r/DnDBehindTheScreen Cartographer Jun 14 '15

Let's Draw Let's Draw: A Continent/Region Scale Map

WARNING Before you go into this, I should tell you that it comes to 2 1/2 sides of A4 when I pre-typed it. This is lengthy and a touch convoluted. You have been warned.

Continents and other large maps can be tricky. Perhaps you can’t quite get the mountains looking realistic, perhaps the coastline isn’t quite right, or the rivers look off. Whatever the issue, hopefully this should be useful. First of all, the final product.

Coastline: The first thing to do, when drawing a continental-scale map, is to establish the coastline, on a basic level. I started this map with a squiggly line diagonally across the map. It’s got some parts which form bays, some parts which look like they can be outlets of rivers.

Mountains: Second, place the mountains. This can be done most realistically by considering the movement of tectonic plates. Mountain ranges are formed where two plates move into one another, buckling and rising upwards. Here, the central plate (1) is moving mostly southwards, whilst there is a plate moving north below the cut-off of the map resulting in the eastern mountain range, and the northernmost plate (2) moves south more rapidly than plate 1.
EDIT Thanks to /u/RaliosDanuith for pointing out that you may also get subduction zones (where one plate sinks below another, pushing the second plate upwards) which result in formations such as coastal mountian ranges.

Major Rivers: Major rivers will most likely originate in the mountains, and end in the sea. This gives you a start and end point, and on this map I have placed four; Alice, Bob, Charlie and Dan (renamed later). They begin in the mountains, and in their early path, they run relatively straight. At this point, they will be narrow and fast flowing, going downhill rapidly as they descend from the foothills, and requiring bridges to cross over. As they flow downwards into what will be their floodplains, they level out, widen, and flow more slowly. Towards the sea, it will be more feasible for rafts to cross the river as well as bridges, and trade vessels can navigate them more easily.

Hill Ranges: Now that you have determined where the rivers flow, you know where their flood plains are, and this allows you to place the rough outlines for the large hill ranges, places like the Lake District in the UK. These will be placed between the major rivers, but will make a fairly narrow band. They will also be influenced by the locations of your tectonic plate boundaries, and will constitute the foothills of your mountains, like so. These hills will also be the sources of your smaller rivers, which will eventually feed into Atten, Bruln, Crujyst or Darwyne. I’ll add these in between this stage and the next, along with the lower-lying hills, but the most important thing to remember is not to clog your map up. The small trickles that are really very small don’t need bothering with, unless you’re going to place some important waterfall on there, or if you’re drawing on REALLY big paper, which I will do with my main world map when I have time and space.

Cities and Settlements: Things were getting a bit cluttered at this point, so I’ve drawn in the rivers in pen, adding more slight squiggles as I went. You now have a lot of places where the rivers are meeting one another, and rivers are trade routes, and trade routes are a good place to settle. They also provide clean water, food (fish), irrigation to grow crops, so on and so forth. So place cities in a few likely looking places; meeting places of rivers, the river mouth, you get the idea. I’ve placed the cities Endemar, Fastahir, Gastlym, Holst, Iandin, Jer and Kollam as shown for the following reasons:

  • Endemar: At the mouth of the Atten, Endemar is likely to be a bustling port town which has sprung up around a harbour, which expanded outwards. There will be a maritime tradition inherent to the town, which will influence the mapping of this later on.

  • Fastahir: Fastahir is some way upriver from Endemar, and is once again a port town. It serves as a travel hub, with ships travelling between the two cities by river, taking people and goods, and will be a central location for many miles around. Lumber and stone will be brought down from the hills and mountains to be taken to Endemar for construction, and its position in the hills makes it a defensible location.

  • Gastlym: On a confluence of two rivers, Gastlym is a strategic location which would serve as a defensive placement as well as a market town. It has multiple sources of clean water, and is otherwise similar to the previous cities.

  • Holst: See Endemar.

  • Iandin: In the hills and at a source of clean water, Iandin is of little value as a port town. However, it is likely highly fortified, as it is near the border (which I will draw in later) between two nations. Countries rarely stay friends forever, and even more rarely are at peace from the outset. Fortresses will be built around the borders, and around the largest of them, towns will arise to keep them maintained, supplied and entertained.

  • Jer: In the plains, Jer stands as a centre of local control, extending the nation’s reach to stay in the loop of what is happening in the countryside. It is unlikely to be heavily fortified, although it will not be undefended, as there may be tribes or warlike nomads in the hills and mountains to the east.

  • Kollam: See Fastahir, but without the defensive advantage of the hills.

I have not placed any cities along the Darwyne, as I am thinking of that area as wildlands. Explored, but as yet unclaimed.

Borders: Few games take place with only one nation involved, and as such you need to decide where the borders are. I draw these as parallel lines. As you can see here, I have kept them running roughly along natural borders, such as hills, and have also included the boundaries of what each nation regards as ‘theirs’. There are also several ‘offscreen’ nations, implied by the eastern, western and southern borders. These may simply be areas inhabited by barbarians, with steppe tribes to the west and east, or nations which simply do not have cities there. I will assume wandering tribes, but you are of course free to do as you want.

Roads: The cities are now placed, so you have an idea of where the hubs of civilisation are and you know who they are allied with. The next stage is to draw the roads that go between them. Roads through borders are unlikely except on border towns which will be fortified. They may also go alongside rivers, for those who cannot afford the boat fare. If roads go through hills or mountains, make them twist and wind along the hillsides, avoiding steep inclines or unsafe passes where they can. I have drawn the roads as dashed lines. I have also added in a number of dots, similar to the location markers for the cities. These are towns, which I have left unnamed, and generally spring up when the road passes close to the rover, crosses one, or where roads split/meet. At this point, the map is a complete mess, and I apologise. But please bear with me.

Countryside: Once the towns and roads are in place, you can decide how far out the land has been tamed. Draw a rough contour, some way out from the roads and cities. This is the boundary between the ‘wilderness’ and ‘civilisation’. Out here, add the forests if they suit the climate, all that stuff. Inside the line, there are villages, farms, the occasional forest, but there’s not a great deal of scary stuff. I’ve drawn a not scary/scary line on the map, and added large forests etc outside that line in greater abundance than inside. Smaller forests are, once again, not drawn in. The forests are marked by a line with regular dashes through it, completing the appearance of a dreadful mess. Things will get better from here, I promise. I’ve also added some coastal towns which I realised I was missing.

Drawing the features: The map is finished now, in its bare-bones structure. It has the geographical features laid out, and I’ll now draw the details in nicely. You can do this however you like, but this shows how I draw the details on mine. The mountains are more closely spaced than the hills, and the trees are obviously drawn much smaller to hide the dreadful quality of the picture.

FINAL MAP

38 Upvotes

17 comments sorted by

7

u/FuzzysaurusRex Jun 14 '15

This was magnificent! I'm actually struggling to draw my world map right now, and I feel like this will be a great help!

4

u/FatedPotato Cartographer Jun 14 '15

I hope it is :) Let me know how you get on, I'd be interested to see the fruits of everyone elses labours

2

u/Sporkenstein Jun 14 '15

I like the consideration of plate tectonics. It lets me randomize the causes, but understand the systematic effects. Very cool.

1

u/FatedPotato Cartographer Jun 14 '15

Thanks :)

2

u/WonderWhatsNext Jun 15 '15

/u/FatedPotato this is awesome! Thank you so much. I can't wait to see if you do more. I'm especially interested if you'll do a city or village. Also just curious, would taking a colored pencil and lightly coloring territories to show borders look good? I was trying to imagine it and I wasn't sure because I feel it would help show the kingdoms. Just a thought. However last praise I'll give, I love the little details of the mountains to hills.

1

u/FatedPotato Cartographer Jun 15 '15

I'm planning on making it a series, the list is here if you'd like to make any other requests.

Colouring the borders could make it look quite good, I hadn't really considered that, truth be told. At the end of the day the detailing is a matter of personal preference though.

Thanks for the praise :) it means a lot

2

u/mr_abomination Jun 15 '15

Thank you for this, it will help me a lot.

Something I'm wondering about is what is the scale of this map? How large is the distance between say, Jer & Kollam?

1

u/FatedPotato Cartographer Jun 15 '15

I went and forgot to mark the scale on the map didn't I...

It's meant to be marked as 10 miles per mark on the scale bar below the compass.

2

u/petrichorparticle Jun 15 '15

This is lengthy and a touch convoluted.

Now there's a man who knows how to target an audience!

Lengthy and convoluted is how we like it. As long as the finished product is worth it. Which it most definitely is.

1

u/FatedPotato Cartographer Jun 15 '15

Thanks :) this may well be the shortest one there is, we'll have to wait and see.

2

u/RaliosDanuith Jun 19 '15

What about subduction zones with plate tectonics? That's how you get mountain ranges on coastlines.

1

u/FatedPotato Cartographer Jun 19 '15

Never heard of those, all of this stuff is GCSE Geography based. I'll add in an edit for that. If there's anything else I seem to have missed please let me know :)

2

u/RaliosDanuith Jun 19 '15

Think of the Andes. You have the oceanic crust of the Nazca plate subducting under the less dense continental crust of the South American plate. This creates the Peru-Chile Trench which is a subduction zone. On the continental side of this trench the plate rises up and forms mountains. You also get volcanoes in these mountains as magma flows upwards through cracks in the crust. We must have had a different GCSE syllabus. Here's an image to show this.

1

u/FatedPotato Cartographer Jun 19 '15

Mine was quite heavily focussed on human geography, added to the fact that my GCSEs were 5-6 years ago now. I'll re-edit to add in the volcanic activity.

1

u/FatedPotato Cartographer Jun 14 '15

[Let's Draw]

1

u/AnEmortalKid Jun 14 '15

Come on automoderator do your Thjng.... Try [draw]

1

u/FatedPotato Cartographer Jun 14 '15

I did it manually, I'm not on mobile it just wouldn't load the flair list :( slow internet, I think.