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November 26, 2023 24 mins

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Ready to become a master mapmaker for your next big role-play or political campaign? This episode will make you an expert, as Jay and I, Wyatt Cerulean, guide you through the intrinsic details of building your own immersive world maps. Prepare to set your campaign worlds apart as we delve deep into specifics, from the art of designing rivers and forests to the strategic placement of cities and fortresses. We also highlight the wonders of technology and how it can aid you in your map creation journey, whether you prefer digital or traditional methods.

But that's not all! We also unpack the importance of building a compelling backstory for your villains and how that can shape your world's geography. From the ruins of their past failures to the fortresses of their current reign, learn how to weave these aspects into your map for an ultimately engaging political campaign. We also emphasize the significance of naming and defending your regions, and how it can impact the smaller areas, such as cities. So, tune in as we embark on this cartographic adventure together, filled with practical advice, real-world examples, and exciting revelations!

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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, welcome back to episode seven of DMI.
Today our topic is gonna beworld maps, as we stated last
week.
So if you wanted to get intoour theming episode, check out
the last episode.
Today we're really gonna kindof dive into how to build your
world map and how to theme it tokind of fit and feel more
realistic and immersive.
My name is Wyatt and I amjoined today by my co-host.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
Jay Cerulean.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
So when you're looking at world maps, there's a
couple of ways to do it.
I would say the most importantthing is just to take your time
with them.
Don't try to rush this like aweek before your campaign.
Sit and stew on this for like amonth.
Honestly, I would say a monthis what has worked the best for
me.
Have you kind of?

Speaker 2 (00:45):
found that, so I tend to come up with my ideas for my
map before I actually like dothe map, so I don't have an
actual time frame.

Speaker 1 (00:52):
That's fair.
Yeah, no, I start drawing mymap usually like a month before
my campaign starts and makingsure that it's like in place and
everything's planned.
Do you tend to like to havedigital maps or do you focus
more on having like physicalmaps where you can touch them?

Speaker 2 (01:08):
So if I'm, there's a couple of softwares that you can
use to make actual online mapsthat are like show elevation and
stuff.
If they were cheap I'd use them, but they ain't cheap, so I
tend to do like hand drawn andlike sketch on what details I
need, where and yeah, for me,I'm in a very similar situation.

Speaker 1 (01:26):
I actually like to do mine as physical maps.
That being said, I will usesome online maps.
At one point, I was taking ageology class, and I got
introduced to a software thatliterally replicates the earth
and how it was made, and you canchange different variables of,
like, different continent sizes,different plate sizes, whatnot.

(01:46):
That one's a little more techy.
It can be a lot of fun to playwith, though, and you can find
it pretty easily.
You literally just look upworld generation geology map and
it'll pop up.
It's actually kind of fun.
There's a couple of differentones out there now.
There's also your like fantasygenerators that do it, but I've
seen one that I'm going to beplaying with from now on that I

(02:06):
really actually enjoyed, and Idid it from my last world map.
Have you, by chance, seen thepeople that just chuck a bunch
of dice on and then draw aroundthe dice to make their world
maps?
I've never seen that.
I absolutely adore the idea.
I saw someone take like a pileof d20s and they just scattered
it on there, and then they justroughly made the continent

(02:27):
shapes around the dice, and thatmay be my new form of like
random world generation from nowon, because that just made me
smile.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
I always make my maps a little more deliberately than
that, based on what I need tohappen on the maps.
So we with like your theming ofyour campaign and everything
your map is going to have.
Your map should have a purposeother than just being a thing.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
That's fair.
That's fair For me.
What I like to do is I like toget random shapes for continents
and then I place my rivers, myforests, my mountains a little
more deliberately to match theplot.
But for for my personal thingis like I would rather have a
random world map and then choosespecific parts of it to use

(03:18):
than to have this reallydeliberate one, just because I
don't usually spend that muchtime on like designing it.
If I'm going to like have areally intricate world map,
that's where I go more into,those like generators where you
can put in all the variablesdifferent size of the oceans,
whether how many continentsthere are like I'll even go in
and be like how many tectonicplates, and then I'll run it and

(03:40):
I'll run it through the yearstill I like it in a certain way.
That's more of my like.
If I'm going to run a lot ofcampaigns in the world just to
kind of get a rough like designthat feels realistic, and then
I'll put the rivers in myself.
Does that make sense?
Yeah, so like what?

Speaker 2 (03:56):
I tend to do is I tend to pick a part of a map if
I'm going to like, focus on it,and then I create that chunk.
So each chunk might have somesmaller like continents or
islands, or even if it's likejust solid land.
For the most part, I'm going todeliberately design that and

(04:18):
then, on the grander scheme,have a position for it across
the planet.
That's fair.

Speaker 1 (04:21):
Yeah, I usually start with my planet and my world map
and then, for my campaignspecifically, I'll take like a
little snapshot of where I wantthem to be and where I want them
to start, and that's that'sgoing to be my more intricate.
One Part of the advantage of themore online generators versus
doing it by hand is the factthat you can actually zoom in on
the planet and they'll, and youcan literally just take

(04:43):
pictures like it's a globe, likeit's our globe.
But if you're doing it by hand,definitely just like, take an
area, make a couple copies ofyour world map, circle it, zoom
it in, draw it, do it by hand.
But basically, if you're goingto do it by hand, your best
friend is really going to beyour computer.
Just take your go to yourprinter at your local library If

(05:04):
you don't have one, if you dohave one, just scan into your
computer and just zoom in towhere you're going to be, print
out a copy of your map zoomed inthere and then trace it onto
paper before you start doing therest, like the little details,
like the islands, the rivers,whatnot.
That's going to be your mosthelpful way of doing it if

(05:26):
you're doing everything by hand.
And I think I would say mostpeople would have a pretty easy
access to that kind of method.

Speaker 2 (05:32):
The biggest issue for like, producing maps for like,
especially if you're gonna giveeach player one is how big you
want it and how much detail youput onto that map, especially as
we get further down and like,get into like building your
stories and stuff.
Sometimes your map can be alittle telling of your story,
based on what is included on it.

(05:53):
So you might have an area whereit's like oh yeah, that's an
area we're going to get to later, and it's like an important
area, but your party is supposedto think it's just like an
abandoned area where nobody isanymore.
So then, by having those areasit can become a little revealing
of.
Oh, this is gonna be important.

Speaker 1 (06:10):
And definitely that's fair.
It is very challenging to makethose choices and that's gonna
depend on your campaign and howmuch you want the players to
know.
I will say one of the harderthings to do, especially as a
new DM, is picking where youshould have towns, especially
important towns, on your map.
Especially when you're buildingthe world map, which really is
only gonna show your majorcities at first, until you start

(06:31):
zooming it in and like printingout those smaller, more in
depth portions of the map, youreally wanna focus on just your
major cities and picking those.
You really want them to be kindof realistic.
So if you wanna look at, forexample, a great one for those
of us who are here in America,look at a map of the United
States.
We are a huge continent.

(06:52):
If you look roughly, you'regonna get an idea of where you
can have your big cities.
Usually they're gonna becoastal, just a little hint.
The coasts are gonna be whereyou're gonna build most of your
large towns and cities and thenfrom there it gets kind of
challenging, but really a majorstaple, especially because of
the fact that D&D is ahistorical, more of a historical

(07:14):
, setting.
It's very fantasy and a lot ofthe times they have some
technology, but it's not likeour current technology.
A lot of your stuff is gonna bebased around a body of water.
Is there a body of water there,yes or no?
If no, then you're probably notgonna have a town there,
because people have to have away to drink water.

Speaker 2 (07:31):
If you pay attention, like across the planet, pretty
much anywhere there's a body ofwater, a city has formed and
like, especially those earlycities, all of them are in the
exact same like geographicalspot of a river valley, because
there's water there and there'sall the nutrients there.
So we're gonna build here so wecan survive.

Speaker 1 (07:54):
Yeah, rivers, lakes, oceans those are where you're
gonna look for your large citiesto be.
Now there is this fun littlething that a lot of people have
started to kind of play with,which is Easter eggs on your map
.
And I really like having Eastereggs on my maps of like, oh,
where should my hidden dungeonor ancient ruins be?

(08:16):
And you don't have to put themin every single map, but they
make the map feel more realistic.
Society doesn't stay in thesame place forever and it won't.
So maybe having some ancientruins in the center of the
continent Well, why would thesebe here?
It's a desolate desert now,with no trace of water.
Well, maybe it wasn't alwaysthat way.
And you can kind of spin thosestories that way and add some

(08:39):
cool like lost magic items, andthat can be a fun way to give
your players magic items whereit doesn't feel like oh, I just
killed this random goblin andnow I have a plus three sword.

Speaker 2 (08:49):
Like I don't like the term Easter eggs for him, but
like including these likeartifacts from previous either,
like adventurers, society,cities, and making sure the
world actually feels lived inkind of helps building that
world map up.
So just because there's a spotwhere a city should be doesn't
necessarily mean that city hasto be there anymore.

(09:11):
So like you'd have a placewhere it'd be great to have a
city and all that's left thereis ruins From some ancient city
that was there a bajillion yearsago.
That has then has since eithermoved, died out or just fell to
ruin somehow.

Speaker 1 (09:27):
Yeah, and you can even write reasons why that
could be something that thatarea is still facing.
One thing that players don'tthink about is what could have
happened in there and with ruinsthat can be a lot of fun to
play with, cause like even herein the real world.
You would know this better thanI do.
Aren't there like diseases andstuff that we have found in,

(09:47):
like ancient Egyptian ruins,that affect people who are
exploring them?

Speaker 2 (09:52):
We sometimes find that kind of stuff Like just
there's sometimes things thatare we might not find the live
disease, but we might find theremains of a disease on a corpse
or something like that,throughout them.

Speaker 1 (10:03):
Correct me if I'm wrong, but a couple of years ago
didn't they coin that like thequote unquote, mommy's curse and
the reason people were dyingafter taking out these
sarcophagus's was, a lot of thetimes, because there was a
fungus that people were beinginfected with that they didn't
know about.
I haven't seen that personally,but I wouldn't be surprised if
it was something like I wasseeing something like weird

(10:24):
about that on the news one dayand I was kind of interested in
it, but like half payingattention cause I was cooking.
So there are there's thingswhere, like you could have
secret old traps or maybe adisease and it could plague one
of your characters and all of asudden, and now it's this
grandiose little side quest tosave your friend and that can be

(10:45):
a lot of fun.

Speaker 2 (10:46):
And we do also tend to like in the real world, find
these now ruins around weirdlydangerous things Like.
There's a set of ruins inGreece.
Outside of, essentially, a gastrap, it's just a room, a cave,
full of poisonous and explosivegas, which was because it was

(11:07):
believed to be like a gateway tosomewhere that the living
couldn't go.
So therefore, we're buildinghere.

Speaker 1 (11:14):
Wasn't a great spot to build there.
Yeah, and there's lots of funthings that you can do with that
and picking places on your map,for that is always a good use
of your time to take the timeout of your day to really go
pick those ruined cities andhave some fun with it, cause I
mean, find a reason to destroy atown.
It is wild and crazy, and itdoesn't always have to be this

(11:38):
major demon king or a lich thatcame in and destroyed the city.
It can be a natural disasterand that can be a lot of fun,
because players oftentimes don'tthink about huh.
Maybe I should wonder why thesepeople left.
They just go to explore itbecause it's old and they don't
think about it.

Speaker 2 (11:54):
And sometimes, depending on how you set up your
villain, those ruins could bebecause of your villain and
reveal something about them,like oh, they were here 200
years ago and they're a human.
Something's off there.

Speaker 1 (12:09):
Yeah, and with your villains there's this big
component of should they bestatically in place, and the
answer to that is almost alwaysno.
Like your villains, if they'rereally this world ending issue,
they're not going to be in oneplace.
That's just not realistic.
If they're trying to destroythe whole world, they're not
going to just sit up in theircastle and wait for the world to

(12:31):
be destroyed by their minions.
They're going to be out thereon the front line prepping
recruiting.

Speaker 2 (12:37):
They're going to be doing something, and sometimes
that could be consolidation intoone location so you could even
if they're not like you knowyour biggest evil like we're
going to destroy the world, butthey're like that, we're going
to take over.
They could be consolidating alla lot of their forces to take
out a neighboring kingdom andthey're going to be there or

(12:58):
somewhere where they can overseewhat's happening, as opposed to
sitting back 100 miles away ina castle some way.
Then they're just a emperortrying to expand an empire, as
opposed to a villain who'strying to enact some dark plan.

Speaker 1 (13:13):
And you can have the emperor be your bad guy who's
sitting back in their castle.
But if that's going to be thetype of campaign, you're going
to run, and you're going to runthis old fantasy style.
We're trying to save this nationthat is being attacked by an
unjust empire.
That villain isn't going to bethe.
The world is ending, so it'sjust about fitting the theme of
your plot then, because notevery campaign has to be a earth

(13:37):
shattering, world endingsituation.
Now, as the game goes on, yes,it's going to have to be larger
and larger scale issues, butthat doesn't always have to be
the case.
You can end a campaign beforeyou get to the world saving
portion.

Speaker 2 (13:52):
Yeah, especially if you look at those like if you
don't plan to get hit level 20,if you're only going to like 12,
maybe 15, your ending to yourcampaign doesn't have to be we
stopped the world from beingconsumed.
It can be something as simpleas well.
We defeated this villain whowas destroying people's lives
around him.
And was he going to destroy theworld?
No, he was just going to makeit an unfun place to be.

Speaker 1 (14:15):
And like you can have .
So really fun campaign I ranonce upon a time was the whole
goal was to stop an evil empirethat was expanding, pretty basic
, pretty lackluster, and theyfreed the nation, but none of my
party stayed behind to helprebuild the nation.
They just dipped and went intoretirement and that's where the

(14:37):
campaign ended, because that'swhere my players wanted to end.
That's where they feltsatisfied with the ending.
Well then I could put I got toplay a second session a couple
years later where there was acompletely different problem
because of the political things,where the nation fell apart
after they crushed the emperor,so there was no form of power

(14:57):
left and so the nation fell intoanarchy.
And now the players got toagain run it a generation later
and they got to rebuild a nation, which can be a fun campaign.
Idea is building a nation.
Having a political themedcampaign can actually be a lot
of fun.

Speaker 2 (15:13):
Especially if you're going for like a political vibe.
I would almost advise for yourcampaign.
If you're going for political,the world map is less important
for it but include somethingelse.
So because usually if you'redoing a political campaign it's
not going to be as much fighting, have something for there to be
a little bit of that like feelof competition, or you need to
do stuff right without justbeing a little combat.

Speaker 1 (15:37):
So if you're going to do a political campaign, I
would I would highly advisestill building out a full world
map, and the reason behind it isyou need to know where other
nations are.
You need to have an idea of thetension where the ruins are
things that people might fightover and then have reasons why
your players are trying todefend those areas, because
sometimes, if another nation'strying to push them off of the

(15:58):
water, they're not going tosurvive without water, like
that's another thing.
Or there might be these ancientruins where they just
discovered an, a lost magic.
That's going to be somethingworth fighting over and your
players need to keep that inmind.
But my favorite thing withpolitical campaigns is that you
can gear them more towards theskill monkey classes.

(16:18):
Like you can have your clericsthat are healers.
They're going to be loved bythe people because they're
helping people.
You can have your rogues tokind of steal information.
You can really just kind of gointo it and have a political
campaign.

Speaker 2 (16:32):
The biggest thing with that like making sure,
especially if you're doing likenon-traditional campaigns is you
need that big picture map.
You don't need, as like,specific pictures like, oh, the
little town 20 miles away, thattown don't matter that much and
the grand scheme of it.
What's going to matter is oh,there's this giant body of water
another group is trying toencroach and untake.

(16:55):
That's what's going to be yourbig deal on your maps, as
opposed to any specific likesmall details type of thing.
Any detail on those maps has tobe impactful to the world, as
opposed to just your party.

Speaker 1 (17:10):
And if you're building a campaign that's
around a political setting,definitely, whenever you finish
a campaign with players, keepthe old maps.
If you keep the old maps andthe specific maps, if the
players have to go to thewestern coast of the country
that they're in to stop aninvasion or to help with a

(17:30):
monster crisis or a food crisis,if you're doing a political
campaign, that could be a townthat they experienced in their
last campaign and then it's anice little nostalgia thing
Cause for the character aspect.
Be like oh, this is the citywhere the ancient heroes had
their final face off.
You can keep those kind ofintricate little towns and use
them in a different way.
That feels a lot more rewardingand it's going to add a

(17:53):
nostalgia piece to your campaignthat is going to keep your
players coming back andinterested in that political
campaign without having to havecombat.

Speaker 2 (18:00):
When you do like a one world map for multiple
campaigns like for me, theEaster eggs you're going you
should try to include, is not inthat like first campaign, it's
in your second or third, wherewe're then making those nods
back to our previous adventuresthrough this world of oh, the
heroes were here, they destroyedsome evil.

(18:21):
And what can also be fun withthat is if you do something a
little sneaky and you make it soour heroes have been like
vilified or deified or any ofthose.
So then your party, if it's thesame place, we'll be like.
That seems wrong, what, andkind of curious about what's
going on in that like out of thetown realm, like maybe the

(18:44):
heroes showed up, they beat thevillain and then a plague hit.
Oh, those heroes brought theplague with them.

Speaker 1 (18:51):
Now yeah yeah, and vilifying your players can be a
lot of fun, and adding thoselittle throwbacks to your former
campaign is honestly, just agreat way to keep it spiced up.
I will say, though, all of thisis really useful whether you're
building your own world map oryou're using a preexisting one.
If you check out the SwordCoast, where a lot of the
forgotten realms campaigns takeplace, most of the towns are

(19:14):
built on lakes, rivers, thingslike that, and they're used in
very similar ways, and it's it'sreally beneficial.
So when you're really digestingsome of this information, make
sure that you're payingattention to it, because it is
already prevalent in a lot ofD&D stuff.
Um, and, regardless, it doesn'treally matter that much if you

(19:35):
use a preexisting map or not.
It's really good.
We've gotten to this pointwhere it's super flexible.
Wizards has put out what at thispoint?
Seven different world maps thatyou can use.
It's it's getting to be quite abit, so you don't have to make
your own world map, but,regardless, all of these
principles kind of play intoeach other a little bit.
For new players.

(19:56):
I really struggle, especiallyfor new DMs, to give the five
most important things to payattention to, and when I've
given advice to DMs in the past.
I've told them because I'veliterally been asked this
question.
So the five things I would sayare most important are nations,
oceans, mountains, rivers, andthen, like your dungeons and

(20:17):
your ancient ruins.
Those would be the five thingsI would tell new DMs to look at
when they're building a worldmap.

Speaker 2 (20:24):
So I think because of the ancient buildings and
ancient stuff can be kind of ina separate little spot for now,
right Because you can add inlater as you decide to build and
spice certain areas up and addsome things in when originally
generating.
To me, the most important areyour rivers.
That's where your big nationsare going to start and they are
going to survive there, like youcan see that in the real world

(20:47):
with like China, which has beenthere since the start, india has
been there since the start,egypt's been there since the
start, like the only one whohasn't is like Mesopotamia and
every other one has been there.
They might have moved a littlebit but they are still existing.
So, kind of keeping those likewhere are my rivers and where
are my origins?
Then another one that's odd isany major geographical feature,

(21:09):
whether it be a desert, amountain.
All of those matter to whereyou are building your cities.
And then cities are obviouslyimportant because that's where
all of your people are going tobe.

Speaker 1 (21:18):
And then, kind of those are those three biggest
ones to me as making sure youhave your cities, your major
geographical obstacles, and thenyour water sources and where
these places are starting up outof Okay, that makes sense
Things you mentioned that arejust really useful in the Indian
general lakes, rivers, deserts,mountains and the challenge

(21:39):
really is and I think it maydepend on what campaign you're
in I disagree with that slightly.
I would say it is important toname all of your mountain ranges
, your major rivers, yourdeserts before your campaign
starts, because then you havesomething consistent that you
don't have to come up with onthe fly to kind of base

(22:01):
everything off of.
I've seen people and I've eventried to do it myself where you
do it as you're going.
It's not worth your time.
It takes way more time and putsyou way more on the spot than
you need to be.
Who needs that stress in theirlife?
Just have it written downbeforehand.
That would be a big piece ofadvice from me personally.

Speaker 2 (22:21):
I think it's important to have those specific
regions named and marked asthese are important spots and
this is kind of a thing with howyour world impacts your small
into the smaller areas when youshrink down towards, like your
major cities.
One of the things you want topay attention to is how are they
?
Because all of your cities aregoing to have walls or something

(22:42):
to defend them.
Different cities, depending onwhere you're placing these on
the map, are going to havesomething different to protect
themselves.
So, for like, using the realworld, for an example, a country
like Egypt didn't have anymajor walls because they were
covered by a desert and a bodyof water.
So you need to, you can payattention to these like details

(23:03):
as to how these differentregions are defending themselves
in the real world, to thenportray it onto the outside
world.
And you can even have somethingsilly like, if you know Greek
history, sparta never builtwalls because they were like
we're too scary to need walls.
No one's going to try to touchus.
And you can include those likequirks of your nations into your

(23:23):
design of their cities and asyou're shrinking down from your
overall world.

Speaker 1 (23:29):
And I would say, definitely an important thing to
remember when you'reconsidering that is the larger
the city, the more likely theyare to actually have walls.
All right, and that's all wehave for today.
If you enjoyed this episode,make sure you're checking out
our YouTube, where we postexclusive content, including
some reviews of certain booksand other products, as well as
we give some more insight andtalk about, like characters that

(23:51):
we've built, things that we'veenjoyed in D&D and, overall,
just provide more content.
Also, check out our Patreon ifyou'd like to support the show.
We also released there articlesthat are kind of in the same
format as a D&D book, at leastappearance wise, that kind of
talk about elaborations fromwhat we go over in the show.
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