What are your favourite fantasy maps?
The GOAT of /tg/
>>98155825The one you use in your games.
>>98155825>spring opposite winter>summer next to winterThis makes me angry
>>98155825
Is this romantasy
Holy fuck, I've just realised that G.R.R Martin's Westeros is just Britain
>>98156444Yes he literally did not even try
>>98156444>>98156449I mean, did he ever hid that?
>>98155825Was the twitter thread so good you wanted a do-over in /tg/ or something?>>98156435Yeah it's sarah j maas. I don't know if it's from this specific series but a lot of her shit is just flat out stolen from other authors. And I don't mean like homages or whatever just copying entire plot beats and sometimes even sentences. I only know about her because apparently she stole a bunch of shit from asoiaf too.
>>98156458The river fuckery at the bottom of the map is a real nice touch. It's funny because I've seen actual maps in published works (Grimhollow) do exactly this and no one questioned it at any point.
>>98156476Maybe it's like the world's largest delta system or something
>>98155825>Current bestselling fantasy seriesMaybe I have hope
>>98156484It's pretty funny because it fails almost every single river rule. Two rivers flowing out of a lake. Rivers looking like they're flowing out from sea inlane instead. Rivers that seem to completely ignore elevation and other terrain features. I actually like the content they make but it boggles my mind that they have never fixed this map and it's been years since they release it. It looks like it's just made in Inkarnate or something as well so it wouldn't even be that hard to do. Even if it's drawn in PS, rivers should be on their own layer.
>>98156485It's incredibly easy to become a bestselling author tbf
>>98155825The ones I use in my game.
>>98156530I'm still wondering if I reach out to publishers or self publish. I have a Patreon with 5000 subscribers and 20-50k followers on my socials but I also don't think any of them care about reading novels. I've heard that working with publishers is absolutely nightmarish as well unless you luck out and have a really good agent/chill publisher.
>>98156551An e-celeb posting on my teegee? Say it isn't so.I feel like if you have a little bit of notoriety you could leverage that to gain a stronger negotiating position with a publisher. Idk don't you have some friends or colleagues that have tried something like this you could ask for advice? I'm assuming you're a youtuber or some shit like that.
>>98155825So, I don't actually have a favorite fantasy map, the collection of biomes and zones within that randomly generate for the campaign "overworld" is largely abstract, to the point they can't fit or form a coherent map.I know that maps can add a lot of flavor and immersion for a lot of people, but I've found I can skip the map drawing and trying to make sure specific geographic features make logical sense in a world of magic and trying to make calculations for what distance takes how much time doing this that or whatever; I don't need that stuff to enjoy a game.I can just abstract or exclude the things that don't interest me. That's what this hobby is for, playing what you want to play and how you want to play it.I'm sorry for the "negative contribution", because I know someone is going to be a bitch about it, but my response is on topic.In the spirit of this thread, and of my point, my favorite fantasy maps pertaining to fantasy would be the ones I'd make, given that I have to make everything else about my games to enjoy them.In the absence of any proper defense for badly designed systems, or any response that wasn't just "hurr rewrite wut u dun liek" or "durr find a nu groop", I've had to adapt my thinking to conclude there's no such thing as good game design and one must just do what they want to get what they want out of a game.
>>98156485>>98156530>>98156551>>98156578Plus "bestseller" lists aren't objective. NYT's one is as untrustworthy as the paper itself.https://medium.com/startup-grind/how-best-seller-lists-actually-work-and-why-to-avoid-them-514e6842beee
>>98156587Knobhead City... Home...
>>98156599Didn't realize it until now. Was going for "Byzantium + Carthage + this and that".
>>98156587Damn, those are some nasty warts
>>98156267I love this one as well.No idea where it originated from.
>>98155825>Dawn Court isn't between Night Court and Day CourtThe person who made this is prejudiced against the autistic.
>>98156926https://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/70688808/#70707726
>>98157072The borders are all straight lines, and the map is just, "draw the British Isles without looking". The person that made it is lazy, and probably retarded.
>>98157137This was known already, as she basically popularized "Romantasy".
>>98157090Most graceful of you, Anon.
>>98155825What map is this? An alt Britain where everything except for the southern tip is run by fairy folk?
My own
are there any maps where it sinks into itself?
>>98157319It's the map of romantasy
The Goat
>>98157147This is very nice.The longer you look, the better it gets.
>>98157137I don't care if it's lazy, I care if it's consistent and coherent.
>>98157382Ballsy to choose your own.I will do the same. I love my own maps.
>>98158421'Nother one for good measure
>>98158455So it's a giant bear, and Kogtjord is its ass?
>>98158421>>98158455Hey, they're pretty good. I like the mountain surrounded by rings. What's its story?
>>98158455>the bears' ass being called "boiled earth"
Romantasy is a fascinating subgenre, solely because of how much it steals from and orientalizes the Celtic parts of the british isles. Virtually no knowledge of the cultures, and likes to paint the non English parts as wild and savage sexy rapist men. It's something you'd expect from Rowling but I'm pretty sure most of these writers are American
>>98155825>setting about england>iraland has a bunch of cool landmakes but is just one thing>whales doesn't even get their own thing
>>98155825winter court and day court don't have named castles>the mortal lands>less than 10% of the totalBiblically accurate wealth distribution of modern society
r8 my homebrew setting map
>big Wales>smol IrelandKino
>>98156485Wait what
>>98156449It's a good way to get realistic coastlines. I used to have a program designed specifically for making rpg maps that had coast line and mountain range tools but I never downloaded it again when I got a new computer. Now I can't even remember what it was called because that was like 10 years ago.
This is kinda where I live so one day I'd like to work it into a campaign. All the pre cambrian rock has significant iron, copper, silver and gold deposits. I used to live in a mining town (copper).
>>98155825The one i made for my players
It is a map.
>>98158652>>98158793Indeed, the ass of the bear is a volcanic island with nothing but charred stone and blazing peaks that never seem to go out even during The Great Freezing.>>98158666You're probably referring to the nexus of Yofderen. Long story short, during an event called "The eclipse" where the entire world was plunged into darkness, a cabal of sorcerers and warlocks joined forces to attempt to restart the sun. Not knowing the sun is the leftover soul of god, they instead accidentally pulled the entire mountain range together into a massive single pillar, which now floats indefinitely with their corpses and spells compressed together as one in a land where nothing grows.For those interested, here is the last continent-beast of my setting. The map is old and needs reworking, but it functions.
>>98155825But that's just Britain and Ireland as mapped in the 600s without "proper" cartography
>>98156449I still cant hep but see it as the opposite of your map; Scotland North of the Firth of Forth flipped and pasted
I'm bored, so I'll provide feedback on maps I see, but from a realistic or believable PoV. Maps such as >>98155838, >>98157613, >>98158421, and >>98158455 I will not discuss, since they are clearly going for a theme or just for fun; though there are in-world reasons for One Piece's map looking strange, even if we don't know the exact mechanisms for it being the way that it is (this information was only revealed very recently, so those that are interested in One Piece shouldn't go looking into it if you care about reading/watching it in the future).>>98155825I'm not familiar with the setting, but the sheer laziness of this offends me. It is not trying to be believable or fun. It is simply an economy vehicle that the author only drives to work, the grocery store, and home. There may be other redeeming qualities to the author's work - I wouldn't know, don't care enough to look - but geography is the single most important aspect of why different peoples ARE different, so this inspires very little confidence.>>98156449Something like this can produce some cool brainstorming ideas, especially since these are realistic landforms. But I personally would not have ran with this without making it more distinct. The Eyrie mountain range is a bit off looking as well, though not impossible.>>98156476Splitting rivers strike again. I actually like the way that the Thousand Rivers looks, it should just be smaller in scale since this clearly isn't a small island; it looks to be a landmass that occupies the entire northern hemisphere in terms of latitude, with the southern portion appearing to be near or on the equator (despite the coast requiring cold fronts to form desert). There is also no rain shadow on the Grey Spine mountains, despite them being quite large; wind and ocean currents (almost universally) carry warm or cold temperature in certain directions. Can't have warm currents and wind on both sides on a continent this large, though would definitely work on an island.
>>98161310High quality post right here
>>98161310Continued>>98156587Second sketch is a definite improvement in all areas, except one. The islands in the original look like they could fit together, while the second sketch makes the two southwestern islands look a bit disjointed. Notice that the three smaller islands look like they could have at one time been connected to the mainland? Your two bigger ones look foreign. This may be your intention if you're trying to do island arcs (i.e. NEW islands, not ones that simply "broke off"), but I would research how those are formed. Island arcs require volcanism, which require plumes and other tectonic plate shenanigans.>>98157151This one is going for a more fantasy bent since it has some distinctive set pieces, but I'll tackle it anyway. The creator of this map knows how to do rivers, but could benefit knowing about cold/warm wind/ocean currents. Warm currents are coming in from the west, and hitting mountains, forming rain shadows on the opposite sides. This is good, though Iriltyth is very questionable; it seems the creator wanted it to be impassable to a degree, so how about breaking it off from the mainland a short distance away and rotate the mountains 90 degrees-ish counterclockwise to keep the rain shadow? Then, the mountains could possibly extend into the western mountains of the Wastelands. Speaking of which, it would be more plausible for the the Wastelands to be more inline with the Massif region; since what you are creating is a continental rift (two large continental plates moving in opposite directions from each other), it could be part of that rift, which the whole valley could also be on it its own tectonic plate at this size. Vog Mur in the southeast is also getting a warm current, but the rest of the south and the east are not. So I would make the western side of the Wastelands mountainous as well, or make Vog Mur also very arid.
>>98156202>Day Court>Night Court>Dawn Court>No Dusk CourtThis makes ME angry.
>>98161473>Second sketch is a definite improvement in all areas, except one. The islands in the original look like they could fit together, while the second sketch makes the two southwestern islands look a bit disjointed. Notice that the three smaller islands look like they could have at one time been connected to the mainland? Your two bigger ones look foreign. This may be your intention if you're trying to do island arcs (i.e. NEW islands, not ones that simply "broke off"), but I would research how those are formed. Island arcs require volcanism, which require plumes and other tectonic plate shenanigans.I'll consider that. This is within a lake, the junction of 2 rivers that end in the local sea. I'm not satisfied with the islands, but I'm not sure how to redraw them. They're meant to be packed slums, the yellows were meant to represent silt/sand banks. Plenty of hulk-breaking and hulk-living. Fishermen. Outlaws. Goblins which figured out how to salvage lake wrecks. Maybe the land area of the islands isn't much, but it's built up from silt, garbage dump (pottery shards for example), repurposed hulls. Mostly artificial, but not as well-made as Venice's islands.
>>98160184Send the party to track down the lost expedition of Edmund Fitzgerald
>>98161473Clearly just a section of the map, so I can only judge based on what I'm seeing. Forests would be much more pervasive than depicted here, since there are certainly enough rivers and lakes in the area. Grasslands typically form due to regular enough wildfires and drought, thus preventing species of plants that take longer to grow, like most trees. The deserts behind the northern mountains should probably be more expansive, but you could also break up the mountain chain a bit more so that more moisture makes it through if you wish to keep the desert small here. Volcanoes - like mountains - typically chain, so the clump of them in the southern portion looks a bit odd. Remember that volcanoes are splits along fault LINES, and you should be good. Also given the shape, look up triple junctions and see how you might use that for that area. The stretch of mountains leading southwest also looks a bit weird. I would probably make this old crust, so they're smaller (old mountains = smaller, younger mountains = taller). I would also taper them a bit to make them look less clean. The river and lake behind the mountains in the northern half is funky, since it seems to be going across a basin, but not from the very large mountain range just to the west of it. I'd probably have the river run from there.>>98159004Good continent shapes. Magehold would certainly be volcanic ("The mages are up to something again."). Could add smaller trailing islands to the northern edge if you wished to, or have the northern tip be an old, cooled magma river. Wide Lands has a river split into a fen, so I would just add more detail that communicates that this is supposed to be a delta. Bloodhills could use some water features. If the name comes from mineral resources in the region, you could have blackwater rivers and iron rivers like pic related in Antarctica. Two southernmost rivers in the south would likely have to be ground source with no orogeny nearby.
>>98161610The shape could be fine if they are more obviously connected to the larger chunk of land, since you could make ships more or less accessible depending on the tide (more accessible during high tides, shallower water during the day). Could help justify why everyone is using sunk ships to help build "homes" for themselves, with the most well off in the slums using the larger pieces of cargo ships. Some rockiness around the shores of the low-lying islands could also help with this. If the source of one or both rivers that feed this lake is seasonal glacial melt, you could also make spring and summer have higher water elevations, with fall and winter making more land accessible again, if colder.
>>98161310How does this look? Or is it too "abstract" due to a lack of topographical details for any meaningful commentary?
>>98161822A bit too early for any sort of deep analysis, but I'll provide some feedback.Your islands have excellent shapes to them, but are clearly supposed to be island arcs. Look at Hawaii for a young island arc, and you'll see that it follows a sort of curved line. This is because there are plumes of magma that broke free very so often to form those islands, and why Hawaii is still experiences volcanism today. If you want something larger than Hawaii (read: older), study how Indonesia was formed; it is essentially the same process, just over a much longer period of time. Notice too how on something like Google Earth there is a large continental shelf around these islands. The ones that people live on just happen to be tall enough for them to become land.The shape of your southern continents look a bit odd, though. Especially the western red one. Some bloopy shapes are fine, and do exist in real life, but more often than not most coasts are relatively WAVY, since ocean WAVES regularly carve their own shape into them. I would start by making your continents have less rounded ends, and reducing how many "ends" there are. Also, maybe adjust the shape of the yellow and magenta ones; my mind immediately thinks of South America and India when I look at them.
>>98161794Thank you for the review and ideas anon. High point of my day.
>>98164956Looks like an angry god smashed the place with his palm
>>98155825Favourite meme maps?
>>98165710The best has gotta be the armchair cartographer’s critique of Europe.
>>98165592>instead of a turtle, the world was previously borne on the back of a divine mosquito
What makes a map feel "worth exploring"?
>>98166215A combination of interesting features, landmarks, biomes, cultures and situations.Aka an interesting environment for exploration and story to develop
Since we are talking maps, I might as well post my homebrew one.>>98160754Love this one. Shamelessly stole the color scheme for my map>>98163102Chris Wayan's stuff is really good too.
whenever i design my own fantasy map I have a very hard time not roughly recreating Azeroth with a few minor tweaks
>>98158421looks cool wish it had some more color
>>98160754props to the first person who decided to make maps by just shifting arund rea continents, they always look more real
