10 Rules for Believable Fantasy Maps

Rules for World Building. How to draw fantasy maps that are realistic - it's science!

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[WASD]

Video Notes:
1) "Is it 11 rules or 10!? You inconsistent, lying sack of troll dung!"
Well, there are 11 rules, but after filming I decided that the 11th rule (break the rules) was not really much of a rule, so I changed the title. Is it really 11? I'll let you homebrew that answer.
2) Yes, the earth is indeed on a 23.5 degree tilt. You may have sensed my uncertainty when I said 45. I had no idea and just kept letting words come out of my mouth. :) It's a bad habit.
3) There are exceptions to nearly all of these rules, but the lonely mountain one is the one I'm finding the most of thanks to you all pointing out some fairly lonely peaks. BUT there are still always other mountains relatively nearby (on Earth). ALL of these rules are 'rules of thumb', and not hard and fast must-haves.
4) I'd like to RE-emphasize - It's okay to break the rules of the way things tend to naturally occur on Earth. Don't stress it, and have fun drawing maps.

[lewisgiles]

Large cities require large amounts of food. They would most likely be surrounded by several farming communities. The bigger the city, the more farmland.

[Numi]

I guess the same goes for mapmaking as any form of art: Never break the rules out of ignorance, know them well so you can break them deliberately and with purpose.

[doodlefawn]

"It's only when you know the rules, can you break them." Some solid advice from my art teacher about how taboo it was to use black oil paint, but applies generally.

[metronicmagician]

Ok so I have a funny story involving a single mountain. A friend of mine was really annoyed (almost angry) that there was this random mountain in the middle of a dessert in one of my campaigns, and would constantly complain about how it’s impossible to the point where the group would make fun of his annoyance. The campaign ends with the mountain which was a sleeping earth elemental getting up and fighting a giant not-Cthulhu monster that the party was trying to stop. The look on the guy’s face when this happened was and still is priceless, and this event created the in joke amount my group “don’t worry it’s just an elemental” whenever someone gets annoyed over something really small.

[uasj]

Being an Australian, my pet hate for fantasy maps, or even just descriptions of places in fantasy fiction, is that 9 times out of 10 north is cold and south is hot - ie: the continent/island/place is in the northern hemisphere of its fantasy world! I suppose it comes naturally to you people on the “top” half of the planet to imagine it just has to get colder the further north you go and that icy wind - well it has just gotta be coming from the north. I was born and bred with the cold winds blowing south from Antarctica where the birds fly north for the winter and so that’s the way a draw my maps.

[Jack-kxrf]

My explanation for my "lonely mountain". An Elven King wanted to paint a mountain by itself but wanted something real to draw. So he ordered his slave dwarves to mine all the other mountains in the area terraforming the land.

[taylornickens]

1) 2:06 Rivers don't split, they join
2) 3:20 Lakes usually only have one drain, if that
3) 4:05 Rivers don't go coast to coast, that's a sea, yo
SPONSOR - 5:10, World Anvil, the best way to keep entire world's organized!
4) 5:55 Mountains aren't lonely
5) 8:08 Rain shadow on your mountains (Wind and storms tend to disperse when they hit mountains, one side usually drier)
6) 9:50 Plate Tectonics affect continental shape
7) 12:09 Plate tectonics REALLY affect mountains though
8) 13:45 Water means settlements!
9) 14:40 Ports are often sheltered from rough waters and harsh winds, as opposed to open
10) 16:00 Keep climate science in mind
11) *BONUS 17:15 By all means, break the rules

Great Video, Nate.

[LividImp]

This bearded space alien is pretty smart. He has much to teach our species. We should listen to him.

[majike]

I know this probably falls under the "climate is complicated' umbrella, but I always think of ocean currents when making maps. Cold water = cold coats (and vise versa), bottleneck areas (such as the Carribean or the Straight of Magellan are going to have quick/rough currents, warm water = bigger storms, etc...

I have a fantasy map where one side of a mountain range is super lush and green, but nobody wants to live there because of the big storms and harsh winds coming from the seas-side.

[ForlanceAbice]

Timestamps...

1. Rivers Don't Split 2:00
2. Lakes Have One River Draining 3:20
3. No Coast to Coast Rivers 4:03
4. No Lonely Mountains 5:55
5. Consider the Rain Shadow Effect 8:06
6. Plate Tectonics Affect Continent Shapes 9:47
7. Plate Tectonics Affect Mountain Formation 12:09
8. Settlements Near Water 13:45
9. Ports in Sheltered Areas 14:40
10. Use Climate Common Sense 16:00
11. Break the Rules! 17:15

[moritamikamikara]

"Port cities are always built in places that are ice free all year around"
*Laughs in St. Petersburg*

[misterrea]

As a former geography teacher, I can't thank you enough for this video!

[jimschuler]

Another rule: Landmasses do not develop with the boundaries of an A6 piece of paper in mind.

[odinforce]

For me the biggest rule is, Start with the mauntains and the topography. Everything else is derivative of that.
Rivers will run from the mountains to the coast, if there are any plateaus they may have waterfalls. Also kingdoms will form themselves based on the rivers, mauntains and valleys around them.
It makes everything much more consistent and easier to make, and therefore more believeable.

[RicoLen]

I remember when I went to make my world, I ended up talking with a geophysicist friend I went to high school and college with and we created together a kind of binary planetary system (technically there were 3 worlds, but 2 of them were habitable and the surface of the other was constantly getting torn to shreds by the gravity of the other larger and much more stable 2). It was very eye opening to me during the conversations my friend and I had that small changes in how a world would differ from Earth would have widespread and dramatic changes to life on that world.

That was when I learned that if humans were to ever colonize Mars, the first naturally born Martians would end up being a foot or two taller than Earthlings and with so little bone density they'd never be able to return to Earth without some kind of suit to keep their bones from breaking under the gravity. And those changes would only be due to Mars smaller amount of gravity.

If you change the tilt of the axis the planet rotates on and you get rid of or drastically increase the intensity of summer and winter and the springs and autumns become intensely turbulent. Also I stopped taking Game of Thrones seriously with talk of a Winter that lasted years and a summer that lasted months. Life couldn't evolve on a planet without a stable axis.

And finally magic became the most fun thing to work with using theoretical science using chemistry and micro organisms. You don't even need mystical entities, just put your gaming world on an alien world, drop its culture back to the middle ages and start inventing mystical explanations for scientific phenomenon and everything works out amazingly well.

All of that spawned just from me wanting to make a realistic map for my game world.

[makinishikino]

When you realise geology is gonna help you when mapmaking...

[jessicalee]

Another rule: More towns. More settlements. More farmland. Look at medieval maps, everywhere there's a river, there's a village, everywhere there's a river and a road, there's a town. Everywhere the river is navigable by boat, there's a city. The old counties in medieval England for example had at least a hundred towns per county. Fantasy maps are so DESOLATE by comparison. Every time I play or watch an RPG where the players have to walk for a week through wild country to get to the next town, I lose the sense of realism.

Sure, there are routes through wild country you could take, but that's not where The Road goes. The Road goes from city to city mostly following a river if possible because that's where the towns are and travelers need places to stop, such as towns (even tiny little towns).

Sometimes there are towns out in the middle of nowhere, but if they're there, there's a reason - and there's a water source. A town called "Broken Wagon Springs" where the settlers' wagon broke down but luckily where was a natural spring so they just stayed and built a town there... doesn't really need an explanation. "Decanter of Endless Waterville" doesn't need an explanation either - there can be magic involved, of course. Although... why do those people want to live so far away from everybody else? Are they a cult? Is there an unusual natural resource found there? Are they some kind of philosophical or religious separatists? Or a rare or unwelcome race of people who just want to be left alone? Is it even on the map? How do they feel about travelers showing up?

If people go to and from the town regularly enough (like, if that's the only place where lead or sulfur or some other useful resource can be found in the country)... where do they stop and camp along the way? Because that's exactly where some other village will crop up over time, if travel and trade to that location is important enough (even deserts have always had caravanserais). If it takes three days to get there from the next nearest place, that's a few campsites (travelers are probably going to keep finding the same decent camping spot), and at any one of those someone could have decided to build a roadside inn with a fortified yard for caravans to shelter in (i.e. a caravanserai) to make a little money from all those travelers - and then if the land is okay other people would start plopping in buildings too - a forge to service caravan wagons, a mine scraping to provide metal to the forge, some gardens and a crop land to provide food to those workers, shops to make assorted goods maybe to sell to passing caravans or to the locals, housing for these extra people... then you've got a town.

Thus, OMG THERE ARE TOWNS EVERYWHERE YOU GUYZ!

There are also tons of merchants on the roads. Like... caravans that are miles long, with hundreds of animals and dozens of drivers and tenders and guards. They may be seasonal, their arrival may be a big event in any town along the way. But it's got to be a thing. Medieval villagers didn't travel much except for pilgrimages or maybe to visit nearby towns during festival time, but there were merchants traveling the roads all the time - if someone was on the road, they were probably bringing their goods one way or the goods they traded for back the other way.

Don't have players wander a road that is on the map between two major cities (i.e. a significant known route), and see like one dude with a cart with two sacks and a basket in the back, and one small campsite, and nothing else for days. It would be like traveling down an interstate highway and not seeing any tractor trailer trucks or gas stations or McDonald'ses.

If there's a reason your world is desolate and depopulated, fine. But there has to be a reason. An area much more prone to war and monster raids and stuff might have more congestion of the population into cities, but short of a lot of priests casting create food & water every day, those populations still need to be supplied by farm communities, there have to be fortified waypoints for travelers in between cities, etc. Even in the Cesspool Of Constant Barbaric Warfare that was Medieval Europe (and Dark Ages Europe, and Roman Era Europe, and Renaissance Era Europe, and Enlightenment Era Europe, and pretty much any time or place in Europe aside from the brief Pax Romana, the brief Peace of Westphalia, and the extremely uncharacteristic peace since WW2) there were still towns everywhere.

More towns. They don't have to all be on the map, the map can be for notable cities and towns.

[AegixDrakan]

Players: "Rejoice NPC peasants! For I have destroyed the vile Artifact of Eternal Rain that has cursed your land with perpetual cloud and fog and rain for the past millennium!"
Villagers: "You WHAT?!?! You *assholes!* "
Players: "I-bu-wha-PARDON?!"
Villagers: "Our entire agriculture system is based on this predictable near endless wetness! Without it, all of our cities and settlements will starve and go into perpetual drought! YOU HAVE DOOMED US ALL!!"
Players: " **sweatdrop** ...Let's leave before they light the torches and sharpen the pitchforks..."

[candiedginger]

Oceanography can help you "break the rules". An ocean current that carries warmer water to colder areas you can create places like the Atlantic coast of Ireland where palm trees grow yet isn't a tropical region. I believe this is considered a micro climate ... like the north side of a house in Michigan that holds snow and ice well into spring while the south side of the same house has flowers blooming.