Maps of places that do not exist

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twistedmentat: Nov 21, 2003; Its my party
and I'll die if
I want to

When i would start a new fantasy series the first thing I'd do is pour of the maps to get a sense of the world. Where are our heroes starting in relative to everyone else? Who are the boarding nations, which one are enemies and which are allies? Fantasy loves to toss out location names casually and knowing the map helps avoid being confused. But you still want to flip back to the front to see where the Kingdom of Fartis. Sci-fi has great maps too, you can look over a entire galaxy and see the breath of the setting.

They're maps so they go from functional

To trying to replicate some sort of google maps style

Still some hold mysteries

And some are just earth but weird

And some are only a possible of many

I don't think there is one official map of the star trek galaxy, but this one tends to be the one that's considered "most" canon. It probably doesn't help is there are a zillion planets added to it constantly.

# ¿ Jun 2, 2022 04:50

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 19:32

twistedmentat: Nov 21, 2003; Its my party
and I'll die if
I want to

Animal-Mother posted:

"We shall conquer the entire Inner Sphere!...... Actually, this is fine."

We're all kickass fighters, we don't need things like logistics and supply dumps! Inner sphere has outdated tech and they are always infighting!

# ¿ Jun 3, 2022 22:07

twistedmentat: Nov 21, 2003; Its my party
and I'll die if
I want to

Twenty Four posted:

I don't have much to add other then as someone who enjoys looking at and studying maps of real places, I also enjoy and will pour over maps of fictitious places as well if it's a setting I enjoy. I just really like maps I guess, they spark my imagination.

That's why i started the thread. I love looking at maps of real places, and many fantasy maps are just as interesting. Its interesting looking to see which ones were made by people who actually know how geography works, like Rivers do not branch off in the direction they're flowing but a lot of fictional maps have that. No real world river does that, all their tributaries flow into the main river.

But there are some clunkers, like the Wheel of Time map

I'm sorry, this thing just sucks. Even the full world map sucks. I know that WoT is actually meant to take place on a world where they have gone through many apocalypses, but that much empty ocean and the main continent being so square just looks silly.

One I do like is the Pre Imperium Terra from Horus Hersey

The oceans are nearly completely gone from the earth and whats left is a toxic sludge, but humanity still has empires and nation states that sorta correspond with current nations but have morphed and changed over 30,000 years. I admit its just the "earth but weird type" but it feels more realistic to a post apocalyptic earth than the WoT one.

# ¿ Jun 4, 2022 16:59

twistedmentat: Nov 21, 2003; Its my party
and I'll die if
I want to

Twenty Four posted:

for the general map love!

In regards to that wheel of time map, I've never read the books and I know they are popular, but it looks like someone who is otherwise a good storyteller going "Time to make a map I guess, lets see... possibly endless ocean on the bottom and left, nearly impenetrable mountains on the top and right... Now that I've got my nearly square canvas framed up, let's fill in the blanks with places I wrote or plan on writing about." It looks sort of like an authors rough draft that had the general idea of what they had in mind that could have been handed off to a cartographer and made to look more believable and cool.

That second one is pretty neat! Please post more maps, of whatever or wherever!

Yea I can accept this being Robert Jordan's sketch he made while avoiding work at his day job, but he could have a least looked at a real map and saw how the land is formed, that mountain ranges do not go in perfectly straight lines with right angles. There's a lot of empty space on the map too. Like kingdoms just kinda float and don't share boarders. Unless their is a massive natural impediment to a countries expansion, they will expand until they come across someone else. Its not labeled "wasteland" or "trolloc country" or something else indicating why their expansion stopped where it did.

grassy gnoll posted:

We are closer to the period in which Shadowrun was first set, 2050, than the release of the game, 1989.

_{2060 supremacy}

Shadowruns setting rules, but Grassy Gnoll is right, the non north american part of it is pretty lazy. "Uh yea...um its just 1508 again". Rifts Earth had kind of the same issue with the UK and Ireland just King Arthur land but with magic and technology, though the New German Republic was meant to be this super high tech nation which was pretty neat. I think North American RPG makers that set games in alternative earths really don't think much about the rest of the world, they just think of whatever stereotype there is for that country and just do it, but sticking robots or demons or something flying around.

Something I like about the Warhammer 40k galaxy map is that it says yes Earth is stuck off here in the corner, but thats the center of everything so they name everything based on that fact. Geographically speaking, our own earth map makes no sense. Why does the grid on the globe look like it does? Because the people who decided to do that made their home central to everything else. Japan is in the "east" but if you were in Japan, East would be the US.

# ¿ Jun 6, 2022 18:33

twistedmentat: Nov 21, 2003; Its my party
and I'll die if
I want to

Edgar Allen Ho posted:

I'm so sick of these atmoran s'wits coming over here, colonizing our continents

Elder Scrolls has a pretty solid map considering not a single game leaves Tamriel

I am old enough to remember when Forgotten Realms was introduced it was focused almost entirely on the Moonshae Islands, which is like Celtic Britain but it quickly moved towards the Sea of Fallen Stars and the Dales.

Like Robert Jordan, David Eddings could have used some lessons in geography when making their map

Though the sea between the 2 continents is unnatural due to the actions of one of the Gods of this world, its still just two boxes seperated by another box.

Fiest got a bit inventive, i like how many large, inland seas he has but I realized, a lot of Fantasy writers keep still our same divisions of people.

Like brown people are in the south, the east has Asian people, white people are in the west, there's probably some not quiet as dark brown between the whites and the browns, and so on.

twistedmentat fucked around with this message at 19:18 on Jun 6, 2022

# ¿ Jun 6, 2022 19:12

twistedmentat: Nov 21, 2003; Its my party
and I'll die if
I want to

Lawman 0 posted:

This thread is extremely my poo poo and I'll shittalk a bunch of these maps because they suck rear end.

Go for it, fantasy maps are often both awesome and very crappy.

# ¿ Jun 6, 2022 20:14

twistedmentat: Nov 21, 2003; Its my party
and I'll die if
I want to

Lawman 0 posted:

Westeros is extremely lovely map/world design imho because scaling it up makes it insane and unbelievable.

Its literally Britain upside down slapped together with something else isn't it?

And Essos is even worse.

# ¿ Jun 6, 2022 23:25

twistedmentat: Nov 21, 2003; Its my party
and I'll die if
I want to

SlothfulCobra posted:

I think a lot of the issues with fantasy maps stem from how many of the most common maps of the current day don't really depict many of the critical factors of geography that affects people's lives, especially for the periods that they deal with. Political maps tend to be focused on borders in the way that modern nation-states concieve of them, and many maps people are familiar with come from a tradition of maps designed primarily for ocean navigation rather than terrain or forests or even most rivers. There are topographical styles of map that show mountains, but then it's hard for many people to wrap their heads around what it means for one area of a map to be brown and the other to be green. I don't think I've ever seen any fantasy maps that go for a more roadmap style or something more distorted or geometric like many medieval depictions of the world tend to be.

I have also developed some kind of fascination with spaceship deckplan maps in a way that may be tapping into a latent desire for homeownership, but also it's a lot easier for me to wrap my head around concepts like the basic livability of these spaces that are basically fancy house blueprints. There's also loads of deckplans and customized deckplans out there from all the people playing roleplaying games. They can also get wonky when trying to figure out three dimensional space .

Yea, I think that's it. I've studied a lot of history so I have a good idea how countries have change over the centuries, especially in Europe. Every kingdom, empire, dukedom, earldom and so on was defined by the geographic features. The mountain rangers are a big one, along with rivers, because these natural barriers prevented the locals from expanding any further. I don't want to be the guy who goes on about his totally going to be written fantasy novel some day, please don't steal, but when thinking about the map, which is honestly where i started, I thought about this kind of stuff. Most of the kingdoms are separated by some kind of landscape. There are a mountains or hilly areas that separate them, or rivers. But in some cases I made the boarder kind of ambiguous. Between two for example there is a large swampy area that neather really controls because you can't do much with peaty water and dead trees and various animals. There are causeways and roads through it, but they are barely maintained. Or another, a kingdom in its south just has no boarder. Yea they claim they own everything but there isn't anything there but endless grasslands until you get to what they call a free city.

Anyways, yes floor plans for ships and builds and layouts of cities are certainly welcome! And yes, you can tell that many designers don't actually know how spaceships would actually be laid out. They think of them as ships, but they'd be more submarines.

Look at a Los Angeles Class SSN

it has an outer pressure hull and then interior hulls where everyone lives and works and where the storage and weapons are actually located. Spaceships would be the same design. They'd have space between the outer and inner hulls. The Normandy SR2 in Mass Effect 2 is a great example, you can see the pressure hulls every time you move around the ship during the loading screens. But a lot of shows have the hulls right up against each other. That is a terrible idea. A hull breach means instant death for anyone inside there.

grassy gnoll posted:

The Empire of the Isles is big enough that it's supposed to take a couple of months to cross the big island, so, big world.

What is this from?

# ¿ Jun 8, 2022 04:56

twistedmentat: Nov 21, 2003; Its my party
and I'll die if
I want to

I don't mean its a hard and fast rule, but its not uncommon. Old Human Nations tended to be divided by geography but when we learned to work things out, boarders could be established that were literally just lines on a map.

# ¿ Jun 8, 2022 17:55

twistedmentat: Nov 21, 2003; Its my party
and I'll die if
I want to

SlothfulCobra posted:

Here's a proper map I guess. Illustrating my favorite postapocalyptic setting.

Miyazaki doesn't really know much about cartography and "proper" symbology for maps, but he is an artist. The map lacking crisp, clear borders between polities is actually more accurate to the nature of pseudo-medieval setting, which gets very blurry. The Valley of the Wind is sort of a vassal of Torumekia, despite being mostly autonomous. Also it just looks darn pretty. He's not a map guy, but he is an artist.

Where's the line between map and aerial view.

There are exactly what was meant when someone earlier talked about how Fantasy Maps tend to be though of as modern maps rather than the kind of maps people would have at the time they were set. These are exactly what a society without modern cartography would produce.

# ¿ Jun 12, 2022 17:55

twistedmentat: Nov 21, 2003; Its my party
and I'll die if
I want to

pygmy tyrant posted:

Hyboria! The world of Conan the Barbarian is just another earth-but-weird, but weirdly enough is based on the work of famous (at least in the PYF Chemistry thread) rocket scientist Dr. John D. Clark, author of Ignition! An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants.

Basically the original author of the Conan stories, Robert Howard, never published his map of the world, and this bothered Dr. Clark and his friend enough to make their own. They wrote letters to Howard about it, revised it from his corrections and details, and were generally such gigantic nerds about that their fan map ended up being used in the book publications of Conan stories and is part of Texas A&M's library collection. (That's not the actual Clark map above, unfortunately I couldn't find any good pictures of it)

Oooh I've never seen this full map. You can really tell that it is the old world smushed together.

If I remember correctly, the idea was this was the age before the classical age. Pretty sure Graham Handcock read these and thought Howard was writing real history because his whole thesis is there was advanced civs that predate Mesopotamia and Indus civilizations.

Anyways, each of those was ment to represent a "classical" civilization, though that name is pretty loosly applied because Aquilonia is supposed to be Southern France by way of the Romans. So you had what would basically be knights among Roman style buildings. Stygia is Egypt, Nordhiem Norse/Viking, Khitai is ancient china and so on. Its very much like a D&D setting when you think of it, and that's probably not accidental because I'm sure Gygax was a big fan of Conan. Pictland is kind odd because there's the obvious connection to the Picts, people who predated the Scots, but also intended to have aspects of Native Americans. This was a guy writing in the 30s who was also coked out of his mind (Howard would do fat rails and then believe that Conan was standing there, reciting his adventures to him) so his views of ancient peoples, especially non european was probably not too good or even great.

Its interesting I thought the Exiled Lands were an actual part of the map, but I don't see them. I figured because the Isle of Siptah is there on the east coast, the game was taking place in a existing place.

# ¿ Jul 7, 2022 04:01

twistedmentat: Nov 21, 2003; Its my party
and I'll die if
I want to

I think maps in the front of books purely for the reader to have any idea where things are are fine, but passing them off as maps that exist in universe is a bit odd if the setting is the standard dark/medieval world that most fantasy settings are.

SlothfulCobra posted:

It's hard, since we're so flooded by modern maps and don't see many old ones.

Geographically precise maps were only really invented when deep ocean sailing started. Before then, most people would just follow the coasts, but when you're far away from any coast and you could be a month away from any land at all, you need ways to calculate where you are and where you're going, and if you get it just a little wrong it could add months onto your journey.

Yea, i'm quite impressed by maps from the 18th century, many are basically modern maps.

I could imagine the Witcher having more accurate maps in universe, as a big part of the backstory is that the humans were modern humans that were cast into this fantasy land and kept some of their knowlage. Like the Sorceress understand germ theory and such.

# ¿ Jul 25, 2022 21:37

twistedmentat: Nov 21, 2003; Its my party
and I'll die if
I want to

Improbable Lobster posted:

I love 40k's weird space maps

Yea something about 40k maps is that technically the whole galaxy is "the Imperium of Man" because there are Imperial worlds everywhere and there is an interconnected trade network and they can communicate with each other (sorta), but other aliens like Orks and Eldar, Necrons and Tyranids are everywhere. There are sections that are areas of control for the Tau and races that don't have codexs like the Hrud, but all in all it does take into account the realities of having Space Empires. You control the planets and the surrounding star system but making a claim on deep space is like saying you own the middle of the Atlantic ocean.

# ¿ Aug 13, 2022 17:55

twistedmentat: Nov 21, 2003; Its my party
and I'll die if
I want to

Twenty Four posted:

Agreed entirely. The solution to the "hard to navigate and stuff would be very small" in a 3D map I had in mind but neglected to mention was that it would have to be computer assisted.

"Computer, target Star A. Computer, zoom in on Star A. Zoom out to include neighboring stars within X distance. Computer, draw me a line or route between Star A and Star B." I mean it could be keyboard, button, or touch activated instead of voice or whatever, but same difference.

Without some sort of computer assistance and interface, yeah, a 3D map would just be like an oblong globe but instead of things on the surface, it would be a big mess with all the stuff on the inside instead. Even a 2D map of that magnitude would be pretty useless beyond sweeping generalities without something similar. Imagine trying to navigate through a neighborhood using a map of an entire large country. There has to be a computer and zoom involved to be useful, I think.

I think its probably fine to just say they have a computer/mutated human that has the ability to navigate through space and not worry about the legit complexities of having a map that has x y and z coordinates. Also with space being VERY VERY BIG you can just focus on individual planets and systems and still have a lot of geography to play around with. Its like we just accept that there is a working FTL drive of some kind that has overcome all the problems we have currently with such travel.

Finger Prince posted:

Another awesome thing about the Star Control 2 map, which I believe is explained either in game or in the manual, is it's a hyperspace map. The stars and constellations/groupings, even the alien territories aren't anywhere near each other in physical space. You pop out of the gravity well of one star go some amount of *distance* and *direction* in hyperspace, which is represented as a two dimensional map so that you can understand it, then drop into the gravity well of another star. Another cool thing is that while you're nearly always going to use autopilot in hyperspace, you can manually move and steer. But because of the fidelity of the steering on your flagship, you can easily miss a gravity well and fly right past. I don't think that was intentional on the designer's part, but does go to show that flying though hyperspace ain't like dusting crops.

I hate to be "in my book" kind of poster, but this inspired one of the methods of FTL some people use in it. That hyperspace is an empty realm, but things as big as planets and stars cast a gravity shadow into it and you can navigate using that. I just imagined how the hyperspace worked in SC2 and was "hey this is a good idea" and made is original idea do not steal. My problem with SC games is that I'm utterly poo poo at that combat. That top down view is someone I have never gotten used to. But they tell some of the most interesting sci-fi stories out there.

# ¿ Aug 15, 2022 07:09

twistedmentat: Nov 21, 2003; Its my party
and I'll die if
I want to

SirPhoebos posted:

I'll admit to uncritically loving TTRPG maps, even when 85% of the time they're completely unnecessary.

I remember buying the second Forgotten Realms box and it comes with this GIANT map of the realms, it was amazing. It was so big i had to open it fully in the living room because it was the only place with enough space for it.

# ¿ Sep 3, 2022 03:51

twistedmentat: Nov 21, 2003; Its my party
and I'll die if
I want to

SlothfulCobra posted:

Had a think about maps that heavily signal that the world was hosed up by some mysterious, unexplained craters and other weird deformations.

Is the last one from Steven Universe?

# ¿ Sep 13, 2022 22:10

twistedmentat: Nov 21, 2003; Its my party
and I'll die if
I want to

Nebakenezzer posted:

Indeed! Though trying to figure out when the Tunguska event happened is a bit confusing.

Its amazing how this world that generally looks so tranquil is seriously hosed up due to the Gem exploitation.

# ¿ Sep 14, 2022 21:09

twistedmentat: Nov 21, 2003; Its my party
and I'll die if
I want to

SlothfulCobra posted:

Is one of these from the Ken Penders Sonic comics?

# ¿ Oct 9, 2022 03:50

twistedmentat: Nov 21, 2003; Its my party
and I'll die if
I want to

Robot Style posted:

That makes me wonder how the map plays into the "it's all just a stage show" aspect of the game. The straight lines, abstract details, and lack of scale kind of reminds me of a transit map.

Talk about places that don't exist, Overwatch 2's Toronto Map has a TTC map that is fantasy of the highest magnatude

Lol a queen street subway line? Hah!

# ¿ Oct 16, 2022 06:18

twistedmentat: Nov 21, 2003; Its my party
and I'll die if
I want to

Tree Bucket posted:

I made this one yesterday- it's a fun way of coming up with genuinely interesting coastlines for your next Generi Fantasy World(TM). Any guesses?
It's a topological map of the moon, with the sea level set to the 2km datum, and earth-like climate zones. (And upside down from the POV of you northern hemisphere people, I guess.)
Completely impossible of course, but it looks great. You've got hell deserts, beautiful archipelagos, huge rivers, multiple mini-Mediterraneans, strategic straits & passes galore....

I want to play Civ on that map.

# ¿ Dec 18, 2022 22:58

twistedmentat: Nov 21, 2003; Its my party
and I'll die if
I want to

Yea, Age of Sigmar maps are a fantasy map nerds dream. Each realm is dominated by one of the winds of magic, and that informs the locations, and they have a lot of fun with that. Because its this crazy high fantasy world where magics part of everything, you can have really inventive stuff going on.

Also they're free to do stuff like have locations completely change as the meta story goes along. Like the city of Anvilguard was once part of Sigmars realm, but the locals were forced out when the Daughters of Khaine took over and is now their main stronghold.

# ¿ Jan 4, 2023 06:59

twistedmentat: Nov 21, 2003; Its my party
and I'll die if
I want to

Pan Am is incredibly stupid. Like, the whole this district does this one thing. Okay, so say you're in the district that just produces wheat, and someone finds a oil or some other useful material. They'll just go "get back to harvesting your wheat!"

Also the Hunger Games itself is dumb, a authoritarian state wants to keep its people focused on both external and internal enemies, not the state itself. Its like the YA authors didn't think long or hard about their dystopias.

# ¿ Jul 15, 2023 17:13

twistedmentat: Nov 21, 2003; Its my party
and I'll die if
I want to

McSpanky posted:

Yes, Panem is a busted setting. Now 2000AD's Cursed Earth, that's some primo post-(post-)apocalyptic dystopia

So whats the big white areas? Places where shits just normal but no one goes there because its not fun?

# ¿ Jul 27, 2023 03:05

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# ¿ Apr 27, 2024 19:32

twistedmentat: Nov 21, 2003; Its my party
and I'll die if
I want to

McSpanky posted:

Pretty much, general non-irradiated wasteland. Pockets of holdouts/LMEs, wandering mutants, plant life reclaiming the land, generic fall-of-civilization stuff.

It basically is a slur, in the post-atomic period the Brits took over the remaining Irish government and turned all the non-irradiated land into a hideously stereotypical theme park where the locals have to act like 19th-century caricatures of themselves to get by.

Most of this was written by Garth Ennis, everyone's favorite handler of delicate racial and social issues.

That's where they got the idea for Fair Haven in Star Trek Voyager from.

# ¿ Jul 29, 2023 11:01

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Sci-Fi Wi-Fi > Maps of places that do not exist