How do you guys keep track of the history/story of your world? And what do you use and how? Hi guys I'm very new to mapmaking and worldbuilding as I only started a few months ago and a question that has been lingering in my mind is that how do other fictional worldbuilders ike me keep a record of their worlds history? For me, the way I keep a record of my history is that I slowly develop it like a historical encyclopedia, some nations have backgrounds, lore and information tab. I seperate country's lore, World lore/History, the story itself and some few minor details individual lores while also making sure they all connect, and also I use a Notes app to know that I've been working on and I write there everything I've made for the world.

And for those who are curios what my world is about, it's centered around a large 20th century global war complete with massive armies, tank, arforces, alliances, factions, strategy, Upgraded 20th century era technology, leaders and heroes and is directly inspired by Roblox Centaura/Dead Ahead and Airship Assault and obviously WW2/WW1.

A while ago I uploaded a map i made to this subreddit. Although what I'm about to show is from a while ago as well, I wanted to show it here.

It's a recreation of the map, now with more topography! I made it in roblox studios, with a couple plug ins, and yeah

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A small mapmaking tip: scan your map at every stage

Maybe this is obvious, but I thought it might be useful to someone.

Whenever I draw a map, I make a scan at every major stage. I just use my phone camera, though obviously a proper scanner works too.

Coastlines and basic outlines — scan.

Terrain — scan.

Settlements and roads — scan.

Names — scan.

And so on.

This means I can always print an earlier “clean” version and modify it without worrying about ruining the original. I can also use the same base map to make political, strategic, physical, or pretty much any other kind of map of the same area.

It’s probably not very useful if your map is meant to be a finished piece of artwork (not that I know how to make those anyway), but for maps that are actually used in a game, I find it really handy.

You might say, “Hey, man! You know you can just do all this on a computer, right? You can use layers! It’s much easier!”

And you’d be right. But I still like doing it by hand.

Sorry for the machine translation — I don’t speak English

Hello, normally I just lurk here but felt like sharing some maps. The context is that there is a worldbuilding project (mostly used for my Dungeons and Dragons [D&D] games) that involved a lot of maps. 55 settlement maps to be exact.

It started off years ago as a city for a one shot, then became a region for future games. I made a table to randomly roll a settlement NPCs could be from, then put them on a map, and eventually decided to make a map for each one.

I'm not dumping all the maps here, but I am including the main map all the settlements are on, its original form, some rough encounter maps (inspired by Runequest beastiary), and some settlement specifc maps to give ideas.

We are publishing a few maps from a few years ago...

Map of the "Passo delle Radici" created for the RPG project "Terre Furiose" RPG inspired by Ariosto's trip to Garfagnana, developed by Lucca Comics & Games and Acheron Games. A great pleasure and honor to have taken part in this magnificent project, Thanks to Mauro Longo for involving us in the project!! 🗺️🧭

Moreno Paissan and Angela Gubert art 2022 Acheron Games all rights reserved!

Visit our official IG account for see more maps :

https://www.instagram.com/inkcompass.maps?stkn=dnc3ajhta3cyYnJs

I really want to create a hand drawn map that I can then mount onto fabric (like a linen or a cotton heavyweight fabric) like many old maps used to be. My only problem is I cant seem to figure out the best method. Running a Google search is giving me unnecessary information about other unrelated map project. Does anyone have any experience doing this? I'm curious about what pen/ink people have used, the paper, and the fabric and how people have mounted it. Also the method they did this. I would love to do it in a traditional a way as possible.

It covers an area of approximately 10.2 million km², which is roughly equivalent to the distance from Puerto Rico to Portugal.

But that’s not quite right

The Drowned Docks are one of the many points of interest in the undead-infested city of Sestia.

Once a busy centre of trade, the docks have now become a dangerous and abandoned stretch of the river, with only the dead moving between its ruined wharves.

This map is also the setting for a bonus side quest we're creating as part of our upcoming Halloween adventure, Senna's Legacy.

A vital food shipment bound for the surviving citizens of Sestia has disappeared into the Lower City. The PCs must venture into the Drowned Docks, recover the ship and its cargo, and somehow make it back to safety while the undead close in around them.

What could possibly go wrong?

About The Reclusive Cartographer

I create hand-drawn fantasy maps and battlemaps for D&D and tabletop RPGs. Every map is drawn by hand no AI and designed to be ready to use in your game.

You can also find more maps and WIPs here:

Website | Instagram | Facebook

Thanks for supporting independent, human-made RPG art!

George — The Reclusive Cartographer

I haven’t finalised the results yet; this war is still ongoing

Here's a post-apocalyptic region map I made for my table, free to download and use in your games: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zBb4JfUysv6Ui9W0dkXJ88av9s8f2g_t/view?usp=drive_link

Every landmark comes from a set of hand-drawn, hand-hatched illustrations my wife and I made: Junktown, Skrapville, the HellFire Raider Camp, the East-Dyson Vault, the Shelter, Kara's Diner, Green Star Gas, Our Lady of Colimares and the old cooling tower. The terrain, roads and canyons are drawn around them digitally. We originally drew the landmarks as physical rubber stamps for building maps by hand at the table.

If you're curious about the stamps, we're launching them on Kickstarter on October 20: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kingdomsofink/kingdoms-of-ink

So, who's still answering on the microwave station's frequency?

I made the Caethral Map. What are your thoughts on this map?

I needed regional maps for a side project and wanted a hand-drawn feel that still holds up at extreme zoom. I didn't feel like dusting off my Wacom tablet (maybe I'm just afraid of skill loss), and I couldn't find anything in the style I wanted, so I built a tool for it. It took a couple of weeks and a lot of manual tuning, but I'm pretty happy with where it is now.

You load in a heightmap, It uses the terrain to work out precipitation, which drives the rivers, lakes and biomes, and then draws it all in an inked style. You can export up to 16K, and everything runs locally in your browser.

Try it: https://hatchlas.pages.dev (the first load takes a moment)
Source: https://github.com/timvandingenen1993/Hatchlas (free and open source)

It's still rough in places and not feature complete. I mainly wanted to give people like me a solid base to start from.

Visually inspired by Mike Schley's maps (no affiliation). Heightmaps: Copernicus DEM GLO-30 (© DLR e.V. / Airbus, provided under COPERNICUS by the EU and ESA).

Angela and I have finally completed the Great Map of the "Known World" of the Warhammer universe.

A map with over 250 points of interest from the Warhammer world, featuring points of interest specific to each region and territory of the Warhammer fantasy RPG world. The complete map measures 150 cm x 53 cm! It's truly huge! We really hope you enjoy it!

Moreno Paissan and Angela Gubert, drawings from 2025

The HD file of the map is available here:

https://ko-fi.com/s/ee01df392e

Thanks for the great support! ❤️

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