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Unpopular opinion: I used to hate putting rivers in my maps.
A friend at a Denver con looked at my sketch and said 'your water doesn't go anywhere, it's just wet decoration.' Now I always start with the rivers and build the land around them. Anyone else have a basic thing they got totally backwards?
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gavine411mo ago
Remember that comment about water being decoration. It made me realize my coastlines were just as bad, just squiggly lines without reason. Now I sketch the plate tectonics first, even for a small region. Those mountain ranges and bays finally have a logic to them, and the rivers flow from the high points it creates. It feels less like drawing and more like discovering the place.
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elizabethg531mo ago
Oh man, that's such a cool way to look at it! I tried something similar after learning how glaciers carve valleys, and suddenly my fantasy maps had way more believable fjords. It really does make the world feel found, not forced.
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Wait, you start with plate tectonics for a small region map? That seems like overkill. Tectonics shape continents over millions of years, not a local valley. For a regional map, you'd just need the high ground the rain falls on.
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