The Challenge of Creating Realistic Maps

Here’s a thing I suck at: making RPG Maps. Not the drawing or the layout, but trying to make a map that is geographically and scientifically "realistic". At least, realistic enough not to shatter verisimilitude of any player smarter at this sort of thing than I am.

I tend to overthink these things. How do mountains affect rainfall? And what the heck is the “lake effect”? How many miles wide should a peninsula be? I don’t know, I’m afraid I will get it wrong, and it paralyzes me. So I get stuck before I even really start.

My advice to anyone else, and the truth I know in my head, is that none of that really matters. The vast majority of these things I start don’t get seen by anyone but me, anyway. And geography only matters in an RPG game if it's so bad as to be noticeable. In other words, on the way to battle the monsters in the borderlands, a river that flows uphill might, in fact, derail the whole adventure (unless it's on purpose and a wizard did it).

But, crippling perfectionism being what it is, I still look for ways past the hurdle. Something better than just ignoring it.

Real World Maps 

Maps are Key...right?


One way is to use a real world map. With Google Maps or Google Earth, one could just zoom in on a particular region of the world, do a screen capture, apply a hex overlay, and voila! Instant, realistic campaign map.

Supposedly, Greyhawk began as an altered map of the real world. Greyhawk was Chicago, apparently. The Near Dyv is shaped like Lake Superior. The main drawback to this is that I don't necessarily want to create fantasy Maine or whatever. And I'd feel compelled to do so. Why base my map on Germany if I'm not going to incorporate that somehow into the setting? Wouldn't a map based on Texas feel like it should have some sort of gunslingers or the like?

Computer Simulation

Another way around this issue is to use some kind of computer simulation to do the work for you. Dwarf Fortress, for example, is a deeply simulationist computer game (perhaps a ridiculously simulationist computer game) that generates a world map that takes into account things like rainshadow, water flow, and temperature. I don’t know how realistic any of this is. But I do know that Dwarf Fortress is smarter than me at this sort of thing. So I’m going to use it to create a campaign map.

To what end, I'm not sure. But I think I'm going to blog about it a bit. No promises, but it might be fun to make a little setting out of all this and see where it goes.

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