@sebo641 Nobody said you have to limit yourself to 2D. I think using something like GPlates to create a globe would be the best approach for the "real map".
@@sebo641 As accurate as necessary to tell the story. If all you're bothered about is who controls which major plot locations, then geographical accuracy isn't as important as political accuracy. If your characters go on very specific journeys with clearly delineated travel times, rest spots, and crossovers, then geographical accuracy becomes far more important for ensuring you know where your characters are at any given point, and when they will realistically meet given their respective modes of transport. That being said, for many fantasy authors, an accurate map isn't actually necessary. Often you're inventing this world from scratch to serve the purposes of your narrative, so as long as your general locations and directions are consistent from page to page, you can construct a map after the fact. This only becomes an issue if you do a David Gemmell and write 20 books in the same universe before coming up with a map, resulting in a weird Frankenstein map that doesn't work with nearly ANY of your books.
Map map map map map men men men men men map map map map map men men men men men map map map map map map map map map map map map map map map men men men men men men men men men men🎶
I feel the excessive geographic accuracy of fantasy maps is part of another, broader recurring problem in fantasy: people in-universe just seem to know everything about their world with perfect accuracy, all their explanations agree with each other, and the only mysteries or disputed beliefs are things that are mysterious or disputed as a plot point. There's a general lack of unsettled questions, competing theories, personal biases, agenda-pushing, or plain old errors. The fact that the Elder Scrolls games _do_ include stuff like this is much of what I love about that universe.
We are plagued by the scientific revolution. We forget that science is not THE one way of inquiry, THE only way to see the world; but just one of many ways to know things (& like it is understandable why we do so; it is a useful tool). But like that way of approaching things means we go about world building back arsewards. Tamriel was built out of clutter & disparate ideas & like it worked so beautifully in morrowind, & has worked less & less well as it has begun to crystallize around conventional world expectations. dune works titilatingly because Herbert had a goal/aesthetic & he built backwards from it (he wanted computers gone, & ended up with the mentats & butlerian jihad)
It was a long time ago so I forget whose channel it was on, but yeah I saw a video essentially arguing for fantasy maps to be much more “imperfect” like you’re describing, more to represent an in-universe distorted understanding of the world than provide an objective modern-style maps of the geography.
That's partially due to what audiences want. Not you perhaps, but audiences overall. People don't like maps they can't read. People don't like maps that aren't accurate.
@@stormelemental13thats true but how would i know if something isn’t accurate? i like maps that show you the vague locations of things that will be important and some cool things to wonder about, but even in my analysis of every line on the map of wings of fire stage i only noticed people caring about vague details even i didn’t mind that the locations of different places didn’t seem to be the right distance away.
One thing to remember is also that for the most part of history maps weren't really a thing for most travellers, as they were just too expensive. The most used expedient was an "itinerary", IE a list of places you had to cross to get from point A to point B, or just didn't use maps and relied on the place names. Here in Italy we have city gates and road names that still reflects that: I.E. to go to Milan you just exit from Porta Milano ("Door to Milan") and follow the only major road from there. To go to Rome, you follow the Via Romea, to go to France you follow the Via Francigena. I adopted a similiar thing in my roleplaying campaing: I have my "True" map (accurate and modern) which the player have NO access to. They can go to a noble's palace or a travellers guild to see approximate in-world, and they need to sketch them if they want indications on how to travel. It's a bit of work, it enhances the immersion and mystery, and my players like that. It can also lead to various fun scenarios if used properly.
Yeah. I've always wondered why things like itinerariums aren't more popular in fantasy. Or approaches like the Peutinger Map, which is just a fancy, illustrated itinarium. That said, I seem to recall a fantasy book where there were multiple types of maps, ie rough sketches over small areas, fairly detailed city maps, a T-type geopolitical map etc which all mad sense from the viewpoint and context of each part of the book - but I can't for the life of me remember which book it was.
My first GM described the map and had the players draw it throughout the campaign. It starts with general common knowledge of continent shapes, which the characters would have and then gets filled out with details from travels, NPC interactions and the sort. The result is surprisingly good.
Isn't that backwards? I'd expect any human, no matter if dark ages or modern, to have excellent grasp of surrounding area, vague idea about surrounding countries, and pretty much nothing about continents etc unless they are really educated or well travelled, but it sounds like the players have it the other way around...
@@KuK137Unless you have huge amounts of magic. If people can fly or astral project they might have a good grasp of wider geography. Another reason to run low-magic.
"For some reason" The reason is for reader's sake. Personally, I have no bias for either. Especially considering most maps have a meta purpose of existing for the reader only and are not real maps in the setting. They look as if they are maps in setting as a stylist choice.
I always just assumed the maps at the beginning of some novels was just for our (the readers') reference. I never really thought the characters in the story had access to that information unless explicitly stated in the text. If there were some stylized or obscure looking map I probably would just ignore it unless it provided some important information about the book.
@@JohnPrepuce That's why this video is kind of annoying to me, because it's based on a false assumption that the maps we see at the beginnings of novels are maps owned by people in-universe, which, for LotR and ASOIAF is just plainly not the case.
@@XxthetanklordxX But for many other novels, it plainly is the case. It depends entirely on what the author intends and how they want to present the geography of the world to the reader.
@@XxthetanklordxX Even if it's not meant for people "in-universe", this video still applies, the question is "what is the purpose of the map". As a reader, what information do we care about? If the use case of a map is not understood, it's probably not a very good map, after all. "Accuracy" only depends on "use". If the map is meant to represent geography perfectly, that means something very different from one designed to measure area perfectly, etc.
minor correction: the mercator projection does *not* map straight lines in real life (more formally geodesics) to straight lines on the map. it maps rhumbs, which are lines of constant heading, to straight lines. the projection which preserves the straightness of geodesics is the gnomonic projection.
Few people understand this rhumb line thing. "Aim at 30 degrees on compass. Turn as needed to keep that direction." Neither a straight line nor shortest path, but very easy to do with only a compass.
And this is exactly why the Mercator projection is useful if you /cannot/ tell the time. It gives a route to follow which does not require you to know exactly where you are on this route. If you want to sail a shorter and cheaper route, then you need a chronometer.
I think in a certain sense, fantasy maps need to be "usable" to the audience. Whether they're following along with the heroes in a novel or figuring out where their character is from in an RPG, a map that the average modern reader would barely recognize as a map loses some of this appeal, so following Tolkien's example rather than a Marshall Islander map is probably considered a safer bet for most creators.
I think that's not quite the whole truth. I think they also communicate a certain genre familiarity. By providing a map that looks just like those of Tolkien's works, you communicate that you're writing a story in that lineage, with those sensibilities in mind.
I think fantasy maps being accurate is a result of managing your immersion budget. The fantastical requires effort to imagine and accept, so anything familiar and reliable helps to offset that effort. This is why most worlds have earth-like "satellite" maps, but also why they have earth trees, sun, moon (even if haunted), seasons, etc. Writers might slightly alter one or more of these, but if you change everything the reader or player will be lost, with nothing to cling to. I do like diagetic inaccurate maps, but i dislike withholding the real map. There is a nice compromise to be had in presenting an accurate but incomplete map - a map of the known world that starts becoming less accurate at the edges, and that doesn't show the whole world. This serves to preserve mystery and uncertainty, while still being reliable and useful for stories taking place within the core regions.
Personally, I think the series that attempt to 'manage their immersion budget' (excessively at least) are doing fantasy wrong. I *want* fantasy to feel otherworldly, that's the whole point. That said, I like realistic maps, since the map is for *my* benefit; not for the benefit of having something historical-looking. I want to *use* a map as I follow along a story, and speculate based on things written on it. That means I want I map I can trust, not a historically-accurate one where I can't tell a real feature from a stylistic choice.
@IamGrimalkin it's a difficult balance. Not everyone has the same budget; you and I are more open to the fantastical, absurd, and unexplained. But others' require a bit more grounding to be able and enjoy fantasy.
@@IamGrimalkin And how do you achieve 'otherworldly'? Let's say this world has magic, and the wizard can look at planet from above, getting wiev too inaccurate so say spy on armies or countries, but good enough to get all the locations of forests, mountains, rivers etc perfectly. Do we ruin this look because this map looks too 'modern'?
@@KuK137everybody has their preferences. I think that one of the great things about the genre is that there is a variety of creative minds. I like a more 'classic' fantasy, where things function much like earth, but there's elves, dwarves, and wizards. I think hyper-analytical worldbuilding can be a burden, as we're taking the unreal thing of magic and demanding it be defined in real, scientific terms. If somebody wants to do all that work for a story, there's an audience out there for them too.
I’m an environmental science-centered person. To me, understanding the non-human component of the world comes first. Then I can imagine how humans inhabit that space.
@@NakariSpeardane i think this video has given me an interesting perspective NGL. rn i think the best approach (for me at least) would be to create two approaches for maps at the same time. First create a geographical map with all the rivers, terrains, regions in the way you see fit as accurately to you (what the world looks like in its entirety). And then create a map that is more weird in nature like you said in the video, the world which the people living in it know about. If I was to make a story, i wouldn't ever show the geographical map to readers ever lmao, just what the people living in it know about. Or just tit bits depending on how different cultures living in created their maps, or depending on how advance their navigational skills are and how much of the world is known, etc.
SAMEEE. i have never understood oc people or anything, i don’t have any names for anyone. most fleshed out character i have made is for a concept album im planning now lol
I know I don't need my map to be perfect but I've already spent two years perfecting the tectonics and thanks to the sunk cost fallacy I'm not about to bow out now! That being said, I absolutely adore the pair of maps from Toasted52 at 7:15. The geographically accurate 'god map' helps keep out unintended inconsistencies while the diagetic maps help keep the storyteller in the necessarily-limited viewpoint of a given person/people/polity. That's a great balance to strike-- guess I better start making more maps.
@@ageh4chou make the plate tectonics important to your narrative. Like in NK Jemisin's 5th Season the tectonics of the world are important both as plot & as symbol.
Your beautiful accurate map will mean you can create a brilliantly realistic world, and when you write make it easy to avoid geographical continuity errors. And then, make smaller, less accurate, more artistic maps for random moments in the story. Or... Do people in your universe have flight? Fly high enough and maps get accurate FAST.
Bruh I feel you. All I wanted was to create some languages and religions and instead I've been working on my climate map for like almost a decade. (It's fun though)
@GiltheDragon NK Jemisin is one of the best to ever do it tbh. I'm hoping to 'make it matter' in my story by using tectonics to determine the distribution of meteor mcguffinite that enables the magic system. NK Jemisin tied all that worldbuilding deeply into the heart of her characters' narratives though and above all else that's the lesson I hope to take from her stories. 🤞
@@tristanridley1601 And how do you achieve that'? Let's say this world has magic, and the wizard can look at planet from above, getting wiev too inaccurate so say spy on armies or countries, but good enough to get all the locations of forests, mountains, rivers etc perfectly. Do we ruin this look because this map looks too 'modern'?
The channel "Mapster" has a fantastic video on the map of Middle Earth by Tolkien. Tolkien struggled a lot with his map and used it to guide himself as much as it would guide the reader. He had yellowed, crudely hand-drawn maps he worked with initially, and the video does a great job detailing how he went from those to the more professional drawn map we got. Much like with a lot of fantasy, the way Tolkien did his map likely served as an example for the many maps we have now.
Also the Hobbit map, a representation of the in-World map is closer to what this channel wants. I'd also argue that the Elves and by extension the Numenoreans had access to the Valar, the beings that MADE the world so of course they'd have relatively more accurate maps. Sauron also helped make the world and with Sauron's obsession with order he probably provided his forces with highly accurate maps. Eldar abilities are also likely involved.
@@specialnewb9821 Yes, many fantasy worlds have in-universe justifications for cartographic accuracy. Godlike beings or clairvoyants who can see things from a distance. Ancient civilizations that were more advanced before they died out, but left some maps and other artifacts behind. Flight through magic or riding on flying creatures like dragons.
@@specialnewb9821 Not to mention that Elves been around for a while, and with Dragons and Eagles hat access to air survailance .. Third. Both LotR and SoIaF don't have complete maps of the worlds just of the current continent.
thank you for putting the map names and origin/time in the bottom corner it helps so much/encourages looking this stuff up when itd be easier not to !!
woah! i was actually thinking about this some time ago. personally, i really suck at the "hyper-realistic super real map of the world" kind of stuff (even if i excessively tried to learn it lol), and it always made me feel like i am a "bad" conworlder, making me enjoy less about creating my world. i guess this video is a good wake-up call for me to actually try to make a fun map _i_ would like for my world :3
But are the realistic maps bad? Let's say this world has magic, and the wizard can look at planet from above, getting wiev too inaccurate so say spy on armies or countries, but good enough to get all the locations of forests, mountains, rivers etc perfectly. Do we ruin this look because this map looks too 'modern'?
@@KuK137 i never said anything you're insinuating. i just said i suck at making realistic maps even after doing a lot of research on how to do it, idk why you say i hate waffles when i just say i like pancakes
This is a very full video. A lot of great points crammed into just 8 minutes, so much so that I have pretty much nothing else to add. Maybe only that I think the current fantasy map style is so popular due to the kind of Fantasy stories that are popular right now. That being, world-spanning epics (probably due to the momentum from Tolkien and what style of map he chose to use). Those kinds of stories benefit greatly from a realistic depiction of the world, where the reader wants/needs to know where everyone is, how far everyone is from one another, etc. in order to create a satisfying story where the reader can understand how the world looks and works.
I think she gets that. But as a reader who enjoys fantasy world building, I enjoy when writers create maps that are creative or unusual, serving different narrative and immersive purposes. A map being for fantasy readers should *encourage* greater creativity and diverse approaches to map design, not discourage them. "It's for readers" doesn't actually explain why so many maps are virtually identical and boring, unless you assume fantasy readers want boring, conventional things. And that's a pretty negative assumption about fantasy readers! @@daxlucero2437
The thing is that those maps are usualy not degetical, they are adressed to the reader/player with 3 main puropose : -Help the reader/player to grasp the geography of this new world -Evoke an idealised image of 18th/19th century world exploration -Being beautiful Showing a diegetical adressed to the people of the fantasy world woudl be very nice but it would serve another purpose : storytelling.
I’ve always been obsessed with these types of maps !!! The world I’m working on right now has a variation of a T-O map with the cardinal directions in the corner of the frame. And other continents/countries use different stylizations. Each map has a purpose in world, and the way they present themselves is always impacted by that. I love the way narrative and agenda and purpose are so integral to the presentation of maps and always say something about the people making it and what they want to communicate. Brilliant video, thanks for sharing!
Why is it wherever I see a new video from you, I question everything I've ever done for world building..... Thank you! We always need that push out of the box to create interesting worlds and stories! I love this channel and all your work genuinely helps me!
All these map designs have a purpose, & the same goes for the accurate ones you find in modern fiction. The purpose is clarity for the audience- a clover map is cool culturally, but fails completely for navigation. They're often shown with flair like an in-universe map might have, but generally that's for immersion, & I can't think of any examples off the top of my head where a map in the narrative is explicitly the very accurate map we are shown as readers/viewers/players without some kind of reason, like a magical device doing the mapping. I am all for seeing these cool historical gimmicks, but it has to come without being a detriment to the audience. Like, an Egyptian-inspired setting having maps with North at the bottom would be excellent, & wouldn't harm the legibility of the map for readers. But one that is just inaccurate wouldn't work to be presented as an actual map. If it's too inaccurate, it becomes obvious it is only an art piece & doesn't fulfill the role of map at all, just being a neat graphic. If it seems accurate enough, then either its inaccuracies don't come up & it is functionally identical, or it gives the sense that the reader has been lied to by the narrative, never a good feeling. It was a great video, & I love weird historical oddities like this. But as far as fiction goes at least, we have the maps we do for good reason, & I'd like them to stay that way.
I think the info presented in the video answers the question. You show many types of maps that look the way they look for a reason. The classic fantasy map looks like it does because its focused on showing places of interest and shape of the land, so it uses the style best suited for those 2 objectives. It wouldn't make sense for a map i give to my players to focus on ocean currents, or things like that. I could make a map that instead of highlighting places focuses on some cultural tidbit i want to portray, but that's a lot of work for something that could just as well be shown with narration. Maps are the best at pointing out places of interest, countries and geography, so that's why most maps are used for that, instead of some commentary on local cuisine, despite the fact that a map could absolutely do that.
I feel like you're missing the main point of having maps in fantasy in the first place: It's not to mimic historical maps, it's so the readers have an image in their head of where this all takes place, how far the character have to walk etc. Also, you may want to use it for worldbuilding purposes. If there's an island on the map which is a giant monster, you want the reader to think it's really a giant monster; not some medieval map feature. For this reason, some degree of geographical accuracy to the fantasy world is usually necessary. Maybe what you're describing might be useful for an in-universe map found by a character, but not for the maps found in the inside cover of the book itself. Besides, if the whole concept is they didn't make geographically accurate maps because they couldn't measure longitude; plenty of characters in fantasy have the means of measuring longitude via magic (all you need is a clock which works on a boat, and timekeeping magic is often present even when navigational magic isn't).
It's stuff like this that has me adoring your videos. To see otherworlds not as static ships in bottles but as cabinets of curiosities; as archaeological assemblages of neverwheres & neverwhens
Great insight into map making. I am now motivated to make different types of maps for each civilization living in a world based on their priorities. An underground civilization, only mark tunnels and where they lead with no regard to distance. A wild civilization living in a forest, no regard to outside life but a map of the forest based on what creatures live there is carved out of wood. Trading nation, trading routes with cities and supply cites and maybe marked with dangerous areas on the routes
Another reason for a more boring style of map is that it can be used to orientate yourself in your world and place things on fixed spot. Making abstract maps or even inaccurate maps is the cherry on top or the polished version to present to someone else, but while you're still figuring things out and building things up, it helps a lot to have a map where you can look things up in case you forgot something
Most people who see your map would assume the mistake was not intentional anyway, they'll just be confused and think the author is stupid, especially in a video game. Can you imagine finding a treasure map, following it, and having to dig randomly for 20 minutes because the map was labeled wrong intentionally? It certainly can be done, but its also very easy for it to have a negative impact on the audience
if i recall the book 'the jasmine throne' by tasha suri has a really cool clover map and I wish more authors would use it! i think it's really cool and presenting more abstract maps can say a lot more about a fantasy world than simply where things are. really fun video as always! :)
I’m reading The Jasmine Throne currently and I was so excited by the intriguing map design! The lack of “accuracy” actually makes it so much easier for me to understand where characters are/are from.
Well, it depends on the effect you're going for, I guess. I as a reader, need something that's easy to read and helps me know where everything is going on in the story relative to everything else (hence why it's ok to have maps with an anachronistic level of accuracy). It *would* be cool to see someone go a little crazy and design their setting's equivalent to the old Babylonian map of the world, though, I agree.
I think it more or less depends on whether the map is used by the world-builder to document the world they create, or whether it is a part of the world itself. I think a lot of people tend to use maps for reference, although the in-universe maps you mentioned will also give many ways of connecting thing. Really interesting video.
Great video, and I love your examples. That said, I have to admit though that making a map that my players or readers can understand comes first for me. Maybe I'm to worried about losing their interest if I give them a map they have no idea how to read.
This was an awesome video, really enjoyed it! Just a quick correction on Mercator maps from a cartographer - straight lines on Mercator are rhumb lines (lines of constant bearing), but these aren't really straight lines in most cases. So, super useful for navigating with a compass, but following a straight line on the map you would begin to diverge from a true straight path (great circle). Maybe you already know this though and are simplifying :)
This comment needs to be more visible. The "straight lines on the map are straight lines in real life" projection is called Gnomonic, not Mercator. It's also substantially older than Mercator, preceding it by some two millennia.
My favourite ever map is the Mappamondo Fra Maoro in the Museo Galileo in Florence. I went there with my school as part of my exchange trip in the city and I vividly remember the museum instructor asking "What's interesting about this map?" (In Italian) And within a second I had immediately turned my head a full 180 degrees upside down (in front of another 40 kids mind you😅) to see the map. It's super cool and detailed, and it's even available online for free for any map enthousiasts :D
Fenomenal video! my conlangs live in a roughly 90 degree shaped continent, so this video inspired me to put east (the economic center of the world) on top and north on the bottom if I ever get around to mapping it
1:15 this map is literally that map in Hollow Knight! In the assets for the game there is this weird looking furniture piece with balls on it and it's labeled as a map of the outside world but of course it doesn't look like a map. It sort of looks similar to this, which I find interesting
What I like about Stormlight is that even though most of the maps are closer to a standard style, it feels very deliberate and context specific. We see various maps from different cultures and for different purposes (navigational, battlefield, etc...) and cartography as a job and activity is discussed in the story itself.
In some defence of TES maps, that is a setting where magic is explicitly regularly used to replace things we'd use technology for (for one cartography-relevant example mentioned in the games, flying magic to get overhead views of areas) and groups that would definitely strive for geographic accuracy (the example map is from the Imperial Geographic Society).
This is an incredible video. Amazing pacing, structure, writing, and, of course, visuals. Best of all, you guide the viewer's curiosity to pose themself questions, which you then immediately answer!
Well, in a world with bolth magic artifacts and flying mounts, it's easier to get a lay of the land. My guess is that most paper maps are drawn copies of magical maps.
Thankyou Nakari. My setting is one with a lot of spatial oddities, for example the Black Forest is about the size of Bri'ish-land from the outside*, but anywhere from the size of Asia to literally infinite on the inside. *(as in, an Otherworlder mathematician and geographer claimed that a long journey around it suggested a similar external size to what they remembered from Earth. They also said this journey wasn't worth it, wrote a great many letters of apology to the families and loved ones of the companions they lost along the way, and died of alcoholism-related health complications a few years later) Thus I'm often stuck and doubly dumbfounded by how best to not denigrate the multiplied madness of the world filled with sadness and ever short on gladness while still representing its locations. You have brought me to the "just imagine you're one of the nutjobs - part one: think like a nutjob achieved - that tries to map this stuff out from within the world" realization. When I have become the tyrannical dictator of a nation, I will be sure to provide you with a standing ovation.
This was really cool! Ive definitely been an “objective geography” mapmaker, but this really has me thinking about making more localized maps with specific purpose and perspective.
I think One Piece is an interesting example of playing with cartography. For one thing a lot of the maps seem to point to ordinal directions instead of the cardinal ones, because of how the world is structured around the Red Line and the Grand Line, which are both aligned with the ordinal directions. Typically northeast seems to be up, but sometimes it can be northwest instead, or seemingly any other direction. Maps can also be outdated or badly drawn, and it's implied that many of them are inaccurate or incomplete (because Nami's ability to draw accurate maps is considered special, so special in fact that Arlong considered her a crucial pawn for his world domination plan.) There's also no proper world map, and drawing one is Nami's life goal. It's a small thing but I really appreciate it. Even though not having a full and accurate world map is driving me nuts as a fan lmao
I love this so much! This is imo one of the most informative resources I've ever seen on this topic (which tracks with the rest of the channel's content). I personally like to begin my mapbuilding with geographically accurate maps, so that I can base other parts of the stories and worldbuilding on accurate geographical information, but I've been really struggling moving away from these maps once they're done, and this video is just so full of inspiration and useful information, thank you so so so much!
Love this video! I've always liked fantasy maps that don't put north at the top. Thanks for reminding everyone that there are so many more options for displaying information than we're used to!
Great video, thank you. I can also imagine adventure scenario's in which finding an old map with the previous boundaries is the only way to solve a riddle and find a treasure, but the old maps were suppressed specifically because they highlighted the humble origins of the current, dominant, empire. Good stuff!
In books, it's because the map is for the readers, not for the characters. Criticising their accuracy is like criticizing the book for being printed on paper rather than on medieval style parchment. It'd be cool to have innacurate maps in movies and TTRPGs, though.
I'm stunned that you managed to subsequently bring in every map I thought of while watching this video shortly after I thought of them. It was simultaneously impressive and kind of scary!
Not quite done watching this, but to address the potential negative reactions ala 5:38, one could use an in-universe explanation of a map. Who created it, in what era, what nation, the intended purpose, etc... An in-lore explanation of the map, even as just an asterisk, would do a lot to convince an audience to take a liking to the map.
yesss i love this!! for my renaissance-era Kids on Bikes supplement i have two maps of the world, and of Venice, the setting: one that was made for actual reference, which is just the modern Earth but with the appropriate states labeled, and a time-accurate map, that is wildly fantastical and inaccurate. it's SO fun.
Very interesting! Made me consider putting a different map in each next book of my series depending on whose story it's telling! And then, when in the last book all plotlines converge, I may finally reveal the accurate geographical map of the world ❤
Love the maps you covered here! How about spatial-temporal abstract maps using the metaphors of watersheds/tributaries flowing into rivers? I only say this because it now occurs to me that the corner map I did for the chorographical map for my fictional project kind of seems like a map akin to the talismanic map that you featured by Ursula Le Guin!
Had to smile when you gave north=up as the first example when the long-time fantasy project I'm working on with my friend has south=up :) Mad good video btw
One really cool thing about Morrowind is that the biggest, and notoriously confusing to navigate, area- Vivec city- has got vendors that sell copies of a diegetic map and guide, which is actually more helpful than the game's own local map.
I think weird in universe maps are definitely important as you say, but also having an accurate map purely for the benefit of the reader is nice. An example I can think of here is actually the Stormlight Archive. You show the map that's in the start of every book but there's also multiple in universe maps with varying accuracy and symbolism. Having both can give the reader something clear that lets them keep track of the progress of the characters while also having the imperfect and filtered views that make sense in the world. Very interesting topic, a lot to think about here.
When I was a kid I thought I wanted to be an epic fantasy author but I realized all I really wanted to do was make maps. One of my favorite things to do with historical maps is to arrange them as they changed and then put in parallel the different maps from different competing cultures at the same time. This allows you to see a story about thoughts of ownership, claimage and ambition and how those things changed over the course of a competition between cultures or political forces in a given space. I've developed this ambition to build that experience into a fantasy story. But I think it would end up being more of a picture book that's relatively short rather than something like epic fantasy.
the art at 0:16 is GORGEOUS omg. also, fantastic video, this open creativity with maps (and everything else) is what i wanna incorporate more for my own stories
The maps in fantasy book are meant to be a reference for the reader and thus need to be easy to read. Maybe having other maps in the book that would show what it would look like to people in the world might be cool, you still need that easy to understand map for the readers.
You don't, tbh. If your story needs a detailed and accurate map so the described journey or spatial relations made sense, it means it either overly complicated or poorly described. My first Hobbit book did not contain a map, yet it wasn't terribly hard even as a child to paint the journey in your mind: from Hobbiton to Erebor all of the described locations lies vaguely on the line eastward. And you don't need the angle of intersection between Running and Forest rivers for the story.
Sometimes making information perfectly transparent can be bad for writing. A little bit of obscurity, as long as it has a narrative reason, is often a good idea, and you can then present a stylised map which can also tell a story.
@@Folemaet doesnt change the fact the map is meant for the reader as a reference. putting a map they cant understand does nothing for the world building, its better to not have one if you were going to do just that.
Wooo! Tabula Peutingeriana mentioned! Also a great online resource for looking at historic maps is the David Rumsey Map collection. It's a high res collection that is index so you can look maps up by what, when, where, or who. You can also download copies for free. First time seeing one of you videos but it has great info
not to nitpick, more to show an interesting fact that further supports your point; when you said "north pointing compass" you showed a chinese compass which traditionally "point south" and weren't even originally used for navigation, but for feng shui!
The Mercator projection *was* useful before the development of the marine chronometer, in fact, the nigh impossibility of knowing one's latitude was precisely *why* the Mercator projection was used: straight lines on the projection, aka rhumb lines, represent lines of constant compass bearing. If you set off from Plymouth to Virginia, and you knew that you should follow a particular rhumb line, then staying on that constant bearing would get you to your destination. Prior to that, sailors had to use dead reckoning to calculate longitude (i.e., an educated, very rough guess), so they basically sailed directly east or west until they made landfall, and then guessed whether they should sail north or south to reach their destination. Mercator changed that with this projection. The one problem, of course, is that unless the sea remains calm for your entire months' long crossing, you're going to get knocked off your bearing. But even before it became possible to calculate longitude accurately, if you'd been following a particular rhumb line, and you'd been knocked off course, by using a sextant and dead reckoning, you could at least get a reasonable idea of how far north or south you were compared to where you should be, and course correct. TL;DR - the Mercator projection was already an advancement and a great help to navigators, even before the development of the marine chronometer.
Happened across this video never having seen anything of your work. I enjoyed it. The maps were very interesting, your descriptions were helpful, and I thought you made some good points. Thanks for the pleasant 8 and a half minutes.
i recently read Tasha Suri's The Jasmine Throne, and it had a map shaped like a flower, with the main city of the empire in the centre and vassal states in the flower petals. I was very confused lol but once i got used to it, it was a refreshing change
thank you, this has given me the thought of having my players potential use an outdated or simplified map for the region they're exploring in my dnd game and I can make the markers on the maps extreme exaggerations of potentially real landmarks
There was one great fantasy series i read a while back that really made sure that it was accurate to how things were in the period that was set. And one small detail that stood out to me was that maps were considered a national secret as they could compromise them when fighting other countries. So the main character had to hire a massive amount of merchants to run things around while recording the terrain on the way to towns and villages. And a few months later they managed to make a rough sketch of about how everything looked. And I just wish more stories would do clever things like that and make maps more diegetic to their setting. It just makes the world feel more real and fleshed out.
as a nerd for how geography affects development of civilizations/cultures etc, I like know the geography of my worlds. BUT the reader getting maps like these would be super cool. Could even be used as a tool for making an unreliable narrator!
Love this video! I like how you showed different styles of fantasy maps as a fan of cartography! It should probably be pointed out that the Gall-Peters is still a fairly flawed map since it’s specifically designed to provide the least amount of distortion to Europe at the cost of significant distortion to regions in the equatorial latitudes (Africa, Latin America, Australasia). My personal recommendation for equal-area maps has been Hobo-Dyer and (if you aren’t a square about non-rectangles) butterfly maps! (Although I do admit that Randall Munroe may have had some influence on my opinions.)
I think it's great for writing to create a "perfect map" so you have a clear vision as a writer, and it's easier to then create a fun/creative map for the reader great video btw!!!
Stumbling across this video prompted me to look through all your other ones and wow, great stuff. Concentrated world building inspiration, and tons of interesting stuff I didn't know about before.
I really love this! Especially the Inuit and the stick-maps are super inspiring: in my (medieval/renaissance leaning) world, I have some specialised humans known as Fateriders, who travel one-directional energy streams that are dangerous and hard to access but let you travel fast and far. They would absolutely be using a map like that - a physical representation of where the fatestreams run, where there are safe places to enter and exit, in which direction they flow, etc. Also, one of my characters is a mapmaker himself, who creates specialised maps himself based on the vast knowledge of the Fateriders - so now I have lots of information of how his maps could look, based on how it would be warped through his perspective and what would be important to him!
On the topic of distorition and objectivity: Aren't a lot of your comments on the maps in the beginning rested upon unstated assumptions? In your points you are assuming those maps to be 100% accurate and objective, even though such is never outright stated or confirmed in many stories. They very well might be distorted and objective already. After all we don't know the true geography of those worlds nor do we know what projection was used to create those maps. You could apply a similar thought experiment to the direction the maps portray. If we assume a tolkien-like lense (ie. the work we read is a translation of into terms understandable for us) and the story never shows to us a compass, then it makes sense that we define north by whatever direction is portrayed as up in maps most commonly.
In one of my urbanism classes we saw this subject of map making, map representation, and how our perception, philosophy and understanding develop along with those illustrations. The main giveaway he gave us that day was: “No 2D map is ever fully accurate, thus every single map is subjective in nature. They shape our perception of our world and worldviews. They can affirm our biases or change the way we see things. Whenever we take a pen and paper we decide whats important and what’s not; we decide what to show, what to highlight, and what to hide. This is extremely important to understand, because whatever we represent has a message with the power to make a stance or reaffirm the reality. Be careful with what and how you draw it, but most importantly, draw it with conviction.”
Outstanding video! I really liked how clearly you showed that not only ancient maps, but also current ones have embedded biases and intentions, as well as traces of technological means and aesthetic values. Insightful and inspiring!
Mercator's influence on sizes of continents was simply an unintentional side-effect of its projection which was essential for what it was designed for, sailing the oceans. I have never seen evidence presented that demonstrates a deliberate political motive for making them that way. I'd be interested in such evidence if it could be produced though.
I can see an alternate timeline where the British Empire invents the Peters projection in the 19th century to show off how much territory they have in comparison to, say, the Russian Empire
Wonderful video! It really blew me away when I realized how little I've thought about this subject before, and it immediately got me thinking about the way I could depict my atlas! I've never really enjoyed drawing maps for the fun of it, but I use them when running my DnD games. I can't imagine how exciting it would be a for a player to get handed something like the inuit coastline map and then told to navigate using that!
Given my fantasy style maps are for my own pleasure or for kids art club lessons this is definitely going to inspire me to play around a lot more! Thanks for the nudge!
I think the map at the front of the Stormlight Archive books are not meant to be as diegetic as you suggest. There are multiple illustration within The Way of Kings that are explicitly diegetic and while they are (at least presented as) much more accurate than anything you have showcased, they do have some odd quirks. The Alethkar map is oriented across its largest extent and the map of Sadeas' warcamp has a peculiar shape because it was scratched onto a shell from a creature. You have once again made such a great video that really showcases how many ways there are to make a map and it will surely inspire everyone that gets to watch it!!
Someone deleted a comment about how these types of maps need to replace the current standard. I just wanted to say that there are pragmatic arguments that can be made for the standardized maps most fantasy stories use in that the vast majority of your audience can take one look at it and understand what it is without confusion. After-all what purpose do fantasy maps serve (aside from being fun to make) than to display information to the reader about important locations, geography, politics, and other details? The standard maps are very good at accomplishing that.
Great video. The challenge is that a map like these real-world examples takes a lot more effort and creativity to produce. It’s hard when you know what’s there to show it in a less accurate way.
I'd almost suggest making two maps: an accurate one for you to reference, and an inaccurate, in-universe one for the characters.
What would you consider accurate tho? If you have a spherical/spheroidal world, trying to depict it in 2D will always have some inaccuracy
This. I've always given players fairly accurate maps simply because thats what I had available designing it all, but this would much more interesting
@sebo641 I meant the shapes of the continents being accurate.
@sebo641 Nobody said you have to limit yourself to 2D. I think using something like GPlates to create a globe would be the best approach for the "real map".
@@sebo641 As accurate as necessary to tell the story. If all you're bothered about is who controls which major plot locations, then geographical accuracy isn't as important as political accuracy. If your characters go on very specific journeys with clearly delineated travel times, rest spots, and crossovers, then geographical accuracy becomes far more important for ensuring you know where your characters are at any given point, and when they will realistically meet given their respective modes of transport.
That being said, for many fantasy authors, an accurate map isn't actually necessary. Often you're inventing this world from scratch to serve the purposes of your narrative, so as long as your general locations and directions are consistent from page to page, you can construct a map after the fact. This only becomes an issue if you do a David Gemmell and write 20 books in the same universe before coming up with a map, resulting in a weird Frankenstein map that doesn't work with nearly ANY of your books.
I like how in Elden Ring, the most useful tool for navigating the map isn't north or the sun, but the giant erdtree in the middle of the map
in subnautica you have the huge aurora ship and two cloud clusters to navigate by, really adds to the adventure aspect
This is like five Map Men episodes combined into one, and I love it.
cue the map men song but with 5x reverb
@@juanjuri6127 I wanna see a YTP like that.
Thank you!! All worldbuilders should watch map men imo v_v
Map map map map map men men men men men map map map map map men men men men men map map map map map map map map map map map map map map map men men men men men men men men men men🎶
🎵 Map men, MAP men, MAP MAP *MAAAP* men men men 🎵
I feel the excessive geographic accuracy of fantasy maps is part of another, broader recurring problem in fantasy: people in-universe just seem to know everything about their world with perfect accuracy, all their explanations agree with each other, and the only mysteries or disputed beliefs are things that are mysterious or disputed as a plot point. There's a general lack of unsettled questions, competing theories, personal biases, agenda-pushing, or plain old errors. The fact that the Elder Scrolls games _do_ include stuff like this is much of what I love about that universe.
i think its more of a western problem
We are plagued by the scientific revolution. We forget that science is not THE one way of inquiry, THE only way to see the world; but just one of many ways to know things (& like it is understandable why we do so; it is a useful tool).
But like that way of approaching things means we go about world building back arsewards.
Tamriel was built out of clutter & disparate ideas & like it worked so beautifully in morrowind, & has worked less & less well as it has begun to crystallize around conventional world expectations.
dune works titilatingly because Herbert had a goal/aesthetic & he built backwards from it (he wanted computers gone, & ended up with the mentats & butlerian jihad)
It was a long time ago so I forget whose channel it was on, but yeah I saw a video essentially arguing for fantasy maps to be much more “imperfect” like you’re describing, more to represent an in-universe distorted understanding of the world than provide an objective modern-style maps of the geography.
That's partially due to what audiences want. Not you perhaps, but audiences overall. People don't like maps they can't read. People don't like maps that aren't accurate.
@@stormelemental13thats true but how would i know if something isn’t accurate? i like maps that show you the vague locations of things that will be important and some cool things to wonder about, but even in my analysis of every line on the map of wings of fire stage i only noticed people caring about vague details even i didn’t mind that the locations of different places didn’t seem to be the right distance away.
One thing to remember is also that for the most part of history maps weren't really a thing for most travellers, as they were just too expensive. The most used expedient was an "itinerary", IE a list of places you had to cross to get from point A to point B, or just didn't use maps and relied on the place names. Here in Italy we have city gates and road names that still reflects that: I.E. to go to Milan you just exit from Porta Milano ("Door to Milan") and follow the only major road from there. To go to Rome, you follow the Via Romea, to go to France you follow the Via Francigena.
I adopted a similiar thing in my roleplaying campaing: I have my "True" map (accurate and modern) which the player have NO access to. They can go to a noble's palace or a travellers guild to see approximate in-world, and they need to sketch them if they want indications on how to travel. It's a bit of work, it enhances the immersion and mystery, and my players like that. It can also lead to various fun scenarios if used properly.
Yes, this. Except my current world is bronze-age and so they won't find any maps.
Yeah. I've always wondered why things like itinerariums aren't more popular in fantasy. Or approaches like the Peutinger Map, which is just a fancy, illustrated itinarium.
That said, I seem to recall a fantasy book where there were multiple types of maps, ie rough sketches over small areas, fairly detailed city maps, a T-type geopolitical map etc which all mad sense from the viewpoint and context of each part of the book - but I can't for the life of me remember which book it was.
My first GM described the map and had the players draw it throughout the campaign. It starts with general common knowledge of continent shapes, which the characters would have and then gets filled out with details from travels, NPC interactions and the sort. The result is surprisingly good.
that is soooo cool omg
Could You share a maps You get on google disc/reddit or somewhere else?
It sounds very interesting idea and I really would like to hear a result
Isn't that backwards? I'd expect any human, no matter if dark ages or modern, to have excellent grasp of surrounding area, vague idea about surrounding countries, and pretty much nothing about continents etc unless they are really educated or well travelled, but it sounds like the players have it the other way around...
@@KuK137Unless you have huge amounts of magic. If people can fly or astral project they might have a good grasp of wider geography. Another reason to run low-magic.
I love that
"For some reason"
The reason is for reader's sake. Personally, I have no bias for either. Especially considering most maps have a meta purpose of existing for the reader only and are not real maps in the setting. They look as if they are maps in setting as a stylist choice.
I always just assumed the maps at the beginning of some novels was just for our (the readers') reference. I never really thought the characters in the story had access to that information unless explicitly stated in the text. If there were some stylized or obscure looking map I probably would just ignore it unless it provided some important information about the book.
more like because that's easier to do and doesn't require research as opposed to realistic maps
@@JohnPrepuce That's why this video is kind of annoying to me, because it's based on a false assumption that the maps we see at the beginnings of novels are maps owned by people in-universe, which, for LotR and ASOIAF is just plainly not the case.
@@XxthetanklordxX But for many other novels, it plainly is the case. It depends entirely on what the author intends and how they want to present the geography of the world to the reader.
@@XxthetanklordxX Even if it's not meant for people "in-universe", this video still applies, the question is "what is the purpose of the map". As a reader, what information do we care about? If the use case of a map is not understood, it's probably not a very good map, after all. "Accuracy" only depends on "use". If the map is meant to represent geography perfectly, that means something very different from one designed to measure area perfectly, etc.
minor correction: the mercator projection does *not* map straight lines in real life (more formally geodesics) to straight lines on the map. it maps rhumbs, which are lines of constant heading, to straight lines. the projection which preserves the straightness of geodesics is the gnomonic projection.
Few people understand this rhumb line thing. "Aim at 30 degrees on compass. Turn as needed to keep that direction." Neither a straight line nor shortest path, but very easy to do with only a compass.
And this is exactly why the Mercator projection is useful if you /cannot/ tell the time. It gives a route to follow which does not require you to know exactly where you are on this route. If you want to sail a shorter and cheaper route, then you need a chronometer.
Whoa I gotta find a whole video on this; that's fascinating!
I think in a certain sense, fantasy maps need to be "usable" to the audience. Whether they're following along with the heroes in a novel or figuring out where their character is from in an RPG, a map that the average modern reader would barely recognize as a map loses some of this appeal, so following Tolkien's example rather than a Marshall Islander map is probably considered a safer bet for most creators.
I think that's not quite the whole truth. I think they also communicate a certain genre familiarity. By providing a map that looks just like those of Tolkien's works, you communicate that you're writing a story in that lineage, with those sensibilities in mind.
@@MCArt25tolkien's map is just a basic map with all the mountains, rivers, forest, castles. Everyone can use such maps for any genre.
I think fantasy maps being accurate is a result of managing your immersion budget.
The fantastical requires effort to imagine and accept, so anything familiar and reliable helps to offset that effort.
This is why most worlds have earth-like "satellite" maps, but also why they have earth trees, sun, moon (even if haunted), seasons, etc.
Writers might slightly alter one or more of these, but if you change everything the reader or player will be lost, with nothing to cling to.
I do like diagetic inaccurate maps, but i dislike withholding the real map.
There is a nice compromise to be had in presenting an accurate but incomplete map - a map of the known world that starts becoming less accurate at the edges, and that doesn't show the whole world.
This serves to preserve mystery and uncertainty, while still being reliable and useful for stories taking place within the core regions.
Personally, I think the series that attempt to 'manage their immersion budget' (excessively at least) are doing fantasy wrong.
I *want* fantasy to feel otherworldly, that's the whole point.
That said, I like realistic maps, since the map is for *my* benefit; not for the benefit of having something historical-looking. I want to *use* a map as I follow along a story, and speculate based on things written on it. That means I want I map I can trust, not a historically-accurate one where I can't tell a real feature from a stylistic choice.
@IamGrimalkin it's a difficult balance.
Not everyone has the same budget; you and I are more open to the fantastical, absurd, and unexplained. But others' require a bit more grounding to be able and enjoy fantasy.
Personally I think I disagree with the "budget". I'm currently writing a novel that has almost everything changed.
@@IamGrimalkin And how do you achieve 'otherworldly'? Let's say this world has magic, and the wizard can look at planet from above, getting wiev too inaccurate so say spy on armies or countries, but good enough to get all the locations of forests, mountains, rivers etc perfectly. Do we ruin this look because this map looks too 'modern'?
@@KuK137everybody has their preferences. I think that one of the great things about the genre is that there is a variety of creative minds. I like a more 'classic' fantasy, where things function much like earth, but there's elves, dwarves, and wizards. I think hyper-analytical worldbuilding can be a burden, as we're taking the unreal thing of magic and demanding it be defined in real, scientific terms. If somebody wants to do all that work for a story, there's an audience out there for them too.
I’m an environmental science-centered person. To me, understanding the non-human component of the world comes first. Then I can imagine how humans inhabit that space.
i agree. the ecosystem HEAVILY inspires what kind of culture the humans living there will develop and evolve into.
Valid!! And that's a cool perspective to bring to mapmaking!
@@NakariSpeardane i think this video has given me an interesting perspective NGL. rn i think the best approach (for me at least) would be to create two approaches for maps at the same time. First create a geographical map with all the rivers, terrains, regions in the way you see fit as accurately to you (what the world looks like in its entirety). And then create a map that is more weird in nature like you said in the video, the world which the people living in it know about. If I was to make a story, i wouldn't ever show the geographical map to readers ever lmao, just what the people living in it know about. Or just tit bits depending on how different cultures living in created their maps, or depending on how advance their navigational skills are and how much of the world is known, etc.
Same here!
SAMEEE. i have never understood oc people or anything, i don’t have any names for anyone. most fleshed out character i have made is for a concept album im planning now lol
I know I don't need my map to be perfect but I've already spent two years perfecting the tectonics and thanks to the sunk cost fallacy I'm not about to bow out now!
That being said, I absolutely adore the pair of maps from Toasted52 at 7:15. The geographically accurate 'god map' helps keep out unintended inconsistencies while the diagetic maps help keep the storyteller in the necessarily-limited viewpoint of a given person/people/polity. That's a great balance to strike-- guess I better start making more maps.
@@ageh4chou make the plate tectonics important to your narrative. Like in NK Jemisin's 5th Season the tectonics of the world are important both as plot & as symbol.
Your beautiful accurate map will mean you can create a brilliantly realistic world, and when you write make it easy to avoid geographical continuity errors.
And then, make smaller, less accurate, more artistic maps for random moments in the story.
Or... Do people in your universe have flight? Fly high enough and maps get accurate FAST.
Bruh I feel you. All I wanted was to create some languages and religions and instead I've been working on my climate map for like almost a decade. (It's fun though)
@GiltheDragon NK Jemisin is one of the best to ever do it tbh. I'm hoping to 'make it matter' in my story by using tectonics to determine the distribution of meteor mcguffinite that enables the magic system. NK Jemisin tied all that worldbuilding deeply into the heart of her characters' narratives though and above all else that's the lesson I hope to take from her stories. 🤞
@@tristanridley1601 And how do you achieve that'? Let's say this world has magic, and the wizard can look at planet from above, getting wiev too inaccurate so say spy on armies or countries, but good enough to get all the locations of forests, mountains, rivers etc perfectly. Do we ruin this look because this map looks too 'modern'?
The channel "Mapster" has a fantastic video on the map of Middle Earth by Tolkien. Tolkien struggled a lot with his map and used it to guide himself as much as it would guide the reader. He had yellowed, crudely hand-drawn maps he worked with initially, and the video does a great job detailing how he went from those to the more professional drawn map we got. Much like with a lot of fantasy, the way Tolkien did his map likely served as an example for the many maps we have now.
omg thank you so much for the channel/video ref, just checked out the channel and it seems right up my alley! :D
Also the Hobbit map, a representation of the in-World map is closer to what this channel wants.
I'd also argue that the Elves and by extension the Numenoreans had access to the Valar, the beings that MADE the world so of course they'd have relatively more accurate maps. Sauron also helped make the world and with Sauron's obsession with order he probably provided his forces with highly accurate maps. Eldar abilities are also likely involved.
Yesh tolkien pioneered fantasy as we know it
@@specialnewb9821 Yes, many fantasy worlds have in-universe justifications for cartographic accuracy.
Godlike beings or clairvoyants who can see things from a distance.
Ancient civilizations that were more advanced before they died out, but left some maps and other artifacts behind.
Flight through magic or riding on flying creatures like dragons.
@@specialnewb9821 Not to mention that Elves been around for a while, and with Dragons and Eagles hat access to air survailance ..
Third. Both LotR and SoIaF don't have complete maps of the worlds just of the current continent.
thank you for putting the map names and origin/time in the bottom corner it helps so much/encourages looking this stuff up when itd be easier not to !!
woah! i was actually thinking about this some time ago. personally, i really suck at the "hyper-realistic super real map of the world" kind of stuff (even if i excessively tried to learn it lol), and it always made me feel like i am a "bad" conworlder, making me enjoy less about creating my world. i guess this video is a good wake-up call for me to actually try to make a fun map _i_ would like for my world :3
You'll make the best map that's ever been made of*your* world. Do it and ignore the haters, especially the ones in your head
But are the realistic maps bad? Let's say this world has magic, and the wizard can look at planet from above, getting wiev too inaccurate so say spy on armies or countries, but good enough to get all the locations of forests, mountains, rivers etc perfectly. Do we ruin this look because this map looks too 'modern'?
@@KuK137 i never said anything you're insinuating. i just said i suck at making realistic maps even after doing a lot of research on how to do it, idk why you say i hate waffles when i just say i like pancakes
@@KuK137 why would a wizard who can astrally project outside the world care about geographic accuracy?
This is a very full video. A lot of great points crammed into just 8 minutes, so much so that I have pretty much nothing else to add. Maybe only that I think the current fantasy map style is so popular due to the kind of Fantasy stories that are popular right now. That being, world-spanning epics (probably due to the momentum from Tolkien and what style of map he chose to use). Those kinds of stories benefit greatly from a realistic depiction of the world, where the reader wants/needs to know where everyone is, how far everyone is from one another, etc. in order to create a satisfying story where the reader can understand how the world looks and works.
Exactly. She criticized the maps without understanding they aren’t for the characters in world. But for the reader to grasp the journey.
I think she gets that. But as a reader who enjoys fantasy world building, I enjoy when writers create maps that are creative or unusual, serving different narrative and immersive purposes.
A map being for fantasy readers should *encourage* greater creativity and diverse approaches to map design, not discourage them. "It's for readers" doesn't actually explain why so many maps are virtually identical and boring, unless you assume fantasy readers want boring, conventional things. And that's a pretty negative assumption about fantasy readers! @@daxlucero2437
I think the algorithm recommended me this because I’m taking cartography this semester, I’m so glad I found this channel !
The thing is that those maps are usualy not degetical, they are adressed to the reader/player with 3 main puropose :
-Help the reader/player to grasp the geography of this new world
-Evoke an idealised image of 18th/19th century world exploration
-Being beautiful
Showing a diegetical adressed to the people of the fantasy world woudl be very nice but it would serve another purpose : storytelling.
Next episode "Why Fantasy Worlds Use English Language"
I’ve always been obsessed with these types of maps !!! The world I’m working on right now has a variation of a T-O map with the cardinal directions in the corner of the frame. And other continents/countries use different stylizations. Each map has a purpose in world, and the way they present themselves is always impacted by that. I love the way narrative and agenda and purpose are so integral to the presentation of maps and always say something about the people making it and what they want to communicate. Brilliant video, thanks for sharing!
0:48 the map of equestria in mlp:fim has the arrow pointing east.. but north is still up
Why is it wherever I see a new video from you, I question everything I've ever done for world building..... Thank you! We always need that push out of the box to create interesting worlds and stories! I love this channel and all your work genuinely helps me!
Thank you! One of my aims is always to make people question the things that are so default they seem invisible :D
All these map designs have a purpose, & the same goes for the accurate ones you find in modern fiction. The purpose is clarity for the audience- a clover map is cool culturally, but fails completely for navigation. They're often shown with flair like an in-universe map might have, but generally that's for immersion, & I can't think of any examples off the top of my head where a map in the narrative is explicitly the very accurate map we are shown as readers/viewers/players without some kind of reason, like a magical device doing the mapping. I am all for seeing these cool historical gimmicks, but it has to come without being a detriment to the audience. Like, an Egyptian-inspired setting having maps with North at the bottom would be excellent, & wouldn't harm the legibility of the map for readers. But one that is just inaccurate wouldn't work to be presented as an actual map. If it's too inaccurate, it becomes obvious it is only an art piece & doesn't fulfill the role of map at all, just being a neat graphic. If it seems accurate enough, then either its inaccuracies don't come up & it is functionally identical, or it gives the sense that the reader has been lied to by the narrative, never a good feeling.
It was a great video, & I love weird historical oddities like this. But as far as fiction goes at least, we have the maps we do for good reason, & I'd like them to stay that way.
I think the info presented in the video answers the question. You show many types of maps that look the way they look for a reason. The classic fantasy map looks like it does because its focused on showing places of interest and shape of the land, so it uses the style best suited for those 2 objectives. It wouldn't make sense for a map i give to my players to focus on ocean currents, or things like that.
I could make a map that instead of highlighting places focuses on some cultural tidbit i want to portray, but that's a lot of work for something that could just as well be shown with narration.
Maps are the best at pointing out places of interest, countries and geography, so that's why most maps are used for that, instead of some commentary on local cuisine, despite the fact that a map could absolutely do that.
this really got me to think about something ive never thought about before, really good job. your videos always make me think why.
I feel like you're missing the main point of having maps in fantasy in the first place:
It's not to mimic historical maps, it's so the readers have an image in their head of where this all takes place, how far the character have to walk etc.
Also, you may want to use it for worldbuilding purposes. If there's an island on the map which is a giant monster, you want the reader to think it's really a giant monster; not some medieval map feature.
For this reason, some degree of geographical accuracy to the fantasy world is usually necessary.
Maybe what you're describing might be useful for an in-universe map found by a character, but not for the maps found in the inside cover of the book itself.
Besides, if the whole concept is they didn't make geographically accurate maps because they couldn't measure longitude; plenty of characters in fantasy have the means of measuring longitude via magic (all you need is a clock which works on a boat, and timekeeping magic is often present even when navigational magic isn't).
It's stuff like this that has me adoring your videos.
To see otherworlds not as static ships in bottles but as cabinets of curiosities; as archaeological assemblages of neverwheres & neverwhens
Great insight into map making. I am now motivated to make different types of maps for each civilization living in a world based on their priorities. An underground civilization, only mark tunnels and where they lead with no regard to distance. A wild civilization living in a forest, no regard to outside life but a map of the forest based on what creatures live there is carved out of wood. Trading nation, trading routes with cities and supply cites and maybe marked with dangerous areas on the routes
Another reason for a more boring style of map is that it can be used to orientate yourself in your world and place things on fixed spot. Making abstract maps or even inaccurate maps is the cherry on top or the polished version to present to someone else, but while you're still figuring things out and building things up, it helps a lot to have a map where you can look things up in case you forgot something
So you have two, or more, sets of maps. One GM set, the other in-world, diegetic set the PCs and players have access to.
@@davidmorgan6896 thats what i said no ?
The idea that squiggly coastlines make a map more "accurate" is cute but I also wish it'd just fade away like Tolkien's elves.
Most people who see your map would assume the mistake was not intentional anyway, they'll just be confused and think the author is stupid, especially in a video game. Can you imagine finding a treasure map, following it, and having to dig randomly for 20 minutes because the map was labeled wrong intentionally? It certainly can be done, but its also very easy for it to have a negative impact on the audience
if i recall the book 'the jasmine throne' by tasha suri has a really cool clover map and I wish more authors would use it! i think it's really cool and presenting more abstract maps can say a lot more about a fantasy world than simply where things are. really fun video as always! :)
I’m reading The Jasmine Throne currently and I was so excited by the intriguing map design! The lack of “accuracy” actually makes it so much easier for me to understand where characters are/are from.
That ad transition was so clean I subbed
Well, it depends on the effect you're going for, I guess. I as a reader, need something that's easy to read and helps me know where everything is going on in the story relative to everything else (hence why it's ok to have maps with an anachronistic level of accuracy).
It *would* be cool to see someone go a little crazy and design their setting's equivalent to the old Babylonian map of the world, though, I agree.
I think it more or less depends on whether the map is used by the world-builder to document the world they create, or whether it is a part of the world itself. I think a lot of people tend to use maps for reference, although the in-universe maps you mentioned will also give many ways of connecting thing. Really interesting video.
Great video, and I love your examples. That said, I have to admit though that making a map that my players or readers can understand comes first for me. Maybe I'm to worried about losing their interest if I give them a map they have no idea how to read.
This was an awesome video, really enjoyed it! Just a quick correction on Mercator maps from a cartographer - straight lines on Mercator are rhumb lines (lines of constant bearing), but these aren't really straight lines in most cases. So, super useful for navigating with a compass, but following a straight line on the map you would begin to diverge from a true straight path (great circle). Maybe you already know this though and are simplifying :)
This comment needs to be more visible. The "straight lines on the map are straight lines in real life" projection is called Gnomonic, not Mercator. It's also substantially older than Mercator, preceding it by some two millennia.
@@MarsAnonymous Yup!
I’ve litterally never been this early to a video before. And it’s to a video from my worldbuilding inspiration!
My favourite ever map is the Mappamondo Fra Maoro in the Museo Galileo in Florence. I went there with my school as part of my exchange trip in the city and I vividly remember the museum instructor asking "What's interesting about this map?" (In Italian) And within a second I had immediately turned my head a full 180 degrees upside down (in front of another 40 kids mind you😅) to see the map. It's super cool and detailed, and it's even available online for free for any map enthousiasts :D
Fenomenal video! my conlangs live in a roughly 90 degree shaped continent, so this video inspired me to put east (the economic center of the world) on top and north on the bottom if I ever get around to mapping it
1:15 this map is literally that map in Hollow Knight! In the assets for the game there is this weird looking furniture piece with balls on it and it's labeled as a map of the outside world but of course it doesn't look like a map. It sort of looks similar to this, which I find interesting
Excellent points! I didn’t realise maps could be a farm more interesting look into their cultures like that!
you deserve way way more than 21k subscribers.
What I like about Stormlight is that even though most of the maps are closer to a standard style, it feels very deliberate and context specific. We see various maps from different cultures and for different purposes (navigational, battlefield, etc...) and cartography as a job and activity is discussed in the story itself.
In some defence of TES maps, that is a setting where magic is explicitly regularly used to replace things we'd use technology for (for one cartography-relevant example mentioned in the games, flying magic to get overhead views of areas) and groups that would definitely strive for geographic accuracy (the example map is from the Imperial Geographic Society).
One reason why I always go low-magic. The main one is that magic as technology isn't magical anymore and I may as well run sci-fi.
Making a map for a ttrpg and Nakari comes out with the perfect video \o/
This is an incredible video. Amazing pacing, structure, writing, and, of course, visuals. Best of all, you guide the viewer's curiosity to pose themself questions, which you then immediately answer!
Well, in a world with bolth magic artifacts and flying mounts, it's easier to get a lay of the land.
My guess is that most paper maps are drawn copies of magical maps.
This is not only an insightful video, but a beautifully made one. Thank you for this!
Thankyou Nakari.
My setting is one with a lot of spatial oddities, for example the Black Forest is about the size of Bri'ish-land from the outside*, but anywhere from the size of Asia to literally infinite on the inside.
*(as in, an Otherworlder mathematician and geographer claimed that a long journey around it suggested a similar external size to what they remembered from Earth. They also said this journey wasn't worth it, wrote a great many letters of apology to the families and loved ones of the companions they lost along the way, and died of alcoholism-related health complications a few years later)
Thus I'm often stuck and doubly dumbfounded by how best to not denigrate the multiplied madness of the world filled with sadness and ever short on gladness while still representing its locations.
You have brought me to the "just imagine you're one of the nutjobs - part one: think like a nutjob achieved - that tries to map this stuff out from within the world" realization. When I have become the tyrannical dictator of a nation, I will be sure to provide you with a standing ovation.
This was really cool! Ive definitely been an “objective geography” mapmaker, but this really has me thinking about making more localized maps with specific purpose and perspective.
I think One Piece is an interesting example of playing with cartography. For one thing a lot of the maps seem to point to ordinal directions instead of the cardinal ones, because of how the world is structured around the Red Line and the Grand Line, which are both aligned with the ordinal directions. Typically northeast seems to be up, but sometimes it can be northwest instead, or seemingly any other direction. Maps can also be outdated or badly drawn, and it's implied that many of them are inaccurate or incomplete (because Nami's ability to draw accurate maps is considered special, so special in fact that Arlong considered her a crucial pawn for his world domination plan.) There's also no proper world map, and drawing one is Nami's life goal.
It's a small thing but I really appreciate it. Even though not having a full and accurate world map is driving me nuts as a fan lmao
I always thought Nami dream was just shit, but reading your comments also made me realize this unique purpose
I love this so much! This is imo one of the most informative resources I've ever seen on this topic (which tracks with the rest of the channel's content). I personally like to begin my mapbuilding with geographically accurate maps, so that I can base other parts of the stories and worldbuilding on accurate geographical information, but I've been really struggling moving away from these maps once they're done, and this video is just so full of inspiration and useful information, thank you so so so much!
Love this video! I've always liked fantasy maps that don't put north at the top. Thanks for reminding everyone that there are so many more options for displaying information than we're used to!
Great video, thank you. I can also imagine adventure scenario's in which finding an old map with the previous boundaries is the only way to solve a riddle and find a treasure, but the old maps were suppressed specifically because they highlighted the humble origins of the current, dominant, empire. Good stuff!
In books, it's because the map is for the readers, not for the characters. Criticising their accuracy is like criticizing the book for being printed on paper rather than on medieval style parchment.
It'd be cool to have innacurate maps in movies and TTRPGs, though.
I'm stunned that you managed to subsequently bring in every map I thought of while watching this video shortly after I thought of them. It was simultaneously impressive and kind of scary!
Not quite done watching this, but to address the potential negative reactions ala 5:38, one could use an in-universe explanation of a map. Who created it, in what era, what nation, the intended purpose, etc... An in-lore explanation of the map, even as just an asterisk, would do a lot to convince an audience to take a liking to the map.
yesss i love this!! for my renaissance-era Kids on Bikes supplement i have two maps of the world, and of Venice, the setting: one that was made for actual reference, which is just the modern Earth but with the appropriate states labeled, and a time-accurate map, that is wildly fantastical and inaccurate. it's SO fun.
LETS GOOOO new Nakari video 🥳🥳🥳🤩🤩🤩
Very interesting! Made me consider putting a different map in each next book of my series depending on whose story it's telling! And then, when in the last book all plotlines converge, I may finally reveal the accurate geographical map of the world ❤
i was about to skip the ad for the vpn b4 yuu said yuu were joking i got caught off guard 😭
This channel was made for me! Love it.
Love the maps you covered here! How about spatial-temporal abstract maps using the metaphors of watersheds/tributaries flowing into rivers? I only say this because it now occurs to me that the corner map I did for the chorographical map for my fictional project kind of seems like a map akin to the talismanic map that you featured by Ursula Le Guin!
Had to smile when you gave north=up as the first example when the long-time fantasy project I'm working on with my friend has south=up :)
Mad good video btw
One really cool thing about Morrowind is that the biggest, and notoriously confusing to navigate, area- Vivec city- has got vendors that sell copies of a diegetic map and guide, which is actually more helpful than the game's own local map.
Morrowind is #1
I think weird in universe maps are definitely important as you say, but also having an accurate map purely for the benefit of the reader is nice. An example I can think of here is actually the Stormlight Archive. You show the map that's in the start of every book but there's also multiple in universe maps with varying accuracy and symbolism. Having both can give the reader something clear that lets them keep track of the progress of the characters while also having the imperfect and filtered views that make sense in the world.
Very interesting topic, a lot to think about here.
When I was a kid I thought I wanted to be an epic fantasy author but I realized all I really wanted to do was make maps. One of my favorite things to do with historical maps is to arrange them as they changed and then put in parallel the different maps from different competing cultures at the same time. This allows you to see a story about thoughts of ownership, claimage and ambition and how those things changed over the course of a competition between cultures or political forces in a given space.
I've developed this ambition to build that experience into a fantasy story. But I think it would end up being more of a picture book that's relatively short rather than something like epic fantasy.
Reminds me of how Tolkien just wanted a world for his languages because it was languages that interested him.
the art at 0:16 is GORGEOUS omg.
also, fantastic video, this open creativity with maps (and everything else) is what i wanna incorporate more for my own stories
The maps in fantasy book are meant to be a reference for the reader and thus need to be easy to read. Maybe having other maps in the book that would show what it would look like to people in the world might be cool, you still need that easy to understand map for the readers.
You don't, tbh. If your story needs a detailed and accurate map so the described journey or spatial relations made sense, it means it either overly complicated or poorly described. My first Hobbit book did not contain a map, yet it wasn't terribly hard even as a child to paint the journey in your mind: from Hobbiton to Erebor all of the described locations lies vaguely on the line eastward. And you don't need the angle of intersection between Running and Forest rivers for the story.
Sometimes making information perfectly transparent can be bad for writing. A little bit of obscurity, as long as it has a narrative reason, is often a good idea, and you can then present a stylised map which can also tell a story.
@@Folemaet doesnt change the fact the map is meant for the reader as a reference. putting a map they cant understand does nothing for the world building, its better to not have one if you were going to do just that.
@@psal8715 cartographic traditions that are entirely foreign to the ones we are used to do nothing for the worldbuilding?
Wooo! Tabula Peutingeriana mentioned! Also a great online resource for looking at historic maps is the David Rumsey Map collection. It's a high res collection that is index so you can look maps up by what, when, where, or who. You can also download copies for free. First time seeing one of you videos but it has great info
Very much seconded for the David Rumsey collection - as a historian I found extremely useful maps there.
not to nitpick, more to show an interesting fact that further supports your point; when you said "north pointing compass" you showed a chinese compass which traditionally "point south" and weren't even originally used for navigation, but for feng shui!
The Mercator projection *was* useful before the development of the marine chronometer, in fact, the nigh impossibility of knowing one's latitude was precisely *why* the Mercator projection was used: straight lines on the projection, aka rhumb lines, represent lines of constant compass bearing. If you set off from Plymouth to Virginia, and you knew that you should follow a particular rhumb line, then staying on that constant bearing would get you to your destination.
Prior to that, sailors had to use dead reckoning to calculate longitude (i.e., an educated, very rough guess), so they basically sailed directly east or west until they made landfall, and then guessed whether they should sail north or south to reach their destination. Mercator changed that with this projection.
The one problem, of course, is that unless the sea remains calm for your entire months' long crossing, you're going to get knocked off your bearing. But even before it became possible to calculate longitude accurately, if you'd been following a particular rhumb line, and you'd been knocked off course, by using a sextant and dead reckoning, you could at least get a reasonable idea of how far north or south you were compared to where you should be, and course correct.
TL;DR - the Mercator projection was already an advancement and a great help to navigators, even before the development of the marine chronometer.
Happened across this video never having seen anything of your work. I enjoyed it. The maps were very interesting, your descriptions were helpful, and I thought you made some good points. Thanks for the pleasant 8 and a half minutes.
i recently read Tasha Suri's The Jasmine Throne, and it had a map shaped like a flower, with the main city of the empire in the centre and vassal states in the flower petals. I was very confused lol but once i got used to it, it was a refreshing change
thank you, this has given me the thought of having my players potential use an outdated or simplified map for the region they're exploring in my dnd game
and I can make the markers on the maps extreme exaggerations of potentially real landmarks
НАКАРИПОСТИНГ
Found you!
Hi fuxiar :D
@@cloudGremlinI'm too young to leave this world 😭
Hello. 👀
XD hi fuxiar
There was one great fantasy series i read a while back that really made sure that it was accurate to how things were in the period that was set. And one small detail that stood out to me was that maps were considered a national secret as they could compromise them when fighting other countries. So the main character had to hire a massive amount of merchants to run things around while recording the terrain on the way to towns and villages. And a few months later they managed to make a rough sketch of about how everything looked. And I just wish more stories would do clever things like that and make maps more diegetic to their setting. It just makes the world feel more real and fleshed out.
I don't have much to say but i really like your videos so here's some engagement
I've always thought this.
And what an adorable little voice!
as a nerd for how geography affects development of civilizations/cultures etc, I like know the geography of my worlds. BUT the reader getting maps like these would be super cool. Could even be used as a tool for making an unreliable narrator!
when i saw The Jasmine Throne and opened it to find an abstract 5-petal lotus map, i knew i was gonna get it.
5:08 I immediately fast forwarded by 2 mins only to then realise I'd missed a huge chunk of the video because the VPN was a lie!
Love this video! I like how you showed different styles of fantasy maps as a fan of cartography! It should probably be pointed out that the Gall-Peters is still a fairly flawed map since it’s specifically designed to provide the least amount of distortion to Europe at the cost of significant distortion to regions in the equatorial latitudes (Africa, Latin America, Australasia). My personal recommendation for equal-area maps has been Hobo-Dyer and (if you aren’t a square about non-rectangles) butterfly maps! (Although I do admit that Randall Munroe may have had some influence on my opinions.)
I think it's great for writing to create a "perfect map" so you have a clear vision as a writer, and it's easier to then create a fun/creative map for the reader
great video btw!!!
Stumbling across this video prompted me to look through all your other ones and wow, great stuff. Concentrated world building inspiration, and tons of interesting stuff I didn't know about before.
5:13 I instinctual skipped 10 seconds and got an add instead
I really love this! Especially the Inuit and the stick-maps are super inspiring: in my (medieval/renaissance leaning) world, I have some specialised humans known as Fateriders, who travel one-directional energy streams that are dangerous and hard to access but let you travel fast and far. They would absolutely be using a map like that - a physical representation of where the fatestreams run, where there are safe places to enter and exit, in which direction they flow, etc. Also, one of my characters is a mapmaker himself, who creates specialised maps himself based on the vast knowledge of the Fateriders - so now I have lots of information of how his maps could look, based on how it would be warped through his perspective and what would be important to him!
On the topic of distorition and objectivity: Aren't a lot of your comments on the maps in the beginning rested upon unstated assumptions? In your points you are assuming those maps to be 100% accurate and objective, even though such is never outright stated or confirmed in many stories. They very well might be distorted and objective already. After all we don't know the true geography of those worlds nor do we know what projection was used to create those maps.
You could apply a similar thought experiment to the direction the maps portray. If we assume a tolkien-like lense (ie. the work we read is a translation of into terms understandable for us) and the story never shows to us a compass, then it makes sense that we define north by whatever direction is portrayed as up in maps most commonly.
In one of my urbanism classes we saw this subject of map making, map representation, and how our perception, philosophy and understanding develop along with those illustrations. The main giveaway he gave us that day was:
“No 2D map is ever fully accurate, thus every single map is subjective in nature. They shape our perception of our world and worldviews. They can affirm our biases or change the way we see things. Whenever we take a pen and paper we decide whats important and what’s not; we decide what to show, what to highlight, and what to hide. This is extremely important to understand, because whatever we represent has a message with the power to make a stance or reaffirm the reality. Be careful with what and how you draw it, but most importantly, draw it with conviction.”
6:18 reminds me of “thiswardly”.
Made me think of "upspin" and "downspin" to describe directions on any of the halo rings.
Outstanding video! I really liked how clearly you showed that not only ancient maps, but also current ones have embedded biases and intentions, as well as traces of technological means and aesthetic values. Insightful and inspiring!
Thank you!! It's always really interesting to consider the choices behind things, conscious or not :D
1:00 humans have an intrinsic north knowledge, just like every animal.
i feel like we as animals have more specifically an east-west knowledge, no? with the day cycle and all
I really needed to see this video- you'v opened a whole new world for me!
Mercator's influence on sizes of continents was simply an unintentional side-effect of its projection which was essential for what it was designed for, sailing the oceans. I have never seen evidence presented that demonstrates a deliberate political motive for making them that way. I'd be interested in such evidence if it could be produced though.
I can see an alternate timeline where the British Empire invents the Peters projection in the 19th century to show off how much territory they have in comparison to, say, the Russian Empire
Wonderful video! It really blew me away when I realized how little I've thought about this subject before, and it immediately got me thinking about the way I could depict my atlas! I've never really enjoyed drawing maps for the fun of it, but I use them when running my DnD games. I can't imagine how exciting it would be a for a player to get handed something like the inuit coastline map and then told to navigate using that!
fascinating!
Given my fantasy style maps are for my own pleasure or for kids art club lessons this is definitely going to inspire me to play around a lot more! Thanks for the nudge!
I think the map at the front of the Stormlight Archive books are not meant to be as diegetic as you suggest. There are multiple illustration within The Way of Kings that are explicitly diegetic and while they are (at least presented as) much more accurate than anything you have showcased, they do have some odd quirks. The Alethkar map is oriented across its largest extent and the map of Sadeas' warcamp has a peculiar shape because it was scratched onto a shell from a creature.
You have once again made such a great video that really showcases how many ways there are to make a map and it will surely inspire everyone that gets to watch it!!
Never thought about the contrast between the Dune map and middle earth, wheel of time, roshar etc but such a good point!
Someone deleted a comment about how these types of maps need to replace the current standard. I just wanted to say that there are pragmatic arguments that can be made for the standardized maps most fantasy stories use in that the vast majority of your audience can take one look at it and understand what it is without confusion. After-all what purpose do fantasy maps serve (aside from being fun to make) than to display information to the reader about important locations, geography, politics, and other details? The standard maps are very good at accomplishing that.
She also said she had nothing against those maps and just wanted variety. There's no reason a work cannot include more than one type of map!
5:15 - You totally got me with that, and earned yourself a subscriber.
Great video. The challenge is that a map like these real-world examples takes a lot more effort and creativity to produce. It’s hard when you know what’s there to show it in a less accurate way.