Good Looking Map? Homebrew tips needed. (My World)

[Malanath]

I've been working on a rough map of the Homebrew world I am making. I've never been very good at this, and I have been striving for a look that makes the world I am creating feel "natural". If someone were to look at my planet from space, I'd want it to seem believable, so the shape and distribution of landmasses are important. Here is what I have so far, let me know what you think, and constructive criticism is more than welcome:

Second, I've made several attempts at constructing homebrew worlds before, most of which have bombed due to lack of motivation. (I.E. A lot of work.) However, in the past I've always tried to do a "top down" approach, building as much of the world as I can before focusing on the small details. This time I am taking a hybrid approach, combining both the bottom-up and top-down methods.

The first thing I did was construct a rough timeline (major events that took place). My timeline stretches back 30,000 years. This gave me an idea of what type of world I'd need, how many races are involved, how much landmass will be needed, etc. With that in mind I created this map. My next step will be to focus on tectonic plates, which will help me figure out where the mountains will be located. From there I can then focus on a single area of the map, adding rivers and such. My focus will then shift on building that single area of the world, giving it some wide details, expanding it's timeline, and then focusing on even smaller portions of that section of the world building outward from there. (Essentially from then on out taking the bottom-up approach.)

My main goal, and my biggest reason for always trying to use the top down approach has been for the sake of continuity. I want everything to make sense and feel believable. However, my past attempts have flopped as in addition to becoming overwhelmed, the portions of the world I created seemed "stiff" because I didn't allow it to grow organically. I am hoping to avoid that with this approach.

So, in addition to constructive criticism on my rough map I'd also like to hear from those who have constructed Homebrews of their own. Are there any methods out there that you found particularly helpful? Am I heading toward a dead end? Are there any pearls of wisdom you'd like to share?

Thanks for your time!

P.S. To give a sense of scale those large islands you see in the map are somewhat smaller than the UK.

 

[Odhanan]

It's hard to answer to your post without you being more specific. What kind of advice, specifically, do you need? Or is it examples you are searching for?

The world I presently use for my own games, Behemoth, has so far a single area fully described, roughly the size of Spain.

I found that keeping with continuity doesn't require to work from the top down. You can add continuity as you had things and modify the big picture (i.e. all that the players aren't in direct contact with) as you go.

I have theories on the cosmology, what the rest of the world involves and looks like, how it basically works, but when I present these ideas to the players, this is always through the mouth of an NPC, and no character in the game can be absolutely sure of the way the world works. Plane travellers for instance are rare, but they are talking of the Nine and the Abyss. Does this mean that's how demons and devils are positively? Nobody can be really sure.

As for the map, there seems to be something missing in the middle of it. It reminds me strongly of Earth of course. Maybe this "Atlantic" zone in the middle could use an Atlantis of some sort? It's really hard to go further than this without basic ideas of how you see the geology of your world and more importantly the scale of the map. Could this be added to the picture?

PS: just noticed your scale post scriptum. If one of these islands if roughly as big as the UK, then the feel I get from it is wrong. It makes me think of a much larger area, world-sized to be exact. I think that is partially the lack of smaller features, the contrast between big land masses and tiny ones that makes me feel this way. So adding some medium features and archipelagos could do the trick. The coast lines seems too smooth too. More variations/rough coastlines would change the sense of scale. It's hard to be constructive without a feel of the geographical features (mountain ranges and rivers, particularly) you want to include on this map.

 

[Rothe]

I think you have a good beginning here. The scale you mention is key, each landmass will have probably at most two mountainous regions and a few major rivers. Given the scale are these a few small continents in a vast ocean? The set up looks great for many sea based adventures. Currents and prevailing winds are another important factor. They will dominate trade and the relations between the land masses if sea movement is by sail.

If you want to start small, I'd start witht the land mass in the lower right and make it hard to get to by prevailing winds and currents. This will isolate it somewhat and make it harder for players to leave while you detail the other land masses. The other land masses I'd just add for now mountains, major rivers and a few major and fabeld "cities," mostly port cities I would think.

30,000 years seems rather ambitous unless it will be a very general outline over most of that span. How far back does written history go?

In general, I really like the shape of your coastlines and the number of islands.

 

[Conaill]

One thing that struck as somewhat artificial-looking about your map:

The two southern landmasses are about the same size and shape, and about in the same position relative to the northen landmasses. I'd suggest you change the size, orientation and position of one of them...

Silly, yes. But that was the first gut feeling I got when looking at that map.


(The second gut feeling is that the shape of your large land masses looks very convincing, but the small islands - esecially near the NW land mass - look too "sinuous" to me.)

 

[Malanath]

Thank you for your responses everyone. I apologize for not explaining myself better in my original post. Hopefully I can clear up any confusion.

The maps scale is the size of the entire world, you are looking at every major continent and its larger islands. The landmass is slightly less than that found on Earth. The large North Western Continent, the largest, is slightly smaller than Asia. The large islands, such as the one next to the North Western Continent are slightly smaller than the UK.

This planet is roughly 75% Water and 25% Land compared to the Earth's 70% Water and 30% Land. This would mean that the planet has roughly 54,443,302 square miles of land, including any uninhabitable regions.

As for some of the anomalies mentioned, a couple of them are there on purpose. The large ocean in the middle of the map was placed there to make traveling to the other side of the world extremely difficult. The western half of the map is the equivalent of the "New World", and most who live within the world probably believe the world to be flat. Traveling the oceans is dangerous, as the waves are much higher, violent and more deadly. This is caused by a moon that is closer than our own.

However, the above directly ties into the reason for the land placement around the large island roughly the size of the UK near the North Western Continent. You see, there are many more islands around that larger island; the ones you see on the map are just the largest of them. The island is very difficult to get to as there are many coral wreaths that cause problems for anyone who isn't a master sailor. There are also many highly active volcanoes around the island that make the area equivalent to the ring of fire.

That island will be the home of the Elves; a place that they were forced to flee to after their Empire collapsed, or face total extinction by their vengeful slaves, the Humans. Nearly 12,000 years of slavery does tend to leave some folks bitter.

Anyway, the point is that the Elves are now the leading seafaring civilization. So if or when the "New World" is discovered it will be by them.

Also, I should mention that I created this map using sections of our own world. I've always had a horrible time with fractal map generation programs, so I literally took this image of our world, and began taking several lumps of it and cobbling it together. I just flipped, mirrored and rotated stuff until I got something that looked like it could fit. I liked the way it turned out, it is hands down the best map I've ever made, although I do agree with Conaill about the lower south western continent seeming too similar to the one on the south eastern side of the map.

In all honesty, I only wanted the one continent (North Western), its small UK sized island, and the large continent on the Eastern side of the map. I just added the others to balance things out as the map didn't look right without more landmasses.

I've created the tectonic plates for the world, which should help me decide where to place the mountains, rivers, and then all I will have to do is decide the tilt of the planets axis and its distance from its star. Once I have all this information I can (hopefully) begin determining the climate for the various regions. Below is the map of the tectonic plates, the arrows show which direction the plate is moving. Each individual plate is color coded for easy identification. The planet has fifteen major plates.

 

[Conaill]

Cool! You don't actually *need* all of that, but it does help to build a realistic looking world.

Are you using Expeditious Retreat Press' A Magical Society: Ecology and Culture, by the way? Because that sounds a lot like what they recommend: start with the plate tectonics, weather patterns, etc...

If you *don't* have this one, you should really check it out! They even have a free extract with just the mapping info: A Magical Society Guide to Mapping

 

[Odhanan]

Ha! Thanks! I understand much better why I had this feeling about the map then! Which goes to prove you did the thing right indeed.

Cutting and piecing back together some chunks of a RL map is a cool way to do the trick. Nice.

 

[deltadave]

IMO you are starting too big. Just do the work that you will need to start the game. Sketch in the large details and go from there. Your best bet is to just start with the game area and a quick historical timeline. If you want to do a large scale framework to ensure consistency make an outline, but by no means is this required. Think of real world history - it is inconsistent at best and totally contradictory in most cases, depending on who you are speaking to.

 

[JonMonster]

I've created the tectonic plates for the world, which should help me decide where to place the mountains, rivers, and then all I will have to do is decide the tilt of the planets axis and its distance from its star. Once I have all this information I can (hopefully) begin determining the climate for the various regions. Below is the map of the tectonic plates, the arrows show which direction the plate is moving. Each individual plate is color coded for easy identification. The planet has fifteen major plates.

Hokay, basic geology primer here. I'm going to hand wave some discrepancies between your map and the real world. This is fantasy so anything goes, right? That said, look at the little red arrows you've got on your map. Where ever they point right to each other over a land mass you'll have great big Himalaya sized mountains. Where ever the meet obliquely you'll have small mountain ranges.

Where an ocean arrow points towards a land mass you'll get a subduction zone with the ocean plate sliding under the continent. This means lots of mountains and lots of volcanoes. Generally these will be big boomers like Mount Saint Helens, rather than oozers like Hawaii.

Near the top of the map you've got two continental plates moving away from each other - this will generate a rift valley so you've got an excuse for a great big canyon there.

 

[Malanath]

Conaill- Thanks for the e-book recommendations. I've actually viewed A Magical Society Guide to Mapping in the past, but over all I found it rather lacking. The information contained within it, while useful, was very general and basic. My main resource tools have been Wikipedia and Google. Wikipedia actually has more information than I need.

Deltadave- I don't intend to fill out every detail on the map. My main focus is going to be the area in the very light blue at the center of the map, an area roughly the size of China, and even there my focus will be on a few key areas. My main reason for going this route was because maps contain a sense of history in them. Wars are most often fought for three reasons: Political, Religious or for Resources.

Having a good map determines a lot of those things. A good map may determine certain characteristics of a religion, for example in a desert there is a high chance that water will be considered sacred where as in a place where there is a vast abundance of drinkable water such reverence isn't likely to exist. If a group lives near huge mountains, there are likely myths about those mountains, which may culminate in a religion adopting one of them (or perhaps an entire range of them) as sacred or somehow special. Human history is filled with religious reverence of mountains. The size of a map also determines how many Kingdoms could reasonably fit in an area, and knowing the climate is also important because it determines how much food is available which will determine the population that a certain area can reasonably sustain. Those are just some of my reasons for using this approach.

JonMonster- Thanks for your response! I was more or less aware of those things when I created the tectonic plates. You can probably tell by looking at the map that the world is a pretty rough world. There are high mountains, deep canyons, plenty of volcanoes, and more than a fair share of strong earthquake regions. The world itself is a rather hostile world, a world of great extremes and not by accident.

The main focus will be the light blue area at the center of the map. You can probably imagine the type of mountain range that will spring up there as three major continental plates all converge at that point, forming huge mountains that probably somewhat dwarf the Himalayas, in turn forming a somewhat natural wall separating more than half of the continent from itself. Ice at the higher altitudes, glaciers far to the north, mudslides in the spring, small earthquakes occasionally, major ones at least every several years, fertile valleys with plenty of water that frequently flood in the spring and thick jungle like areas near the south which is closer to the Equator.

Odhanan- Thanks! Hopefully other people who have trouble can use the trick. It worked out much better than I thought it would. In reality I probably should have done the Plate Tectonics first, but doing that first doesn't typically ensure that you get a good looking map. You also can't get your mountains where you want them and the like, so I decided to just create the landmasses first, then arrange the plate tectonics in such a way as to make sure I had mountains where I wanted them. It also gave me the ability to better envision how the world would turn out.

Currently I am plotting out the mountain regions, doing some research on various biological like plagues (trying to find a rather nasty one), jotting down interesting things that pop into my head for the history as well as other things I feel will be important. The main problem I am currently having is trying to determine what the climate will be like in various areas. A lot of factors go into that.