A massive miss opportunity I often find with fantasy worlds is they normally only have 1 map. Why not multiple, say one nation or empire could create 1 map n another nation could create another contradicting map. This would be a really cool way to show internal division and disputed territory amount other things.
World maps in novels and RPGs are typically there to help the reader/player find his way around the narrative background. The type of contradictory maps you describe would be more useful as handouts for a specific adventure. Of course, if the conflict between the two empires forms the core of the narrative, then disagreeing maps would be a great way to indicate the basics of this conflict. In this case, you wouldn't be mapping the world at all. Instead you are mapping the disagreement.
I kinda use this concept in one of the worlds I use for my RPG campaings. There's the "human map", where human plot their realms very precisely, with the occasional settlement of other races (like the default fantasy map). And then there are the maps for other races, like elves or giants, with borders completely different from the human map, with different sizes and importances given to different things. It's up to the players to piece together some informations to decifer, for example, using an elvish map where and old civilization is relation to their human map.
You can use those biases, such as assuming certain places are empty, as an interesting worldbuilding tool as well. For instance, in a TTRPG campaign, you can convey the political and sociological bisases of a certain place (In this case the source of the map the players hold) by having the players find out a region or a culture is strikingly different from what they were shown previously.
That's exactly what I thought of as well! By immersing the reader / the player / the viewer in only the perspective of a single culture or a system, it can make the reveal of its bias an incredible story-telling opportunity! To, in one move, both make them gain a newfound curiosity for the world, since they now expect that information may come from an unreliable narrator, and make them ask those same questions of their own reality and perspective! I really wish I could actually apply all this potential in a real project as opposed to gushing about world-building from a detached space though. It's pretty overwhelming, to juggle this much introspection and the power of, basically, a God.
@@thosebloodybadgers8499 I really like these ideas, but one thing to note is that the beauty of these storytelling strategies is that players may be likely to trust the first source of information they are given, and once the curtains are pulled back, they may not fall for it twice. Be careful when planning out the story so that you can take advantage of the drama these reveals create and the potential they have to change the nature of the game itself. The next challenge, I think, is to find ways to be able to use this element more than once, because while you've got your players questioning everything they're being told already, there's nothing quite like being able to twist the plot more than once, whether it's in the same game or not.
@@jerrykwan150In literature, Sarah J Maas does this beautifully in A Court of Thrones and Roses. Everything the main character knows about Prythian turns out to be wrong several times over, and each new reveal changes the plot completely.
My favourite fantasy world I've made was explicitly built as "A Merchant's Guide to X." The author was a well-travelled merchant giving advice to others of his class and was based firmly in his own experience. It's highly opinionated, favours urban centres and great states, and is at times chauvinistic, all because these were the express interests of the author. There were even multiple editions over decades - in the D&D campaign I ran with this world, the players had an old version but stumbled into a civil war in what looked on the map like a large, perfectly stable empire. All-in-all, it provided the players a good opportunity to question their own Guide as they found it to so often flatten the reality on the ground.
This sounds so cool! Would you be willing to share more about your world? The merchant guides, the empires, etc? I'm trying to make something similar on my own world
Tolkien’s aproach is pretty tolerant to these themes i believe. Not only because majority of civilization infrastructure is not adressed in any king (villages, less important towns, castles, etc.) but also the way he adressess the landscape. The states are not called by its inhabitants (there’s no edaina, or noldor empire) but by the land itself usually. Even concrete states like gondor or rohan have no clear border, making they ambiguous (mordor is an exeption as its border is literally outlined by mountain range
You need to remember that the map of Middle-earth wasn't intended to show readers where a kingdoms boundaries are, or to be used as a geographical tool to determine exact locations or accurately measure distances or even drawn to a truly accurate scale. It was a map drawn by an amateur that kind of filled it in as he traveled from the Shire to Gondor. And as he arrived somewhere, or was told of somewhere, he added the name to the map. He didn't know where the borders were, he just knew that eventually that were no longer in Rohan, but had entered Gondor. That map is just so we (as the reader) can kind of have something visual that we can see the Fellowship's progress. Now had the Red Book of Westmarch been an official record, commissioned by a king, and not a memoir or recollection or diary of the Hobbits' adventure (and written as such by Tolkien), the map would probably have been drawn with more concrete borders, and more cities of note, with roads and major routes of travel marked, without exaggerated and out of scale terrain symbology, and at an accurate scale with measurable distances. Because an official record would be concerned less with following some traveler, and more concerned with giving accurate information
Tolkiens story was not about tolerance, but go ahead and pretend that the 80 year old work of a devout catholic fits into your weird political cannon. It doesn't, you just need him for recruitment purposes.
@shoopoop21 sorry that your brain-worms have liquefied your brain to such an extent that anytime you see the word "tolerance" you assume they must mean "diversity" or compare it to modern identity politics. but that isn't what is meant by "tolerance"
@@shoopoop21 from your complete misunderstanding of the comment I actually presume you haven't even watched the video, or didn't understand it either. they said "tolerant to these themes" ie the themes of how older maps are more vague, symbolic, less focused on technical accuracy, less focused on defining hard political borders
This is why I like turning random shapes and fractals into maps. The randomness eliminates my own biases as much as possible and forces me to mold my ideas to the geography and extrapolate instead of trying to impose what 'should' be there.
This sounds like a cool way to create a world's unique history & lore. Like the randomness of the geography caused different people to live certain ways, be proficient at different things, create eras of prosperity because what was once a small fishing town became an important sea trade route once *insert empire* extended it's boundaries. I like it
Glad to see I'm not the only one who fantasises with this haha. One thing I often find myself doing is looking at the bread crumbs on the table while I'm eating, and imagining they are the islands of an archipelago in the table sea. It amuses me to try to group them together in countries and political entities and imagining how each one of those islands would look like, its climate, its people, its infrastructure... just based on its location and size within the archipelago. PS Yes I'm a map geek I know
@@antoniodelaugger9236 Even a map-generator has bias. Or does it sometimes generate maps with heat information, or elevation levels? Or is it, as is typical, just naming which nation state "owns" land
Your biases are what makes your map relevant in the first place. Every fantasy is a reflection of our perspective of the real world and thats what makes them so interesting.
Political Maps of my campaign setting is looking more and more like Holy Roman Empire internal borders. I like to think of those borders more as "Spheres of Control" usually around settlements, helps creating realistic systems as well, forces me to think about it. One thing I also like creating is culture, lifestyle, sprachbund, and de jure maps to give the world some dynamism I can play around with
The last RPG campaign I ran accidentally ended up a mapping experiment. I drew some coastlines, decided to mark languages (just some fuzzy, overlapping blobs to give a rough idea where each one was spoken), then ran out of time. I ended up pretty happy with just the language map. It wasn't precise about borders, but it said a lot more about nomads and settlers; who lived or traded with whom; and how far the big imperial powers' might actually reached (versus where they drew their borders).
This makes me think of Zemuria, the fictional continent of the Trails video game series, and how the locations of countries contributes to the overall plot. Especially Crossbell, the city-state stuck in between two superpowers.
>be me >finds new video essayist with high-quality and insightful content >wants to see more >clicks on channel >channel has two videos, both over a year old >feelsbadman Well, I suppose I'll subscribe on the off chance new content is eventually released.
Using the thoughts of this video for a minecraft world I yet have to build is truly amazing. Having already mapped out my place which now needs to be put into a living map rather then a static one is something I want to achieve
I gotta thank you for making this video because it opened a whole new perspective on map making altogether. I had been having a problem with a current world I've been attempting to build and never once thought of choosing a specific perspective to create it from, beyond "I need, the storyteller, need a map!" Great work.
Yeah Im gonna make a map for my fairytale story/novel and there's no way I'ma include every single detail of the world , plus doing that would leave little imagination for the reader making the world a bit stale.
Very cool video. As a world builder, I personally think that world maps enter their final stage when different characters can point the same place and give it different names.
I think it would be interesting to have, rather than a single “canonical map of the world”, to have two or three or four different maps, made from different perspectives. One can compare which cities and towns are labeled on each, what names they use (or a direct translation of those names if the story has fictional languages), and what features are drawn incorrectly, or not drawn.
This was delightful to come across--a student sent it to John Wyatt Greenlee, who shared it with me. That said, would it be possible to update the credits where you've quoted us? Every sentence of our piece was thoroughly co-authored. (Funny coincidence, JW and I both think that your voiceover for quotes sounds weirdly like my actual voice!) -Anna Waymack
Hi Anna, we're very sorry for the incorrect attribution! UA-cam sadly got rid of their corrections feature, so we don't have a good way to fix the video itself, but there is now a correction in the description. Thank you for bringing this to our attention, and that's a funny coincidence that we sound alike! Again, sincere apologies, that was sloppy on our part.
This was genuinely inspiring, as a writer myself, I'll definitely be taking notes for my own work, maps and stories that reflect our own world I find fascinating, it's nice to see some that loves good maps too, just a simple map will not suffice
Mappa Mundi is an interesting counter-example to modern (humanist) cartography, but I think it would also be interesting to fantasy maps draw inspiration from the Aztec Codex Xolotl, which show the landscape in terms of stories and journeys rather than as a poltical structure. Especially in medieval fantasy, this kind of map would be really interesting for centering the worldbuildng around how the land is used rather than where things are.
The ending segment reminds me of what happened with the Louville ω hill near the Chang'e 5 landing point on the moon. New worlds, same old problems... great video!
what's interesting is the very man who made the trope of modern fantasy maps; JRR Tolkien, was also the first to break that very trope, as he stated that dwarves oriented their maps with east were north otherwise would be.
That actually used to be normal for maps all through Europe for parts of history- that’s why Asia was known as “the orient”, because you would “orient” the map to have east be up
Thanks. This gave me an idea. The next time I DM a Fantasy D&D Campaign, I'll never give my players one objective world map. Instead I'll have them gain access to a number of maps specific to a certain culture or time period and have differ from each other. -Places appear on one map, while they are missing from another one. -One map has exact borders of nations, another has different border for the same nations or no borders at all. -Places are named differently on different maps, all carrying different connotations. This, I think, will make for interesting exploration of the world, especially if the main goal of the campaign or a certain arc is to find an exact place.
I went to check out your channel expecting to see tens or hundreds of thousands of subscribers (because of the quality), and was incredibly surprised to see under 1k. Needless to say I've done my part to correct that. Can't wait for more!
Great video. I'm your 20th subscriber and your content is so well made and interesting, I have no doubt I'll follow your ascension to the olympus of video essayists. In a couple of years, I will be saying "I was here from the start".
In the Web Novel Delve, there is a map of the world that the main character takes to scribbling on with abandon because he hates it do mich for being so inaccurate. It has fairly accurate coasts and little else going for it but as a reader it’s fun to see this bap with all the scribbles and notes and also the knowledge that it is only a rough approximation of the world. It still helps to orient the reader, but it is also fun and open to the unknown at the same time and I love it for that
This is incredible! I'm definitely going to keep this in mind from now on. It's also a good reminder for real life. Keep in mind the wills of others, how wants and needs take away those of others.
This video was really helpful, it really encapsulates in words what I feel was missing about narrowing in on a nationstate based map, but I never could articulate myself. This I think is why any good fantasy map is paired with a deep set of worldbuilding as well, and the understanding that change is constant and that borders solidifying and being made manifest is only a fairly recent development. Love it
What you call cliches, I call archetypes. People are so obsessed with turning everything upside down, you'd be lucky to find any work that has them right-side up that the upside down becomes the new right side up. 'The loser father' trope has become so common that you'd be hard pressed to find a competent father in any meaningful role in fiction.
I’ve got a dnd group that I’ve slapped into an era of a story intended to publish a version some day. My idea of maid might possibly be influenced by the fact I play EU4 in my spare time since I have multiple maps of the same thing with different labels making different things. Simplest is the Landmass Map Mode where it just has names of continents and other landmasses. I was aware that nationstates as I’m used to them wouldn’t be functional, so instead I have the Hegemony Map Mode, where it shows what polity has the most influence/de facto control over certain areas. Then we have the Region Map Mode where I labeled thing that I’ve said are about equivalent to saying Asia Minor/Anatolia, The Levant, the Ruhr River valley and such - though the sizes are a bit skewed and some I could very easily update, and intend to eventually do so , so there’s that. And all these maps, I’ve implicitly and explicitly told the players, are a tad bit wrong because of in world messiness - particularly certain areas of the map that aren’t accurate to the actual state of the world - not just politically but geographically. So far it hasn’t but me in the but yet, though I do constantly find I want to make and even more detailed map which may or may not be fully accurate.
Interesting there is a map of Skyrim from the Elder Scrolls in the video (from 8:36). In the context of this game world this particular map is very much in the Imperial/Cyrodilic cartographic style (the Tamrielic Empire being like a fantasy version of the Roman Empire). The Nords’ own views of their lands would be more “fluidic”. And the view of the region from the indigenous Reachmen would be yet again different from both. One of the positive points about the fantasy world of the Elder Scrolls is its recognition of the complexities beyond simplistic black-and-white binaries. For instance at the start of the game in Morrowind the player is presented with a quite standard picture of the “holy cities” of the Tribunal against the evil forces of the Red Mountain. But as one progresses in the story one realises that the real picture is a lot more complex than this. There are also nomadic Ashlander tribes that function outside the “civilised norms” of either the Empire or the Tribunal, but they are not simply romanticised into some kind of “noble savage” either, but are people with complex and more realistic motives and tendencies.
I think the reason Dynastic nomenclature is used is because it makes a lot of sense in a world where one of the most important political questions is "which powerful family claims ultimate authority over this place?"
I have to say, this was a great video, very thoughtful and well-thought-out. In my own world-building, I've wanted to move away from standards that have apparently been set in place by a genre or tradition. I haven't finished (I don't think it ever ends), in part because something comes along--like this video--that causes me to consider something else that hadn't occurred to me or that I was unaware of. Some of the things you mention have occurred to me, and I've been mulling over a number of ideas concerning my world. I think one has to draw a line somewhere, perhaps, however, or else one's world may become a salad of things intended to "flip the script," but that end up making a mess of things. Perhaps some form of convention is necessary. Very thought-provoking work! :-)
I just wanted to add more effusive praise for your work in the comments section. This video was very thoughtful and useful and also had great production. Thanks for making it.
That was quite well said and well illustrated! When making premodern-ish maps I moved away from drawing borders alltogeather towards marking settlements, because borders are mostly legal fiction of later times whereas settlements are very real and show the actual developement and control of land rather than it's theoretical ownership. The exception are fortified borders of course, like the wall of China or the Roman Limes, and natural barriers because these types of borders were historically enforcable and existed as physical features of the land. Settlements don't include migratory peoples, but their ranges are also better described imo with reference to settlements and goegraphical features (both of which have a real impact on anyone who lives in the area, including nomads) than through a line that claims their territory/range always extends up to the line and never beyond.
Cool video but it dangerously implied that hard borders and the “othering” effect of imperialism is uniquely Western. It’s not. Eastern empires did the exact same thing.
I thought this video was going to just focus on fantasy and fiction examples but in the first minutes you already use concepts and ideas from academic books and give many real-world examples of the uses of maps for explotation and erasing in human history. When the idea of nation-states is so common sense reminders like this video are very useful.
8:35 You showed the map of Skyrim as an example of a "static" or "simple" "nation-state" map without any depth. But the lore of the Elder Scrolls implied the area has a rich and diverse history with multiple groups of people moving in and out of the area such as the falmer, the dwemer, the reachmen, the nords, and the dunmer.
this was great. it puts voice to something I noticed about some of my own maps. in one of my maps I only recently added nation states, it had only been devided into regions loosely based on environment and some similarities in culture. even so I found that there where regions that I could not divide into nation States as the nature of the people and culture and just did not allow for it. I sometimes wonder if dividing it into nation states was a mistake, just because it makes it easier for others to understand. im finding a simmular issue with something im actually writing a story for, where I know there are nations who have identities, but at the same time that dose not always seem to fit for the story.
I think your ‘mistake’ has a lot in common with how real world modern states have formed. To your second issue, I think showing the boundaries of and contradictions to the National identities you’ve developed for your story will give your world a greater sense of verisimilitude.
Much like this video, this channel came out of nowhere, rocked the floor and ended. Just like that. No final words, no closure. What a bizarre experience.
Nothing bothers me more than people saying "don't make X political." Everything is political. Because it's made by people and no person is without its agenda. Thanks for diving into this slice of that subject. It's really fascinating to me :)
That's because you're conflating in-world politics with real politics. That is what bothers me. What people mean is don't use a story as just a vehicle to make a hamfisted modern political statement. You have to write it well and have it make sense in the setting. You can have political themes without writing allegories to modern politics. GRRM has political beliefs that obviously make it into his writing but he is more subtle with it as well as writing a good story in a world that feels real first. I wish people would stop misinterpreting what the other side means just to have something to attack.
(Sorry if this was long) My favourite book series The Wheel of Time I think does a pretty good job of using maps, whether it be the world map at the beginning of each book, or the individual city maps at scattered points throughout the story; Robert Jordan really makes an enveloping world for the reader to be immersed into, and also follows some points in this video. TWOT excludes mentioning the Tuatha'an in the map because obviously they can't be in it. It also presents certain seperation of key areas from the general population centres; like the Aiel waste which is the barren desert home to the Aiel. The waste is separated by a massive mountainous ridge and only certain people are allowed into it. This also follows into the isolation of the Two rivers, the home of the main protagonists; which is seperated from the world by the Mountains of Mist, therefore making it extremely difficult for nations such as Arad Doman and Tarabon to trade, making it more accessible for pedlers and traders like Padan Fain to enter from the Eastern nations like Andor.
This is an excellent demonstration of completely missing the point of the video. Why can't there be a map of the Tuatha'an? We seem to have a map of the Mongols just fine. The paths they travel are just as mappable as anything else. Indeed, placing a map at the *back* of a book as a summary of the events that transpired is not a bad practice. And the Aiel have specific settlements called holds, the most prominent of which could be placed onto a map. All the maps that Jordan produced do is repeat the prejudices of the Randlanders. For fucks' sake, the official name for not-Australia is "Land of the Mad Men". This isn't to say that WoT's maps are bad; they're great. But they're not remotely an example of actually thinking about the consequences of your map choices.
7:49 I agree, it'd be so weird. Imagine if the biggest nation in the Arab peninsula and it's inhabitants were titled after the Saud family. That'd be bizarre.
A printed map with scribblings keeping track of indigenous tribes and their legends kind of looks neat. Well to me. Also marking anomalies. Unfortunately, not many stories do that.
Holy shit, I have to say I got chills when I watch the video. Thanks! Its been so long since I got such a nice inspiration to write and such a great insight. Thank you so much!!
Suddenly imagining a map where the vast majority of peoples are migratory. How do you map the movement of these people and the effect they have on their environments? What does the map look like in places where paths of migration intersect? And that's just one idea for an alternatively themed map.
Great content. As a fantasy world builder myself I find it very thought provoking to consider maps as inherently segmenting between the civilized and the savage. That being said... I'm left with a bit of pause on how to rectify this.
I don't care about ethnicity as an individual, and my maps tend to reflect that. There are states, but nations often neglected. I don't think we should care about ethnicity as humans, but we do, and orcs are truly different from humans. Sometimes my worldbuilding in general neglects that more than I should. Not to say I completely ignore it - I have a Mindflare stat block, and I'm not going to shove it into the middle of a forrest.
Decent video. I create fantasy maps all the time as a Dungeon Master and setting designer. My first three steps are as follow. 1. Define enough rough geography to fill in with rational extrapolation later. (If i have the mountains, lowlands, coast and primary rivers defined I can redily fill in tributaries and settlements later. 2. Define political borders of states and organizations. These split up the map based on defensibility and distribution of resources. 3. Define cultural borders of ethnic, religious, or behavioral distinctions. These frequently overlap and saturate the map based on ease of migration and abundance of simple resources. Ther are often lands claims by a state which contain no cultural groups, empty lands. And many cultural groups that extend beyond the border of the state that they are primarily found in. Thanks to magic in these settings, there are not many lands which are not "claimed" by some lordly actor or state. These unclaimed lands are sometimes simply to dangerous to bother laying claim to due to natural occurances(extreme heat or regularity of storms, fire swamps). The mere process of creating and defining these political and cultural lines on the map inherently creates along with it some of the history and interior dynamics of the setting being created. Currently writing the content for a setting that contains a cultural group of human and halfling horse breeders that is truly ancient. Lived on this parcel of lands through the existence of a dozen nations or more on the same land. Something long ago made them apolitical as a rule and it has allowed them to survive catastrophic wars, selling well trained animals to whom ever claims to rule the land currently.
Thank you for such a great video! Even while aware of the bias of maps, having such a neatly presented essay is highly valuable to help all those notions click into place.
I never comment on videos but my god this is such a great video that I couldn’t not comment! Me being a geography nerd was absolutely enthralled by this video, I’m seriously impressed by this hopefully more people see it soon!
That video was just fantastic. I loved the way you presented it, the clips were well chosen and made me want to create a map myself, and your way of narrating is absolutely superb. Enjoyed every second of it. Keep it up
A massive miss opportunity I often find with fantasy worlds is they normally only have 1 map. Why not multiple, say one nation or empire could create 1 map n another nation could create another contradicting map. This would be a really cool way to show internal division and disputed territory amount other things.
World maps in novels and RPGs are typically there to help the reader/player find his way around the narrative background.
The type of contradictory maps you describe would be more useful as handouts for a specific adventure.
Of course, if the conflict between the two empires forms the core of the narrative, then disagreeing maps would be a great way to indicate the basics of this conflict.
In this case, you wouldn't be mapping the world at all. Instead you are mapping the disagreement.
I've been making multiple with my current campaign because the monster factions are so important.
Megan Whalen Turner's Thief series actually does this, having two conflicting maps from different sources in the last couple books.
I kinda use this concept in one of the worlds I use for my RPG campaings. There's the "human map", where human plot their realms very precisely, with the occasional settlement of other races (like the default fantasy map). And then there are the maps for other races, like elves or giants, with borders completely different from the human map, with different sizes and importances given to different things.
It's up to the players to piece together some informations to decifer, for example, using an elvish map where and old civilization is relation to their human map.
@@gabrielpmo great idea, stealing it.
You can use those biases, such as assuming certain places are empty, as an interesting worldbuilding tool as well. For instance, in a TTRPG campaign, you can convey the political and sociological bisases of a certain place (In this case the source of the map the players hold) by having the players find out a region or a culture is strikingly different from what they were shown previously.
That's exactly what I thought of as well!
By immersing the reader / the player / the viewer in only the perspective of a single culture or a system, it can make the reveal of its bias an incredible story-telling opportunity! To, in one move, both make them gain a newfound curiosity for the world, since they now expect that information may come from an unreliable narrator, and make them ask those same questions of their own reality and perspective!
I really wish I could actually apply all this potential in a real project as opposed to gushing about world-building from a detached space though. It's pretty overwhelming, to juggle this much introspection and the power of, basically, a God.
@@thosebloodybadgers8499 I really like these ideas, but one thing to note is that the beauty of these storytelling strategies is that players may be likely to trust the first source of information they are given, and once the curtains are pulled back, they may not fall for it twice. Be careful when planning out the story so that you can take advantage of the drama these reveals create and the potential they have to change the nature of the game itself. The next challenge, I think, is to find ways to be able to use this element more than once, because while you've got your players questioning everything they're being told already, there's nothing quite like being able to twist the plot more than once, whether it's in the same game or not.
@@jerrykwan150In literature, Sarah J Maas does this beautifully in A Court of Thrones and Roses. Everything the main character knows about Prythian turns out to be wrong several times over, and each new reveal changes the plot completely.
it might be too pop or cliche, but i feel like Attack on Titan does reflect this
True
My favourite fantasy world I've made was explicitly built as "A Merchant's Guide to X." The author was a well-travelled merchant giving advice to others of his class and was based firmly in his own experience. It's highly opinionated, favours urban centres and great states, and is at times chauvinistic, all because these were the express interests of the author. There were even multiple editions over decades - in the D&D campaign I ran with this world, the players had an old version but stumbled into a civil war in what looked on the map like a large, perfectly stable empire. All-in-all, it provided the players a good opportunity to question their own Guide as they found it to so often flatten the reality on the ground.
This sounds so cool! Would you be willing to share more about your world? The merchant guides, the empires, etc? I'm trying to make something similar on my own world
Tolkien’s aproach is pretty tolerant to these themes i believe. Not only because majority of civilization infrastructure is not adressed in any king (villages, less important towns, castles, etc.) but also the way he adressess the landscape. The states are not called by its inhabitants (there’s no edaina, or noldor empire) but by the land itself usually. Even concrete states like gondor or rohan have no clear border, making they ambiguous (mordor is an exeption as its border is literally outlined by mountain range
You need to remember that the map of Middle-earth wasn't intended to show readers where a kingdoms boundaries are, or to be used as a geographical tool to determine exact locations or accurately measure distances or even drawn to a truly accurate scale. It was a map drawn by an amateur that kind of filled it in as he traveled from the Shire to Gondor. And as he arrived somewhere, or was told of somewhere, he added the name to the map. He didn't know where the borders were, he just knew that eventually that were no longer in Rohan, but had entered Gondor.
That map is just so we (as the reader) can kind of have something visual that we can see the Fellowship's progress. Now had the Red Book of Westmarch been an official record, commissioned by a king, and not a memoir or recollection or diary of the Hobbits' adventure (and written as such by Tolkien), the map would probably have been drawn with more concrete borders, and more cities of note, with roads and major routes of travel marked, without exaggerated and out of scale terrain symbology, and at an accurate scale with measurable distances. Because an official record would be concerned less with following some traveler, and more concerned with giving accurate information
@@bufordhighwater9872 good arguement, didn’t consider this.
Tolkiens story was not about tolerance, but go ahead and pretend that the 80 year old work of a devout catholic fits into your weird political cannon.
It doesn't, you just need him for recruitment purposes.
@shoopoop21 sorry that your brain-worms have liquefied your brain to such an extent that anytime you see the word "tolerance" you assume they must mean "diversity" or compare it to modern identity politics. but that isn't what is meant by "tolerance"
@@shoopoop21 from your complete misunderstanding of the comment I actually presume you haven't even watched the video, or didn't understand it either. they said "tolerant to these themes" ie the themes of how older maps are more vague, symbolic, less focused on technical accuracy, less focused on defining hard political borders
This is why I like turning random shapes and fractals into maps. The randomness eliminates my own biases as much as possible and forces me to mold my ideas to the geography and extrapolate instead of trying to impose what 'should' be there.
This sounds like a cool way to create a world's unique history & lore. Like the randomness of the geography caused different people to live certain ways, be proficient at different things, create eras of prosperity because what was once a small fishing town became an important sea trade route once *insert empire* extended it's boundaries. I like it
Glad to see I'm not the only one who fantasises with this haha. One thing I often find myself doing is looking at the bread crumbs on the table while I'm eating, and imagining they are the islands of an archipelago in the table sea. It amuses me to try to group them together in countries and political entities and imagining how each one of those islands would look like, its climate, its people, its infrastructure... just based on its location and size within the archipelago.
PS Yes I'm a map geek I know
The map of Roshar is modelled off the Julia set
@@antoniodelaugger9236 Even a map-generator has bias. Or does it sometimes generate maps with heat information, or elevation levels? Or is it, as is typical, just naming which nation state "owns" land
Your biases are what makes your map relevant in the first place. Every fantasy is a reflection of our perspective of the real world and thats what makes them so interesting.
Holy cow. This video and channel is criminally underrated. The quality of this is unreal. You are doing great, and can't wait to see what you do next.
Thank you so much for your support! Our interests are somewhat broad so the topics will vary, but we're excited to make more.
ikr
Bro hea like uploaded 1 video too early to decide whether it's underrated or not
Not finished the video yet, but this comment has got me to subscribe.
Literally only 2 videos
Political Maps of my campaign setting is looking more and more like Holy Roman Empire internal borders. I like to think of those borders more as "Spheres of Control" usually around settlements, helps creating realistic systems as well, forces me to think about it.
One thing I also like creating is culture, lifestyle, sprachbund, and de jure maps to give the world some dynamism I can play around with
If you think HRE borders were sphere of controls you fundamentally misunderstand how it worked.
I like the idea of a mapmaker slowly discovering the world through his journeys. The first book starting with a blank map and a single city.
Drops two great videos leaves refuses to elaborate
The last RPG campaign I ran accidentally ended up a mapping experiment. I drew some coastlines, decided to mark languages (just some fuzzy, overlapping blobs to give a rough idea where each one was spoken), then ran out of time.
I ended up pretty happy with just the language map. It wasn't precise about borders, but it said a lot more about nomads and settlers; who lived or traded with whom; and how far the big imperial powers' might actually reached (versus where they drew their borders).
This is a great exploration of maps in general, not just in the context of fantasy.
This makes me think of Zemuria, the fictional continent of the Trails video game series, and how the locations of countries contributes to the overall plot. Especially Crossbell, the city-state stuck in between two superpowers.
Bit like Novigrad in TW3 then. What you do influences whether or not it falls to Redania, Nilfgaard, or remains a free city.
@@Jenna_Talia You mean "falls to Redania, Nilfgaard" right?
@@msid7748 oh yeah oops
>be me
>finds new video essayist with high-quality and insightful content
>wants to see more
>clicks on channel
>channel has two videos, both over a year old
>feelsbadman
Well, I suppose I'll subscribe on the off chance new content is eventually released.
Using the thoughts of this video for a minecraft world I yet have to build is truly amazing.
Having already mapped out my place which now needs to be put into a living map rather then a static one is something I want to achieve
I gotta thank you for making this video because it opened a whole new perspective on map making altogether. I had been having a problem with a current world I've been attempting to build and never once thought of choosing a specific perspective to create it from, beyond "I need, the storyteller, need a map!" Great work.
Yeah Im gonna make a map for my fairytale story/novel and there's no way I'ma include every single detail of the world , plus doing that would leave little imagination for the reader making the world a bit stale.
Very cool video. As a world builder, I personally think that world maps enter their final stage when different characters can point the same place and give it different names.
I think it would be interesting to have, rather than a single “canonical map of the world”, to have two or three or four different maps, made from different perspectives. One can compare which cities and towns are labeled on each, what names they use (or a direct translation of those names if the story has fictional languages), and what features are drawn incorrectly, or not drawn.
This was delightful to come across--a student sent it to John Wyatt Greenlee, who shared it with me. That said, would it be possible to update the credits where you've quoted us? Every sentence of our piece was thoroughly co-authored. (Funny coincidence, JW and I both think that your voiceover for quotes sounds weirdly like my actual voice!) -Anna Waymack
Hi Anna, we're very sorry for the incorrect attribution! UA-cam sadly got rid of their corrections feature, so we don't have a good way to fix the video itself, but there is now a correction in the description. Thank you for bringing this to our attention, and that's a funny coincidence that we sound alike! Again, sincere apologies, that was sloppy on our part.
I just discovered this video and I gotta say, it's brilliant. The editing is very high-end and the content... Chef's kiss!
Oh my goodness! This video is absolutely incredible, from the writing, editing, and visuals are just... Outstanding!
Also, the voices work so well
This was genuinely inspiring, as a writer myself, I'll definitely be taking notes for my own work, maps and stories that reflect our own world I find fascinating, it's nice to see some that loves good maps too, just a simple map will not suffice
Mappa Mundi is an interesting counter-example to modern (humanist) cartography, but I think it would also be interesting to fantasy maps draw inspiration from the Aztec Codex Xolotl, which show the landscape in terms of stories and journeys rather than as a poltical structure. Especially in medieval fantasy, this kind of map would be really interesting for centering the worldbuildng around how the land is used rather than where things are.
Can't wait to see what you come up with next!
The ending segment reminds me of what happened with the Louville ω hill near the Chang'e 5 landing point on the moon.
New worlds, same old problems... great video!
what's interesting is the very man who made the trope of modern fantasy maps; JRR Tolkien, was also the first to break that very trope, as he stated that dwarves oriented their maps with east were north otherwise would be.
That was common in Medieval English maps, that he most certainly was intimately aware of.
@@d4n4nable Likely so however it still is not familiar with us modern people and so in a sense it still breaks the trope
That was common in Breton maps as well, that's why we still call the eastern part "High Brittany" and the western part "Low Brittany"
That actually used to be normal for maps all through Europe for parts of history- that’s why Asia was known as “the orient”, because you would “orient” the map to have east be up
I can't get enough video essays into my brain
Thanks. This gave me an idea. The next time I DM a Fantasy D&D Campaign, I'll never give my players one objective world map.
Instead I'll have them gain access to a number of maps specific to a certain culture or time period and have differ from each other.
-Places appear on one map, while they are missing from another one.
-One map has exact borders of nations, another has different border for the same nations or no borders at all.
-Places are named differently on different maps, all carrying different connotations.
This, I think, will make for interesting exploration of the world, especially if the main goal of the campaign or a certain arc is to find an exact place.
This is the kind of thoughtful content we need more of. A++
The quality of this video is so good! You deserve 100k + views on this interesting subject!
This video was actually an incredible find. I hope more and more people come to learn about this as well :)
I went to check out your channel expecting to see tens or hundreds of thousands of subscribers (because of the quality), and was incredibly surprised to see under 1k. Needless to say I've done my part to correct that. Can't wait for more!
Well, he does only have two year old videos
Great video. I'm your 20th subscriber and your content is so well made and interesting, I have no doubt I'll follow your ascension to the olympus of video essayists.
In a couple of years, I will be saying "I was here from the start".
Not worth being in recommended 10 times. Ok UA-cam I watched it
this is one of my favorite videos of all time on this platform. Incredible.
Dear god. The script of this video is incredible. Mind blown.
In the Web Novel Delve, there is a map of the world that the main character takes to scribbling on with abandon because he hates it do mich for being so inaccurate. It has fairly accurate coasts and little else going for it but as a reader it’s fun to see this bap with all the scribbles and notes and also the knowledge that it is only a rough approximation of the world. It still helps to orient the reader, but it is also fun and open to the unknown at the same time and I love it for that
This is incredible! I'm definitely going to keep this in mind from now on. It's also a good reminder for real life. Keep in mind the wills of others, how wants and needs take away those of others.
I am legitimately impressed as to the quality. Phenomenal job dude. Made me think of some important stuff for my projects
This video was really helpful, it really encapsulates in words what I feel was missing about narrowing in on a nationstate based map, but I never could articulate myself. This I think is why any good fantasy map is paired with a deep set of worldbuilding as well, and the understanding that change is constant and that borders solidifying and being made manifest is only a fairly recent development. Love it
What you call cliches, I call archetypes. People are so obsessed with turning everything upside down, you'd be lucky to find any work that has them right-side up that the upside down becomes the new right side up. 'The loser father' trope has become so common that you'd be hard pressed to find a competent father in any meaningful role in fiction.
Man's spent 15 minutes telling writers to add the cultural map mode
/J great video!
This is the best video on this topic I've ever seen.
This is insanely good content for a channel of this size.
I’ve got a dnd group that I’ve slapped into an era of a story intended to publish a version some day. My idea of maid might possibly be influenced by the fact I play EU4 in my spare time since I have multiple maps of the same thing with different labels making different things. Simplest is the Landmass Map Mode where it just has names of continents and other landmasses. I was aware that nationstates as I’m used to them wouldn’t be functional, so instead I have the Hegemony Map Mode, where it shows what polity has the most influence/de facto control over certain areas. Then we have the Region Map Mode where I labeled thing that I’ve said are about equivalent to saying Asia Minor/Anatolia, The Levant, the Ruhr River valley and such - though the sizes are a bit skewed and some I could very easily update, and intend to eventually do so , so there’s that. And all these maps, I’ve implicitly and explicitly told the players, are a tad bit wrong because of in world messiness - particularly certain areas of the map that aren’t accurate to the actual state of the world - not just politically but geographically. So far it hasn’t but me in the but yet, though I do constantly find I want to make and even more detailed map which may or may not be fully accurate.
It'd be interesting to see a book with maps from various perspectives of the different factions in the world.
Interesting there is a map of Skyrim from the Elder Scrolls in the video (from 8:36). In the context of this game world this particular map is very much in the Imperial/Cyrodilic cartographic style (the Tamrielic Empire being like a fantasy version of the Roman Empire). The Nords’ own views of their lands would be more “fluidic”. And the view of the region from the indigenous Reachmen would be yet again different from both.
One of the positive points about the fantasy world of the Elder Scrolls is its recognition of the complexities beyond simplistic black-and-white binaries. For instance at the start of the game in Morrowind the player is presented with a quite standard picture of the “holy cities” of the Tribunal against the evil forces of the Red Mountain. But as one progresses in the story one realises that the real picture is a lot more complex than this. There are also nomadic Ashlander tribes that function outside the “civilised norms” of either the Empire or the Tribunal, but they are not simply romanticised into some kind of “noble savage” either, but are people with complex and more realistic motives and tendencies.
Great video! Definitely brought some oversights of my own within my worldbuilding to light. Thank you!
I think the real question is whether China is a part of Taiwan 👌
Mmm good point
I think the reason Dynastic nomenclature is used is because it makes a lot of sense in a world where one of the most important political questions is "which powerful family claims ultimate authority over this place?"
I have to say, this was a great video, very thoughtful and well-thought-out. In my own world-building, I've wanted to move away from standards that have apparently been set in place by a genre or tradition. I haven't finished (I don't think it ever ends), in part because something comes along--like this video--that causes me to consider something else that hadn't occurred to me or that I was unaware of. Some of the things you mention have occurred to me, and I've been mulling over a number of ideas concerning my world. I think one has to draw a line somewhere, perhaps, however, or else one's world may become a salad of things intended to "flip the script," but that end up making a mess of things. Perhaps some form of convention is necessary.
Very thought-provoking work! :-)
I just wanted to add more effusive praise for your work in the comments section. This video was very thoughtful and useful and also had great production. Thanks for making it.
The opening sequence to this video gave me my villain origin flashbacks to APHUG in high school.
That was quite well said and well illustrated!
When making premodern-ish maps I moved away from drawing borders alltogeather towards marking settlements, because borders are mostly legal fiction of later times whereas settlements are very real and show the actual developement and control of land rather than it's theoretical ownership. The exception are fortified borders of course, like the wall of China or the Roman Limes, and natural barriers because these types of borders were historically enforcable and existed as physical features of the land. Settlements don't include migratory peoples, but their ranges are also better described imo with reference to settlements and goegraphical features (both of which have a real impact on anyone who lives in the area, including nomads) than through a line that claims their territory/range always extends up to the line and never beyond.
Borders have existed since states existed and that has been a thing for 5 millennia.
interacting to maybe boost the algorithim, this video is fantastic.
I love when worldbuilding tells me more about our own world! Thanks for the great video :))
I have never known that I needed a video like this until I saw it. Well done.
Cool video but it dangerously implied that hard borders and the “othering” effect of imperialism is uniquely Western. It’s not. Eastern empires did the exact same thing.
I thought this video was going to just focus on fantasy and fiction examples but in the first minutes you already use concepts and ideas from academic books and give many real-world examples of the uses of maps for explotation and erasing in human history. When the idea of nation-states is so common sense reminders like this video are very useful.
Criminally underrated channel. A true hidden gem. Have my like and sub. Hope you get bigger. Keep it up! =D
"in other words maps require agendas"
gr8 video
~media studies~ intensifies
8:35 You showed the map of Skyrim as an example of a "static" or "simple" "nation-state" map without any depth. But the lore of the Elder Scrolls implied the area has a rich and diverse history with multiple groups of people moving in and out of the area such as the falmer, the dwemer, the reachmen, the nords, and the dunmer.
this was great. it puts voice to something I noticed about some of my own maps.
in one of my maps I only recently added nation states, it had only been devided into regions loosely based on environment and some similarities in culture.
even so I found that there where regions that I could not divide into nation States as the nature of the people and culture and just did not allow for it.
I sometimes wonder if dividing it into nation states was a mistake, just because it makes it easier for others to understand.
im finding a simmular issue with something im actually writing a story for, where I know there are nations who have identities, but at the same time that dose not always seem to fit for the story.
I think your ‘mistake’ has a lot in common with how real world modern states have formed. To your second issue, I think showing the boundaries of and contradictions to the National identities you’ve developed for your story will give your world a greater sense of verisimilitude.
Commenting so the algorithm picks it up more. Glad to see I am on the right track with my world building.
Ah for some reason found a secret very valuable high level NPC.
Just kidding keep up the great work m8 i will be rooting for this channel
How the fuck did I become the kind of person that clicks on a video called "The Politics of Fantasy Maps" 😵💫
Great video!
You did a great job with this. Definitely going to do my part in sharing it with other worldbuilders where I can!
Much like this video, this channel came out of nowhere, rocked the floor and ended. Just like that. No final words, no closure.
What a bizarre experience.
Algorithm, please boost this person. 283 subs is a tragedy.
It would be great to get a closer look at your map, looks cool
Nothing bothers me more than people saying "don't make X political."
Everything is political. Because it's made by people and no person is without its agenda. Thanks for diving into this slice of that subject. It's really fascinating to me :)
That's because you're conflating in-world politics with real politics. That is what bothers me. What people mean is don't use a story as just a vehicle to make a hamfisted modern political statement. You have to write it well and have it make sense in the setting.
You can have political themes without writing allegories to modern politics. GRRM has political beliefs that obviously make it into his writing but he is more subtle with it as well as writing a good story in a world that feels real first.
I wish people would stop misinterpreting what the other side means just to have something to attack.
(Sorry if this was long) My favourite book series The Wheel of Time I think does a pretty good job of using maps, whether it be the world map at the beginning of each book, or the individual city maps at scattered points throughout the story; Robert Jordan really makes an enveloping world for the reader to be immersed into, and also follows some points in this video. TWOT excludes mentioning the Tuatha'an in the map because obviously they can't be in it. It also presents certain seperation of key areas from the general population centres; like the Aiel waste which is the barren desert home to the Aiel. The waste is separated by a massive mountainous ridge and only certain people are allowed into it. This also follows into the isolation of the Two rivers, the home of the main protagonists; which is seperated from the world by the Mountains of Mist, therefore making it extremely difficult for nations such as Arad Doman and Tarabon to trade, making it more accessible for pedlers and traders like Padan Fain to enter from the Eastern nations like Andor.
This is an excellent demonstration of completely missing the point of the video. Why can't there be a map of the Tuatha'an? We seem to have a map of the Mongols just fine. The paths they travel are just as mappable as anything else. Indeed, placing a map at the *back* of a book as a summary of the events that transpired is not a bad practice. And the Aiel have specific settlements called holds, the most prominent of which could be placed onto a map.
All the maps that Jordan produced do is repeat the prejudices of the Randlanders. For fucks' sake, the official name for not-Australia is "Land of the Mad Men". This isn't to say that WoT's maps are bad; they're great. But they're not remotely an example of actually thinking about the consequences of your map choices.
7:49 I agree, it'd be so weird. Imagine if the biggest nation in the Arab peninsula and it's inhabitants were titled after the Saud family. That'd be bizarre.
Not sure why UA-cam decided to show me this video in 2023 but I'm glad. Wish there was more content on this channel!
A wonderful video. Very insightful, very useful
A printed map with scribblings keeping track of indigenous tribes and their legends kind of looks neat. Well to me. Also marking anomalies.
Unfortunately, not many stories do that.
I was intrigued, then I left hungry for more. keep it up.
Very cool
Holy shit, I have to say I got chills when I watch the video. Thanks! Its been so long since I got such a nice inspiration to write and such a great insight. Thank you so much!!
Suddenly imagining a map where the vast majority of peoples are migratory. How do you map the movement of these people and the effect they have on their environments? What does the map look like in places where paths of migration intersect? And that's just one idea for an alternatively themed map.
Great content. As a fantasy world builder myself I find it very thought provoking to consider maps as inherently segmenting between the civilized and the savage. That being said... I'm left with a bit of pause on how to rectify this.
I don't care about ethnicity as an individual, and my maps tend to reflect that. There are states, but nations often neglected. I don't think we should care about ethnicity as humans, but we do, and orcs are truly different from humans. Sometimes my worldbuilding in general neglects that more than I should. Not to say I completely ignore it - I have a Mindflare stat block, and I'm not going to shove it into the middle of a forrest.
I believe the term you are looking for is, "Thatcheridians".
Decent video. I create fantasy maps all the time as a Dungeon Master and setting designer. My first three steps are as follow.
1. Define enough rough geography to fill in with rational extrapolation later. (If i have the mountains, lowlands, coast and primary rivers defined I can redily fill in tributaries and settlements later.
2. Define political borders of states and organizations. These split up the map based on defensibility and distribution of resources.
3. Define cultural borders of ethnic, religious, or behavioral distinctions. These frequently overlap and saturate the map based on ease of migration and abundance of simple resources.
Ther are often lands claims by a state which contain no cultural groups, empty lands. And many cultural groups that extend beyond the border of the state that they are primarily found in. Thanks to magic in these settings, there are not many lands which are not "claimed" by some lordly actor or state. These unclaimed lands are sometimes simply to dangerous to bother laying claim to due to natural occurances(extreme heat or regularity of storms, fire swamps).
The mere process of creating and defining these political and cultural lines on the map inherently creates along with it some of the history and interior dynamics of the setting being created.
Currently writing the content for a setting that contains a cultural group of human and halfling horse breeders that is truly ancient. Lived on this parcel of lands through the existence of a dozen nations or more on the same land. Something long ago made them apolitical as a rule and it has allowed them to survive catastrophic wars, selling well trained animals to whom ever claims to rule the land currently.
This is...an amazingly thoughtful video.
This is incredibly knowledgeable and thought provoking. I hope you consider making more videos one day!
Such a great video, I wish more people took this to heart
Thank you for such a great video! Even while aware of the bias of maps, having such a neatly presented essay is highly valuable to help all those notions click into place.
I never comment on videos but my god this is such a great video that I couldn’t not comment! Me being a geography nerd was absolutely enthralled by this video, I’m seriously impressed by this hopefully more people see it soon!
I am now your 50th subscriber, keep it up, your intent is great
This guy: “Notice how every baseball game features the same diamond, the same bases, players in the same positions with mindless regularity….”
OMG! This is so underrated! Great job, keep up the good work!
Excellent exploration of the subject of maps, of fantasy, and of the concept of boundaries. Great bit of philosophic consideration!
Bravo! An excellent, thought provoking video!
Very late to this video but wanted to say it's fantastic! Subscribed!
That video was just fantastic. I loved the way you presented it, the clips were well chosen and made me want to create a map myself, and your way of narrating is absolutely superb. Enjoyed every second of it. Keep it up
Love the vid
"Dynasties aren't an important way of thinking about states anymore".
The Kims of North Korea and the House of Saud would like a word.
Only 200 subs for something with such good quality? Im subbing
This is such an amazing channel !!