Help regarding scaling, please!!

[VietIronfist]

Hello everyone,

I hope this is the right place to post this.

Recently, I've been ruminating about scale on my maps. They are always something that I have struggled with concept wise.

Quick background: When I first started making maps, I would just create the land and then create a scale that seemed to fit. Something did not seem entirely right about doing it this way... so I started looking around for different ways to create fantasy maps. I watched the map-making tutorial created by Artifexian and really liked that style of map, although it is incredibly tedious. I really love the style and the way everything looks. Being able to accurately scale things is so awesome, and I have been improving on zooming into different regions and keeping the appropriate scale when doing so. I really like doing the world approach because it allows me to create realistic climates and it feels like I have more control over creating things.

Now the issue... I am going to be making multiple regional maps for a TTRPG that I am developing with my partner. For these regional maps, I am not going to be putting the time nor the effort into creating a larger world map as we will not be using one. I am struggling with how to appropriately scale these maps.

Do I just lay down some land and decide more arbitrarily the distance between things without considering more real-world implications (such as curvature of the planet)? Or do I just make the world map and zoom in on the area that I want to focus on so I can obtain a real-world scale? Do you have any tips/tricks that you use when making regional maps in terms of scaling? How realistic do I need to make this? I would love to keep with the atlas-style map because it's so clean looking... I just don't always want to have to do everything that goes into it...

I hope all of this makes sense... please feel free to ask clarifying questions... thank you for taking the time to read this and for your help!

[Skaald]

If I had to do this I think I'll ask myself "what do I need to be put on that map and what is the purpose of said map", and when you know it, you take the two things the most distant with each other (the capitals of the two kingdoms in war, the rivers bordering the battlefield, and you have the scale of the very map you're working on. You have to do a little of preparation before starting to draw your map, because you have to worldbuild a little before.

[Falconius]

Like Skaald said.

Make it big enough to include a little bit of area of wiggle room around what you need. Do not make a world map, if you need more map just make another one and add it on, or make a larger regional map which you map sits within. The curvature of the planet is entirely unimportant for a regional fantasy map. It is important if you want to put longitude and latitude lines in, which it sounds like you do, but in that case I'd just copy existing long and lat lines from the approximate latitude you want your map to theoretically be and then ignore them whilst you fill it in, you will have to match your scale to them though. Don't let realism get in the way of making your map, use it as a tool instead of a limitation. The easiest way to figure out what scale to use is "the days of travel" method, in which you declare how long it'd take characters to get from point "a" to point "b" and then figure out the approximate distance between "ab" by using the average walking speed of people typically 20-30 miles a day.

[VietIronfist]

Thank you, both of you!

That makes a lot of sense. I feel like that used to be my philosophy making maps, but got caught up in making them more realistic. I'm hoping that I will be able to keep that perspective. It will definitely make things a bit easier going forward!!

[waldronate]

The others have pointed out some important concepts, but here's a little bit more:

A whole-world map may not matter right now, but a quick sketch will let you do one of the most important things for a lot of related maps: be consistent from map to map. If map A says that it's five days travel from Angel's Fall to Hellmouth, map B had better not show it as an afternoon's walk or your readers may lose their suspension of disbelief. The map really doesn't need to be a whole world, but (as Falconius suggests) an overview map somewhat larger than your intended regional areas will make a big difference.

If your TTRPG is set on something resembling a planet that responds to familiar physics, then the map projection will start to make something of a difference when your maps are a few hundred miles across. Putting things at reasonable places and sizes on the map will tell you about things that can be important, like where the tundra is or which parts are desert or why kingdom A never really talked much to kingdom B.

Maps serve the stories you're trying to tell. Having a map and a history for that map (Bob the Mighty fought his way across the whole of the land of Knod in Year Two of the Little Troubles) lets the map become a storytelling aid and new stories quickly start flowing. An overview map (even one with very large strokes) with a few areas detailed (and maybe more detailed maps of those important areas) gives a sense of a cohesive whole, even if that's not actually the case. Note that I'm not saying that you'd need a whole world map, but something to tie together what you're going to do in the first push with a little extra space for wiggle room is where you should be heading.

A quick way to avoid issues is (if you can) have maps done by some character or guild in the context of the game itself. Ancient surveys weren't the best and maps often differed significantly depending on who was doing the map and why. Plus, it lets you have a little flavor and relaxes your consistency constraints. A little note in the corner (by Ortilon the Simple, dung street, OUR MAPS ARE THE BEST) can
give players a feeling of life in the world that a generic map can be missing.