The fascinating lands of the Lost World

[Neutron_22]

Hi folks!!!
I'm new here, although I've followed the forum in the past when I wasn't a member and it was very inspiring (I hope I haven't broken any rules by posting here). Now I have decided to join and try to share my work with you, hoping to get some helpful criticism.

Before I begin a small introduction about this project:
the idea of this world was born many years ago, when I was a child, and it was to be the framework within which the events of some stories I had invented at the time took place. Over time the stories, as well as this world, have grown in size and complexity, and I have drawn many maps of these lands over the years. The last one I completed was drawn in 2017, and after that, because I felt that somehow I was not satisfied with it, I began to experiment with new methods. Since then I have not been able to draw anything that really satisfied me. Over the past few years I have attempted several times to approach GPlates to make a tectonic simulation, but unfortunately I have never been able to really complete one, only getting more dissatisfaction and frustration. So I decided to rework the old maps to try to integrate them into a “manual” tectonic model that is certainly less realistic and accurate than it would be if it were done with GPlates.

And now we come to the point: since I am not an expert in plate tectonics, and unfortunately I don't have the time to delve into the subject, I was wondering if any of you would be so kind as to help me, trying to assess how plausible the model I have tried to make might be.
Please feel free to respond, any criticism is welcome.

Here the map:
TECTONIC SKETCH.png

Boundaries color:
Blue = Convergent;
Red = Divergent;
Green = Transform

[waldronate]

I'm going to ask an unpleasant question, so please don't be overly offended here: how important are the world's tectonics to the stories you want to tell? Not all maps need to be physically plausible and most maps made by characters in semi primitive cultures are going to be wildly inaccurate.

That giant continent in the middle is going to have deserts the likes of which earth hasn't seen for millions of years (assuming earth size and equirectangular projection).

[Neutron_22]

I'm going to ask an unpleasant question, so please don't be overly offended here: how important are the world's tectonics to the stories you want to tell? Not all maps need to be physically plausible and most maps made by characters in semi primitive cultures are going to be wildly inaccurate.

Hi waldronate!
Don't worry, this is a question I have asked myself several times! In fact, my story focuses mainly on the southeastern continent, and I don't know if it will ever reach the shores of the central one.
The point is that I would like to know the geography of the whole world, and for this to be at least plausible.
I know it might perhaps seem like a waste of time (and indeed it has been for many years now, because it has distracted me from writing those stories), but I make no secret of the fact that it would be wonderful to see the whole world come to life. That's why I finally decided to abandon GPlates and do the work by hand-it seemed like an acceptable compromise.

That giant continent in the middle is going to have deserts the likes of which earth hasn't seen for millions of years (assuming earth size and equirectangular projection)

Yes, I realize that the central continent is huge, considering that the planet has a larger radius than the Earth, it should have an area of about 91 million square kilometers. Actually the huge desert might be an interesting feature (or just very unrealistic?), I don't know. Any suggestions?

[waldronate]

For that large continent, take a look at the information about the climate zones of Pangaea. Basically, current models say that it would have massive monsoons and the central interior would be about the driest place you can think of. The coasts would be drenched regularly and the interior might go decades without any rain.


One of the best things about fiction is that it's not the real world. We don't know for sure what tectonics would look like on a world that's a different size than Earth (or even slightly different composition or rotation rate or lunar configuration). There are lots of guesses because it's ultimately a simple physics problem related to heat flow, but there are many potentially confounding issues, especially if you have a context with the possibility for world-altering agencies (Sayeth the Lord: Oh yeah, well I'll just reduce the friction along these three faults and you'll see what happens Real Soon Now!)

Tectonics can tell you about where things are likely to occur (ores, etc.) and how the topography is likely to look (mountains will occur on Earth mostly at plate boundaries). Solar class, age, orbital parameters, and continental distribution will tell you a lot about how climates are likely to be distributed. Throw in one little oopsie (say, a large inter-planar gate to an elemental plane of water at the top of a mountain in the worst desert in the world) and you may find that you suddenly have a large river in an implausible place.

My point was mostly that pretty much anything will look plausible at first glance and can often be written off as imprecision in cartography. In my experience, the only folks who go super deeply into tectonics are the "my world is exactly like Earth except that the names are different and I don't like how this mountain range here runs on Earth because it offended my ancestors so I'll flatten it to make my people more important" kind of nutjobs. More or less everyone else tends towards the "my stories are mostly about stuff where all that's important are that there are mountains of dangerous stuff separating the heroes from their goal" camp.

[Tiluchi]

Hmm, as one of the tectonics nutjobs waldronate was mentioning I'd say there's a lot of distance between "I need every bit of tectonics to be as plausible as possible" and "there are mountains here for whatever reason". It sounds like you're more in the in-between realm of "I want the placement of my mountains to make sense without spending months in GPlates", which is probably the most sensible middle ground. Probably the only reason to go super deep into tectonics is if you find it genuinely fun and interesting, or if it's important for your worldbuilding (in my case both).

All that said I think what you have here looks decent, but maybe a few things to consider for it to look a little more plausible at first glance:
-Active margins (where an oceanic plate is subducting beneath a continental plate) tend to have fairly smooth coastlines on a global scale (not including fjords and things), and bow outwards in an arc. That's mostly the case here but some active margins look a little more irregular than what I'd expect, particularly the southern coasts of the central supercontinent and the southernmost continent.
-In general if an active margin goes beyond the edge of a continent, it would continue in the form of a volcanic island arc in the ocean.
-Not a huge deal unless you're going to put out a tectonics map, but convergent boundaries tend to be reasonably smooth for physics regions rather than jagged as some of them are here.

Otherwise this looks pretty good at first glance, and there's not much else to say until you start working on topography. Looks like a great start! Will be interested to see where the rest of this goes.

[Neutron_22]

For that large continent, take a look at the information about the climate zones of Pangaea. Basically, current models say that it would have massive monsoons and the central interior would be about the driest place you can think of. The coasts would be drenched regularly and the interior might go decades without any rain.


One of the best things about fiction is that it's not the real world. We don't know for sure what tectonics would look like on a world that's a different size than Earth (or even slightly different composition or rotation rate or lunar configuration). There are lots of guesses because it's ultimately a simple physics problem related to heat flow, but there are many potentially confounding issues, especially if you have a context with the possibility for world-altering agencies (Sayeth the Lord: Oh yeah, well I'll just reduce the friction along these three faults and you'll see what happens Real Soon Now!)

Tectonics can tell you about where things are likely to occur (ores, etc.) and how the topography is likely to look (mountains will occur on Earth mostly at plate boundaries). Solar class, age, orbital parameters, and continental distribution will tell you a lot about how climates are likely to be distributed. Throw in one little oopsie (say, a large inter-planar gate to an elemental plane of water at the top of a mountain in the worst desert in the world) and you may find that you suddenly have a large river in an implausible place.

My point was mostly that pretty much anything will look plausible at first glance and can often be written off as imprecision in cartography. In my experience, the only folks who go super deeply into tectonics are the "my world is exactly like Earth except that the names are different and I don't like how this mountain range here runs on Earth because it offended my ancestors so I'll flatten it to make my people more important" kind of nutjobs. More or less everyone else tends towards the "my stories are mostly about stuff where all that's important are that there are mountains of dangerous stuff separating the heroes from their goal" camp.

I understand your point of view and share it. I admit that I have often forgotten that this is fiction, so I may have some room for “artistic interpretation,” I guess. All the fault of my perfectionist side.

As for the climates of the central supercontinent, I think a place where it doesn't rain for decades could be very interesting, especially seeing the impact it would have on the culture of the people living nearby. Perhaps they might think that the absence of rainfall is a whim of some mischievous god, or the consequence of some ancient divine war, who knows.

Hmm, as one of the tectonics nutjobs waldronate was mentioning I'd say there's a lot of distance between "I need every bit of tectonics to be as plausible as possible" and "there are mountains here for whatever reason". It sounds like you're more in the in-between realm of "I want the placement of my mountains to make sense without spending months in GPlates", which is probably the most sensible middle ground. Probably the only reason to go super deep into tectonics is if you find it genuinely fun and interesting, or if it's important for your worldbuilding (in my case both).

All that said I think what you have here looks decent, but maybe a few things to consider for it to look a little more plausible at first glance:
-Active margins (where an oceanic plate is subducting beneath a continental plate) tend to have fairly smooth coastlines on a global scale (not including fjords and things), and bow outwards in an arc. That's mostly the case here but some active margins look a little more irregular than what I'd expect, particularly the southern coasts of the central supercontinent and the southernmost continent.
-In general if an active margin goes beyond the edge of a continent, it would continue in the form of a volcanic island arc in the ocean.
-Not a huge deal unless you're going to put out a tectonics map, but convergent boundaries tend to be reasonably smooth for physics regions rather than jagged as some of them are here.

Otherwise this looks pretty good at first glance, and there's not much else to say until you start working on topography. Looks like a great start! Will be interested to see where the rest of this goes.

Actually I used to be one of the tectonics nutjobs myself, or at least I used to try, since the topic fascinates me so much, but unfortunately I never had the time to delve into it as deeply as I would have liked.
For the past seven years I have been trying to use GPlates for tectonics and have spent too many hours without getting satisfactory results (for the record, I think I have the files of at least ten attempts gone wrong). Only the last time did I seem to be on the right track but a rotation file error messed up my whole simulation, so I decided to give up.
I don't know, maybe it is because I am misusing the software (which is likely).
Anyway, I was so persistent in wanting to have a tectonic simulation because I had half an idea about a magic system based on rocks and minerals (like that some minerals had different magical properties based on their origin, or something like that), and I thought the tectonic model might help me develop it better.

Thank you for the advice about the coastlines, in general anyway I forgot to specify that they are totally work in progress, and I was thinking of finalizing them after defining the plate boundaries (and galciations).
For example on the active margin of the southeastern continent a very dense island arc is planned, or again the coasts of the central supercontinent are irregular that way because they are the result of a rough cutout made on the shape of the continent further south so that a situation like between South America and Africa would be created, but of course it's all still to be refined.

Another thing I forgot to specify is that most of the continents are actually a collage of old maps I drew when I was practically a kid. At the time I drew on paper without any particular knowledge of how tectonics and everything else worked, so this represents an attempt to pay homage to the "original ideas" by trying to harmonize them in a single map. This is why one of my main concerns is that all this appears coherent.

[Naima]

Hi waldronate!
Don't worry, this is a question I have asked myself several times! In fact, my story focuses mainly on the southeastern continent, and I don't know if it will ever reach the shores of the central one.
The point is that I would like to know the geography of the whole world, and for this to be at least plausible.
I know it might perhaps seem like a waste of time (and indeed it has been for many years now, because it has distracted me from writing those stories), but I make no secret of the fact that it would be wonderful to see the whole world come to life. That's why I finally decided to abandon GPlates and do the work by hand-it seemed like an acceptable compromise.



Yes, I realize that the central continent is huge, considering that the planet has a larger radius than the Earth, it should have an area of about 91 million square kilometers. Actually the huge desert might be an interesting feature (or just very unrealistic?), I don't know. Any suggestions?

I do the tectonic work by hand too , I find Gplates an useless overburden that takes too much time to learn and even more time to use in a proper way when I can do all what I need by simply applying logic and some Tectonics knowlegdge.

Usually Tectonics are usefull for two reasons to me :

1 Create plausible position of orography like mountains, basins, underwater features and continental shapes.
2 Have an idea of where to position world resources like from Oil to Gold and so on.

That's all for me , some people might want to delve deeper and have all the geological evolutionary stages of the continental drifts but this really depends on the needs I think and for most uses , to have a tectonic map is more than enough to have very plausible and realistic world.

[Neutron_22]

I do the tectonic work by hand too , I find Gplates an useless overburden that takes too much time to learn and even more time to use in a proper way when I can do all what I need by simply applying logic and some Tectonics knowlegdge.

Usually Tectonics are usefull for two reasons to me :

1 Create plausible position of orography like mountains, basins, underwater features and continental shapes.
2 Have an idea of where to position world resources like from Oil to Gold and so on.

That's all for me , some people might want to delve deeper and have all the geological evolutionary stages of the continental drifts but this really depends on the needs I think and for most uses , to have a tectonic map is more than enough to have very plausible and realistic world.

Yes, GPlates is very obtuse in some circumstances. That's why I think maybe I'll only be able to come to grips with this project by moving away from it.


Quick update, I tweaked the tectonics a bit, specifically trying to create a Pacific analogue and introduce a divergent continental rift to recreate a situation similar to the Rift Valley in Africa. Then I started refining the coastline, adding island arcs in the vicinity of subduction zones and adding a small inland sea in the central supercontinent, which could be an ancient trapped ocean remnant of a very ancient collision. I have also tried drawing fjords and glacial archipelagos, although I am not very convinced....

TECTONICS SKETCH 2.png

LANDMASSES SKETCH 1.png