I want to make a map of the country I made up for my world, but I'm not sure what I should include. I know the basics - mountain ranges, forests, stuff like that - but what else? Should I include the character's houses? Specific buildings? Or should I just stick with the geographical features, like rivers and lakes and stuff?
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I was kind of thinking to divide the land into 5 main islands and little small islands in between and around the other big ones
Hi, A few basic tips
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Rivers flow from high places into the sea. Source your rivers at a lake, or glacier, or in the mountains or hills and have them flow into the the ocean, branching as necessary. Remember that they tend to flow from high to low areas (gravity being what pushes them down). Since sea level is the lowest area it will flow into the sea.
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Depending on the time period, most of important cities are either going to be coastal or based on major rivers especially in pre-modern settings (where irrigation systems are not as complicated)
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Separate the map into the following paradigms: Wet and Dry areas and Low and High areas. This will make it easier to create transition zones between the different paradigms.
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Alternatively, a mountain range can be used for a sharper transition, as it can indicate that the two different biomes are, in fact part, of separate plates.
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Creating landmasses is difficult but there's a lot of programs and internet sites that can generate a basic landmass for you. I found it helpful to use a generator for ideas then add distinct features as necessary. Although a lot of hubub is made about realism both in this post and in this thread, cool features are what make a map striking and memorable in your novel/game/rpg campaign. If you've read The Stormlight Archives think of the Shattered Planes. Is it a realistic geological feature? No. Does it look awesome on a map? Hell yeah.
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Additionally, story convention is always, always, always more important than realism in a fantasy map. Realism is a tool, not a goal.
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You can use your map to tell the story of the area. In fantasy, magic can twist and shape the landscape in odd ways. Have that play out on the map. Giant craters, sweeping mountains that form a wall, what have you. The magical nature of fantasy lets you have some fun with the geography.
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Alternatively, geography plays a role in shaping the major powers of the continent. The premier power in the world should not be an overland empire with no warm water port, with a capital (or at least a de facto one, de jure might be a different story) in the middle of butt-all nowhere. Large cities tend to be the ones with warm water ports. For a real life example of this, look at Constantinople. It was one of the largest cities in the world during the medieval era (typical fantasy) and it's no accident. Look at Istanbul on a map. It's a dream location, warm water port and surrounded by fertile farmland that can sustain a city of that size. Of course, this all gets more complicated when magic gets involved, but large cities still tend to form around these regions. Universal access to food hasn't made New York or Tokyo shrink so keep that in mind.
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Major powers are the ones who have high population and can move their armies. That's why the "sea power" is so stereotypical it's almost a cliche. The ability to move your armies is a big part of military dominance and is easily linked with expansion. It's how the vikings invaded Sicily and Russia and why the English conquered such a large part of the world. Geography plays a role and in big a nation can be.
So there are a few basic tips to get you started. Feel free to message me again with any questions and I look forward to seeing your work.
Go for it! If you already have a style, then have at it! If not, maybe look around and find a look that you love, and crib it. How far you want to go with realism (e.g. plausable mountains, climates, etc.) depends entirely on you. Hand-wave the details, or simulate it on a supercomputer - it's all good. Have fun!
Hi everyone,
I recently finished a tutorial showing you how to start drawing maps for your campaigns. You find it in full below with some picture links and inspirational links (including my blog where you find png's of map elements and a parchment texture).
If you are a Game Master it is always exciting to start a new campaign and let your players explore new shores, their peoples, customs and the secrets they hold in ruins old, mountains high and dungeons cold. To make it easier for your players to visualize this unfamiliar environment you may have provided them with a map of these lands, may it be as loot or after some negotiation with a Gnome in the local antique shop. A map may also come in handy for a wargaming campaign to show the position of warbands or armies and natural obstacles.
Often the first iteration of such a map is a simple hand-drawn sketch, but after more and more of the new area is discovered you may want to provide something with more visual appeal, add a background texture or even colorize your map.
I will show you my process of drawing a simple map by hand, scanning and cleaning it up and finally colorizing it using Photoshop. This tutorial is for beginners and more complex map drawing techniques will follow at a later point.
Initial considerations - historical maps as inspiration
If you just start out drawing maps I would recommend to first have a look at historical maps to get some inspiration for your own work. You can decide what appeals to you visually and stylistically and also make up your mind which style works best for your world. If it is high fantasy both medieval and renaissance style maps could work, if you make a map for a scenario with a historical background you could go so far and emulate a specific style.
The famous Tabula Peutingeriana can serve as an example for a medieval map. It is supposedly a copy of a Roman original, dated anywhere between 250 BCE and 400 BC. An interactive online map viewer:
http://peutinger.atlantides.org/map-a/
by Cambridge University Press allows to examine the original, heavily weathered medieval map, too.
As is apparent this is quite different to modern maps. Instead of accurately depicting geographical features or the shape of land masses, this map's goal is to aid travelers in assessing how many days worth of travel a journey between cities will take (indicated by the red, segmented lines), and how big a settlement is (indicated by the relative size of a settlement and features depicted).
The cities are drawn using a semi-isometric style that does not attempt to be absolutely spot on if it comes to accurately depicting the perspective. I could see this kind of map in a role-playing context, given that your players are often interested in how long a journey takes. The symbols for cities could be modified to add variation. Naturally this would also work perfectly for a campaign map if you run an ancients campaign.
Map drawing supplies - nothing fancy here!
You don't need expensive supplies to draw your own maps, nor will you need an expensive Adobe Creative Suite subscription. Drawing supplies are readily available at your local art store and you can use open source software like Gimp and Inkscape to clean up and colorize your maps. You can basically use any image manipulation program that allows you to use layers. It comes in handy to have a function that converts a bitmap into a vector graphic, but even that is not necessary when you start out. You can use Inkscape for this, which is the open source alternative to Illustrator, a vector drawing program.
I did use Photoshop and Illustrator for my map, mainly because I have these programs at my disposal, but the instructions work with any program.
So far so good, but what basic supplies do you need?
A pencil or a set of micro pens. I use one with a 0.8 mm and one with a 1 mm tip respectively.
White drawing paper. I use 80gsm paper for marker and pen rendering. It is smoother than your usual copy paper and the marker does not tend to run or smudge on this paper.
Illustrator or Inkscape to clean up and vectorize your art work.
Photoshop or Gimp to colorize your artwork.
You can see, if you don't want to colorize or vectorize your artwork you only need pen and paper to start. Onwards to drawing techniques!
How to draw a map in five steps
My workflow to draw a map is as follows:
https://daggerandbrush.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/how-to-colorise-a-map.jpg
As you can see in six steps I scan the original, vectorize it, block in the base colours, shade and highlight the drawing and add a suitable background texture and environmental details.
Let the ink flow!
For starters take a piece of paper and just draw something. Hills, trees, a coastline etc. or if you already feel comfortable with more intricate designs try yourself on some buildings, maybe a farmstead or a tower. You can look online for some inspiration, but generally speaking I would focus on developing your own way to do things and let the map develop organically.
The best part is, that you can use any of these designs later and even combine them, after all we will be able to scan, edit and arrange them however we like.
https://daggerandbrush.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/original-scan-100dpi.jpg
https://daggerandbrush.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/scan-of-hand-drawn-map-elements.png
Some general advise when drawing a map:
I drew the natural and man-made features separately. Accordingly the latter turned out larger in size and more detailed than the former. To better match detail levels compare both set of drawings and adjust accordingly.
Try to be consistent with regard to the perspective.
If you want to colorize your map keep the shading subtle and leave lots of white space.
Don't draw the details too small if you want to blow the map up later on. This will give you a cleaner look.
Nevertheless, I think it was a good idea to separate the two. It makes it easier to edit the elements and avoids problems with overlapping details should you decide to change them at a later stage.
Having details such as trees and mountains as part of a design can be problematic. For instance if you want to integrate a ruin into a mountain range the line thickness may not match. I would advocate to separate them, too.
When you start something finish it. If it looks off try again, but always finish your drawing. It gives you a feeling of accomplishment and seeing it through will also hone your drawing skills. I didn't care much for the central tower of the fortified settlement, but still finished it. Later on I removed the tower and only used the surrounding elements.
Scanner time!
When you are happy with your first drawings scan them with a suitable scanner choosing the highest possible resolution, at least 600dpi. Depending on the scanner it may have a line art setting that will output a PNG with transparent background, which will save you a step. If that does not work remove the white background in the photo editing program of your choice or vectorize the drawing.
To vectorize your drawing Illustrator offers a handy function: Live Trace. This basically traces your pixel-based artwork, turns it into paths and removes any white elements. This not only cleans up your art work but makes it scale-able.
Colorizing the map
After the map is scanned we can now proceed and colorize it. For this we use layers and masks in your image processing program. Not unlike painting a miniature you first block in the basic colours. However, we don't use any colour as such, rather we make a solid fill layer of the colour we would like. We then hide it using an opaque layer mask and proceed to remove parts of the mask to reveal the colour underneath. This allows us to change opacity and achieve smooth blends between different layers.
https://daggerandbrush.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/photoshop-layers.jpg
Per color you need a mid-tone, a shadow and highlight tone. There are obviously other ways to colorize a map utilizing different layer blending settings etc. but I kept it simple for my first attempt and will try other techniques at a later stage.
You can also add a background texture at this stage. Depending on your settings it will influence the layers above and make your map look more realistic.
Depending if you want texture on your man-made buildings you can also use a texture brush to remove the mask and thus add a light texture to stone, white-wash and roofs. Just try different approaches on different layers and see what you like best.
After the base colors are blocked in you add the shadows and mid-tones. To get a smooth blend you should use a soft brush and reduce opacity to 20%. Build the color up slowly.
https://daggerandbrush.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/how-to-colorise-a-map-ii.jpg
https://daggerandbrush.files.wordpress.com/2017/04/colourisation-experiment-faded-100dpi.jpg
The main advantage to using layers and masks is that you can change any color with a simple click. For instance I was able to make a sepia and night-time version of my map with a few simple color adjustments.
I hope you found this article useful and maybe it inspired you to take a pen and draw your own map. If you are looking for further resources check out the links below. But never forget to wield your brush with honour!
Inspirational Links
Additional photos, free parchment background and png's of map elements on DaggerAndBrush: https://daggerandbrush.wordpress.com/2017/04/21/mapping-fantastical-fancies-hand-drawn-campaign-maps-for-your-rpg-sessions/
Fantastic Maps - How to draw a map: http://www.fantasticmaps.com/2015/02/how-to-draw-a-map/
The Cartographers Guild - A forum for cartography enthusiasts: https://www.cartographersguild.com/forum.php
Deven Rue's Twitter feed offers lots of inspiration for your own work: https://twitter.com/DevenRue[/url
Currently in the process of making a fantasy world, and would love for some tips and/or tricks to do so. I've been trying to figure out a starting point as well, not being very confident to just freehand the shape of the countries and continents.
Hey everyone!
I have made fantasy maps before, but I never finished them or they didn't convince me completely since I have been in constant search for a style that I liked. But, I finally took the time to finish one and I'm very proud of how it turned out.
However, I know it's not perfect so if you could give me feedback, I would really appreciate it!
Regarding the lore of these islands, they do not have a story behind them, since I made this map as a gift for a very special friend of mine, so I just made up things and names and mixed them with the things she likes. Anyway, "Helianthus" means Sunflower in Latin, which is one of her favorite flowers.
With that said, I hope you like it!
I always kind of assumed they did for some reason, but then Brando Sando doesn't I don't think? So I was wondering what the standard is
Edit: Thanks for all the fantastic replies, it's been really interesting to hear about different people's processes :)
I’ve been writing my own fantasy novel for two years now. I have about 275 manuscript pages written. I’ve drawn maps for my world building however I want to take my map to the next level. I have browsed the internet for the best map making software. These days you can’t rely on reviews from the consumer site. Can anyone help me out with a recommendation for map making software? I would appreciate any input from those with wisdom and experience using such software.
So I'm trying to draw a fantasy world but I don't know how. Got any tips?.
No lore, just felt like sharing
I'm struggling to start a dnd campaign because i dont know how to make a map whit cities and other things. If u have any tips, it could really help.