Screaming Into the Void

the edge chronicles is a foundational work of fantasy. to me

Started playing Starbound again today and I'm going crazy with the mods, stay tuned.

reminder to worldbuilders: don't get caught up in things that aren't important to the story you're writing, like plot and characters! instead, try to focus on what readers actually care about: detailed plate tectonics

I grew up learning about land formations. Seeing fictional maps that don’t follow the logic and science of them makes me upset

What are the most common sins you’ve seen relating to this? I wanna know

Wind blows clouds in from the sea, but mountains are so tall the clouds can't get past 'em, so you get deserts on the windward side of mountain ranges because clouds can't get there to water the land, or do so only very rarely.

Oh yeah nothing is more annoying than fantasy maps that can't get mountains, rivers and rain shadows right.

May I recommend my new favorite tool: Mapgen4. You start with a random seed and then add mountains, valleys, shallow water, or oceans as you like. You can adjust the wind direction to make wind shadows off the mountains fall where you want. You can adjust overall raininess to make the rivers larger or smaller, or have more or fewer tributaries. It works best for small, isolated landmasses (think islands more than continents) but as there’s no scale bar and it’s all slightly abstracted anyway you can do whatever you want with it. I’ve only just started playing with it but it’s SO FUN.

In defence of Mordor. Whenever I feel I am getting too detailed with something in my world. Mordor pulls me out of the pit by being a literal box in a huge fantasy setting. So I can get away a single caldera in a place where there probably shouldn't be a caldera. And then not give it much of an excuse to be there other than "mmmmagic, old"