Bad fantasy world maps

Communal living at the highest elevations of the area, centered around structures that look like hurricane shelters. Locals casually refer to "rivers" that are bone-dry 95% of the year. If you do any kind of mining or excavation, you had better do it on a lakebed or riverbed, because the local druids will whip up a mob to lynch you if you dig through the grasses on hills and inclines that prevent mudslides. Farmers are so busy planting in the days after the monsoon that it's almost impossible to do anything else. The best places for wells and the best places for shelter are often not the same, so there are these water-hauling caravans with amazing infrastructure that always completely vanishes in the week leading up to the monsoon.

To be fair, there is probably a whole lot more to Azeroth than portrayed on the map and in game. I mean, some of the villages are literally three houses. It is a video game from 2004 after all.

rate my map please.

I actually like the shoreline even if it's a blatant not-Europe.

I knew the people on Veeky Forums would instantly know it's Europe.

I basically based my continent on 14th - early 15th century Europe.

no one has figured it out despite doing quite a few games in it.

That's most certainly the case, but it gave me a convenient extreme example.
Like I said, it serves its gameplay purposes, the logics behind it are very different to just worldbuilding.

How about Creation, the default setting of Exalted 2e? You have a giant mountain in the literal center of the world, that goes all the way up to "the Pole of Earth" and past the point where height has any meaning, a Pole of Wind in the North that produces more and more wind chill the closer you get to it, a Pole of Fire in the South that leads to hotter, more arid land until you reach a literal wall of fire, and poles to the East and West (I forget which is which) that also lead to increasingly bizarre terrain as you go further out? I can't remember if Water is East or West, but as you go out you get more rivers and swamps, then archipelagoes, then individual islands, then finally a fuckhueg ocean.

You're not for real right?

>clearly betrays it is just a random generated cloud pattern
>elevation just raises to mountains in the center of every landmass, like continents are pillowshaded
>continents are shaped to fit the rectangular map format
>format doesn't leave map features enough border space
>uniformly spaced land masses
>uniformly spaced cities, disregarding geography
>identical sized countries, always contain similar number of features
>rivers running ocean to ocean
>scale/climate zones indicate continent, features on it spaced and scaled like regional map
>unpleasing linework, no fractal forms
>default fading out photoshop brush that doesn't look like anything is used
>everything is a wobbly blotch
>doesn't convey any information/lack of features
>style of elements clashes
>just a wonky copy of earth/europe/US etc
>font unreadable
>every place is copy pasted from another work
>landforms repeat in absolute identical manner

If the monsoon is predictable, farmers would probably have temporary constructions in the fertile plains for most the year and only take them off when the monsoon is near.

I think all fantasy maps must be
>aesthetically pleasing
>geographically plausible (magic is a lazy excuse unless it's absolutely essential for the world)
>enough variety to be interesting
>doesn't just throw in one of every biome in the world for pcs to visit
>doesn't copy Middle Earth
>Names are unique and not generic (southforest) or obvious Middle Earth copies (see: Eragon map)

So just a minor twist on the generic cold north, desert south, exotic east, temperate west thing every map has?

Usually people making them too big and putting too much shit on them.

/Thread

Inkarnate.

I like using topographical maps.

I was lazy in my last D&D campaign. Just used google maps on my town and transposed the weather patterns as needed. Wound up being one of the best campaigns ever.

Mercator.

>every coast is a jagged fractal nightmare, dissolving into a clusterfuck of tiny daggerlike islands
>every coast is perfectly smooth and undulating
>land terrain stops at the arbitrary border of the continent (e.g. Himalaya-tier range hits ocean and just stops, doesn't bend away or descend)
>never a note of hot springs, naptha pits, moors, or anything less generic than "forest"
>no indication that the population actually interfaces with natural resources, apart from farming in convenient grasslands
>most of the map is made of sparse farming communities seperated by expanses of unfarmed grassland, which exist despite every indication that the climate is oceanic/european and should be forested
>giant untouched wilderness forest with pleasant climate, surrounded by well populated farming communities
>mountains are always just a series of peaks, rather than a mixture of ridge, fold, highland, etc. — just one cone after another
>islands or major terrain features have no interaction or discernable relationship with one another
>everything is flat unless there is a mountain, in which case it always rises like a wall
>no recognition given to passes, straits, oases, or other important trade landmarks
>no recognition given to major holy sites
>no variation in climate and/or ecosystem despite major differences in latitude, longitude, height, distance from sea etc.
>fear of letting some things be large and uniform, or unexplored
and finally
>place names all from same language, despite large scale of map, with clear etymology
>place names from only "common" and "exotic" (elvish, old tongue...) with no melding together

They exist in real life, because we have technology required to make them and political climate allowing for their existence. Not to mention they exist almost solely in places that were previously extremely sparsely populated or are effects of wars over sparsely populated areas OR bunch of faggots just took a ruler and draw borders of their colonies/liberated states based on "I think we should put the line here". And those mostly happen when there were no natural borders to use.

So no, nonsensical borders on maps ALWAYS look bad. Especially if you end up with a straight line going through, say, mountain ranges or rivers. That's just shit-tier world building and map making.

Belgium has borders based either on natural boundaries or cultural ones. And almost entire Austrian border is based on mountain or at least hill ranges.

Reverse - making them too small and overcrowding then.
And absolutely worst - huge-ass map with barely any features on it. You end up with "small" countries in size of half of Europe, that have absolutely zero geo, bio or climate diversity, hell, entire continents of this shit and improbable or just plain impossible features, like a Dry Desert (intentional capital letters) directly going into a fucking Dark Jungle and/or Lush Plains of Farmlandia, with absolutely ZERO features between them that could at least try to justify this shit.

I keep promising myself that some day I'll figure out how to do decent maps instead of just for-reference shit like this.

>every coast is a jagged fractal nightmare, dissolving into a clusterfuck of tiny daggerlike islands
>every coast is perfectly smooth and undulating
More than anything I want to solve this, because chaotically pretty coastlines make my dick hard.

This looks super dope as well.

This so much. Nobody cares if you've perfectly replicated plate tectonics or have 100% accurate climate patterns or whatever. What is there to actually do in your world?

>apostrophes
Kill yourself and try again

>>every coast is a jagged fractal nightmare, dissolving into a clusterfuck of tiny daggerlike islands
So... you don't like dalmatine and fiord type of shoreline?
Because those things exist IRL and are pretty "popular" land features. Popular enough to be a fucking classes of shoreline by itself.

>most of the map is made of sparse farming communities seperated by expanses of unfarmed grassland, which exist despite every indication that the climate is oceanic/european and should be forested
Let's bring it step further, shall we?
>huge empty and fertile plains
>somehow not colonised like mad by those farmers
>somehow no traces of nomadic lifestyle (daily reminder that your average highlanders, regardless if Scots, French or fucking Georgian [Caucassus, not US] were nomads by default or at least were acting like nomads herding their stock)

Fucking this and basically /thread

I was once working on a homebrew setting with bunch of guys from Geo department of my uni. Fucking perfect map, the Bio students helped with climate, foliage and shit like that.
Who cares, if the setting itself was just bland heartbreaker and people using it were basically bunch of murderhobos doing dungeon crawl

Never got around finishing it as the run ended in hiatus, but either way, rate my map.

I know that coasts like that exist, it's just jarring when the entire map ends up looking like a shattered pane of glass. You just don't see that on a continental scale. Even the Canadian arctic and Austronesia hold some general form and flow, instead of radiating out in some insane fractal parody of the mainland.

Likewise there are also large stretches of relatively smooth coastline, like in Brazil. But even then, when you look closer you realize it's broken up by countless capes and estuaries, and it's held together as a singular form juxtaposed against the Carribean and the fjords of the Southern Cone, instead of massing together with other giant smooth protruding shapes to form some amoebic orgy of a map.

My gripe isn't that those patterns are used, but that in many maps they're the only pattern shown at all.

... why there is that water in the middle of nowhere? Since I have only wild guess about everything, it looks like you've placed a lake in the midle of highland, with no justification whatsoever.
Even worse if that pinkish color is supposed to represent not highland, but fucking desert, but let's hope you didn't fuck up this bad
Also, if river is big enough to be "mappable", it can't run from nowhere to nowhere, unless extreme evaporation is a factor.

Crossposting:

and the full world map. it was a sandbox exploration of the 'recently' discovered southern continent.

it's a huge ass oasis, it's actually connected to a vast world of underwater cave systems, like the rest of the continent.
>Also, if river is big enough to be "mappable", it can't run from nowhere to nowhere, unless extreme evaporation is a factor.
it runs from some small-ish mountains to a tiny fertile strip, in slightly greener. it's not perfect or anything, it was my first attempt at something 'coherent', so i might've fuck it bad.

Importance of a feature is what determines mapability. Look up a map of the Arabian peninsula and see how many wadis they map, despite them being dry 360 days a year. The rivers in the map could be like the Syr and Amu Darya that used to feed into the Aral Sea but because of cotton farming now mostly dry up before they reach it.

I can't account for the lake, it might be a paricularly massive oasis or endorrheic lake fed by seasonal streams from those mountains above it. Lake Tchad exists between the Sahara and the Sahel, so it's not impossible.

Yo tru. Smaller map with a medium amount of interesting features (generated with players) that can be added to and zoomed out if necessary a best.

Meant for
But I guess the author already answered anyway

...

Or just use fractal generator with a shape you define early on. Exactly same result.

>no one has figured it out
Have they seen the map? Are they literal retards?

It's a mythic map though, not an accurate one.

Like how the Ancient Egyptians used to handle the inundation of the Nile.

I just assumed it was a troll

God, I hate this style
>yo, do this fuckin' thing
Fuck right off, spastic

how would you rate my map Veeky Forums?
it's too big to post here.
gifyu.com/images/VelikaJebenaMapacc8f3.jpg

here it is

They could be just Americans, you know

I've got a message for you

Ruchasz psa, kiedy sra

maybe they are americans or something.

It's Venus obviously.

Welcome to Earf.

>They exist in real life, because we have technology required to make them and political climate allowing for their existence.
Have you ever looked at a map of the Holy Roman Empire? Enclaves and exclaves fucking everywhere, countries nearly but not quite encircling each other. What is often referred to as border gore has occured throughout history.

Rate my map !

>blueberry river

This, oh this so very much.

Kraken in lake sounds like a fun adventure.

if your lake doesn't have a kraken, then why bother, to be quite honest.

>Kraken in puddle

>I basically based my continent on 14th - early 15th century Europe.

As opposed to 21st century Europe?

>Names are unique and not generic (southforest)
But this is actually how places are named.

This isn't Earth, where's America?

>God, I hate this style
No, you don't. You've just seen it a couple of times, and you think you've discovered the next big thing for Veeky Forums to hate on. You want it to be like industrial necromancers, unrealistic maps or fun, all things we once used to embrace, but started to hate because they got popular.

A lot of place names are generic.
Australia is derived from "southern land."
Austria is "eastern borderlands"
Bahamas are "the shallows"
Bahrain, "two seas"
Cameroon, "shrimp"
Canada, "village"
Cabo Verde, "green cape"
Chad, "lake"
Costa Rica, "rich coast"
Cotê d'Ivoire, "ivory coast"
Cuba, "abundant fertile land"
East Timor, "Eastern East Island"
Ecuador, "equator"
Eritrea, "Red Sea land"
Guatemala, "forest"
Guyana, "land of many waters"
Haiti, "mountainous land"
Honduras, "depths"
Iceland, obvious
Ireland, "fertile place"
Italy, "land of calves"
Jamaica, "land of springs"
Japan, "how about sunrise land?"
Korea, "lofty walled city"
Kosovo, "field of blackbirds"
Kuwait, "fortress by the water"
Liberia, "freedom"
Luxembourg, "little fortress"
Maldives, "palace islands"
Mali, "hippopotamus"
Malta, "honey"
Micronesia, "small islands"
Monaco, "single dwelling"
Montenegro, "black mountain"
Namibia, "area where there is nothing"
Nauru, "I go to the beach"
Netherlands, "lowlands"
Norway, "northern way"
Pakistan, "land of the pure"
Panama, "place of many fish"
Portugal, either "beautiful port" or "hot port"
Rwanda, "land"
Samoa, either "holy center" or "moa place"
Sierra Leone, "lion mountains"
Singapore, "lion city"
Spain is "land of hyraxes" (which they mistook rabbits for)
Sri Lanka, "holy island"
Togo, "by the sea"
Tonga, "south"
Tobago (of Trinidad and), "tobacco"
Tuvalu, "eight islands"
Vanuatu, "our land"

And most of the remaining countries are named after named geographic features, a deity, a person, a tribe, or what more powerful outsiders thought the tribe looked like. And a couple concepts and adjectives.

Should've just called it 'Arth'. People probably wouldn't even notice.

Lack of NPC, towns, real time events and proper historical context (in universe)

How do you make a really interesting world? Do you fill it with a bunch of races or magic or weapons or what?

Norway hands down the coolest, and makes the best maps

Litter it with Draugr tombs LOL TODD XD

HxH, Togashi put no effort in it

The Swedish word for Sweden is basically a bastardisation of "Kingdom of the Swedes", 'Swedes' itself being a bastardisation of the tribal name of the Sviar, which is itself a bastardisation of some old Germanic word for 'Self'.

So basically, Sweden = Me-land

Doesn't get much more generic than that.

I don't know what makes a bad one, but I can tell you how to easily make a good one.

>take map of earth that shows countries and borders clearly
>cut out each country, then re-arrange them
>done

How did that work? Turn every hill into a mountain range, every pond at the golf course into an ocean?

>Panama, "place of many fish"
and butterflies, where did you find this?
it's nice and mostly accurate for those i know.

He even stole Ulthuan from Deadhammer.

this triggers me

>yo do this fuckin' shit
>bitch then FUCKIN DO THIS FUCKIN NEXT
That person needs to neck themself

...

>What makes a bad fantasy world map?
When I make it.

I got you famme

To be fair to place names on a map, its likely because that map is using the names the culture that produced said map uses for those places. For example the British and Americans call Germany "Germany" where as in France its called "Allemagne" and in Poland its called "Niemcy". The place name issue really only becomes a thing if the natives always use the same name for their homeland as the culture that made your map uses.

it's awful

For me its a combination of people acting like people and tidbits of oddity and weirdness happening. Its not all "oh god its all depressing here, blah blah blah, kill raiders please, blah."

...

for me it has to feel organic to some point but have enough wonder in it so it doesn't feel like bad historical fiction.

ancient ruins, magical forests, spooky swamps different cultures (and i mean, make-an-effort different, not just lol elves are japan) worth interacting with and solid motivations for your pcs to explore such world, as in the end, the world should support your character's stories, while hopefully being able to survive without them.

Yeah but Geography is not the sole consideration, there's a reason in the US the further west you go the larger and more geometric the states borders are.

Yeah exactly!
Its almost like the first thing people tell new people that they don't even speak a common language with is their name and where they're from resulting in all sorts of hilarious misunderstandings that are never ever corrected.

This is actually just a tiny archipelago btw

this image makes very little sense to be but i've never read this manga, i'll assume it can't be much worse than say one piece's or god forbid, toriko's.

Oh, it's not that bad.

The native name for New Zealand (Aotearoa) translates into "land of the long white cloud"

l always though it was a pretty neat name desu

>Wyoming, the state with a population less than the city I live in, still has 3 electoral votes

Will never fail to not trigger me

>Mob rule is a good thing

Fuck off libshit.

Just fuck already.

I mean, isn't that put in place so that the coasts don't run the entire country, though?

i really doubt the founders were worried about the coastal populace running the country when literally every state was coastal at the time