Help me make Lakehome less blah

[dimensiondust]

So this is my first time making this kind of town map, and I think I'm lost with all the scales. I have a hard time with the transition from "high density" part of the town to the "low-density" farm part and just in general things seem... weird and like they don't belong? I have zero vocabulary when it comes to arty things, so I don't know what exactly's wrong. Help?

This is supposed to be about ~2100 people fantasy "town".

Assets from 2-minute maps.

[Redrobes]

Thats a nice map - welcome to the guild.

The key to doing cities that make sense is that they grow. You got to think what would somebody want at the point in the town / city and then build that. Then keep going adding to it constantly. The people will exploit the resources from the city. It will make more sense since each item works with all the buildings and structures around it. For example the farms will not cluster because it makes more sense to have somebody strike some new land and expand their farm or take a whole new plot that was unused. People build onto existing buildings and along existing roads until the space is exhausted. Where there is a lot of footfall shops and taverns will spring up and it goes on like that. So its just a minor mental shift and then it will all just flood out.

I also think its a wise idea to get in the heights of the land before starting any buildings and roads. Its not too clear from your map whether that headland to the right is flat or hilly. If it were flat then I am sure fishermen would be all along there with boats. That kind of thing.

The art side of your map is fine.

[wminish]

Hi dimensiondust, welcome to the guild.

Getting scale right is one of those hard problems in map-making. Designing a city or region that feels realistic takes a great deal of thought and experience but you're asking the right questions to get you started.

Here are some things that have really helped me as I've grappled with the same questions.
- Take a look at this resource, Medieval demographics made easy, this is a resource that I find invaluable for working out scale in maps. It's by no means exhaustive, but it's a great starting point for thinking about both regions and cities. For example, using this resource I would estimate the population of your town is 300-400.
- Look at real-world cities to help give you an idea of scale, Carcassone in France is a great one to look up on google maps as one of the largest surviving medieval walled cities.
- Depending on how deep you want to go, historical research will always help you out. Due to several modern inventions (cars etc) the size and layout of our modern cities is very different to what people built in a medieval context and this can steer you wrong when designing your cities (assuming you are designing medieval style or other historical style cities for your fantasy RPGs etc. I've been watching old episodes of Time Team (a British archaeology show) on youtube recently, and there are many other youtube channels that go deep on castle design, medieval industries and professions, medieval culture, etc. Having knowledge of all these areas really helps inform how you design your cities.

[GrimFinger]

The title of this thread is: Help me make Lakehome less blah

Which is quite a distinct thing from issues such as scale and density. Even though it's been a few months, since you created this thread, dimensiondust, I would still inquire of you what about this map of yours, in its current form, induces a sensation of blah in you?

This map is colorful, and it has a number of nice colors incorporated into it. Yet, it feels unfinished, and this is largely due to the large expanses of empty space, upon both land and water, relative to the amount of space that you've already populated with objects or places.

There's no people, no animals, and the vegetation that does appear comes across as not being of the growing wild variety. This yields a rather unnatural look to the map.

What are the yellow objects? Farms? Crops? Buildings? Since I don't know, and since it isn't obvious to me, I ask. At first, I thought they were building, and then I thought that they may be wheat or hay growing, some kind of crops.

Some smaller well-trod paths between various buildings and places would seem to me to be a good fit. Human beings invariably end up taking short cuts, thereby creating their own paths in addition to roads and formal paths. From the doors of houses and other buildings to wherever the inhabitants would frequently travel to.

The scene depicted appears as flat, featureless land. No hills, no mountains, no valleys, not even a woods edge to disappear into. And the river transitions seamlessly into a larger body of water. Why so seamless?

The small red tents on the right appear to be identical to the larger red tents on the left, only smaller in size and turned in a different direction, rather than them being individual items plotted one at a time.

It really isn't so much a matter of the map being blah, as it is that you started off well, but then seemed to run out of steam. That much water, but no one fishing. Nobody swimming. Minimal human activity in a location that would likely see human activity flourish, even recreational activity, if nothing else.

The map doesn't really allow me to zoom in on it, after clicking on it. A pity.