Map of [Region Name Here]

[octopod]

If you have big mountains on both the east and west of the central realm, you're setting that realm up to be like the Central Valley or the Turpan Basin -- hot, dry, watered by mountain runoff, agriculturally productive? That's pretty cool, I like it, but you'll want to have those rivers flowing south into that bay at the bottom, I think, which will involve removing part of that string of hills down there.

Now knowing that the grey means high mountains, I might connect the grey ridge actually -- erase the bit of it on the southern shore of the inland sea, then attach the northern part with a line going straight north-south across the isthmus to the mountains on the left coast of the southern landmass. Then you could handwave the tectonics by saying that your central realm is a microplate (like Tarim, again!) that's getting squished between the plate containing the southern continent and the inland sea on the bottom + right and the ocean plate on the left, with fairly neutral relations with the plate in the north.

ETA: wheeee, I scribbled on it in crayon

(little S-shaped twiddles indicate arc volcanism; also notice I did the things I described in my second paragraph)

[Scipio]

If you have big mountains on both the east and west of the central realm, you're setting that realm up to be like the Central Valley or the Turpan Basin -- hot, dry, watered by mountain runoff, agriculturally productive? That's pretty cool, I like it, but you'll want to have those rivers flowing south into that bay at the bottom, I think, which will involve removing part of that string of hills down there.

Now knowing that the grey means high mountains, I might connect the grey ridge actually -- erase the bit of it on the southern shore of the inland sea, then attach the northern part with a line going straight north-south across the isthmus to the mountains on the left coast of the southern landmass. Then you could handwave the tectonics by saying that your central realm is a microplate (like Tarim, again!) that's getting squished between the plate containing the southern continent and the inland sea on the bottom + right and the ocean plate on the left, with fairly neutral relations with the plate in the north.

ETA: wheeee, I scribbled on it in crayon

(little S-shaped twiddles indicate arc volcanism; also notice I did the things I described in my second paragraph)

Wow, thanks for the help! I wasn't exactly thinking central valley style, though... more kinda like a C-shape chain of mountains separating the main basin (facing the inland sea) from the tundra in the north, sea to the west, and the desert in the south. Now that I think about it the confusion probably arose from the fact that I used grey lines for imprecise indications of unfinished coastline around the inland sea and desert region. So there wasn't supposed to be a grey ridge. Silly me (using grey for both coastline and high elevation didn't confuse me at the time since I had it all in my head, but the stupidity is obvious now, haha). Hmmm... since you mention it though, maybe the valley makes more sense... I really like the microplate idea, and I did envision having a natural gateway mountain pass into the desert...

I was also concerned about my placement of forests though. I guess it makes sense to have the small forests along the west coast, but then at the same time the two major forests could only be formed from air currents rising off from the inland sea. Perhaps that is unrealistic, though...

Once again, thanks a lot. Sorry for the confusion, but this is all very helpful. It may well be that how you interpreted my plans is actually more feasible than what I envisioned.