How to place decor appropriately on maps?

[Redrobes]

My preference is to determine the height of the land first. Exactly how to do that is up to some debate but on a global scale plate tectonics come into play. On a smaller scale I dont think people can definitively say any particular arrangement would be wrong.

Once you know where the high ground is you can determine catchment areas and then river flow and lakes. Making a stab at soil types you can determine where is wet enough and fertile enough for plants to grow. Then you can set up your vegetation.

Thats most of the natural world taken care of. From there people tend to live next to resources. So fishing in bays, fords over bigger rivers, sheltered areas with game and hunting or space for agriculture. Between towns you have roads that take the most efficient way to get from one place to another and at regular nightly intervals you might get stops for travelers.

In towns they grow and are rarely planned out as much as we like to draw them on this forum. There might be a cattle market to start with then it forms a town square and then builds out. Houses tend to share walls and not be individual huts with bigger stronger ones being on the higher ground and closer to the fortified areas. If big enough it needs a defense like a wall or keep. Usually areas are feudal with regional strongholds.

So basically it comes down to understanding the natural processes at play which forms landscape and then for people each person getting by in life and working out how they might do that. All the natural processes are highly optimized for efficiency and all the people live with an inherent maximizing of efficiency too. So this is the key thing to keep in mind if you want it realistic.

[Cradlis]

I understand your points and I'll work on this for the future, although I still have a hard time to place mountains in a way that I like, for in my eyes they are the most important decors since they often, if not always, are the the markings that defines the borders between two countries. I'll try to begin with tectonic plates as you mentionned.