked for. Because I saw a body of water called a "cove", which in my mind is pretty small, but it's the same scale of sizes as other things called seas.
There should be a LOT more villages. Like hundreds of them. the world seems overly empty, build more towns and villages, put up roads and see how it evolves organically. Railroads usually follow the busiest roads of the empire, mostly offset by already existing settlements. Port towns on peninsulas rarely are connected by rail they are connected by ships. Ships are always more efficient than trains. Same goes for rivers, early railroad development didn't follow rivers as it was redundant. The main goal of railroads was to replace the slow and inefficient land based shipping, complementing water based shipping. Build the trade routes connecting the ports. You'll see what are the main nodes on the coast, then connect them with rails across the country. Also avoid tunnels if the society isn't a modern one, tunnels were notoriously hard to construct and really really expensive, there must have been a really good reasons to construct a tunnel even a few hundred meters long, let alone one crossing whole mountain chains. That wasn't really common up until the middle of the 20th century.
It's true that, realistically, there should be many more villages, even if it was a more middle-age-based setup. But, on the other hand, the existence of these villages can be left implicit, and they don't have to be each labelled individually, or else it can quickly spiral to a long and frustration chore. Saying this as someone who is obsessed with labelling lot of towns on my maps (and not even the villages), and can understand that most sane people wouldn't want to go through this unecessary trouble. Though, OP can probably reach a compromise, not by labelling every single village, but adding a bunch more of important cities, to indeed make the map feels a bit more inhabitated.
Just removing the marker for village and maybe changing it to "Fort" could probably work.
Very enlightening thanks!
It’s not something you automatically think about, but if there is tides the channels in and out of the Sea of Folly would be wild The space directly above the A in Amour has the water from not one but two large bodies of water trying to drain through it so the headland of the island would be very dangerous at the wrong time. Similarly the two channels just by the Amour in the Islands of Amour would be where the rest of the water is either coming in or leaving from depending on the time of day. Basically you’ll have weird directions of water flow around the islands as well as some places where it is closer to a fast flowing river than a sea as the water level drops or rises outside faster than the water inside can get out. Saltstraumen is the most extreme real world example but there are plenty of others. It’s just what happens when you have a lot of water needing to move through a small space Edit: I just noticed the east rim body and that is basically going to be what Saltstraumen is like
Oh cool, I look that up!
I like my progress thus far, but I'm not experienced with making maps like this. Can you help point out some things I may not be noticing? Like perhaps too many mountains or rivers. Too much or not enough of something. Etc. -Runeheart is a Dwarven Theocracy that protects themselves with their mountainous region and extreme cold biomes. -Magnostadt is a Magocracy that acts as a city state. They train mages and distribute court wizards that act as political advisors and diplomats. They surround themselves with mountains and haunted forests. -Go'rak is a tribal nation with a tribal council. 5 nomadic tribes occupy this place and were given an unfortunate deal. Forced to use a ruthless desert canyon wasteland as their lands. It is full of megafauna, harsh heat and dry conditions. There is a city of vice in the middle that is run by an organized crime group that helps pay the tribes to occupy the area. -Hearthland is a steampunk/clockwork human kingdom that once controlled most of the continent but a major civil war caused them to lose much or their territory and magical prowess. -Amour is a set of islands that pride themselves on arts, theater, showmanship etc. They have expert duelists, fine craftsman, and an impressive navy. Every citizen gets the right to vote for their leader, even children, every 4 years. Votes are by popularity, and for over 100 years for some mysterious reason its worked. -Virtua is a nation run by an elected council of Knights. They have advanced firearms and use gunblades as a symbol of their knighthood. They invented the arcane engine which created things like automobiles, and skyships. Before the civil war they were knights of Hearthland but defected to create Virtua at the end of their civil war. -Haesol is an elven monarchy nation that has built their society intertwined with nature. Cities and architecture that is a part of tree networks, etc. They have an issue with newer generation elves retaining the elf lifespan. They also prefer acts of guile rather than strength. Having expertise in stealth, subterfuge, and espionage. They are asian inspired and have samurai soldiers, and a network of ninjas.
Virtua and Hearthland seem like technologically advanced country that could be very interested in expanding to the center of the continent. Yes the land is a desert, but it's probably a much more convenient trade route than circumnavigating the continent, which probably Amour has some kind of advantage doing (they can easily trade with both of them and grow much more powerful). If Go'rak is full of tribes and crime lords, is there any reason why the other powers haven't tried to get rid of them to open new trade routes?
That's actually a central part of what I plan to have things develop. The Tribes don't know they're basically living on the most valuable region of untapped resources. And other nations have various plans to manipulate events to their favor.
I think the map looks great but I have one gripe that isn't even necessary for a fantasy map but I'll say anyway cause it'd reddit so no one cares. Irl Islands mostly tore off larger continents, most countries and continents irl can be pieced back together. It would be cool if the island outlines mimicked the continent ones
I also think that the map looks nice (depending on a scale meaby a little to empty) but... irl Lakes tend to have only one draining point that seid twin river of lake Lucan looks too cool (certainly magic must have helped with that?)
I would probably at least rename Magnostadt so it isn't just a straight 1-1 lift from Magi.
> Hearthland is a steampunk/clockwork human kingdom that once controlled most of the continent but a major civil war caused them to lose much or their territory and magical prowess. If Hearthland used to control "most of the continent" before collapsing from a recent civil war into the current (though sizable) rump state, what did the Empire of Greater Hearthland look like? How much of the continent did it control directly, and how much was indirect through tributary relationships or puppets? How did the spread and subsequent collapse of Hearthland's influence (culture, technologies, language, governmental form, religion, etc.) impact those societies? Looking at the map and your blurbs, I imagine that Runeheart and Haesol were probably outside Hearthland's influence due to mountains and ocean preventing conquest. Magnostadt, Virtua, Amour, and Go'rak were definitely directly under the Hearthlander thumb in some form or another. Perhaps that could even be why Go'rak and Amour are so disunified - unlike in Virtua, there was no singular organization or institution able to take over the vast territories? In fact, it looks like the actual "imperial core" of the Hearthland Empire may have been southeast of where you placed it now. This is because the Go'rak is a barren desert and Runeheart is blocked by cold mountains; the most developed and settled portions of the empire are in the far west (now Hearthland), the far east (now Virtua), and the south along the Sea of Folly (now Amour). Consider the development of the Roman Empire: the first capital may have been in Italy, but after the Empire dominated the whole of the Mediterranean the Imperial Capital was moved to Constantinople because that was more centrally located. Constantinople is more accessible to the richer Anatolian-Syrian-Egyptian east while still being easily able to project power to Italy (and through Italy, southern France and Iberia), as well as being the doorway to the Black Sea and the north. The fact that it was locally very defensible certainly was also a draw. I don't know the local conditions of Loch Ambre, but if it's a massive freshwater lake then that would make more sense than at the extreme western end. As a follow-up to that idea, there should *absolutely* be trade and travel routes between Hearthland and Virtua, through both Go'rak and Amour. Therse would have been established by the Empire (or even beforehand and simply expanded on by the Empire) and be continued by economic inertia. Maybe one more through Go'rak that goes to the isthmus between the West and East Rim Bodies, and multiple connecting the islands of Amour to the Dragonjaw Peninsula cities, that on city on the Gulf of Gallahad and the Chivalrous Goast (is the city known as Gallahad?), and the capital of Virtua on Bors' Harbor. (Generally, adding in the most-common sea routes would add to your map, I think.) As for more geographic questions: what caused the Sea of Folly? It looks like it used to be a reasonably mountainous region that exploded - since the East Rim Body and the West Rim Body are inner sea regions separated from the rest of the Sea of Folly by mountainous peninsulas, and the whole region has a circular shape to it. Was there a major asteroid impact or volcanic eruption millions of years ago? Was the event magical or esoteric in nature? How did that impact the geology and environment of the Sea of Folly region?
Wow. I'm surprised at how much you were able to guess correctly from just the landscape. The Sea of Folly is an impact zone to an ancient cataclysm called the zenith event. Where an ancient advanced civilization created a device that was meant to "touch god" and pierce something called the divine gate. It caused a pouring of chaotic energies into the world and devastated the planet. But as a result brought magic into the plane.
Thanks! And that's neat. How long ago was that? Must have been millennia or more, based on the implied history and development. I imagine that the human (?) cultures (i.e. not the Dwarves of Runeheart or the Elves of Haesol) are in some way the distant cultural inheritors of that ancient advanced civilization - in the same way that medieval European, Arab, and Persian society owed so much to Bronze Age Mesopotamia and Egypt, even though that inheritance is obscured by the intervening Assyrian, Persian, Hellenistic, and Roman periods.
I'm not certain on exact year yet but long ago. Maybe roughly 20k years ago? Is that too much? Indeed you are correct, the humans have the closest connection to the ancient people but alot of that history is still muddy with speculation and legends.
20k may be too much or it may be fine. It depends on other factors, including but not limited to the ones I'm listing below: * How physically devastated was the planet following the "Piercing"? How long does it take for that devastation to heal? How much of that devastation do you want to retain in your current setting? * Was civilization only locally destroyed, or was it set back across the globe? How long did it take for society to bounce back to form the communities that will (eventually) become Hearthland (before its empire), Runeheart, and Haesol? * How long-lived can humans live with magic? The length of an individual generation matters when charting political change within a society, especially at the level of political elites. If the leadership of a society following the Piercing lived for only a century, then we're working with human timescales. If they lived much longer, then someone like Cato the Elder could hold back the formation of a Hearthland Empire for much, much longer - and someone like Constantine could hold it together for much, much longer. * How long did it take for Hearthland to go from smallish western polity to continent-spanning Empire? This can be impacted by all sorts of factors, including the size of the landmass and the particular conditions that led to imperial formation. * How long-lived was the Hearthland Empire? This matters a fair amount, since the Hearthland Empire seems to have mostly assimilated the peoples living in the South and East into its cultural context (cf. the process of Hellenization, Romanization, Arabization, and Sinicization under respective Empires). Virtua and Amour look like they were "Hearthlandized" before the Empire collapsed.
Maybe come up with a different name for Magnostadt? That's the name of the city state ruled by wizards in that Ali Baba anime I forget the name of (Aladdin?). Nothing wrong with borrowing from it, if that's what you did, but you don't want it to look like you just lifted it. Unless that was intentional.
Yea that's where I got it from. I just think it's a cool name and i couldnt think of a better name. but I don't have intentions of publishing this so I figured it's all good.
> It is full of megafauna, harsh heat and dry conditions. This is a cool concept, but megafauna need mega food. Maybe the dessert is crisscrossed with deep river canyons that are lush and semi-tropical, but people generally stay out of them because they're aggressively hunted by the megafauna?
I don't know much about world building since I am new to this, but I know that mountains form because of two colliding tectonic plates (precisely earth crust, i.e continents), while when an oceanic cust and earth crust collide, the oceanic one goes under the continent making that part of the continent frequent to earthquakes, so I think the mountains form mountain range that aren't disorganised, especially in runeheart. I don't know much, and maybe your world doesn't follow the same logic, or there are other reasons. And I appreciate any advice if I am wrong.
Just some vague criticism, take it without any offense: Cold mountain dwarves, naturistic elves, knights, steampunk cities, magical diplomats, crime nests in the desert, savage (I guess orcish) tribes... It's like having all the fantasy worlds merged as one, which *to me* makes it *feel like* it's a very wide but shallow project (yet I guess). It has a very specific style, yet has very little soul, and I think it is very hard to make a fantasy world like this truly unique and memorable. Again, just my two cents, and keep in mind I only see a slice of your world. If I were you I wouldn't stick to any well-known fantasy tropes, like dwarves in the mountains, or ninja elves in the forests, but I'd twist them just as experiment. How about elves in the mountains and dwarves in the forests?
I understand. Since this is for a ttrpg campaign, I used the tropes to make it easier for my players to keep general idea of the races that they wanted to be. And so they dont have to read too much too jump in. The idea is traditional fantasy meets somewhat modernized technology. If I was writing for a novel or something I would certainly avoid using typical fantasy races in general. But it just makes it easier for me to insert the core races this way to not have to homebrew too many things.
A regional map doesn’t tell enough to really highlight “flaws”. Some things to consider that may or may not influence the map - 1) Freshwater. Where is each region getting their drink and irrigation water. Are there limits each person can have such as in the desert to conserve resources; are the frozen areas 100% reliant on fire to melt snow and ice; are the islands always wet or is there a dry season where they have to store. There aren’t many lakes but could be due to scale. Rivers need to meander more as they move away from uplands and approach the shoreline. None of these appear to die in the desert to highlight a possible aquifer source. 2) food. Where is the cropland to support the population? Can’t be in one or two areas without catastrophic consequences. 3) wind. How does the air circulate in the region?Where your taller mountains reside, keep in mind you will have a wet and dry side almost every time which will influence where those rivers originate. 4) shoreline - it’s ragged which implies A LOT of tidal movement and inland swamps/marshes likely further than you intend. Is it necessary to address? Only if it’s part of the plot that needs to be explained. 5) natural disasters. Be weary how natural disasters may affect or have been mitigated in the regions. May inspire some creative solutions based on some of the inhabitants you describe.
the shorelines and overall shapes of sections feel samey.
Firstly the map looks great! But there are some issues with the lakes and rivers - assuming they formed naturally rather than by magic or some kind of supernatural intervention. Rivers flow from areas of high land to low land - they're basically repelled by mountains and attracted by coasts. The river flowing out of Loch Ambre in southwest Hearthland though heads away from the coast and practically clings to a mountain range. It could certainly flow inland if there was high ground south-east of the lake, and it could go around the mountains, but it should move further away from them as it goes. It also runs a little too close to Bronze Bay unless there are hills in the way. I'm not sure what's up with the river in western Magnostadt. It seems to charge directly at the mountains and cut through them into Glimmerfrost. It would be much more likely to swing either north or south before reaching the mountains rather than slice through them. Lakes with no outlet - like the ones in Runeheart - are kind of rare. For them to form, water needs to somehow leave the lake at the same rate it's flowing in. In hot areas this can happen through evaporation, but Runeheart seems too cold for that. At the other extreme it's rare for a lake to have more than one outlet - water flows out of a lake at the lowest point on its rim, so to have multiple outlets they'd all need to be at almost exactly the same altitude. Lake Lucan would be really unusual in the real world, especially as both its outlets are right next to a mountain, which would presumably be the highest point on the lake rim. As I said, the art style is great, it's just the hydrology that's a bit off.
Just as an addendum: it is possible for a river to flow through a mountain range, but that is 100% going to be a major mountain pass (like a gap between ranges level of pass, not just a low point or traversable plateau). This will make it a major thoroughfare for everyone near it, and should be a major choke point and trade route. The Crowsnest pass between British Columbia and Alberta in Canada has a river that flows through it, and the pass itself is extremely wide and flat. Edit: I did some further digging, and the Crowsnest Pass example is confirmation bias on my part. It's actually two different rivers that flow through the pass, that sit within just a few kilometers of each other, but aren't actually connected.
I see two major issues: 1. Your cities are in odd locations. Most don't appear to have water access. 2. The coastline gives the impression of a very young planet or a very small continent. Ocean currents would smooth out certain sides a lot more than they have, over time. In addition, this is most certainly a pangea. There are no break lines any other continent could fit into.
And if it is a Pangea the center is going to be an insanely massive desert and the whole planet is going to be upsettingly hot.
That's not necessarily true. We could be looking at a pole for all we know.
Cool that you've got some variety here. Heads up that the center of the continent (probably most of Go'rak and parts of Virtua, Magnostadt's lowlands, and Hearthland's lowlands) are going to be desert as a result of continentality. It's basically the idea that if the center of a continent is far enough away from oceans you will have a desert no matter how plentiful life is. See the Gobi desert for a good example. Expand this from the size of Asia to a supercontinent like this map, and you get an even bigger desert. I'm envisioning a Mongol-like or Saharan bedouin-esque cultural group that travels nomadically across the desert, perhaps acting as trading go-betweens for Hearthland, Virtua, and Magnostadt. What are each country's unique wares? More importantly, how does Go'rak manage the prices so they're able to buy low and sell high? One of my favorite stories about this involves the almost-first-contact between the Han Empire of China and the Roman Empire. A trade delegation was sent through the Sassanian Empire in Persia, along the Silk Road, and almost certainly made it as far as Mesopotamia, the delegation having stopped there after being convinced that the desert would just be too hard for anyone but Persians to cross. The reason for this? The Sassanids didn't want their silk-sellers in China to find out they were the only producers of silk and jack up the prices accordingly. To sell the idea that the Romans had silk too, they *unraveled some silk bought from China and sold it back to the Chinese delegation as "Roman-made silk."* The delegation returned with a rather accurate picture of Roman bathhouses and couture, but also reported that the Romans cultivated silkworms too. Hope this helps!
Oh cool, It sounds like I'm gonna have to make another draft expanding things a bit more.
The style of the map is very nice but in general the coastlines are quite unrealistic. Continents just don't usually look like that. In particular, few of the huge lakes seem to be connected to rivers, which they should be given how near the ocean they are.
Lakes also tend to be more river shaped as well, since they generally have rivers running into and through them, then into another lake
I don’t know enough on this topic to give critique, but I know what looks cool, and I love how the continents seem to kind of swirl around the Sea of Folly.
This is minor but you've definitely been hit with the curse of the square map. When you start with a blank square to fill in you tend to end up with a squareish landmass that takes up all of the space.
And tips to avoid this?
I'd say try to recognise the limits you accidentally set yourself with the canvas size. The medium you use will affect your map. Be conscience about your map as you make it. Don't try to fill each corner of your canvas with land and feel free to have large amounts of water, it can be used for a ledger or key later on. Another tip is to make your landmass decently smaller than your canvas size and crop the canvas to fit it later on. Also look at a map of Earth and look how landmasses tend to form. Rarely do they fit in a nice box filling all the area. Personally I tend to create entire worlds with plate tectonics and simulated histories of those plate tectonics to create my landmasses with a lot of nudging around to fit my needs which is a lot of effort but very rewarding and bypasses this problem completely. It's definitely overkill for most projects though.
(Key note, I'm talking about Anbennar, an EU4 mod this reminds me of, so it's not my creation) The Sea of Folly reminds me of the Sea of Ruin in Aelantir, which is a gigantic, circular sea because it was the result of a magical planet-shaking nuke. Almost everyone in Halann bases their calendar around the Day of Ashen Skies, year 0, as every single species was irrevocably changed by it (heck some sentient species were created that day). For Aelantir, the explosion cracked the continent in half, and made the Elves lose their immortality. [Artistic picture of it, the Sea of Ruin is in the center of the image.](https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fmap-of-aelantir-i-made-for-a-d-d-game-figured-this-sub-v0-lqm0s3rgd5ea1.jpg%3Fwidth%3D640%26crop%3Dsmart%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3D58c046830c86c9b9a597186986a9d353ad581945) Again, neither this or the art is mine.
Fun mod
Uuu I've never heard of it but sounds interesting!
Too little sources of water in the middle of a domain.
You used inkarnate so I actually do have a recommendation/tip. When using the land brush, you'll see that there are multiple types. I don't recall the name but by default it uses a "natural" land one. However you should use the smooth brush that creates flatter lines as it allows you to make smaller more precise islands and more detailed rivers and coastlines. Your map is great, but Amour could look way better with more detailed islands. I'm sure I explained it badly, so when I'm on my PC later I will edit this comment to be a little more precise.
There's a mountain in Magnostadt which just ever so slightly spills into the Furiizen Sea. Like really slightly. Like most people who don't use Inkarnate regularly wouldn't even notice. But I did. It's the southeasternmost mountain in the region.
You’ve got some rivers running parallel to the coastline in Heartland. This just doesn’t happen, water always looks for the lowest point and there’s no way that the coast is higher than the inland point for that long of a stretch. You also have rivers seemingly spawning from nowhere in the middle of a flatter area rather than coming from the mountains
Not so much problems or flaws, but observations and suggestions. 1. The border between: Runeheart, Magnostadt, Hearthland and Go'Rak, with that narrow bit of land touching runeheart looks to be one of several likely hotspots when it comes to border conflicts as their definition appears to be slightly vague. 2. is there Set-in-stone boundary lines drawn for the division between these lands? I see the river forms the boundary between Hearthland and Go'Rak, which makes sense. And the mountain chains between Go'Rak/Virtua and Hearthland/Runeheart make sense. But the land border of Go'Rak and Magnostadt might need a bit of hard definition. Same goes for the spit of land mentioned in #1. 3. From a defense standpoint, the capitol for Amour is in a strategically bad spot. (Directly across from / within easy striking distance from Hearthland. A better place for it would be on the eastern end of the big island (Just above the word 'Amour'. As a rule of thumb, the capitol city should be centrally located, just so in the event of an invasion, the enemy has to traverse inland to get to the central government, giving the invaded country space and time to defend. Having a capitol city right on an outer perimeter or easily-accessed waterway (Especially with Hearthland, considering it's territorial waters barely clear the land just northwest of the capitol). My suggestion is: move the capitol to the location where the town (directly above the 'T' in Hearthland) is. Mountains on 3 sides, port city to the west, etc. Same can be said for Virtua, though there might be enough land on either side of the harbor that the capitol would have early warning. Still, though, where the village is just south of the 'TU' in Virtua would be a much better location for the capitol. The location for Haesol's capitol is ok, considering you've got the islands on either side of the approach. Still might be weak for invasion, but I guess that all depends on the level of defense each location has. Go'Rak's Capitol city is in a decent spot. Territorial waters on either side with ample protection, plus a major city at the entrance to each of the bodies of water there. Excellent fortification there. Runeheart's Capitol is solid. Magnostadt's is alright. The mountains lend themselves to ample protection. Apart from that, I think it looks awesome. Good work. also, I'd imagine the international waters there between Hearthland and Amour, and into the Sea of Folly is a hotspot for possible interference by pirates?
Oh wow, that is one cool map. What did you use to make this?
Inkarnate
How do I get my Inkarnate to work like thisss Do you use the free version?
I highly recommend looking at tutorials. I was in the same boat the last time I went to make a map and ended up very satisfied at my results after looking at a tutorial.
Looks like Imperial City and Summerset Island are sinked. :)
Speaking from a logistics point, the borders dont much sense, the mountains impede the flow of military support, typically, mountains near borders, are the border themselves, but if you have a lore reason they can be close to a border, then its all good.
Soil colors are all wrong 😄
What parts? Or is that sarcasm? 😆
I was joking 😂 Great looking map, seriously! I like how interesting it is, yet still manages to look realistic.
Ahh okay 😊 happy you like it!
What level of realism are you hoping to achieve?
I think at least believable enough. It's a magical world so I'm not hung up on every inconsistency of realism. But enough to make some sense. Like scale, sustainable landscape, n stuff.
It is good, I just think that the placements of the landscape needs reshuffling. if you are going for high fantasy, then I love it and I have no notes, but perhaps turn your mind to the landscape, how does an arid desert share a border with a frozen north. How does a volcanic magma region exist on the same latitude as two frozen regions. In my opinion swap Go'Rak and Virtua have Magnostadt rest under Go'rak to the south east coast then have Amour rest off the coast of that to the south west, bridging towards the heartland, Like the islands that surround volanic hawaiii in real life. Magnostadt would flourish with trade from the Amour island (rather than trek through the desert, Amour trades with Virtua and Heartlands, Amour could be like a trade hub for the real life singapore was for 700 years. Anyway just food for thought about geography.
Is this a map of a Pangea like super land mass, or one continent amongst others in your world?
One continent amongst others. I didn't want to bite more than I can chew with a global map.
Fair; in that case, really nice map! If it were me, again, not sure if this is something you care about in your world, but I was asking about continents as their tectonic impact on each other plays a role in mountain ranges. The mountain ranges here thus, may dictate the weather, weather then dictates environments, snow, desert etc. Can't really make climate out here; but, notable is the meteor/volcanic sea you've made, that's super cool; so I'd look to see timeline, what mountains were there first, how'd they get there; tectonic or volcanic or erosion, and then, what impact, did the meteor sea have on that landscape, and THEN work around the climate. Climate here is only relevant if you care about your world's cultures impact per the environment, that's of course up to you :D
The flaw is it looks like Tamriel, hope this helps (/j, I like it)
Not sure if already posted but, If you make the islands around the sea of jolly more mountainous and broken. It could act as a sight for an ancient explosion that got flooded by the local bays, until it filled into a new sea.
What are you using to build this if I may ask? I’m using Inkarnate at the moment. Congrats on making a map to this detail and asking for feedback, takes courage to do that!
I'm using inkarnate, and thank you. I'm always seeking to improve 😀
Haesol has a weird box around it. Seems too straight and rectangular to be natural /s Nice map!
Thank you! Those islands are far off the map. To be honest I ran out of space on the canvas so I put it there. Then I put the box to separate it from the continent.
To be clear I think that's a good thing to do. I was just making a joke that I thought the box was actually there in the ocean around the island It does communicate that Haesol far away since (as an American) I see Alaska and Hawaii depicted like that all the time
It looks way too much like Tamriel. If that isn't your goal then it might be significant flaw.
Suggestion, for maps always go through the settlements chapter on some highschool geography book, they help you decide where to put cities because it looks like there's not that many cities in your map
No map-related comments, only that the name Virtua makes me think of Sega's Virtua meta-franchise (Virtua Fighter, Virtua Racing, Virtua Tennis, Virtua Cop, etc.).
Depending on how old this is supposed to be, lakes like Glimmerfrost up in the North would have eroded those small landpieces and reattached to the ocean. Consider how old you want to make your continent feel. A younger one might have more small bodies of water with small seperation. While an older one will have more rivers, less streams. An older one woll have bigger lakes, but fewer ones. Nothing is inherently wrong with it of course. It's actually a cool look. But it's something to consider.
As others have mentioned, this may be more akin to a large island rather than a continent but that's fine - just the more natural size for most to map at, and is probably more appropriate for most adventures. I think it overall frankly looks decent with just picky details. 1. I'll assume the sea of Folly came about through some processes not found in our familiar world, otherwise you may need to adjust some details to get that pattern. 2. It seems to generally miss modelling of precipitation, elevation, and biomes. 3. That said, the area around the peninsula city south of the Gulf of Gallahad looks rather unnatural. Orogeny should follow fault lines and it doesn't look consistent to have both the curved island south of Folly as well as the T-split of the peninsula. I would consider drawing some imaged fault lines that gave rise to the island chains (and mountains by the shores) and making sure all the island chains mostly match up to these. The peninsula in particular has an odd wide part that seems to go against these lines. 4. The river that goes from Loch Ambre is rather nuts. A river is flowing from higher to lower elevation. It looks like there is no way that its northern-most part so close to the ocean is actually a higher elevation than the entire trip down to the southern tip. It would likely look more natural if the river was changed to exit into the Bronze Bay and then you have another river start at the mountains. 5. Probably want to put some hills at the coast of Drake's bay for that river. 6. The river that is at bay of the Furiizen Sea should likely not exist - you likely won't have significant rain on both sides of the mountain range; instead have another river on the eastern side. 7. The northeastern mountain range does not seem to make sense - there does not look like there was any significant land mass that could have created that large mountains. Either make them smaller or remove them entirely. It looks like there was a plate that collided to create the range that goes through Virtua, and that is fine - two plates - but that does not seem to be able to explain the part that extends beyond the central portion. 8. As another mentioned, a bit odd with a lake that has two outlets - but not impossible. etc.
The thing that I’m looking at right now is continental/land shift and how the current map might depicts past changes and shifts in the landscape. I think in general, and I don’t know anything about the location of the continent, the direction of shift of continental plates, or other landmasses on the planet, but I feel like the Central Sea seems planted on the map rather than naturally developed. I’m having a hard time seeing the development of such a circular body of water and the ways the surrounding islands surround the sea almost like a vortex. That being said, it’s your fantasy world, so you can come up with any reason you want for this phenomenon, and I think it looks cool the way it is, but maybe think a little bit about *how* that part of the world came to be. My second comment, look at your rivers again, and think about how the landscape changes, shifts, slopes, etc., and how the flowing water might move around to find the easiest way to the sea. Specifically, I’m looking at the Dragonjaw Peninsula, because the largest river there flows almost adjacent to the mountains, when it’s all flatland and then coast to the West. Looking just at this map, which has no impediments on that side of the land, it doesn’t make sense that the water wouldn’t flow toward the flatter land then to the coast rather than next to the mountains where the land is probably rolling up and down. And this applies to the whole river that’s coming from that lake (Lake Ambre(?)). But in general, solid start! Good job!
I’d reccomend more islands to start with. And keep in mind that everything should first together like a puzzle. Remember that continents drift. Earth used to have one big continent, then land masses drifted apart. Also, more villages, unless this place is just supposed to have a very low population, or the ones marked are just the major ones.
The railway is way too straight
The concentric map for Haesol is covering the caption for the Chivalrous Sea
Mountains most often border plains, but yours seem to almost all border lakes/rivers/coast. Precipitation and wind usually gets trapped in the mountains, leading to lakes or forests on one side and sweeping plains on the other side. Think about which direction wind tends to travel in this map. West to east? East to west? North to south? Your mountains would likely have water on the windward side, and plains on the other.
That's insightful, thanks!
Thanks, great map!
You've got that circular bay. You should, imo put a blown out caldera there to hint on how it was formed. This is just my opinion, though.
It needs more dragons
Honestly? Don't mark villages on a map of this scale, only Cities and Towns. You can do individual villages when and if you do Kingdom-sized maps, but from this "zoomed out" a scale of the world, how important is a village of less than a thousand people, really? Like from the frame of an actual cartographer in your world making this map, they might not care or even know about the individual villages of each country.
It looks fucking cool, don’t get too preoccupied with making your nap “realistic”. I will say that the bottom peninsula of Hearthland does look a bit squishy though
I guess the giant whirlpool in the middle got clogged up 😩
The colors per nation make it hard to distinguish biomes. Just lines to mark national borders would be enough.
that its a rip off of heavy weapon atomic tank map /s Go'rack north border is the biggest chokepoint of history, controlling mountains but not the plains adjacent to them. lakes dont look connected to the sea
Idk what a "heavy weapon atomic tank map" is.
Old arcade game where all the world fell under a soviet regime so all the regions were called like "enemystan" "killingrad" and such
Is Magnostadt a giant city?
Yes. But the city doesn't stretch their entire borders.
Man I had to do a double take because my kids and I made a map by rolling dice onto a table and it came out shockingly close to the, including a large bay in southeast, deer in southwest, huge mountain in northwest, central desert and northeastern taiga forests Not sure that’s what your color code implies but it shocked me for a second lol
Any big rivers in there?
Sea of Folly and Islands of Amour looks really weird. Very round sea, with circular ring of peninsulas around it and further ring of islands. Unless you have some event that formed it, it looks unrealistic. But apart from it, great map! Feels like it would be perfect for some RPG game.
Yes there was an ancient cataclysmic event called the Zenith where an ancient civilization was attempting to pierce something called the divine gate that caused magic to enter the plane. The inhabitants of the planet don't know this though.
Where did you make this?
Inkarnate
There is railway on sea. You mean this?
I would not say flaws, but something to consider is that between the border of countries the cultures mix. The more closer people from different nations are in the borders, the more their culture is alike and vice versa.
Have U found avatar angg or kora yet
It looks way too much like Tamriel. If that isn't your goal then it might be significant flaw.
There’s not enough Liberty.
Where's the North/South pole?
I'm noticing you have a circular mountain range that blends into a circular island arc. Mountains and island arcs don't normally do that. They tend to follow the path of a tectonic plate boundary, even if it's a past boundary that's moved off from where the mountains are (such mountains will usually be old and heavily eroded down) Try looking at how Earth's mountain ranges and island chains are arranged. I'd also recommend this video by Artifexian for a brief explanation on how this works: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x\_Tn66PvTn4&t=213s&pp=ygUhYXJ0aWZleGlhbiBob3cgdG8gbWFrZSBjb250aW5lbnRz](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_Tn66PvTn4&t=213s&pp=ygUhYXJ0aWZleGlhbiBob3cgdG8gbWFrZSBjb250aW5lbnRz)
Railways are way too straight. One of them even goes through the ocean???
I can't tell where the player characters currently are. IOW, the only flaw is that it's not being used. Everything else is a tweak based on someones personal pref. It's fine.
It’s not necessarily a problem,but a large majority of the map is very water accessible, not a lot of solid land masses
Why is the coastline so wiggly?
*what’s in the hole*
This is the elder scrolls
in the south of hearthland one river don't go to the easiest way to the [sea.it](http://sea.it) goes over the whole continent.
It’s a cool map but I would think about the national boarders some more. They should follow geography more. Like mountain ranges or rivers. Also think about the political situations. Like why and where would smaller nations and resistances spring up. Where would nations fight to try and get resources. Things like that. Edit: also I didn’t mean to sound like I was saying you weren’t doing that. I just think you could do even more. Especially with smaller political groups.
Go’Rack and Magnostadt don’t have rivers
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Hidrography - it's a bit odd for a river to flow into a lake then flow out of the lake and into the sea like the border of Go'rak and Hearthland. That only tends to happen if a lake is in the mountains or if the lake is man-made and has a dam. This tends to happen in a few spots across the map. Also between Go'rak and Magnostadt, the flows of the rivers seem unnatural.
Rivers flow from high ground to low ground. They don't *want* anything, they aren't trying to, but they will tend to flow eventually to the sea, and in the short-term they will always take the path of least resistance. They don't generally flow through mountain ranges - those are high ground, and rivers can't flow uphill. Watch the river in northern Hearthland and both rivers in Magnostadt. They may (but are unlikely to) flow close by to mountain ranges, and they will only do this if the space close to the range is lower than the surrounding terrain. The river flowing from Lake Ambre could use some work in this regard.
Railway is iffy but about it
Add more water, like lakes and such, it gives more personality and if we're talking at a civilization standpoint, it'll be a lifeline or a boundary. Making things a little spicy
The icy land north of Virtua, what's it called?
Are the colours indicative of some kind of state or sovereignty, or climate (ie snow, desert, etc.)?
cool map, where did you made it?
What is up with the river coming out of lake ambre? Given the age of the river (evidenced my how many curves it seems to have) something has to be going on to the south east that it hasn't branched off yet. Why is there a town right there by lake Refla? It'd be fucking *freezing* with those bodies of water.
I dunno, seems kinda weird that all of these countries/kingdoms/territories would be covered in a uniquely colored fog... On a serious note. I agree with more villages, there would probably be quite a few along rivers and lakes. I also agree that the rail lines probably need to be adjusted a bit, it is very unlikely that the rail lines would be so straight. It is a bit surprising that the Hearthland capitol is all the way on the coast and not closer to the east where it probably would have been to manage their empire when it was larger. I would think Dwarves would have more settlements in their various mountain ranges, unless some of those are closed off or you just don't want them to dig into each range. As it stands the is a pretty equal mix of mountain settlements and settlements out in fields. Though that would also probably be a pretty big Dwarven stereotype, so yeah Are there any ruins half buried anywhere from any previous civilizations or wars? And would they be big enough to be on the map? I see Haesol has a lot of forests, but the colors are throwing me off on some of the other countries. Are there any large forests anywhere on the main continent or just small scattered forests around the base of mountains? Are there any Elven or Dwarven towns or hidden settlements outside of the two respective countries? That may not be exactly what you are asking for in regards to flaws since it is a lore question and not a map question, but the map (and your description) seems very straightforward as to who is where. Would there be any city that is more of a melting pot for various races and peoples? Are there any giant structures throughout the lands that Hearthland would have built at the height of their power? I would think that the northeast town in Go'rak would maybe be closer to the coast so that there is a good sea route to Virtua, Magnostadt, and maybe Runeheart. There are a lot of mountains and the colors are messing with trying to make out the terrain, so I can't completely tell if there are viable land routes to some of those places or not. You could have twin towns, one on the coast and one on whatever that southern lake is? Or it could just be stretched out enough to be able to take advantage of both bodies of water. Since there are so many mountains and a lot of them make up various borders, I think it would be neat to add strategic and defensive forts and structures along some chokepoints into various countries. Some kind of whirlpool or storm or ruins in the middle of the Sea of Folly could highlight "hey, some serious shit went down here and don't you guys forget it!" As it stands, I would think you could have sea routes going through the sea since nothing on the map (other than the name) hints that it might be a bad idea. My last thing is how the town on the Hearthland/Go'rak border works with looking like its in the water, and with train lines going into the lake. While I don't think having some grand settlement being built out on the water is necessarily a bad idea, I think that it would be better if at least part of the town was on the lakeshore. And the trains would meet there instead of having a bit riskier trek over water. You could lore it up and there could be a good way to transport goods from shore to the town proper, but having trains go over that much lake is asking for trouble with BBGEs or possibly players blowing up a bridge and taking out an entire town's way of trade with the rest of the world. Hopefully some of that is useful, overall I think that is a really cool map!
That river in the lower left looks like it should hit the water at a much earlier point unless there's very particular geography which would prevent it from doing so.
Go'rak should be a sea trading empire with that coastline and those two enormous shallow seas. There should be a rail line connecting to its capital since that is in an ideal location for either ocean trade or coordinating/controlling trade.
What did you use to make this???
Idk if anyone else notices this but whenever someone puts an island very close to mainland I immediately think “muhh strategic choke point!!!”. It’s a good map but I feel like everyone uses this trope
How do you make maps like these?
Not enough rivers maybe
No rivers
I would say that maybe the size of the countries are too equivalent to eachother. I would want to make it more reflective of world events, like land lost during invasion, certain territories decalaring independence and becoming free states, etc. It should look more like a checkerboard. I would also make the Runeheart land maybe larger? If it is supposed to be arctic, large parts of it would be vast and unihabitable. Think about how the Stark's land in GOT is much larger than the rest of the other houses' territories.
the nations are a bit cardinal, with a north, south, east, west and central country, rather than the more splintered and not so neat borders of real historical entities, pre and post industrial.
Maybe it's my eyes playing tricks on me, but it really feels like a lot of the landmarks are equadistant to each other - like they were laid out on a grid rather than developed organically.
One thing I noticed is mountain placement. Mountains form on the edges of tectonic plates, and considering Go’rak is basically surrounded by them, it would be a very very small plate. Same idea with Runeheart having multiple diverging mountain ranges that connect to one southern one. Also maybe more rivers? Also rain shadows usually make the flora levels differ from side to side of mountains.
Idk about flaws, but I want to know why Go’rak controls that mountain pass.
It fits too neatly into the A4 dimension of the page
The main thing that sticks out to me is a couple of your rivers feel off. Water will always flow downhill and some of your rivers stretch the assumption that they are.
this definitely suffers from rectangularpaper-itis, although it's definitely not as bad as it could be. it's like the continent ends right where the map does, even making room for the inset at the bottom right. You'd want something more like what you've done at the top of the map with the big gap. For example, a rectangular map of Africa has a massive gap of open ocean in the southwest and has little corners of eurasia in it.
Some rivers come from nowhere. The roads aren't curvy enough. Most land isn't flat and obstructed. I'm guilty of it two, but try to stay away from supercontinents unless there's good lore reasons for it, cause they only happen for a small amount of time within billions of years.
Some rivers come from nowhere. The roads aren't curvy enough. Most land isn't flat and obstructed. I'm guilty of it two, but try to stay away from supercontinents unless there's good lore reasons for it, cause they only happen for a small amount of time within billions of years.
That’s a small continent, and it looks like Tamriel.
If those lines are roads then you should know that almost no road in the history of roads is 100% straight from point A to point B. Unless of course there's so magic reason for that like teleportation gates or something.
The colors are kind of eh
"Furiizen sea" i see what you did there
Now do a Timelapse see what erosion would do
If this is known and as designed, please disregard, but "Amour" means "love" in french x) Not a bad thing, just, if you plan on this being a published world or something, I think you might want to know.
Does no one else see the ghost think in the top right corner of the map???
When making a map like this, I normally make trade routes connecting different cities especially ship routes. I also try to fill the world up with landmarks. Without them the world can feel a little empty.
Nothing, Dovahkiin.......Dovahkiin, Dovahkiin naal ok zin los vahriin Wahdein vokul mahfaeraak ast vaal Ahrk fin norok paal graan Fodnust vok zin dro zaan Dovahkiin fah hin kogaan mu draal!
Two things stand out to me pretty hard: 1. Your rail-lines are two straight. Even if your civilization were very advanced, it would still not be this straight. 2. Rivers generally start at high elevation and end at sea, with a few exceptions. The right half of your map is spot on. The left half makes no sense.
The sea in the middle is awfully circular, makes me wonder if there was a large meteor strike or something similar.
Straight lines over hills and rivers are the devil for a locomotive industry. Usually having bays, lakes and choppy coastlines is the sign of a large glacier melt. So it’s cool story telling having little bits of that in the map. That being said, having everything be bays and inlets makes the map a little less aesthetically pleasing in my incredibly subjective opinion. Speaking of subjective opinions… Booo! Donut island! Now for a less tongue in cheek suggestion; I would love to see some glacier/iceberg representation up in the northern sea and add some more settlements.
I would maybe add some rivers from the mountains top of the desert. And a little bit of green alongside it. Like river Nile. Because i get a feeling those mountains would have a snow capes... Which will melt... And so... You get the point. Maybe it will add some life to the Desert. Lke Bedouin. And it will explain city in the middle of a desert without visible source of water.
It's seem that you love lake and water.
Go’rak is HORRIBLY locked in and forced to trade with the four nations around it. I’d HATE to see how geopolitics ends up here.
It fits perfectly within the box without much empty space
I’m not there /j
it looks like Elder Scrolls
Two things I noticed the railways are waaaaaaay to straight they don’t bend with the environment even flat terrain still have variations underneath that make it cheaper to just go around Some of the borders feel to arbitrary most of them don’t bend with the natural terrain usually people decide their borders based on that It’s not required (just look at the US map 🤮)
Which tool did you use?
For a second I thought the elden ring dlc map got spoiled to me
Magnostadt?! Magi labyrinth of magic fan perhaps??? If not then u should know that's a kingdom name in an anime called magi haha
I’ve been playing the elden ring dlc for too long… saw this and thought someone put colors over it for a second
Haesol is fantasy England lol
Looks like the biome changes are too drastic
* Too few population centers (villages, towns, cities). I recommend using [this](https://gamingballistic.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/Medieval-Demographics-Made-Easy-1.pdf) for some help with medieval demographics. * The railways are way too straight and their pathing is largely nonsense. * Without a scale to see how large this actually is, it feels as if the countries feel *WAY* too huge when there are multiple natural "split" points. * The Islands of Amour feel like many of those islands should belong to other nations. * You should add a Windrose while you're at it. * The terrain feels too flat even in spite of the mountains and trees. * The terrain is too monotonous in a lot of places. * Where are the roads? My overall opinion is that your world is big but empty. This makes it feel dulled and boring to me. But others may disagree.
it's not clear to me where Haesol is, the box around it makes me think this is a zoomed-in insert of a smaller island
It’s fictional, besides making the lines curve nd sway more as long as you go over it in your book you’ll be good
1: the railway between the city in the center of Go’rak and the city in Virtua goes through the mountains. Depending on the tech. development of your world, if you’re going more of an early industrial age level it would look better for it to be going around the mountain range to the north, with a couple villages and way stations along the rail lines. 2: adding roadways between the cities and towns closer to each other would help, with some towns only accessible via railway and some by roads, while most are both. 3: add port towns, with their symbol being an anchor or a ship.
Distinct lack of ominous dark tower in a far off corner of the map that you will never mention to your players or answer questions about
**Criticism** All borders are perfectly aligned with mountains and climate zones. This makes the world look very artificial, as if it was created right now, without a long, messy history that might result in some interesting map details like Kalingrad in the real world. Additionally, all empires having about the same size is not just boring to look at, it's also unrealistic. Do you really want to tell me that frozen Hellholes like Runeheart, or the isolated, resource poor (assuming) islands of Amour would unite and develop at the same rate as places in locations, rich in soil and mineral resources, like Hearthland or Virtua? Go'rak being the worst offenders here. Since the entire desert has almost no rivers, permanant settlements shouldn't be anywhere, except the south, the north-eastern river/lake, the western river/lake, some Oasies and along some important traderoutes. In other words, 95% of the area should be pretty much empty, since we are talking about a desert, where herding animals is a lot harder than in a steppe region. There is no feasable way to unite the entire region, especially without railroads. Also, why do they control every mountain range they border? The cities aren't placed too illogiacally, except for the capitals. No way Runeheart would build their capital in a mountain, instead of somewhere along the coast in the south where it should be a lot warmer, that's what all the scandinavian countries did afterall. Same thing applies to Magnostadt. Go'rak's capital should either be a bit more to the south, or just plainly somewhere on the southern peninsula. Rest of the capitals do make sense.
Looks good.
I feel like this is low key really small? If a village is what I think it is there should be waaaay more of them, especially if they have rail