9 Geography Facts You NEED To Create Fantasy Maps

[@JDMPYM]

I hope you never ever stop uploading videos. Your knowledge and insights have been helping me A LOT in my WIP.

[@JustInTimeWorlds]

Glad to hear it. ☺️

[@katiekofemug]

I love mapping fantasy worlds. One of the things I'd add to your great "Cores of Mapping" here is ... mapping, even if just the basic pencil and paper, is a groovy way to engage the other side of your brain when you hit transition points or plot difficulties or thematic choke points. Stepping to the side and "mapping it out" so to speak, can re-charge the weary writer as well as re-spark the flame of storytelling. ITA it doesn't have to be "pretty," but using colored pencils, markers, crayons, whatever is at hand can give you permission to indulge that creative flow that might be flagging or frustrated with "just words." Zooming in, or zooming out, with mapping can fill in blanks of history as well. Tapping in to Where are we, How did we get here, Why does it matter, and Where are we going in tangible form is a freeing experience.

[@JustInTimeWorlds]

Very well put ❤️

[@bluejayblaze1180]

I made the mistake of starting to write my current project before making the world map. About 120 pages in, I realized I *needed* a map, so set out to make one. Cue taking three tries on the plate tectonics to figure out how to fit the landmasses to what I had already described (and thank the gods for volcanic hotspots and glacial archipelagos letting me manipulate island placement in the northern seas).

[@redknight808]

A fantastic tutorial. :D Another thing about fjords: They allow resource gathering and transport deeper into the interior than normal. So mining, forestry, trapping, etc. can be accomplished easier than using most rivers.

[@JustInTimeWorlds]

Great points :)

[@nagillim7915]

I've always wanted to work a cloud forest culture into a story but haven't managed to find the right story for it just yet. I love the idea of a cloud forest where the plants literally absorb their water from the low-lying clouds around them.

[@JustInTimeWorlds]

That sounds awesome. I built drifting plants in my sci-fi world with their stems dangling down from the clouds toward the earth, but they were solo plants, not a forest.

[@gregoryblack8109]

I love the glacier from Clark Ashton Smith and Robert E Howards hyperboria. A giantic, sentiant, evil glacier that's unstoppable and slowly causing a horrific continent wide apocalypse

[@MrBoop-rj4tk]

Aaaaaaaaand I've made my way over from Unleash the Dragon. Learned more here than after 50 of scrolling Google. Love it

[@JustInTimeWorlds]

Welcome :D

[@Artourguyentertained-cu5wb]

Didn't know about the kingdom elevation or deserts mostly forming on Westcoasts. Neat

[@LMondoux]

A very instructive video! Having created many fantasy settings over 30 years of being in the milieu, your videos verbalize a lot of practices I have been almost subconsciously using in their creation.

[@magnus_cockstrong]

world building is one of my favorite hobbies, thank you for sharing your knowledge.

[@JustInTimeWorlds]

You are very welcome

[@CelticShae]

I stumbled onto your videos recently, and I am absolutely loving the info. I'm learning so much from you, while you're also putting words to a lot of things I knew intuitively. This video is another sweet drop of honey for my curious mind.

[@JustInTimeWorlds]

You are very welcome :)

[@Etaith]

This topic had excellent timing. Over the last week, I was mulling over what sort of geography my world had/needed. Thank you for the info/reminders! I have been trying to wrap my head around fjords, and how they usually work, just earlier today!

[@JustInTimeWorlds]

You are very welcome ☺️

[@nagillim7915]

Just remember that fjords are sea-flooded glacial valleys. They're navigable because they're U shaped with deep flat bottoms carved out by the long gone glacier ice, whereas river valleys are typically V shaped. You do get sea-flooded river valleys also, but they're not as common and occur in more tropical regions

[@ronecotex]

What do you think of tropical Dwarfs the tunnels of the whole Earth eventually they run to the fantasy equivalent of Hawaii I'm imagining Stern dwarves culture mix with local culture I think it would be pretty interesting

[@JustInTimeWorlds]

That would be super interesting. You reckon your dwarves tunnel below sea level? BC that’s pretty damn deep

[@kiwilemontea4622]

Making fantasy world maps is SO fun. I'm happy to say that I took all these things into account before making mine! Although there's a LOT of magical screwiness on the map, it's all deliberate. The entire planet got reconfigured into a fractal during an apocalyptic event, so the placement of continents and mountains has nothing whatsoever to do with plate tectonics. However, those plate tectonics still affect volcanism! Most volcanic areas aren't even mountainous, more like swamps where you have lava instead of water. The few mountains this world has are so big, even the smallest would put Olympus Mons to shame; therefore, the rain shadows of these mountains span large sections of the continents. They're so high, their peaks don't have snow. Forget thin air- there's NO air up there! And yet, that doesn't stop certain anaerobic lifeforms from making it their home.

[@JustInTimeWorlds]

That sounds fascinating 😊 Another interesting volcano type application is hot water geysers that spout from under the earth (speaking of swamps), which is something I’ve always found fascinating.

[@storyspren]

"The Kingdom in the Sky" is one of the coolest place nicknames I've ever heard, and it being a real place rather than a fantasy one is just incredible!! Also, growing up in Finland definitely gave me an ever-present awareness of just how much glaciers shape the geography of their location even several millennia later. Absolutely every natural feature you might examine here will have something to do with glaciers, and I'm very much drawing from that with some locations in my dnd setting

[@JustInTimeWorlds]

It's an amazing name :D And yeah, walking in Finland, I'm so aware of the affect of glaciers on our rocks and landscapes, it really is freaking amazing.

[@briesullivan883]

Marie saying “bite me” made me laugh way harder than it should have.

[@JustInTimeWorlds]

😁

[@KalebPeters99]

Wonderful video, thank you Marie!!

[@JustInTimeWorlds]

Thank you! 😊

[@ronecotex]

What do you think of an island continent the size of Australia but it's fertile as Hawaii

[@JustInTimeWorlds]

I think that’s a great opportunity to build a society where the paradox of plenty comes into play 😁😅

[@N.A.Summur]

This video will surely come in handy once I further develop my world. Thank you for making it!

[@JustInTimeWorlds]

You’re very welcome ☺️. It’s some nice back pocket knowledge when you’re drawing the map.

[@N.A.Summur]

@@JustInTimeWorlds for sure. I had already drawn one, but it was very basic and didn’t include mountains or rivers or anything. This will help with that, for sure!

[@TheMichaellathrop]

Fact nine got me thinking about some kind of frost archmage using magical ice to carve the land in fast forward, weeks rather than centuries, or to form walls of ice around a city either for defense or to trap them for a siege. As far as all of the climate stuff goes the region I live in is significantly warmer and wetter than it should be do to the interplay between ocean currents and mountains(NW corner of the united states), so there is a definite level of complexity to that even before you take magical elements into account. I could also see using subtle breakdowns of those rules to indicate to the reader when the characters have transitioned from normal reality to magical reality and back again, for instance a major river flowing towards the mountains... is this just a loop of the river acting oddly due to dip in the landscape from the last ice age before it turns again and flows into the sea? Or is that foothill of the distant mountain the river is circling a giant fairy mound?

[@JustInTimeWorlds]

The rules reversed for fairy worlds is such a cool trope 😁 And yeah, ocean currents can make a world of difference.

[@Mentalhearts]

Thank you very much you help me a lot on making my world map for my book and KZbin channel. I’m gonna probably start. This was very helpful and thank you again

[@JustInTimeWorlds]

Awesome :D Happy writing.

[@tiffanylamb1187]

What a great video! Thank you so much.

[@JustInTimeWorlds]

You’re very welcome ☺️

[@anathema1828]

Excellent thanks for posting!

[@JustInTimeWorlds]

Glad you enjoyed it :)

[@motorcitymangababe]

My current Wip has a huge magical influence in the form of a huge wall of storm dividing the planet in half. The winds and moisture has caused massive ripple effects in the biomes and cultures- ive had to make a map with multiple layers just to highlight the different forces at play!- winds, currents, mountains, rivers- so many different influences! Its been a fun challenge to say the least, but its allowed me to learn about and implement 2 of my favorite biomes - temperate/ cool rainforests and glacial steppes! Its a cool planet compared to ours in general- there are tropical rainforests and deserts- but they are smaller and cling to mountainsides and coasts on the equator.

[@JustInTimeWorlds]

I love that! I considered a wall storm in my world, but in the end a conspiracy worked better for me. Maybe someday I’ll have a reason to create a wall storm.

[@markbechtold7372]

That second camera, "bite me" moment. 😂

[@TheRealMrWolf]

What have we done to deserve such an incredible channel?

[@elizabethdavis6275]

Thanks for all your videos. They're a great aid to thinking my way through the ideas for my fantasy world.

[@JustInTimeWorlds]

You are very welcome

[@ronecotex]

When you mentioned I Kingdom in the mountains that made me think of a bunch of Dwarven kingdoms fighting and trading with each other isn't that his rivers go through mountains so maybe it's not that isolated

[@dragonboy131308]

Great vid!

[@JustInTimeWorlds]

Thanks :)

[@PRGidaro]

I am creating my own world for my rpg game. It is entirely effected by the will of the gods, like the Greek stories of the gods interference in every day life. I have used the real world effects on the world but the gods have effected much of how those real life effects work. I enjoyed your videos and they have added to my knowledge of the creation of my world.

[@BKPrice]

It should be noted that many of these features of a world, especially climate zones, can be altered by non-magical means, simply by changing the tilt of the planet, the distance from the sun, the amount of suns, shape of the orbit, etc.

[@JustInTimeWorlds]

100% Magical or otherwise can change any of these rules. But before you change it, you gotta know it. Otherwise, you have characters swimming in a warm sea right next to a desert coast and you have a smart ass going: Uh. No. Desert on a coast means colds currents. Unless you got a reason, Bub....

[@solsystem1342]

Love your concept of a patchwork world One thing I always end up coming back to is "why a planet?" There's so many ways to design the topopology of a "world" and a planet is only one of those. Not that every fantasy story needs to be set on the inside a small cavity within an infinite expanse of rock with the gods being different magical spheres that orbit around in the center of tbe cavity but, it would be cool if a few more had bonkers cosmologies.

[@BKPrice]

@@solsystem1342 I prefer my worlds to be set in the ear cavity of a giant cosmic rabbit.

[@ODDnanref]

Saw this video on my recommended and I was in the middle of thinking about this too. So happy coincidence. Part of my world has a situation similar to the Mexican Selva Madre. Though one side is a dessert so I had to add a mountain range to capture some humidity and separate the Jungle/Forest from the dessert. The coastal side is populated by mangrove forests. While I still have not decided how the river delta has not been overrun by mangries yet. Maybe current flow is too strong, maybe it ia magical reason. I did need to push mountain ranges to force an area over the sea to create the wind flows nesr the Yucatan Peninsula to have a sea of storms.

[@JustInTimeWorlds]

A mountain range pushed is a climate changed :D

[@snickerbobble]

Its fascinating how many variables there are with the formation of terrain and climate. Then there's also the tilt of the planet, and the distance of the sun/star. And moon(s) 😀 And probably a whole lot more. I need to revisit making a map again. The last time I made one was like 20 years ago that followed no rules at all 😅 Basically a patchwork map. I think I might embrace it still as it's a 90s platformer styled world which often had those types of maps, but I'll put a little more thought into the updated version. An organized yet chaotic map 😁

[@JustInTimeWorlds]

Nothing wrong with 90s patchwork 😁

[@elchiponr1]

The mountain range that plays a role in my story a.t.m. connects (or rather, divides) a green land with agrarian culture and cattle, with the steppes and the desert. Due to a historical event caused by a paranoid king, the two area's have become 'enemies' and hundreds, maybe even thousands of years of co-existing and trading have gone out the window. Now the mountains are home to smugglers and the once rich agrarian society is in economic demise, giving rise to murderers and highwaymen. It's dope af, if I may say so myself :) Working on the map rn, and just put in a little smuggler's tavern in the middle of the mouintains.

[@JustInTimeWorlds]

That’s a cool piece of lore 🙌

[@nagillim7915]

Strange names for locations is par for the course in fantasy. In one of my worlds i have a huge desert called the Empty Sea and i've had a few people see the map and ask how a desert can be a sea. It has nothing to do with magic and everything to do with plate tectonics: basically it was a sea floor in the distant past but as the continents moved around it the sea was closed off from the greater ocean, and then rain shadows and its location in the tropics led to it baking dry as ages passed, leaving behind salt pans and valleys and basins deep below sea level, some valleys so deep and sheer sided that sunlight only reaches the bottom for a few hours each day. The few rivers that still flow into it are seasonal and are swallowed by the dunes and evaporated by the sun before they can reach a coastline.

[@JustInTimeWorlds]

I think Empty Sea is a great name for a desert 😁 and I love the explanation

[@heatherkuhn6559]

Currents on Earth are determined by three things: temperature, the Coriolis effect and the presence of land masses. The Coriolis effect is a direct result of the Earth's rotation and explains why the cold ocean currents flowing toward the equator are always on the west side of a land mass. I'm not sure how currents would work in a geocentric setting with a stationary globe and I have no clue about currents in a setting like Pratchett's Discworld. FTM, I have no idea if he thought about it much. When I was designing a map for TTRPG setting, I decided to have the world rotating in the opposite direction from Earth so the cold currents would be on the east coast of the land masses. On rain shadows: The volcanos on the Hawaiian islands are tall enough to have rain shadows. Heck, the volcanos on the Big Island are tall enough that their rain shadows affect a couple of the neighboring islands. Anyway, the net result of these rain shadows is that the Hawaiian islands have a wet side and a dry side. Honolulu is on the dry side of Oahu. Regarding the effects of glaciation on the landscape, you should look up the Missoula floods and channeled scablands sometime. Short version, ice formed a dam in a mountain pass trapping millions of gallons of water behind it. As the climate warmed, the ice dam would periodically give way releasing the trapped water in a cataclysmic flood. After the trapped water cleared out, the dam would reform and more water would back up behind it again. The available evidence suggests that this cycle happened at least forty and possibly as many as one hundred times. It's had a major effect on the landscape.

[@adamlatosinski5475]

Those are good advices for making world maps. Do you have some other advices for making more datailed regional maps? What do I need to remember when I'm making a fantasy map of a smaller region, like a single country? Obviously the place of the country in a wider world is important, but I imagine there are some other effects that only become relevant on this smaller scale.

[@JustInTimeWorlds]

When creating a detailed regional map, focus on the following: Geography and Ecosystems: Show how terrain (rivers, forests, mountains) affects settlements, agriculture, and trade. Human Influence: Map roads, cities, borders, and fortifications. Think about how history of the cultures that have lived in the region have shaped those areas. Consider things like ruined castles, standing stones from ancient cultures, old roads from a fallen Empire, etc. Climate: Highlight microclimates caused by terrain (e.g., rain shadows from mountains). Political Boundaries: How does the geography impact cultural or political divisions within and around the kingdom? Economy and Resources: Indicate resource-rich areas (mines, farmlands) and trade routes. Hope that helps :)

[@gerardmichaelburnsjr.]

Giant snakes need abundant game of a certain size. They're more likely to be found near big Rivers.

[@JustInTimeWorlds]

I catered for them with a different monster :) Anything can be made to work, as long as you think through the consequences.

[@Starolfr]

I adore world-building. (I do a lot of it in place of actually writing anything... ). And while I knew a lot of these I still absolutely love the way you think about topics (I feel like I think in similar fashion). I also love the way you explain things and how informative, entertaining, and *thorough* the videos are. Just awesome. This is one my of favorite channels. Thank you for these - and keep up the excellent work. :)

[@JustInTimeWorlds]

That is awesome to hear :)

[@bernadmanny]

I've been thinking over how land formation would happen in a sky-world. On maps however, I loath it when the map is under illustrated. To be specific, when they look like it would take a nice Sunday stroll to get from one side to the other.

[@JustInTimeWorlds]

I’d imagine land formations are either vast columns due to really weird plate tectonics or, if it’s floating, I’d go for straight up magic and perhaps a post apoc world where the land was torn apart and thrown into the air.

[@DavidGlenn-xl6yi]

Trying to think of plate tectonics make me confused, but thankfully with my map it shouldn't be hard to work some sort of plate tectonics in. I'll definitely need to think of wind and water currents to justify some of my biomes for different stories (one's a savanna, the other is temperate) This line came to me when you were talking about the kingdom in the sky (which I had no idea existed): They have the high ground lol. In all seriousness, I guess I need to think of the mountains in my savanna story. I'll have to look at the coral reefs video because I do imagine the coast of my savanna setting as having a coral reef. I even drew a picture of my characters visiting it. Talking about natural harbors made me think of the White Cliffs of Dover. Hmmm... maybe I can put a tribe along the peninsula I think is on my savanna map. I remember learning that during the ice ages there was more land around the UK referred to as Doggerland (I probably misspelled that).

[@JustInTimeWorlds]

You spelt it right :) Doggerland was above the ocean because the sea level was lower. The glaciers lock up a lot of the water in the world and so lower ocean levels and more land during ice ages, less land and higher oceans when the ice melts.

[@shokan7178]

How did you draw your maps?

[@JustInTimeWorlds]

I use Inkarnate. If you pay for a subscription, you get full commercial rights to the image, which is perfect for using it in a book.

[@gerardmichaelburnsjr.]

Very valuable, but the Western coastal regions of the Americas are anything but dry. The Rockies seem to force moisture to be dumped on the west side of the Continental divide because where can I carry moisture above altitude of the Rockies. North and South American coastal regions are rarely very dry although there are spots.

[@JustInTimeWorlds]

The Atacama is a great example of a very dry desert right on the coast in South America. As is the Namib Desert of Africa. The Mojava desert and the Sonora Desert in the South-West of North America look pretty dry as well and are on the coast. Certainly the Rockies help and their rain shadow makes Nevada drier, but coastal deserts aren't unheard of, even with mountains, if your ocean current is cold enough.

[@Arnsteel634]

Ah ma cheri how is it that you are constantly making videos on an area I am working and struggling with at the proper moment.

[@JustInTimeWorlds]

It’s a gift :)

[@smokelingers]

Voel asof Ek in 'n klaskamer is wanneer tannie praat. Ek sit sommer regop en begin fokus. 😂

[@JustInTimeWorlds]

Ek hoop ek’s darem meer interresant as my aardrykskunde onnie was 😂😂😂

[@smokelingers]

@@JustInTimeWorlds O ja, dis vir seker! 😂

[@shokan7178]

Comment

[@JustInTimeWorlds]

Reply ❤️

[@aeray3581]

Coral building low-relief islands is a new fact for me. 🤿🗺️

[@JustInTimeWorlds]

Coral are such awesome creatures ☺️