How to Draw Fantasy Maps: Political Borders 🌍
We’re back to nitpick about fantasy map design! While natural borders like rivers and mountains are a major part of how borders get drawn on a map, they’re not the only factor. Adam takes a look at how history has shaped a few of our borders, and how we might be able to use the lessons they teach us in our own fictional maps to make more interesting national borders.
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This video is where we held our 10K subscriber contest! 🎉 The contest is over, and the reward claimed by the winner. Thank you to everyone who participated, we had a great time chatting with you about your maps in the comments!
#fantasy #maps #cartography #writingcommunity
//VIDEO CREDITS//
Script and audio by Adam Bassett: / adamcbassett
Editing and Thumbnail by Cole Field: / acolefield
//ADDITIONAL RESOURCES//
Not sure how to make a map? I was using Affinity Designer, but that’s a little complicated compared to some of the alternatives. We compared a few popular tools: www.campfirewriting.com/learn...
More about map design: www.campfirewriting.com/learn...
A brief history of Romania: localhistories.org/a-brief-hi...
More about Enclaves and Exclaves: storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/...
The India / Bangladesh Land Boundary Agreement: www.brookings.edu/blog/up-fro...
More about how many of Africa’s borders were decided: africaupclose.wilsoncenter.or...
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//AFFILIATE LINKS//
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THE 10K SUBSCRIBER CONTEST IS OVER. The winner has been selected and given lifetime access to all of Campfire's writing modules. Sincerely, thank you all for participating in this little event. We weren't really sure what would happen but you blew us away. I hope you also got something out of the video, whether you've just discovered the channel for the first time or you've been watching us for a few years now. We've got more exciting writing and worldbuilding videos coming soon, so stick around, and thanks for watching! 😄
Question, for the last part of the video what program did you use to draw maps, and is there others you might recommend that are free?
"Politics both help and ruin everything." Amen. This is massively helpful in thinking deeper about the how and why of borders.
Is it in universe politics?... or real life politics? One is great other ruins everything
How about Western Europeans drew borders in Asia and Africa using rulers (straight line )and divided a nation into 2 different countries.😊
@@carkawalakhatulistiwa Yeah thats the problem real life politics
bro said amen
The main thing I’ve learned in making fantasy world building more realistic is: Start with a logically consistent world, then sprinkle on some bullsh-t. Draw your maps around logical borders, then straighten some, bend others, and do enough random stuff to make it feel just a little off. Make sure it makes sense, but also that you could to a “Top 5 Weirdest Borders” video in your world.
2:11 learning about the history behind the borders and geopolitcs of a country helps a lot. Romania for example, is hard to see "ignoring the mountains" like you say because they actually seem to acknowledge in many ways, and is instead just expanding its limits WITH the mountains. There are a lot of subdivisions in the country that let geographical boundaries explicit; and populational differences in transylvania are really bold
Especially with "Trianon" lol
World building and geography is my biggest struggle when it comes to writing. Campfire has helped me improve in other areas, however, so hats off to the team for all of the inspiration and hard work you put into the platform!
One of my friends and I have been building a world for several years now. He discovered Campfire only recently, and he just. can't. stop. telling me how blown away he is by what you've built. I've been too busy with grad school to dig in, but I'm sure I'll be singing Campfire's praises soon enough! Here's hoping for that lifetime subscription ;)
🔥10K SUBSCRIBER CONTEST DETAILS 🔥 It’s wild to think how far this little channel has come. It’s thanks to all of you that we’ve hit this milestone, so we’re giving one lucky subscriber a lifetime subscription to every Campfire module. You’ll be able to create characters, interactive maps, plot the timeline of your story, and so much more without any limits. Plus, you’ll immediately unlock full access to the new Calendar Module as soon as it’s available. Which should be *very* soon. ✨HOW TO ENTER✨ All you need to do to enter this contest is subscribe to the channel and comment down below (tell us about your own maps, talk about your world’s political borders, or just say hi). We’ll pick a subscriber at random and reply to your comment in a week (March 14th), so keep an eye out for that. **If the winner does not respond in a week, we’ll move along to somebody else.** If you leave a comment but do not want to enter the contest, just mention that in the comment. 🥳WHAT IF YOU WIN?🥳 KZhead doesn’t have a private messaging system, so we’re going to take a few extra steps to make this work. We’ll announce the winner in one week, on March 14th. If you win the contest, you’ll receive a notification from this channel saying you won, asking you to email us. Our contact form is here: www.campfirewriting.com/contact. In your email, just mention that you won this contest and what your YT username is. **DO NOT email anyone else claiming to be us, or use anything other than that email form to reach out to us.** We’ll respond with a short code and ask you to edit that into the comment we responded to on this video. That will help us make sure the right person is getting the prize. Once we confirm that you’ve edited the correct code into your comment, we’ll need to know your Campfire account username (the one that includes @ in the front). If you don’t have an account with Campfire, you can make one in just a few minutes for free here: www.campfirewriting.com/signup. Once we have your account username, we’ll get you set up with all the modules for life!
Merci pour le concours ! 😁 Hâte d'utiliser le nouveau module calendrier 😎
This would be a fun opportunity for me, I wouldn't be able to afford it otherwise. Hope I get a shot :)
Hello! So, I just received an email about the giveaway, so here I am. I've already been subscribed for quite some time, so here's that comment. The main setting I'm writing for right now is a bit genre-blendy. Well, it's kind of two settings. The one we start with is a relatively conventional fantasy setting. There's magic, humans, and goblins. There may be elves and such as well, but only the goblins are really relevant. A technological city-state called Epoch City has risen up over the past decade, and it's ruled by someone who was displaced from Earth. But it isn't Earth as we know it. It's a post-superhero Earth, taken over by supervillains. That's as much as I'd like to share about it. It's a world (or worlds?) better revealed over the course of the narrative than described all at once. I'll be keeping an eye out for this giveaway. Thanks for the opportunity!
Kawai Desu, Innit? ^^
Hello! Thanks for the opportunity. :)
Not only did The Inheritance Cycle introduce me to fantasy it revived my love for it when I lost interest.
political borders are interesting because for some part they tend to follow natural features like mountains and rivers, but then sometimes you get absolutely stupid shapes for weird political reasons which just adds a whole layer of depth to a world. congrats on the subs, happy worldbuilding!
Another thing to keep in mind is that premodern countries often don't even have clearly drawn borders. The further you go back, the less clearly and distinctly the lines are drawn.
I've been doing fiction writing for a while now but just got into worldbuilding for a fantasy world that I've been working on within the last year, and because of that I've been looking around for writing tips and have been watching this channel quite a bit for the last few weeks, (quite a lot of good stuff on here). Just got into map making recently and have been loving it. While it can be very difficult it can be super gratifying aswell.
I'm working on a passion project based around a sci-fi setting, and I recently made a map using Krita. I've been struggling with making borders, so I'm glad I stumbled across this video.💜
Congratulations on reaching 10k, I am so very happy for you 💖 It truly feels like we’ve been on this journey together!!
Congrats on 10k! 🎊 When I started worldbuilding the nuances of climate, biodiversity, agriculture... etc. But borders have been one thing I've been stumped on the whole way through.
congrats on 10k!!! I wanted to keep the "about my own maps" bit short. but it's not everyday that i get an opportunity to drop lore about my project so enjoy pfft Since the post apocolyptic setting is a very important factor to the plot, i’m going for a setting that’s very inspired by the real world, but with the cultures more merged in. The basic historical divisions in the story’s world have slowly faded over time since some areas are more unsafe than others, so i’m aiming towards “districts” instead of nations. With the lack of communication options and well just lack of safety in travel so there’s no full map any charcters could refer to (at least not in the start). In the end, instead of using clear historically set borders, what’s left of the government and authorities use borders according to mutually benificial pacts between districts to protect each other, or they have natural borders due to geography or just inhabitable regions. Most of the map making is still a work in progress since the story is more character driven, but the relavance of divisions is pretty important. Areas surrounding ones usually work with no goverment or real division and are generally unsafe since the land there is free to take because no authorities see profit in managing them. At the same time there are regions with historical borders still implemented since they aren’t unsafe. That all said, There is a very major role of the development, expansion and erasure of certain districts, in fact a major conflict revolves around the violent expansion of a country into a district formed by mutual interests all because it was the safest. Unfortunately the area does become unsafe which slowly turns the entire country into ruins because all the resources and trade were concentrated in that one district to assure that no calamity leads to losses (never realised until now that i may have accidentally made karma a canon thing 😭). Anyways, aside from that mentioning politics and borders of the major districts is too big of a spoiler! This is my smaller project, my main project with proper extensive world building with several species and stuff, but that's a shared project and a life goal so i'd rather reveal that world's setting with the story itself :) tl;dr : i love lore dumping
I'm still learning how to make maps but I'm absolutely LOVING it. Worldbuilding is my favorite part of writing and it's a joy to be able to see the world that I'm making.
as a kid i really loved drawing fictional maps just for fun, and eventually they made their way into my barbie movie stories (lol). i've been toying with the idea of fully throwing myself into the story idea that's been living in my head rent free for the past few months, and honestly i'm so excited to create maps and begin world building for it!! i found campfire a few weeks ago and it was like a blessing !
Congrats on 10k!!! Also, I'm not only excited about the giveaway but the fact that these map tips are super helpful for a world I've been working on. Thank y'all for all you guys do for the writing community!!!
World building and maps go hand in hand, as creating a detailed and immersive world requires a clear understanding of its geography and topography. When designing maps for my world, I always consider factors such as climate, terrain, and natural resources to ensure that the layout makes sense and feels realistic. With campfire, the process of designing realistic and detailed maps that reflect my world's geography, climate, and natural resources is such a blast! Thank you guys for creating such an amazing tool.
I get so into the weeds with cultural details of my characters, and I love it every time.
I’ve been trying to write my book for over a decade now, I’m so happy I found this app. It’s helped me so much and I’ve gotten so much done, makes me think I might actually finish. Plus these helpful videos and everything that they make ❤️
I never thought about the concepts of enclaves and borders that end up kinda fuzzy when you sit down to design, but it was a great watch. Keep up the good work on campfire ♥
I hadn't thought about borders like that before, but that's a really good thing to keep in mind, especially if national politics are a main focus in the story. Also, congrats on 10k!
I always struggle a lot with drawing fantasy maps. I never thought about making borders like in the video, so this video was very helpful! And even tho my newest map has only borders along rivers (which is important to the story) I am sure it will make my future maps so much more interesting! And congratulations to the 10k!! Its sad that I only found out about campfire a month ago, but the Campfire moduls have already helped me a lot, so thanks for that ^^
I love campfire, I’ve been using it for quite some time now and you all work so hard to make it better and better. Keep up the good work!!
After this I feel there's alot more I can do with my worlds Worlds Map, especially since there's so much strife between the different countries in my world, yet the boards at pretty flat. Particularly the Bangladesh/India board example gave quite the flash of inspiration. You've given me alot to think about, and a Massive congratulations on reaching 10K subs!
I’ve been playing D&D for years now, and have been coming up with stories since before then. Campfire has been a saving grace when it comes to writing and organising those stories into playable adventures. All of that to say: Campfire is awesome.
Congrats on 10k! Political borders are fascinating, I never knew they existed. Good luck everyone ❤
I'm always looking for more convenient ways to cook up maps for my campaigns and while campfire doesn't help me make the base map itself it does something equally helpful: Marking up the map *and* making it hold more information than first seen. It's a treat! Anyways, congratulations on the 10k, you guys deserve it.
Congrats on 10K! That was a great way to consider borders for nations. I haven’t worked on a map for my story yet, but I’ll keep these tips in mind.
Maps have usually always been at the center of my stories, so it was pretty psyched to find campfire which has not only writing software but the ability to bring the maps that live in my head and the backs of notebooks to life
I've been using Campfire since it was a desktop application, through the Blaze era, and to this day! You guys have come a long way. Congratulations on 10k!
Gratz on the 10k! Looking forward to try this new module as soon as possible, I always had a thing for cool maps.
Congrats on the 10k and thank you all for what you provide to the writing community!
I've only dipped my toes in map making briefly, but i'm excited to get into it more with Campfire! Congrats on 10k 💜
I love historical maps and enjoy seeing what causes borders to exist. Thank you!
Very refreshing to see a well-thought out world with a rich history showing itself in even the shapes of the regions and nations/peoples.
I’m in the process of building my imaginary world knowing I want coastal lines and different boarder types. This is very helpful in taking consideration of what I should think of! Love this!
I've always found channels like this very informative and helpful! Congrats 🎊
I will definitely be incorporating some of this into my own boarders. Thanks! 🎉 Congrats on 10,000!
The contest to win a lifetime subscription drew me in, but this channel actually has a tonne of super useful worldbuilding tips so I'm really glad I checked it out!
I always found the different ways fantasy maps are drawn fascinating.
Congrats to your first, well deserved 10k subscribers.
I find building the world to be the hardest part of any story but also the most rewarding when you have an idea where it is going.
It's so nice to see good on a good looking map
Campfire has been an absolute blessing when it comes to writing. Been using it for a couple years now. Happy 10k! 🎉
maps are fun and a great addition to a fantasy world. It gives the reader another part your vision as a writer that words cannot convey. I'm still working on my own map, but the subjects talked about in this video are great. I would've probably picked only natural borders as political borders without thinking about geopolitics. A fun layer to add to the world. A big thank you for your work
I am just finding out about this KZhead channel now, and it is amazing! I subscribed and will definitely be using this channel to help plot out the elements of my stories. Love this video on fantasy map plotting - as someone who is trying to figure out how to plot out my very first world, this is extremely helpful! 😊 Thanks for all you do!
When drawing a political map of my original fantasy world, I first focused on the central province of a worldspanning empire, and then worked my way forward in the timeline drawing different kingdoms and lands that were conquered or otherwise incorporated, until I arrived at the "modern time" of my story. Where it's a huge, continent-spanning empire with a ton of smaller nations surrounding it- kinda like the Roman empire.
Congrats on the 10k, it's only the beginning ;)
Hii! Came to say hi and give a shoutout to what you guys are doing at Campfire! I am still pretty new to writing my ideas out and don't have any experience with worldbuilding but I am feeling pretty inspired looking at the updates you're cooking up! Love you guys
I've been using y'all for over a year now and I'm excited about the new changes and the new calendar module! I have several maps that I want to put up at some point. My most loved one is actually a side view of several caverns I designed for a probably forever work in progress novel around vampires that live underground like Drow, and how they unearthed some kind of evil god-like entity that nearly destroyed them.
hi, i recently found campfire and i love it! i can’t function my story without it now. i hope to see it grow and develop well in the future!
I had no idea there was a campfire KZhead channel, how exciting! I have a lot of catching up to do. Congrats on the 10k 🥳
I already have a lifetime to all of the Campfire modules. Just wanted to say thank you for making such a great tool for writers. I appreciate it.
Hey there! Loving Campfire and all the excellent learning channels provided. Well done! As a new user I’m finding my way around and your guys make it easier. Thank you, Much success to you all.
Congrats to the 10k! I just found out about Campfire and fell in love immediately. Especially the maps-part is so impressiv! And I love the fact, that I can add my incarnate-maps so easily. :D Keep going the good work!
Congrats on the 10k! Stoked for the giveaway, you guys are beyond generous. These map tips are perfect timing, too; my first attempt at a map for my series is so sad it hurts.
This was a great dive into map making and I didn't find it long at all. In fact, I wanted a little more. Great examples as well that helped make the point. And congrats on the subscriber count. I need to dust off my maps again and take another look.
Never thought about borders this way... Thanks for the inspiration 😁
Hi! Congratulations on 10k subscribers! That's amazing! You guys have been so helpful to me and my writing over the years
Definitely some really interesting points made here. I have always just followed along natural features when designing borders, sometimes even adding features that didn't really have any explanation other than existing to be a border. I have gotten a couple of interesting ideas to rework a map from some of the points brought up in the video.
This is really helpful, I was just beginning to plan out the map of my novel’s world and how it changes through time, this video helps a lot!
I’m excited to start building maps in Campfire. Right now, the whiteboard has been a good visual tool but it gets complex when needing maps in two different centuries. Thanks for creating such an incredible tool for writers! 🎉
I've been just keeping nebulous ideas of areas in my brain for a long time now and would love to get into drawing my own little maps, both for campaigns I run and just to invent fun little worlds and consider how much of us goes into the way our world is shaped :)
Congrats on 10k! Been a long-time Campfire supporter and user and I can attest to its worth! Here's to winning, cheers
Been working on a map for the better part of 5 years now, and this has simultaneously made it much easier, and much more difficult to be satisfied. Thanks!
I've always struggled with making realistic maps, so this video is a huge help! I'm excited to draw up some maps for the worlds I've made :)
I've discovered your app last month and I'm very excited about the news to come
I've loved this software since I discovered it a few years back, hope to win and hope this channel grows even more
My map has so many types of terrain, and though different species to congregate in the natural habitat they harness energy from (like rock, ocean, forest, etc.), there is also a way that some of these geographical features can separate political or even cultural subsets of the world/Map! Thanks for always considering the ways we can tell richer stories through deeper understanding of our worlds, characters, and maps!
Hey! Congrats on this new milestone dude, never realized I wasn't subscribed until I checked today. Cant wait to see more from you in the future!
Ahhh this is exciting! Thanks for the chance to win! I haven’t used the mapping feature yet, but I have enjoyed the beginning stages of developing timelines and languages for my Fuetellon demon characters.
I love drawing maps. Campaign Cartographer is my go-to program. The UI looks ancient but there's still a lot you can do with it, and they have nice assets.
Hi, I'm here for the contest. I really love Campfire and I'm excited to see how much it's grown!
Nice video! Campfire has made it so easy to update my writing from multiple devices, loving the software
I hope your channel grows even more!!
thanku so much for organizing such a marvellous giveaway for us it really means a lot
Congrats on 10K!!!
Maybe one of these days I’ll get around to actually drawing a map and make use of all these lovely tips!
I have been a subscriber and fan of Campfire for quite some time now so it's great to see someone out there will get access to all their wonderful modules. Personally I find the relationships and systems modules are the most useful. The other features are great but organizing the dynamics between a multitude of different assets in a story has really helped make campfire worthwhile for me. It doesn't just have "good bones"; it actually has many extra features that make it easy for me to keep thing in one place. Although in my case I didn't use it for just a story; I made a board game and I'm using it to script various events of a computer game I am working on now. Thank you for the wonderful program; especially for making a desktop version I can use on the go since I tend to be on the move quite often for work.
Honestly, setting borders is the one aspect of world building I’m actually decent at, but I always love learning more about it and world building and writing as a whole.
Congrats on 10K subscribers! After trying many alternatives, Campfire is the toolset I eventually landed on, due to its flexibility in both tools and pricing; so it's well-deserved.
This is such an exciting giveaway, congrats on 10K! Still working on the layout of my regions but this vid gives me a lot of great tips to start building :)
Congratz on 10k, best of luck everyone! As for maps, I tend to make a decent number of fantasy maps, though it takes me a while as I like to start from the ground up (pun intended) with plate tectonics, figure out my land masses/mountains, etc and let that inform my climate.
Been using Campfire's PC app since late 2018 and it's been indispensable for countless projects! Congrats on 10K, and hoping I get that total access ;D
First off I really appreciate your content! Keep up the good work
Ahh I've used Campfire for planning my stories for years now, congrats on 10k!
I've been starting to use Campfire to keep track of all the info for my D&D home games and absolutely love it!
I always had a problem with making good maps, so this helps a lot!
Always loved it when they had a really interesting map at the front of books ❤
Great video! I've been doing maps for a while, to use them with my regular TTRPG group, it's always great to learn new things to improve my games.
I’ve always loved maps at the beginning of books and coming up with how everything should lay in the world I’m building (as well as keeping all of the world building aspects in mind when writing) is always such a hard part of the process
Really nice video, congrats on reaching 10k Never thought of borders in all those ways, maybe I can incorporate some of this in the borders of my caveman like tribes of my current project.
I am making a DnD setting, currently my map area is one part of a continent, and a smidge or another (think Europe and Morocco), with more continent (ie: Asia) off-map. This is exactly the kind of thing I needed to try and build my borders in the area. This was great, thank you!
This is possibly the words "lets begin with Romania" have ever been spoken
Congrats on 10k!
Been using Campfire for my novels and now for the tabletop RPG I am creating! Love the tool! Now getting more into mapping so these videos are useful!
Congratulations, and here's to 20k!
🎉
This is really helpful! I've been trying to build a map for my story and I've been struggling a bit since I've never made one before. I'm going to take this knowledge over to Inkarnate and start some mapmaking!