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Semi-Realistic Geography for Dummies or: How I Stopped Worrying and Love the Curve

by u/nitewalker11

Original album on Imgur

Original r/worldbuilding post via Teddit

Hello! This is a simple tutorial I’ve put together to help you make 15 minute maps with simple, generally realistic geography. This isn’t a scientific guide and will only touch on the very surface level of the actual science behind many of the phenomena that we can attempt to copy to create realistic maps. I apologize in advance to the reddit nerds who will get angry at my oftentimes inaccurate explanations of that science.

To begin, lets take a look at some (super simplified) tectonic science.

[A map of Oceania]

Here is an image of Oceania. Overlaid on the map is a black line indicating some of the island chains which make up much of the region. Tectonic plates exist along these lines. Through a process known as subduction, the tectonic plates crash into one another, leaving openings in the ocean floor for volcanic formations to emerge and causing landmass to overlap on top of itself. this creates mountains and other landmass. Visible in this example is the very obvious line that connects dozens or hundreds of islands that exist many miles away from one another.

[An map of the southwestern US and northeastern Mexico]

In another example, a tectonic plate that exists along the California coast runs down into mexico, but is split as a result of other tectonic forces, creating the gulf of California and several mountain ranges.

[A map of Alaska]

In this third example, the long island chain south of Alaska and the Bering sea create progressively smaller masses of islands along a tectonic fault. It is obvious that the islands grow larger as they approach the Alaskan mainland.

[Map of Earth’s tectonic plates]

Visible here are the actual tectonic plates, on which all three of the previous examples of tectonic formations are obvious. Other varieties of mountain range exist, such as mountain ranges which exist in the center of a plate as a result of the plates on either side of the center plate putting pressure on it, but for the sake of simplicity I’ll be ignoring mountain ranges that exist under other circumstances.

[Some hand-drawn curves]

So, here are the beginnings of our maps. a series of curves which exist to indicate where tectonic plates are being forced together. Imagine that pressure exists on either side of each line, forcing together towards the line itself to create the high points of a landmass.

[The same curves, with rudimentary landmasses drawn around them]

Here I have sketched in very, very simple maps that utilize the above curves to indicate where continents and island chains exist. it may take some time to get a feel for sketching around the existing curves. Don’t be afraid to add/remove curves as necessary to create a more interesting map!

[The handdrawn map now includes a temperature gradient.]

Now we’ll touch on some of the atmospheric sciences which effect the biomes that will eventually exist on your map. First is one that can be easily ignored if your world is not a planet, some basic climatology. On the first simple map, I have drawn in the various temperature levels based on an assumption that this world is earth-like. Cold at the top and bottom, hot in the middle, gradient inbetween. This one is very simple but will have noticeable impact on our final map.

[Altitude map]

Second is altitude. You have a lot of room to play around with the altitude on your map. On this one here, I decided to make some steep cliffs where the map transitions instantly from blue to orange, while in other places the transition is much more gradual. The important part is that your mountain ranges generally exist along your tectonic curves.

[Precipitation map]

Third is Precipitation. In some cases, water from the ocean will evaporate, be transported up a mountain, and then rain and collect in an aquifer, some large underground supply of water, but initially all water must from from the ocean or a place where the ground sits below the water table - a lake. For simplicity’s sake again, on these examples I am assuming that no interior bodies of water exist. Clouds are naturally blocked by mountain ranges, which means that places which are far from the ocean or blocked on many sides from the ocean tend to have very little precipitation.

[a scribble of angular lines]

Now we come to drawing the coastlines of our map. Many people who are new to map making tend towards long straight coastlines, but in reality coastlines only become long and straight at massive distances, and will jut in and out when looked at more closely. The above appears to be a scribble of angular lines drawn in one place, which is exactly what it is. When you take those angled jumbles and move your hand slowly down your paper as you’re drawing them, you are left with...

[less of a scribble]

Something that looks like this. Angular and chaotic, and requiring essentially 0 artistic talent to be capable of creating. The scale of this line is much too large for a small map though, which is why...

[it’s coming along]

We scale it down significantly! Here is that same technique, applied to a much smaller distance. The line of this coastline moves perfectly straight in one direction, but the detail of the coastline adds significant complexity. On a map that I intend to spend more than 15 minutes on, I will get significantly further into the minutia of coastlines, drawing from real-life examples and spending time detailing a variety of coasts, but for the sake of our 15 minute map we will use this simple technique to create interesting coasts.

[The rudimentary handdrawn map]

So, lets apply everything we’ve learned. Here is our 4th and final starting sketch, which is made of two major continents with some island chains between them. Applying our scribbly line technique to the coast, we come up with the following:

[The same map, now with jagged coastlines]

This is beginning to look like a real map. Several islands have been added off the coast of random locations with no tectonic lines. This is fine and suggested - in real life not every island is formed directly off of the existence of a single force, so adding other islands will improve the real-ness of your map. Now, lets apply the science of our atmospheric forces to our map to create biomes.

[The final result]

And here is our final 15 minute product. Deserts are nestled in between mountain ranges or centered on continents away from water sources. Tropical islands are abundant in the middle of the map, where storms are frequent and intense as a result of the proximity to the ocean. across the center of the map, a band exists where rainfall is slightly less frequent on the coasts of our major continents as a result of the extremely high heat. This map is by no means intended to be a final product - it’s just a jumping off point to make sure that your geography is sensible before you get into the meat and potatoes of map and world building.