World Building- The Skyrim Map's 𝓪𝓮𝓼𝓽𝓱𝓮𝓽𝓲𝓬𝓬𝓬 & 𝓯𝓸𝓻𝓶

Throwing crap at the wall and seeing what sticks! Some of it. Not all of it. Comments are for discussion and criticism.

TIMESTAMPS:
00:00- Lmao Wayne Gretsky didn't say that
00:10- Howdy, Builder Boys and Gamer Girls
1:05- Skyrim's Shape
2:10- Rivers & Visual tricks
5:20 - Regions with Rivers & Mountains
11:39- Lore things that bug me!

Today we're looking at the Skyrim map and why it looks really good!

Skyrim's map is really cool 1. Because it's Skyrim, and 2. Because all the reasons I mention in this video. The Elder Scrolls is one of my favorite fantasy franchises and its world building is pretty good. I think this video will be helpful for any mapmakers, DMs, or writers who dabble in this kind of thing.

This is definitely not a normal kind of video I've made. A lot of this is speculative, so whatever sticks does and whatever doesn't doesn't. This is also more of a lecture style with little itty bitty bits of cringe humor sprinkled in. Making something that's less edited and less humorous allowed me to go in depth on a weird weird topic, and I expect to suffer in the watch-time of this one. The hardcore world builders won't mind, though.

I felt bad about not posting for 3 months when my next (normal) video isn't nearly done yet, so here you go. Just some straight factz and nollidge.

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Dark Music - Awakening by Adrian Von Ziegler
Nordic/Viking Music - Einherjer by Adrian Von Ziegler
Nordic/Viking Music -Till Vaholl by Adrian Von Ziegler

Jdrcomposer’s tracks-

[n.m.dimmick]

"It looks like High Rock should own this part."
The Forsworn: "Our thoughts exactly!"

[meiscott]

Can you do a worldbuilding:Wyoming? Ever since the dark elves invaded Wyoming, they made the state border dynamic and detailed.

[hollowhoagie]

Step 1: draw out the tectonic plate lines
Step 2: draw the continents and maybe some fault lines
Step 3: draw mountains on tectonic lines on continents where they meet, ravines in the ocean, plateaus or hills descending from the mountains and hills descending from the plateau.

Step 4: draw rivers descending from the mountains following the path of elevation downwards, water always flows downhill and almost never branches off creating a distributary.

Step 5: establish water currents and where warm water will go, as well as where winds will go. These will help determine the weather along with the mountains

Step 6: when rain flows to a mountain, the rainy side should be more lush than the opposite side. If lakes equivalent to the great Lakes exist (ones created by glaciers) then mountains won't matter much. Places that don't receive much rain because of dry winds will be deserts and probably will lack many rivers and lakes.

Step 8: now with all this information, you can start placing down towns and cities. Towns on rivers, cities on low coast to act as ports, or on navigable rivers. And villages can be scattered, just make sure any large settlement has water and a road connected to it, roads should lead to the capital but not always, they can lead to major cities instead. Without roads that town or city would be pretty independent

Step 7: now you can draw the country borders. Think of power dynamics and how they've changed. Don't just give land to a country for sexy borders, make sure there's a legitimate reason the country has that land. Either because it's rich in resources or the leader wanted to expand the nation's influence. That's all I can think of

[DragonessYT]

15:09

Actually they do use the Pale Pass. It's mentioned in a letter at the Falkreath fort if the Stormcloaks have it that the Pass is currently covered in an avalanche and the Empire has been digging it out.

[EvilFuzzy]

“Most people start with an outline of the continent, then add in mountains and rivers and stuff”

“You should start with the coasts, and mountains and rivers”

[ihavenomouthandimusttype]

“Skyrim likes to be simple.”
Truer words were never spoken.

[ihavenomouthandimusttype]

Stoneworks: Skyrim is so well designed!

Me: Wait. Takes a map of Ireland, rotates it 90 degrees anti clockwise.
“Breathes in through nose and exhaling, carries on with day”

[grouchymax]

Mountains are the more logical natural borders. Rivers are secondary.

[SpookeyGael]

The idea that rivers are always natural borders is a bit of misconception. Rivers are typically easy to cross with a boat or a bridge (not true with mountains, which are used as borders much more often). Add to that the inherent value of rivers for trade and transport, as well as river valleys often being great farmland, and it makes owning the whole river much more valuable than just half of it. For example, the Nile, Tigris/Euphrates, Ganges, and Indus river were almost never used as borders for the aformentioned reasons. So rivers = borders is by no means a hard rule.

[devlynnorth]

Mountains are better borders than rivers, Because huge mountains are harder to cross and claim than water. If you can't reach the river, you can't have the river

[blazethesteamdragon]

The way I went about shaping continents and regions was by importing a rule from OC creation, it was a tip for creating uniquely designed characters (though I think the rule breaks down with more realistic characters.) Make the silhouette distinct. If your region's silhouette is put into a group with other silhouettes of blobs and regions, tilted, flipped n resized, and you can find it quickly then you're on the right track. Kinda like how Australia is really recognizable as an arc with horns and a lil crescent shaped island close by.

[Frst]

15:14 the Imperials do in fact use Pale Pass for cargo/reinforcements, as implied by a note you can find in a Stormcloak controlled fort in which the author is worried about a Legion massing at Pale Pass

[inciaradible]

Skyrim: *exists*
Stoneworks: *notices bulge*

[edugabreu]

When he was speaking about High Rock "claims" to the West of Skyrim, I remembered that when the Nords arrived from Atmora and eventually took Skyrim for themselves, there were already Men living in the region. In fact, in the 4th Era there's still people fighting against this Nord occupation, per say. The Reachmen even look more like High Rock men (not speaking of Bretons here) than anything else.

[KingLama]

When he started drawing lines I was like he’s making shit up now

[reyhaz]

As a Logistics Engineer, I'd like to add a few:
About the lore stuff at the end, namely why the Empire doesn't choose to use Pale Pass for trade route instead shipping across two enemy domains' water is simply a matter of money & tech.
You see, when you want to move a whole lot of things (preferably heavy stuff or highly valued, like provisions for a war), big ships like galleons are way better than a line of carts. Cheaper. Maintaining a ship and it's crew is much cheaper than maintaining all those horses, carts, guardsmen along the road, outposts along the road and inns, carpentry and blacksmiths along the road (for repair purposes), animal handlers (for changing horses, etc).

Out on the water, it's rather hard to ambush a trade caravan, yet on land it's like walk in a park, so it's about a matter of security too. Also not forget, that aren't just the opposing forces have to deal with, but bandits too, so there's a whole lot more danger along the road (not to mention the hostile fauna).

Weather is also a factor, on sea, there's only about two kind of weathers that a sailor has to deal with: calm (can't go with no wind) and storm (probability to turn over or washing ashore).
While on the road: too much heat (animals, people need more water), too cold (animals and people need more frequent stops to warm up), blizzards (visibility goes out the window, cold, wind and snow makes it difficult to steer or climbing up the hills), rain (makes quagmire out of the dirt, or slippery the road).

And do not forget the basic technology of transportation and roads. Yes, Romans had high quality roads, but they too preferred the waterways when they could choose between the two (today also preferred to use water ways instead of roads). Because those roads, unfortunately aren't fit for high density trade routes. And the technology of transport vehicles? A cart with a wooden wheel (maybe an iron plate running across as "tire"), with no suspension (that technology is yet way away in time), on rocky road.

And do this in a middle of a civil war.
Add that together and you'll have a logistic nightmare.

So, yes even today, with all the tech, we still prefer using water ways to haul the huge stuff (=huge in volume), because the cost/weight (or cost/profit) ratio is a whole lot better.

[demonxkiller]

Nobody:
Stoneworks World Building:
"You guys want some map bones?!?"

[LickMyRainbow]

The mountain ranges of skyrim and Tamriel annoy me so much as a geography nerd. I know from a purely game mechanic sense, they're there to serve as the walls to the world space, but the fact that the three of them are almost at right angles to each other makes no sense from a geological sense. Almost all mountain ranges form along tectonic boundaries of fault lines. I could buy the Jerall Mountain being formed from the Skyrim and Cyrodiil plates meeting and the Velothi Mountains as a side effect Red Mountain and of the Morrowind plates dragging along. But the High Rock Druadach Mountain make no sense and I hate them!
*angry geology noises*

[yuirick]

"Every dm goes coast, river mountain, which sucks, so now I'm going to focus on how Skyrim makes everything cool out of coasts, rivers and mountains."


... What?


Am I missing something?

[t.b.cont.]

There is content that explains markarth belonging to Skyrim. There was apparently a lot of fighting over it years ago, and during the empire/dominion war there was a rebellion by the native bretons and they were sovereign for a little bit until they were again brutalized and subjugated by the nords with the help of ulfric stormcloak.

Later on the former Breton king would rebel again and he was captured by the markarth jarl, and held prisoner in cidna mine. His followers would be driven into the mountains and become who we call the forsworn, becoming more tribal and shamanistic in nature as they allied themselves with hagravens in hopes that their old magicks would help in getting revenge against their Nordic subjugators