6/18/2023 0 Comments Fantasy map designer rivers![]() ![]() On the other hand, for a colder world drop the climate mentioned later in the sentence above. Perhaps also make the area near the equator nearly inhospitable without being a special creature, or using magic or devices. Of course for a hotter world, drop the first, second, or even third of those. If you’re making an Earth-like world, then you’ll have an arctic climate at the poles, then subarctic, followed by temperate, next subtropical, and finally tropical near the equator. Is your planet earth-like? More arid or humid? Colder or hotter? Escarpments: Sudden changes in elevation such as the edge of a plateau.Īfter you’ve thought through your coastlines, mountains, and other landforms it is time to think about climate.Gorges: Steep passes & valleys formed by riven canyons.These may form swamps, marshes, seasonal lakes, inland seas, and salt flats. Depressions: Areas lower than sea level that you can sprinkle across your map.They can also be highlands, shields, bulges, etc. Rolling Hills & Tablelands: These are hills that are more eroded away and possibly now cultivated.Foothills: These surround mountains and are usually more rugged than other hills, depending on how much time erosion has had to work.However, volcanoes tend to form mountains in clumps (to relieve intense pressure with several “spigots”) and lines (as plates move over a “spigot” over time). They often run parallel to coasts because of plate tectonics. In addition to forming where crumpling plate tectonics overlap, volcanoes form mountains. Mountains: Usually at least partly surrounded by hills or other elevated/rugged terrain.Next when making a fantasy map you’re going to want to add some more landforms to fill out the world. If you’re using another tool (or even paper) you can easily do the same to create your coastlines, mountains, and hills. And these land masses determine our initial coastlines. A land percentage setting in Worldographer determines how many land masses it places. This sort-of simulates plate tectonics in a very basic way. Where they overlap is where the first hills and mountains will be placed. Worldographer starts its world generation by sticking down several land masses of varying sizes. ![]() (If they don’t want to be from the starting area.) Coastlines The major geographical features and largest cities will be enough for your players to pick for character backgrounds. There’s no real harm in putting down the broad brush strokes for other areas of the map. Unless you’ve got oodles of ideas that can fill a whole world ready to go (great if you do!) you can focus on just the one kingdom where the PCs will start and maybe a couple adjacent kingdoms or nations. However, you’re likely only going to do a detailed map of a smaller area such as one continent or part of a continent. You can go smaller or larger, depending on how big of a canvas you want. For size, keep in mind the circumference of the earth at the equator is 24,901 miles. Other ideas are die-shaped worlds (d4, d6, d8, d10, d12, & d20, and probably others), a Möbius strip, and a flat map–which would make mapping it accurately easier.īut for our purposes, we’re going to focus of sphere shaped worlds. There are a number of possible world shapes in fantasy & science fiction: Ringworld & Hollow Earth are two prominent non-sphere examples. ![]() Note: We also made a video based on this article. Whether you’re using Worldographer’s generator or you’re going to make your own fantasy map (regardless of tool) the following information should be a great resource. When creating Worldographer and its map generation algorithm, we learned a lot about planet geography. How to Import a Worldographer Map into Roll20.How to Edit the Name/Nations/Religions/Etc Generator Values.Creating Terrain & Feature Icon Guidelines.Fog of War/Explore & Trace Underlay Drawers ![]() Mini-Map Area, View Options, & Layers Drawer Controls ![]()
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