Essaria V2: Learning How Rivers Work Boogaloo - or How I Learned Not to Copy GOT

[Stalker]

Hey guys!

I recently went back and decided to reexplore the first fleshed out setting I made, which was also the basis for the first novel I actually started writing back when I was 16 or so. It was Essaria, which I made with no knowledge of cartography besides some sketches in my books and with no real ideas besides an obsession with A Song of Ice and Fire and an insistence to myself that I totally wasn't stealing ideas.

So I still love a lot about the setting I made and wanted to revisit it in some new writing but decided I wanted to reimagine the setting and make the whole thing less generic / edgy / whatever.

So here's my rough draft of the newer version currently. Mostly looking for criticisms on shapes and rivers and so on and so forth. Mind you, this is nowhere near final, I plan on using this as a rough draft and tracing over it on my tablet and going from there, but the general shapes will probably be similar. My main goal was to make the world seem a bit more interesting to look at and a bit less like Westeros. I also have done some wondrous things in the time since and if you've been following my other maps, probably know I have actually learnt how rivers and mountains and such sorta work by now. So that was big for me too.



(note the southern continent still has not had any work on rivers beyond the very first few, middle continent is supposed to be mostly steppe in the east, which is why there are few rivers)

And here is the original:



Please let me know what you think! I'd dearly love criticism before I start entering the actual stages of making the polished map- once it becomes a bit too late to turn back.