Unnamed Regional Map (River Police check)

[Neyjour]

Before I get further along with this, could the River Police tell me if there's any issues, please?

Unnamed Regional Map WIP by Neyjour.png

[Zach]

I'm not River Police, but it looks to me like there are no serious errors with the rivers. I have some minor concerns, though:
- Is that supposed to be a lake with the horizontally oriented island in it, or a section of river?
- Rivers don't flow through high ground. So that large crescent-shaped area in the top of the map with the castle in the middle (and especially around the lake) must be some fairly high ground in order for the longest river to divert its course around it. I guess the problem is that there isn't anything on the map (hills, whatever) to indicate that.
- The rivers look a bit wide for the scale of the map, but you're probably going to change that.

Other than that, everything looks fine.

[Neyjour]

Thanks very much, Zach.

* Yes, the smaller portion below the large lake is another, smaller lake with an island. If that doesn't translate well, I could make the island a bit smaller (or get rid of it altogether).
* I haven't worked much on the terrain yet. This is just a base texture/colour at the moment.
* Yes, the rivers are just roughly drawn placeholders. The final ones will be thinner and will look very different (colour/texture-wise).

[Neyjour]

Here's some revisions and additions. Does this look better? And again, any issues?

Unnamed Regional Map WIP-2 by Neyjour.png

[Pixie]

I'm not the river police, but I can reason some geography on your map. I prefer the first to the second.

The huge lake draining through the mountain range eastward is highly unlinkley. It makes your (island?) terrain tilted with high ground on NW and lower land over the whole south coast. The depicted mountains suggest otherwise. I think you could suggest that land is higher depicting high cliffs on the western coast, but the perspective won't make it easy (I guess the artists here could help on that, though)

As for option 1, it looks much more reasonable. The lake could form from the the runoff of all the rain on the east slopes of the range which accumulates in a mid-continent depression. This would be congruent with West->East maritime winds, which are typical northern hemisphere temperate climate, and also consistent with the overall mountain system. The lake would one outflow from a low point, probably the very end of the small mountain chain that runs south from the NE coast (you could continue it with some hills to make this more obvious). If you choose to go down this path, I would suggest adapting the shape of the lake into something more elongated, roughly respecting the shape of the western chain (roughly, a capital D).
Which also brings another subject - a detail if you like. If the majority of the rivers appear on the west slop, that means that's where the humid winds come from. Which means the east coast is in the "rain shadow" of that main range. Hence, your highly forested area should not be there. (Or, if that is highly forested, the west should be even more forested - if it's not, the main reason is human deforestation, aka, many people and lots of agriculture).

Hope this helps. The map looks good overall.

[Galendae]

Get a River Doctor in here STAFF!

[Neyjour]

Pixie - Thanks very much. I appreciate you trying to help. I feel a bit stupid, though, because I'll be honest... I don't understand some of what you were saying. I guess I would need some kind of visual to help me out with that, or a "Rivers for Dummies" type of explanation.

Basically, I just want to make sure that the rivers are feasible, and that there are no glaring mistakes. Once I've got them in place, terrain/texturing and more trees will come later.

So, well... here's another revision that's a combination of the 1st and 2nd.

Unnamed Regional Map WIP-3 by Neyjour.png

[Raptori]

In essence, water - streams, rivers, etc - flows downhill from mountains to the sea, and as they flow downhill they join up with each other - forming bigger streams, then rivers, then larger rivers. I think a useful analogy is that a river is roughly shaped like a tree, with the base being river mouth at the coast and the thinnest twigs being streams on the slopes of a mountain range. Obviously with rivers it's a bit more complex, since they can and do form lakes and do all sorts of other cool stuff in unusual situations, and since there are things which govern where they will appear (which was part of what Pixie was talking about) but the vast majority would follow that simple principle.

So yeah, in summary, the rivers in your current map look fine

[MadLetter]

Far as I remember it's highly unusual and very much temporary for rivers to split into two fully different streams, though, isn't it?

[Domino44]

Don't feel stupid Neyjour, I have a similar problem when it comes to rivers and lakes. I always want the water to look cool first and then I worry about how plausible it actually is. I have found it hard to discover the balance between the rivers being artistically engaging as well as geographically correct. The river police have been rather helpful though.