c/fantasy-map-makers

Found out hand drawn maps can actually be more accurate than digital for certain terrains

I read this article from a cartography blog about how satellite data can miss small elevation changes in dense forests, but hand-drawn contour lines from ground surveys catch them better. Now I'm rethinking my whole workflow for my fantasy world map since the river systems I plotted by hand feel way more natural than my digital attempts.

Old school method for mountain shading I never see anymore

I was looking at a map in a 1984 Dragon magazine the other day. Those old hand drawn maps had this specific way of doing mountain ranges. Short, tight hash marks on the shadow side. Now everyone just uses a big fuzzy brush in Photoshop or GIMP. It loses all that texture and direction. Am I the only one who thinks digital mountain shading looks too smooth nowadays?

Tried making a mountain range using salt dough for my map

I spent like 4 hours mixing flour, salt, and water to make this 3D mountain range for my fantasy map of Eldoria. Painted it all up nice with acrylics and it looked awesome until the next morning when the whole thing cracked like a dried up mud puddle. Turns out I used way too much salt and didn't let it dry slow enough. Anyone else have their DIY map supplies fail on them in some random way?

Spent 4 hours hand-drawing a river system only to realize it looked like a spaghetti pile

Had to scrap it all and start over from scratch, but the second attempt with smaller tributaries is actually looking like a real river now, anyone else ever nuke a whole map section mid project?

Overheard a game dev say he uses AI to generate his map names and lore...

I was at a local comic shop in Denver last Saturday and this guy was telling his friend he just feeds a prompt into an AI for all his fantasy city names and backstory now. Said it saves him 'hours of thinking.' I just sat there with my hand-drawn map of a mountain pass and felt kinda sick. What happens when every map has that same AI-generated feel? I already see maps with rivers that don't make any sense geographically... Has anyone else noticed this creeping into the community?

PSA: River placement matters way more than I thought

I used to just sketch rivers wherever, thinking they were just decoration. But after reading a post on here about drainage basins and watching a video on erosion patterns, I went back to a map I made last month and realized my main river literally flowed uphill in one spot. Now I'm checking elevation lines and watershed logic before I draw a single tributary. Has anyone else nerded out on this and found it changed how they see fantasy maps?

My dad's old compass taught me something new about digital maps

I was showing my nephew my latest map in Wonderdraft last weekend, and he asked why I bother with all the hand drawn coastlines when the software can auto generate them. I pulled out my dad's old Silva compass from his backpacking days back in 1987, and it hit me that I was losing the connection between real navigation and fantasy map making. The auto features are great, but they don't give you that feel of plotting a path yourself. Has anyone else gone back to paper and pencil just to shake things up?

I was wrong about hand drawn maps being outdated until I saw one at a convention

Last year at Gen Con I walked past a guy selling hand drawn maps on aged paper. I figured digital maps had already won, cleaner lines and all that. But I stopped and looked closer at the coastline detail on one of his city maps. The slight wobble in the lines made it feel like a real explorer drew it, not a computer. Has anyone else found that hand drawn stuff actually adds more character than they expected?

My buddy's 8 year old daughter pointed out that my river systems don't make any sense

I was showing her my latest map, all proud of the mountain ranges and coastlines. She just looked at it for a second and said 'but water flows down, not up.' I mean, I know that obviously. But looking at my rivers, I had some splitting and going in directions that made zero sense if you actually think about gravity. Been drawing maps for like 4 years and a kid caught what I was doing wrong in 10 seconds. Has anyone else had that moment where someone with zero map experience spotted something obvious you were messing up?

Rant: My friend the cartographer gave me advice that ruined my map

My buddy Dave, who draws maps for a board game company, told me to shade my mountains by going left to right with a 2B pencil. Took me 8 hours on a 24x36 map of my fantasy world. Looked great at first. Then I scanned it and the contrast was so bad the mountains just look like gray blobs. Anyone else have a "pro tip" that backfired?

Mountains or forests - which do you put down first on a map and why?

I went to a fantasy map workshop at a local con last summer and the guy leading it said he always puts forests down first because rivers and mountains follow from where the trees are. But I've always done mountains first since they shape the whole land. Which way do you do it and did you ever change after seeing someone else's method?

Bought a $40 set of digital brushes and they were all stolen assets

I dropped $40 on a brush pack for my fantasy map software last month thinking it would save me hours of drawing rivers and trees. Turns out the guy just ripped assets from free brushes and resold them with a filter. Even the mountain outlines were traced from a well-known free pack I already had. Has anyone else run into scam brushes on places like Etsy or some smaller map maker forums?

Hit 50 maps drawn this year and honestly it feels like a flex I didn't expect

I finally saw the difference between my old mountain maps and my new ones

I pulled out a map I drew back in 2021 for a D&D campaign and compared it to one I finished last month. The old one had every peak looking like a brown triangle with snow caps, no texture or depth at all. The new one uses contour lines and cross-hatching to show elevation changes, which took me about 3 weeks to figure out through trial and error. The biggest change was learning to look at real topo maps from USGS for reference instead of just guessing. Now my mountain ranges actually feel like they belong in the landscape instead of sitting on top of it. Has anyone else seen a big jump in quality after studying real-world geography details?

Spent 80 hours on one map and it still felt incomplete

I finally finished a regional map for my D&D campaign last week. I counted the hours and it came to 80 exactly, which floored me because I thought it was maybe 40. What got me was that even after all that time, I still wanted to go back and add more rivers and trees. Has anyone else put way more time into a map than they expected, and still felt like it was missing something?

My first digital map vs my latest one - 2 years of progress

I started hand-drawing maps for my D&D campaign back in 2022, and my first one was just a mess of crooked lines and messy labels. After switching to Inkarnate last year and practicing about an hour a week, my latest map actually looks like something from a book. What pushed your skills forward the most when you were learning digital mapping?

The great debate: do you name every single town or leave some blank?

Last month I was finishing up a map for my D&D campaign (a coastal region with four kingdoms) and I got stuck on the tiny fishing village in the corner. I spent an hour trying to come up with a name for it, then finally just wrote "Fisher's Rest" and moved on. But then I looked at a map from a published book I bought at a con three years ago, and they left half the hamlets unnamed with just a dot. On one hand, naming everything makes the world feel lived in. On the other hand, leaving blanks gives the DM freedom to improvise when players wander off the beaten path. What do you all do with those random hamlets and crossroads? Do you name your map down to the last farmstead or leave room for imagination?

That time a Reddit user told me my river was wrong

I posted a map of my fantasy valley last month and someone named user42beta said my major river split into two branches at the delta. They told me real rivers almost never do that except in rare cases. I checked a bunch of real world maps and the guy was totally right. Now I redid all my rivers to flow as single channels. Has anyone else gotten geography tips that turned out to be true?

Tried drawing a 3D mountain range without any shading first

I spent 4 hours last weekend sketching a massive mountain range for my D&D campaign map using just contour lines. When I showed it to my buddy Dave, he said it looked like a pile of worms fighting on a table. Learned the hard way that even basic shading from one light source makes all the difference. Anybody else ruin a whole map section by skipping a simple step like that?

Picked hand-drawn over digital for my first campaign map and it took 12 hours but felt way more mine

I was going back and forth between using Wonderdraft or just sketching it on paper with micron pens, and after finishing the coastlines and rivers by hand I realized the wobbly lines actually made the world feel lived in, has anyone else regretted going full digital too fast?

My entire ink bottle spilled on a half-finished map last night

I was finishing the border for the Kingdom of Veridia, a big piece for my book, when my elbow knocked over the open bottle of Higgins Black Magic ink. It went right across the mountains I spent three hours drawing. I had to quickly blot it with paper towels, which smeared the lines even more. Now I have a big dark stain where the Silverpeak range should be. Has anyone saved a map after something like this, or is it time to start over on fresh paper?

TIL that drawing my map's coastlines freehand first, then inking them, looks way more real than starting digital. Did a test with the Bay of Storms and the hand-drawn one just had more soul.

I tried using my kid's glitter glue to mark trade routes on my parchment map and it's weirdly perfect.

The glue dries clear but leaves a faint, raised line that catches the light just right, and now my 'Silk Road of the North' actually looks like it's carrying something shiny, so has anyone else found a totally wrong art supply that works for a specific map detail?

My friend said my map looked too much like Europe and it got me thinking

I was showing my new continent map to a friend who writes, and she pointed out that the big inland sea with a narrow strait looked exactly like the Mediterranean. She asked why my made up world had to follow Earth's plate tectonics so closely, and it hit different because I'd never questioned that habit. How do you all break away from copying real geography when you draw?

Just realized I've been drawing my rivers wrong for years

I was working on a map for a novel set in a place called the Greymire Basin, and my rivers kept looking like weird, wiggly noodles. The problem was they were splitting apart as they went downstream, which I read is actually pretty rare in nature. So I tried a new rule: every single river line must get thicker as it goes, and tributaries can only join, never split. It made the whole thing feel way more solid and real... but now I'm worried my maps look too simple. Has anyone else stuck to a strict rule like this and found it helped, or did it just limit your creativity?