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Message: <blockquote data-quote="discosoc" data-source="post: 6833300" data-attributes="member: 6801554">I'm not so sure people really would know more.  Look at maps from Ancient Rome through the Middle Ages, and they all kind of vary in accuracy and quality*.  Not only that, but most people really wouldn't have access to those maps.  So for the vast majority, it was good enough to know that "the big city is 2 days north, by road" and that's it.  Hell, I think most people pre-industrial revolution spent their entire lives in something like a single 20 square miles, if I remember correctly.* Ptolemy's Geography was republished in the 1400's I believe, and at the time it was considered an amazing find and highly accurate mapping of the world.  What's interesting is his Geography only survived because it was in the form of tables, not maps (like the linked image below).  So the maps of the 1400's generally used his data points to plot out where cities were in relation to one another, and sort of filled in things like coastlines and mountain ranges manually (or through reports).  What's particularly interesting to me is these data points largely came from the Ancient Roman Empire, often via troop logs, so by the time they were "discovered" in the 1400's, it's not like it was new data.  TLDR:  maps were highly inaccurate compared to the "fantasy maps" we associate with RPG's.  Don't get stuck thinking that you need a map right a way by assuming the people in your world would have used them.  <a href="https://www.ibiblio.org/expo/vatican.exhibit/exhibit/d-mathematics/images/math14.jpg" target="_blank">https://www.ibiblio.org/expo/vatican.exhibit/exhibit/d-mathematics/images/math14.jpg</a></blockquote>

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