WIP- Adding Teutonic Plates!!

[Bobemor]

So I'm a huge ameatur at all this, and I've got my world, hand drawn/sketched (no artist) and being digitalized slowly. But before I get any further I need to work out my Tectonic plates, I thought I had a good understanding of these things (looked at many a guide even got out my old geography books xD), but it seems adding plates after designing the thing is much harder and all the guides I found were about designing with tectonic plates first.



So, would those work? Please ignore rivers, artistic style and climates... for now

Thanks in advance!!

[Chick]

Hi Bobemor, I'm curious why you need the tectonic plates in the first place. You can make a world map without caring about them, as long as you remember a few basic rules, such as mountains form in long straight or gently curved ranges, never at sharp angles to each other, and not a lot of isolated mountains standing alone by themselves. Volcanoes most frequently occur in arcs of islands, which is where plates are converging, but as long as you keep them in realistic arcs, the tectonics will be understood by default. You might not need to go through all this

[Bobemor]

Hmm, I guess i'm just trying to make sure that I have followed the basic rules (something i'm not sure i have done D: ). I'm also really into the realism thing I guess so I want to get these things right. I guess though as long as the tectonic plates are part right it doesn't matter hugely, partly it should help me work out earth quakes and such.

[Chick]

Realism is good, and I'm forever annoying people by pointing out lakes with no outlets and mountains that meet at right angles, but I think if you understand tectonics and other geology a bit, you can avoid those kind of problems and just make a nice map without being too explicit about where the plates meet.

Sometimes I want a river running a certain place, so I just build a few hills to channel it where I want it. That's part of the fun of fantasy mapping, you can adjust your world to fit the story, instead of getting hung up on fitting into something real.

[Chashio]

Realism is good, and I'm forever annoying people by pointing out lakes with no outlets and mountains that meet at right angles . . .

Hmm... Maybe we should put up a map of wrongness that illustrates and labels all of the stuff that doesn't usually happen in the real world, and include supporting texts and examples of what does work and why, and possible rare exceptions.

I'm not really more informed than you, Bobemor, on the subject of tectonics but I appreciate your wanting to keep it real for plausibility, though I also agree that there's likely a point past which is good enough. I'm curious what you're designing this setting for.

[ascanius]

First off I kinda agree with chick on this. I sarted, along with a few others here, with a tectonic map and the continent I'm working on now doesn't really show all the time and work I went into making that map. I'm not saying all the work was wasted but I could have arrived at the same place without the tectonic map, the only place that it shows is at the global scale but at the continental it doesn't show.

If you still want to do tectonics though, I suggest you go do your reaserch on tectonics. Your going to need to know about divergent, convergent, and transform boundaries and how they intereact with eachother. Already looking at what you have so far I can see a lot of problem areas. You might also want to create a world map first and get tectonics all mapped out before going to a smaller scale, though thats just my opinion. And lastly check out the threads of other users who did the same thing, Pixie, Groovey, Azelor, myself and a few others started with tectonic maps and there is a lot of information.

[ChickPea]

There is a sorta one page guide on Reddit here:

http://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuildin...from_a_little/

I'm not qualified to judge the accuracy of the info (maybe Chick could weigh in?) but it's certainly a manageable introduction to the subject if you just want the basics.

[Chick]

The reddit page looks quite good to me, and is a nice intro to some basic geology, but it really doesn't address the main issue here, which is how to make a map that is consistent with good geology without having to know all the underlying theory.

I don't want to hijack this thread for that purpose, but perhaps it would be a good idea to make a collection of the most common geological mistakes people make because they don't know better, as Chashio suggested, and stick it up as a tutorial.

Chashio, want to start a thread like that, get a lot of suggestions, and then one of us can pop it all into a tutorial?

[Bobemor]

I guess at the end of the day I enjoy knowing that it's accurate, currently other than significant mountains I'd already planned, i've just been adding hills where i need rivers to start from.
But so at first glance do my mountains look okay? Are there no obvious ones missing?

@Chashio, currently just my own non magical fantasy world. The world is going to be in use through out history (not just medieval, in fact mostly not medieval).
Also that sounds like a great idea, too many wordy explainations out there D:

@ascanius My solution to needing a whole world map is that i'll just have some handy oceanic plates seperating the other main land mass Though please point out problem areas, I can think of some obvious ones myself. Also a slight problem is I have parts of my map I've already set my mind on wanting, and the amount of time i've put it i certainly ain't starting again xD

Hijack away, but a seperate tutorial thread would be better aha. I've been looking for something that lists things simply, it took me a few weeks and browses of this forum and google to find out that lakes only have one outlet, seems obvious now but it wasn't something I thought about. Same with mountains at right angles. A comprehensive bullet point list of things to avoid would be great!

[Chick]

Here's the thread! http://www.cartographersguild.com/sh...ad.php?t=30156

Hopefully some people will add ideas.