Minor Map-Making Tips

Minor Map-Making Tips

I’m super not an expert, but here’s some stuff I bear in mind while designing maps for our RPG setting.

Rivers run away from the nearest high ground/mountain range towards the ocean. As they approach the ocean they usually (but not always) get wider and slower.

Deserts are usually not near large bodies of water unless something (possibly divine or human intervention) has catastrophically affected the soil or there is a mountain range in between keeping the clouds away

Ocean currents can justify some pretty weird temperature effects, e.g. why Hawaii is very close to the equator but is not miserably hot; it’s surrounded by hundreds of miles of cool open ocean that sucks up the heat.

Colder temps = coniferous forests (pine and fir), not deciduous (leafy green boys). They handle the cold better. Forest takes more humidity than grassland to survive, but also creates humidity once it’s established, so an area can lose its forest and be unable to bounce back.

Cities are usually built near sources of transportation or freshwater. A big river is both, even inland, a place where two rivers meet is even better (e.g. Pittsburgh), and the place where a large river meets the ocean is everyone’s first choice for a city even to some extent in modern times and definitely in pre-industrial times.

That said, Tolkien’s maps make no sense and Lord of the Rings was still wildly popular anyway, so… don’t stress too much.