World Design Questions

[Gumboot]

My main issue with population and civilization concerns was my own misreading of maps I've seen in other fantasy novels. They're not like Google Maps. They don't show you every little village - just the big or important ones. I think that was my biggest problem.

To be totally honest, from the perspective of realism, most fantasy world building is terrible. Even authors praised for their realism like George RR Martin do a pretty embarrassingly bad job (they're in the business of telling stories after all, not creating a world)

I found the page that Falconius linked shortly after I made this post. Gumboot's interpretation and personal insight definitely helped too.

That document is my world building bible, and I use the excel spreadsheet created from that document (modified as needed) as my template for every state I build.

Edit: Gumboot, why do you say rivers don't split? I know they do, but is it just rarer than I realize?

It's exceptionally rare. The number on the entire planet is probably dozens.

Note that I'm excluding deltas and multi-channel rivers (braided rivers) from this.