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Stone and brick buildings are more resistant to a wolf's lungs than those built from sticks or straw.
General Rules
So there are natural processes that dictate how a landmass looks, like water always flows downhill and pools at the lowest point. But what other rules does everyone else follow?
Stone and brick buildings are more resistant to a wolf's lungs than those built from sticks or straw.
How about if you take the lungs out, fill them with water, and freeze them?Originally Posted by Straf
General rules will include: water flows downhill (you have that one) and moves the stuff that it flows over with it. Mountains tend to form as chains, except for those that don't. Islands form for specific reasons that depend on the kind of island. Rivers flow together as they flow downstream, unless it's energetically advantageous not to do so. Lakes are not permanent; neither are mountains, trees, or puppies (but all for different reasons and on different time scales). Marshes do not form on mountaintops. Glaciers rarely flow into tropical seas. Deserts are caused by lack of precipitation, which can in turn be caused by global or local circulation patterns. People need ways to get from one place to another. For a traditional agrarian society, one person in a city needs many more than one person in the fields to feed them; a modern society may have much less than one person in the field to feed one person in the city. Wet rocks are weaker than dry rocks. Freezing wet rocks tends to break them apart. A big ball of molten rock whose surface is hideously weakened by water is likely to form big, floating rafts of lighter rock; a big ball of molten rock with dry surface rocks may not have any rafts at all. A big pile of dirt may, if left untended for an extended period, turn into rock.
There are probably some other rules as well.
Hmm
Well you're not wrong. Do you use rebar reenforcement or straight brick and mortar?
Lakes have only 1 outlet. They might have more but it never last for long (ex: flooding).
Rivers CAN split naturally for different reasons. It's better to avoid it until you understand how they form. It could be a meander or a delta. Maybe there is something else.
It is either summer everywhere or winter in the north and summer elsewhere, no fall or spring. Seasons are usually messed up.
While at it, it's daytime everywhere at the same time.
Trees are smaller than mountains, unless they aren't. Size for trees is important to some people.
A pole is a dot on a sphere but becomes a line on most (cylindrical) map projection. People forget that.
Most people use the equirectangular projection. With a 2:1 ratio.
Don't use too many different fonts. You can use maybe 2 or 3 if they fit well. Use bold, underline, italic, Capital, small capital instead.
Mountains don't intersect at 90 degrees.
That's it for now. I'm sure someone else will continue the list.
The most important rule of all: "Physical Geography" is an excellent search term in virtually any internet search engine. Ramer-Douglas-Peucker is also a good term, but for a far more specialized reason.
Rivers can cut down through mountains and end up flowing from one plain to another through those mountains - as long as the river is eroding the land faster than the mountains are being pushed up
Free parchments | Free seamless textures | Battle tiles / floor patterns | Room 1024 - textures for CC3 | GUILD CITY INDEX
No one is ever a failure until they give up trying
Don't put a scale on a map where the projection causes distances to distort. Don't put a compass rose on a map where the projection causes bearings to distort. (Distortion that is negligible at the scale of the map may be discounted.)
Cities exist for reasons.... that may be forgotten or passe. People like us need water, so cities need a source of it. People gotta eat - local supply is cheaper than distant. When designing a world/realm/nation/setting, plausibility and interest are improved by lacks as well as by surpluses. Trade creates all sorts of good mappable situations, for good and for ill.
Political boundaries are placed for reasons... that may not be visible. So rivers and ridgelines are ok, but so is the random-looking line surveyed by drunk monkeys a thousand years ago, or a patchwork of inherited or conquered too-small-to-need-explaining plots. Political units don't have to be contiguous - see Germany for about a thousand years.
People are lazy so roads go straight, except when bent by terrain. 'Terrain' could include political considerations, land *cover* as well as shape. The rougher the land, the more expensive and implausible 'straight' becomes.
Mountains generally are surrounded by hills.... but not always. Mountains and forests are not mutually exclusive, though overlapping symbology gets tricky. Mountain ranges that run up to a coast plausibly continue in the water as islands. Lots of not-mountain terrain still has relief - isn't necessarily a featureless plain. Not showing every hill and dale is a sensible simplification of 'reality'.
Somebody "in-story" drew your map (unless it is from an omniscient outsider viewpoint). That mapper could have been expert or amateur - could have been knowledgeable or not (and could have hidden lack of knowledge by making stuff up). He or she or it had limitations in the sorts of materials available, the time permitted, the payment available. You can use those to enrich the story your map tells or explain away stuff you don't want to include. Use whatever combinations you like, but plausibility is aided by avoiding anachronisms - like photorealistic true-color Kodachrome-perfect satellite imagery on parchment lettered by hand.
Maps can be art. They can also be crafted by non-artists and be serviceable, elegant, even pretty.
Using languages unfamiliar to the reader can add so much 'flavor' that a map becomes more stage set prop than info-transmitting document. That's fine if you intend it. If it is to be used, making it hard to understand is counterproductive. You might can impart enough 'flavor' by font & symbol selection, style, language behind place names.
Rule 1: have fun. Rule 2: unless I'm paying you for it, it's your map not mine - suit yourself first & foremost.
Last edited by jbgibson; 10-12-2017 at 10:54 AM. Reason: Typos
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