TheHoarseWhisperer I must have missed the updates you've been postingI'll read through this once the kitchen finishes kickin my butt
Alright Tomalak, I'll try to keep this brief (said optimistically), but hopefully you'll find it helpful.
1. a good place to start is with a piece of paper, a pencil, and an eraser. Sometimes you don't even need the eraser. Basically, just draw lines. More and more lines. Start with long lines - maybe one line which goes from one side of the page to the other, while making waves and arcs. Then add another line that comes off the first and doubles back to hit it again. And add more lines. Then add some more lines. Don't go overboard, obviously. I find it helpful to have a map of Earth's tectonic plates in front of me, just to give a sense of how many plates there are, their shapes and their sizes. But the main point is, draw. Don't overthink (it is a serious problem). Just draw. If you get nervous when you see a blank piece of paper, destroy its blankness. Paper is cheap, practice is good. If you draw on a computer using a mouse, your lines might wobble a bit. That's good. You can undo things if they don't look right (that's really really good). I think it's worth drawing on paper and on a computer. They are different and doing both will help develop your mind. When you see what you have drawn, and when you compare it with what you know about tectonics, you'll start to see the mistakes, and where it still needs work. So that's just a general piece of advice.
2. this is a bit more specific. What's the PS filter you use? Is it Render Clouds? I sometimes use render clouds, and it's good because it looks natural and it is random, which is fun. So, I'm going to assume you have a randomly generated set of landmasses/continents. Here's something to try:
- look for places on your map which might mark tectonic boundaries. For example, if you have a long narrow sea (such as the Red Sea or the Mediterranean) that might mean the continents are tearing away from each
other, so put a divergent boundary through there.
- look for areas of coastline that are not too jagged (don't have too many inlets, peninsulas, bays, etc.). The west coast of South America is a bit like this. That is where a mountain range has been thrown up over a
convergent boundary, so put one of those along that area.
- look at the oceans. Are they large and roundish (like the Pacific) or long and rectangular (like the Atlantic). If the former, they might be sitting on their own plate, so you draw a line that goes around the ocean, not
necessarily keeping close to the edges (again, keep an eye on an Earth map); if the latter, they might be the result of a rift that got too big, in which case put a divergent boundary running most of the way down the
middle.
- if you have islands in the middle of nowhere, they might be sitting on either a convergent or divergent boundary. Islands which are long-ish (eg. Papua New Guinea, Japan, Cuba) are on convergent boundaries (if you
have one side which has a jagged coastline and the other side of the island is smooth, you know which side to put the tectonic boundary (see above); islands which are round (like Iceland) are rarer and often sit on
top of divergent boundaries (the same place as the mid-oceanic ridge from the previous point). Add the lines as necessary.
If you do those things, hopefully you will now have a handful of tectonic boundaries placed. Now start joining them together, and adding more as necessary. Remember, tectonic plates will usually not cut straight through a continent.
If you're still having difficulty, you can just draw a line around each of your continents so that they all sit on their own plates, and then divide up the ocean afterwards. This won't give you a perfect tectonic map, but it might help you get started. After that, you can edit as much as you want until you think it looks right.
And lastly - I can't stress this enough - remember that planets are round. If you have a border going off the east of the map, make sure to continue it on the western side; if you have one going into the north or south, that is slightly more complicated, but I explained all that in the previous post.
Does that help? Let me know if it doesn't, or if you're still having problems.
This is a great guide! I just found it today, and read all of it in one sitting. HoarseWhisperer, I find your writing easy to read and very informative. I will definitely be thinking more about tectonic plates when I design maps.
This. This is exactly what I neededOriginally Posted by TheHoarseWhisperer
Yes, I use render clouds. Again, this is really great - I cannot thank you enough for breaking the tought parts down for me.
@Tomalak: no worries. You're welcome.
@ SaberDart: thanks for the praise. Those are some very good points you make; I can't disagree with any of them. I was going to comment on your suggestions, but I don't think I really have much to add. Environmental factors could contribute to empire-building, even if they are not the decisive factors (eg Vikings in Iceland and Greenland during the Medieval Warm Period); Hungary, Moorish Spain and Mughal India are some more examples of raiding cultures putting down roots; the search for a particular resource can be illustrated with the British and Indian tea or the Dutch and Indonesian spices (although they were looking for commodities rather than strategic resources); people fleeing another aggressor - I meant to include this myself, but apparently forgot, so thanks for adding that one.
I don't know much about the Omayyad or Rashidun, but is it possible that their internal problems arose from the expense of maintaining a large empire? Rome was already falling apart from within before the Germanic tribes appeared, and that was largely because the Empire was too cumbersome to easily govern. I think that's true about empires built by one leader, and it's usually because the empire grows too large too quickly, and so there is no chance for a civil administration to be developed. The empires, therefore, are shortlived. Just goes to show, doesn't it - bureaucracy is a good thing.
@TheHoarseWhisperer: good point with the environmental contribution. I'd still be leery of crediting the environment's contribution as being resposible, but I can totally see how it might make it easier for an invader to establish themselves, or for an extant empire to fend off invaders.
Not really, at least not for the Rashidun. That collapse was mostly political intrigue. That first caliphate was ruled by the immediate successors to Muhammad: Abu Bakr, Omar, Uthman, and Ali, and there was a succession debate right off the bat between Abu Bakr and Ali. The Caliphate collapsed when Ali's son Hassan ceded the throne to Omar's powerful cousin Muawiyah (who ruled from Damascus, and had quite the army at his command). When Muawiyah died Hassan tried to re assume the throne, but Muawiyah's son Yazid killed him, cementing the new Omayyad Caliphate in Damascus.
But, I suppose the Omayyad fall could be seen as overreach. So, fine. You win. =P However, the problem was less expense, and more oppression/poor governance in the fringes/cultural differences with the fringes. Which I suppose is a good additional reason for collapse, cultural incohesion.
Great read and very informative, TheHoarseWhisperer. I'm currently redrawing my maps from a tight focus on a singular region to the broader top-down view of the entire continent. I'll be incorporating many of your ideas and comments into the recreation of my world.
One comment on the expansion of empires: religion. I don't believe this was mentioned previously. A good example are the Crusades. While there may have been natural resources or military advantages to the capture of Jerusalem, the city and region hold religious significance for three major religions. The battle for control over this region has persisted to this day due to religion.
Sorry to those people who commented for not responding earlier.
Mojarda: you're right about religion as a cause for empire-building (although my personal opinion is that it is over-used in fantasy worlds). A point to you.
SaberDart: my grasp of history is improved, thanks to your comments, so thanks for that. Perhaps the point to emphasise is that, while the comments I've written are my attempt to simplify historical processes into ready-to-use patterns for our worldbuilding friends, it is still a simplification, and reality is always more complex, and offers more opportunities than one person can ever write. So if anyone is building a world and they get stuck, find a history book (or science, or whatever the issue is). You can't beat research.
This thread has helped me re-think the lay out and design of my world. While i have been researching this topic, i also came across a free downloadable PDF that covers some of topics in this Thread. I think combining these two resources has helped me considerably.
I'm not sure about the rules on posting links to other sites or not, but since the PDF is free (and legal) i don't see the harm. But for the sake of being on the safe side, i'd suggest people google, A Medieval Magical Society Guide to Mapping. it can be found easily at DriveThruRPG.
While i am still far from honing my mapping skills, hopefully i can get close to the talent i have seen while browsing the gallery here.
Okay, I feel inclined to input even if my advice may not be fully sound or somewhat touched upon in earlier postings.
When developing a culture/kingdom/country and their history prior to when your map is dated or your story. It's vital you think about the chain of people within the society both famous and infamous. The one who held the respect of most of their peers for some reason or another. Was it "inherited" by their royal parents, if so, what did they do with it. It could be very much helpful to create an entire family tree for royal bloodlines and find at least one person in each generation that did something to change things up. This is where having an established database of names comes very much in handy.
Did they go with the culture or do things differently that challenged people's thinking? What were some of the challenges the society faced at the time? Were they the one who created the modern farming scape for the society by domesticating the dangerous wildlife beyond the plains to the north, and henceforth allowing them to start settling in the north? Were they the one who became the most well respected general throughout their nation's history because they're the only general with the balls to put himself on the front line when the situation called for it (like holding a mountain pass)?
Who came along and made things hell for the nation? That one self-obsessed ruler who cared nothing for the life of others? What weird stuff were they into? Were they Empress Potema of the TES universe who was involved with Necromancy? Or were they just a total evil like prickjob like Nero who burned down half of Rome, blamed it on the Christians so he could slaughter more of them, and then used it to build himself a mansion using nearly all of Rome's Treasury? And how far back did this put the nation? Or what did they lose to surrounding nations because of it? Was the change irreversible, or did the maniac die off soon enough so that not all was lost?
Did the little things they said leave a big impact on people? And what do other people of that culture say when they look back on them or the events they were apart of? Rather than just giving a general idea, develop actual quotes by either randoms or their contemporaries.
Make their inventors, scientists, authors, and arcanologists as famous as our own. When people look back on the greats like Isaac Newton, Thomas Edison, Nikolai Tesla, Einstein, Aristotle, and what not, there's a lot more than just their inventions people admired, and then tried to imitate with themselves or see as ideal.
As for those, indicate the impact on society, did they discover the concept of smokehouses by accidentally leaving their large cut of meat inside a smokey factory-size forge overnight and find it wasn't spoiled? And did this in turn allow settlements to be less dependent on a constant of game and expand in other regards? Freeing up their time to build more houses, dig more wells, etc.
I hope this helps at all.
Last edited by Vurtax; 05-10-2013 at 09:41 AM.
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