Episode 169: For the Cartography-Curious

Few things are more glorious than opening up a fantasy book and seeing a gorgeously detailed map right up front. So what goes into making that masterpiece for you to feast your eyes and imagination upon? In this episode, we discuss our love of maps, some of the ways we make maps, and the relationship between the map and the text. We also share some of our favorite maps, as well as exploring some non-traditional types that we'd love to see more of in fantasy and sci-fi novels.

Creating a solid map for your world is something that might seem basic at first, but doing it well involves a lot of different skills and knowledge bases: everything from geology and plate tectonics to linguistics and political science. A map really can be a microcosm of your world and its story. How are you going to create yours?

And, as promised, here are some of the links we said we'd drop in the show notes!

• Marshall's Maradaine Maps
• Inkarnate (a classic fantasy map generator)
• Watabou City Generator (make a town or city)
• Azgaar (spin up some worlds!)
• Tectonic Explorer (lets you play with crashing continents into each other)
• The enormous maps of our co-created world
• Time lapse video of border changes in Western Europe (ie, smash the HRE with a hammer)
• The Holy Roman Empire
• Germany in the 18th century
• Cross-section of life in a medieval castle
• Official Star Wars galaxy map
• Less official but more granular Star Wars galaxy map
• The medieval-style Star Wars map
• Star Trek galaxy map

[Transcript for Episode 169]