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.

[Steel General]

I actually like the original land masses more .. but this is a fine start.

[Jean-Abdel]

I think it's usually better to first put your mountains, then your rivers and finally borders because that's how it works in the real world.

[Gidde]

Eh, I often start with rivers and put mountains where they need to be in order for the rivers to make sense, so I think you might be ok. The problem I see is that if you're going to do that, you need to leave yourself a little more room between the rivers. Some of these are darn near connected.

Another thing to just keep in mind (it's not necessarily bad if you take it into account) is that landforms like this are almost always indicative of a very small region. Think the United Kingdom or Westeros (which is about the size of the UK or just a bit bigger). So as you're thinking of how big those regions are, if they're meant to be huge, this is a strange shape for the land to take without a very good geological reason.