Hey all. I'm Sark, aspiring author, and making fantasy maps terrifies me. I worry about tectonics a lot. I try not to even think about what kind of rocks would be found (and used for building materials) in different areas. Then I start thinking about climate, soil types, historical geology and climate, and I run in terror. And don't get me started on scale. The closest thing I have to a map for my current project is a list of geographical features and material culture elements (cotton, rice, etc) I want to fit in, plus some very hesitant polygons drawn in an office suite.

In short, I have no idea what I'm doing, and while I'm not too worried about making the prettiest maps, I would really like to be able to describe the fantasy locations I'm writing about in more detail than "rocks," and to stop panicking every time I try to map them out.

Any tips on which tutorials to start with for this sort of thing specifically?

(I also GM RPGs, mostly Apocalypse World derived ones. I like to cheat and use the map drawing game The Quiet Year to trick my players into developing the setting with me.)