World Building #9: It's Just a Model

Let's take a break from design cultures and races and buckle down with one of the most memorable parts of any setting: geography! I, of course, am no cartographer nor do I play one in a situational comedy. So, I turned to the help of one of my good friends, JulyFlame. You might notice her under my followers on the right. Yes, I have followers. I was surprised as anyone else.

Anyway, July, who is incredibly cool, told me that she was going to help me make a map using a method with tectonic plates and subcontinents. I was thoroughly confused. She commanded me to just draw a bunch of basic shapes. These basic shapes would be mini-tectonic plates and subcontinents.

Of course, this isn't my first try. My first try at making tectonic plates, I simply put a bunch of jagged lines everywhere after looking at a map of tectonic plates. July, politely, corrected me and from there I made what you see above. I may have made them a bit too big and fill to much of the area. Earth, after all, is 71% sea water. Oh well.

July then asked me to mash the subcontinents together to form whole continents. Mash them together at random, fit them together, connect some, leave some unconnected. Whatever floated my boat. Where the plates overlapped would be where mountains form.
In the end, I made two large continents. I also tried to fit the plates around fairly tightly, something I may change in the future.

After I showed this to July, she worked some cartographical magic and came up with this:


Have I mentioned how cool she was? I didn't even asked and she pulled this up. Intrigued by what I could do by putting a bunch of shapes together, I thanked July and went to bed. Little did I know what a lovely surprise would await me when I signed back on to the IRC channel where we chat...

THIS!

It's a simple map, but one that shows so much promise.

Already, I'm plotting where the campaign world is on the map. It will probably be centered around the vertical sea on the western continent or the other sea on the eastern continent. The Selkies seem to have become the center of the setting, all roads lead to Rome and whatnot, so it makes sense to have a Meditteranean analogue.

While July's work is lovely, I do have modifications I want to make to it before I adopt the map for my setting.

One of my personal pet peeves about a lot of fantasy maps is the lack of water. They're often big round blobs of land. This doesn't work for a setting where a race based around water is one of the anchors. So, I'm thinking of widening the seas, adding some more inland bodies of water, and perhaps even shrinking the continents a bit.

I'd also like to add some more mountains and perhaps a volcanic area for the smallfolk.

All in all, a good map. A very good map. An awesome map, in fact. Thank you so much, July!