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Spent 6 hours fixing one river on my map that kept looking wrong
I was working on this map for a fantasy novel set in a region inspired by the Scottish Highlands, and the main river just wouldn't look natural no matter how many times I redrew it. Turned out I was making the tributaries too symmetrical, like they were all branching off at perfect 45 degree angles. After staring at actual satellite images of the River Spey for 45 minutes, I finally got it to flow right. Anyone else ever get stuck on something that seems simple but eats up your whole weekend?
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gavinperez1mo ago
Did you try looking at real rivers too? I got obsessed with mountain drainage patterns once and spent a whole afternoon falling down a rabbit hole of Swiss valleys on Google Earth. It started when I tried to draw a single ridge line for a D&D campaign and somehow ended up studying erosion patterns for three days straight. The worst part was that nobody at the table even noticed my perfectly natural-looking watershed, they just said "cool map bro" and moved on.
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Oh man, @gavinperez I feel this in my bones. That "cool map bro" thing hits hard after you've put in real work. I got stuck on a delta once for like four days. Thought I had it figured out, showed my buddy and he just glanced and said "looks like a river" and went back to his phone. Broke my heart a little. The worst part is when you finally crack it and nobody else can see the difference because to them it just looks like a squiggly line that was already there. But we know. We always know.
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