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! 😄
A good reason for straight border might be just too powerful nations that can’t claim the entire border region so they just draw a straight line between them to make things easier
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.
imo definitive lines are generally a post-Crimean war concept, since the modern concepts of sovereignty and diplomacy started the practice of making conclusive settlements between parties, which includes creating clear lines of where territory ends and starts.
Yeah. Where populations were denser you might have more defined borders, or if a country established a series of defenses you might have a pretty clear distinction but in some cases where a country bumps up against a desert, they likely are exerting influence into it but don't really have any fixed boundary defining how far into the desert their country extends, and both these situations could exist at once. On one side a country might sign a treaty demarcating a border, or build a series of forts that de fact establish a border, and on the other side have a desert with no fixed boundary.
@@nicoliedolpot7213 Eh, the concept of defined borders as well as soverignty and diplomacy existed before the Crimean War as well. The treaty that defined the border between the US and Canada was written and signed by the US and Britain before the Crimean War. And we have other treaties as well, dating as far back as the Bronze Age which seeked to establish peace and borders.
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.
Hi political geography major here! Another aspect to consider is that in a medieval like fantasy settings, especially in a feudal system, the concept of borders is very difficult to locate in the fictional reality of the world. We are conditioned by concepts like nation states and clear cut political maps, to intrinsically understand the concept of a border. But for a majority of humanity (before our time) the concept of borders as we know it was foreign, they looked upon borders from the ground, different feudal lords had different fealties, e.g. the king of england was also the duke of Normandy subserviant to the King of France. Nonsensical territories and patchwork bordergore like in the HRE (holy roman empire) came about through political systems, decades long border conflicts were caused by unclarity of land deeds. I encourage you to first place important settlements, think about the political entities, culture and the people living there and then as a result of that one should draw the borders!
Yeah this video definitely leans more toward the modern understanding of what a border is defined as. Perhaps we'll revisit this topic from a Medieval perspective one day.
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
@@exctinnal Caused a lot of peoples life quality to worsen since areas that were once Hungarian were completely neglected after Trianon, the people were surpressed, discriminated and hungered causing many to move to Budapest causing it to be overpopulated and Ghetto areas got more frequent. And the people who stayed had it even worse. Same with other nationalities who lived in those areas like Svabs or Bunjevac
@@wladynoszhighlights5989 did the Hungarians not oppress the Romanians just as much, even more? Ever heard of the hungarian process of magyarization, abducting children from their families and brainwashing them into being hungarian? When trans6lvabia joined romania, a million people rejoiced and some ethnic overlap was inevitable yes, but keep in mind Hungary had lost the war, it wasn't meant to be fair either
@@wladynoszhighlights5989 what of the majority romanian areas? they were not much better off under hungarian rule. you must remember it goes both ways, as both nations repressed eachother's peoples.
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!
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!
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?🥳 TH-cam 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!
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!
When I built the world for my DnD campaign, I sat down and had a little game day just for myself. After making a geographical map without any political entity, I then seeded human population and a few attributes and then started to turn-based develop and fight between settlements, emerging kingdoms or nations and other political forces. Kinda like a game of risk paired with model UN, but all based on dice so it’s sufficiently random. (If you know the system Stars without number you‘ll know the sort of thing I did.) It led to an awesomely diverse political map with the benefit that every time a player would ask „why is this weird exclave a thing?“ I did not just have an answer, but could give three different answers depending on how deep into history the particular NPC went (think asking somebody „why is point roberts a thing?“ - you either give the quick answer of the line on a map or you can go full „let me explain colonization to you“ mode). It took quite some time, but because it was like a second little game for me, I really enjoyed it and it definitely enhanced the immersion of my players who always marvel at the depth of my knowledge about a fantasy world.
you should look up Mappa Imperium" then, its kinda like a worldbuilding game that only requires dice and the book to create a DnD world in a fun way just like what you made. it was created by the youtuber nookrium, and he made videos about it. i think you gonna like its idea.
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.
Africa exists and also you could add some lore to a country that it was at war with country B and they signed a peace treaty with their new border going through some parrarel or Smth.
Straight borders male more sense when the cut through pieces of land with very low populations. Take the border between Namibia and Botswana. It works because the amount of people living on that border is so small it can safely be ignored without many consequences.
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'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.
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
Something else people seem to forget is that barbarian peoples would also exist as semi-nomadic tribes with no discernable borders, or in some cases the areas were simply uninhabited.
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!
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 find it more fun to imagine two neighbouring nations fighting to determine where the border between them goes, and the accident of war leading to something inconvenient. For example the war for control of a peninsula ends up with the border running *along* it. Or one nation ending up with land on both sides of a long fjord, making communication within the country difficult except by crossing that body of water.
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.
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.
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.💜
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.
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!
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
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.
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 ^^
one argument against river borders (some, but not all) is that in many cases rivers arent the borders of a civilization, but it’s heart. a good example of this is hungary. the danube river, the second biggest european river, runs straight through the middle of hungary, and it’s capital budapest sits right on that river.
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 !
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.
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!
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
Great advice. I'll add that you often don't need precisely drawn borders at all to build a great setting. Sharp, defined borders are a pretty modern invention. In the middle ages, borders between political entities were often fuzzy, even between established and powerful ones. You don't have to draw every border take your world fleshed out.
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!
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 drew my first map recently using rice to make the geographical borders organic. It's just a small town, but maybe I'll be able to use this advice for a bigger project someday.
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.
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!!!
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.
I didn't know Campfire had a channel! I am terrible at making maps. They always follow too closely something I already know. But if making maps is difficult, what I find most difficult is to decide on the climate there. Climate depends on so many things: the land itself, mountains, forests, seas, oceans, landmasses across aforesaid ocean... it's so delicate. Plus, climate influence how people live in a given region, and therefore culture, politics, history and maps too!
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 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.
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’m writing my first novel and it’s a sc-if apocalyptic, survival horror and it’s quickly becoming one of my favorite passion projects. Every day I’m falling more and more in love with the characters and plot I created. But that world building aspect is a BITCH. I’ve been struggling so much on what makes sense to create and what just seems so outlandish. But I’m also loving the challenge it brings me. It’s really forcing me to think about the bigger picture and how environments heavily influence people’s culture, their view on politics, and their perspective on the world. I think your video really helped me to think about how natural borders can both help and hinder my characters on their journey and how it influences the overall plot
Thanks for this giveaway and all your hard work building Campfire. I don't know where I'd be without it. I've been building my world as a side-project for many years. And it all started with a map. My ultimate dream is to create a huge RPG set in this world. I've been working on my first game, Red Sector, for over 3 years. It's the first step towards that goal. I've even been using Campfire for it as well. It's a "small" game I would say, but I'm hoping we'll use it to tell stories in interesting, unique, and unexpcted ways.
I've been using Campfire for a while now and would love to have unlimited access to all of its features. This video was quite helpful and was pretty timely for me. I'm right at the stage of worldbuilding on my current project where this is relevant. I've gotten the geography and different species/races figured out and have used that to determine a lot of the basics of where people would settle and how movement would occur and so on, but I feel like keeping in mind the impacts that various political pressures can over time will help to really help make things feel more interesting.
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!
Something I think is crucial to keep in mind when looking at "just a straight line" borders is that they tend to be expressly colonial occurrences. Geographic features are much more prevalent determining factors when it comes to actual on-the-ground disputes -- after all, if you're going to claim land with the intent of holding on to it, you usually want it to have strong natural defenses for when your neighbors come back a few years later trying to retake it. Borders that completely ignore geography tend to be born from politics done at a distance, e.g. monarchs sitting in palace meeting rooms trying to decide how to "share" land a thousand miles away so their colonists don't start a thousand wars over it. If you look a little closer at North America, you'll notice something important: the borders are a lot more complex to the east of the Mississippi River than to the west. The 49th-parallel line between Canada and the U.S. suddenly starts squiggling, the field of giant rectangles defining the different U.S. states gives way to a jumble of various shapes and sizes, and the lines all seem to pay more heed to natural boundaries like rivers and mountains. This is largely due to the fact that these borders were drawn when there were barely any colonists west of the Mississippi, so all the land claims were decided with more of an eye for distant economic necessity rather than local geopolitical sensibility. While it's true that having every border perfectly follow obvious geographic boundaries makes for bland fantasy, throwing in random geography-ignorant borders with no consideration for why such a thing would happen i.m.o. makes it even worse.
i am currently writing a ten book series... none of in chronological order for the fun of it for the reader... that way i can drop in clues, easter eggs, red herrings, etc... one of the most important parts of the process has been creating a world map... starting with longitude & latitude... adding continents & islands... seas & lakes... ocean currents... wind currents... upwells... mountain ranges... biomes... natural resources.... country borders (which will need to change about seven times throughout the series)... cities & port cities each with trade routes... i also want to create continent, country, region, and city maps for the different settings that are visited in the storyline... it should be a lot of fun as i write to see what all needs to be created... wish me the best in my endeavor...
This was such a fascinating video! it hadn't occurred to me to work trade routes into my country borders or to have countries made up of former smaller countries. Worldbuilding is such a rabbit hole, isn't it? Congrats on the subscribers!
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.
Congratulations on 10K Subscribers (consider yourself having +1 more permanent subscriber). Thank you for hosting this contest. :) To all, good luck! When I started to create my map (for a fantasy story), I didn't consider much about borders. This video has helped me a lot. It helped me to think of how border are important. The history of how the border were made/decided. This really helped improve my story. Can't wait for more videos. And yes please, enter me into the contest. :D
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!
The map for my current, overarching project is based on a really old map I made on regular paper over 20 years ago 😅 There are no hard borders in the main world as travel is free and aided by portals. Some areas are only accessible through portal or boat because they are islands. In another world, there *are* very clearly defined borders as travel is restricted and regulated. Mountain ranges help with this, as well as several rivers and other bodies of water.
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!
I've only ever considered self map design for D&D and such until starting to write but, I confess I may have to actually venture into the political climate (and its history) of my systems more now.
Honestly, It's always good to hear that my interest in the history part of my world building project has helped to make the borders feel more realistic. For example, a lot of the borders in the "Barltad" "Tahnt" and "Fent" regions don't follow most natural formations because of the messy break up of larger states in the past that ended up lasting to the present also p.s. "Ahikto" has over 240 countries in it... which is a far cry from the 2018 version of the world where there was only like, 35
Maps are critical, I know exactly what I see, but making attractive, legible, and helpful maps for my series has been a struggle. The area where the magical events occur is described as a somewhere that has never been mapped accurately, the borders within the area are not only different than what the government maps show, its borders change. I love how Campfire allows me to keep my maps accessible. I too admired Aragon's maps.
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 :)
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.
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! 🎉
Hello! I’m about to create my first map - I’ve started writing with only a basic handwritten map but excited about how campfire will help me create something WAY COOLER!!!!
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 ❤️
Perhaps looking at how borders were drawn in different eras from our own might be more useful for use as models for borders in fantasy worlds, especially (for many if not most fantasies) in the middle ages.
This video is over a year old now, but it's something that I just came across. This is something that I've struggled to try to explain to other people getting into worldbuilding, about how natural boarders are a good start for nations but are not the end all be all, how nationalism or colonialism may make a nation that's typically locked to one region expand elsewhere, or how migrations of the past can lead to situations such as the Uyghurs of China or Kurds of Turkey/Iran trying to get their own independence and form "ugly" boarders. Granted, I tend to be the "more is best" approach to worldbuilding, and how events 200 years in the past can influence claims of the present and all that, and she just doesn't comprehend that scale of nation building.
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.
I think expanding on this, its also good to look at available maps from eras where the avalible technology of the time may be analogous to your setting. Natural barriers are easier to overcome and negotiate/trade/unify/conquer your neighbors up over the mountains if you have access to aircraft - or big ass dragons. Also think of resource distribution/access (and if that resource is, was, or will be something that would be usefull given tech level, past, present, and/or future) and how that might effect what specific land/river/coastline may be fought over. Food cultivation is very important to consider as well! This is why some of the first recored human civilizations where in river valleys - fertile soil good for larger scale agriculture.
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.
I've struggled so much trying to build an amazing map for a giant futuristic city. Landscape design for skyscrapers and such, not easy. But I've had a wonderful time each time I do it
Hi! I'm not good at making maps but it's a skill I need to develop because I'm starting to run into blockades since I can't actually picture how far away things are from each other. So this video is wonderful timing.
Man, I am horrible at making maps. I started a new fantasy book that I desperately need to make a map for, but I’m honestly not sure where to start. This is going to be an amazing resource for me!
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?
A good reason for straight border might be just too powerful nations that can’t claim the entire border region so they just draw a straight line between them to make things easier
"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
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.
Best comment, I just don't draw borders anymore. Instead I draw power centers, like cities, valleys or forts.
imo definitive lines are generally a post-Crimean war concept, since the modern concepts of sovereignty and diplomacy started the practice of making conclusive settlements between parties, which includes creating clear lines of where territory ends and starts.
Yep, they were more like blurry blobs. Even more so with tribes.
Yeah. Where populations were denser you might have more defined borders, or if a country established a series of defenses you might have a pretty clear distinction but in some cases where a country bumps up against a desert, they likely are exerting influence into it but don't really have any fixed boundary defining how far into the desert their country extends, and both these situations could exist at once. On one side a country might sign a treaty demarcating a border, or build a series of forts that de fact establish a border, and on the other side have a desert with no fixed boundary.
@@nicoliedolpot7213 Eh, the concept of defined borders as well as soverignty and diplomacy existed before the Crimean War as well. The treaty that defined the border between the US and Canada was written and signed by the US and Britain before the Crimean War. And we have other treaties as well, dating as far back as the Bronze Age which seeked to establish peace and borders.
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.
Hi political geography major here! Another aspect to consider is that in a medieval like fantasy settings, especially in a feudal system, the concept of borders is very difficult to locate in the fictional reality of the world.
We are conditioned by concepts like nation states and clear cut political maps, to intrinsically understand the concept of a border. But for a majority of humanity (before our time) the concept of borders as we know it was foreign, they looked upon borders from the ground, different feudal lords had different fealties, e.g. the king of england was also the duke of Normandy subserviant to the King of France.
Nonsensical territories and patchwork bordergore like in the HRE (holy roman empire) came about through political systems, decades long border conflicts were caused by unclarity of land deeds.
I encourage you to first place important settlements, think about the political entities, culture and the people living there and then as a result of that one should draw the borders!
Yeah this video definitely leans more toward the modern understanding of what a border is defined as. Perhaps we'll revisit this topic from a Medieval perspective one day.
@@AroundTheCampfire And thats entirely fine too! It might make more sense and might be easier to grasp for modern readers/tabletop groups.
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
@@wladynoszhighlights5989 trianon was generally successful
@@exctinnal Caused a lot of peoples life quality to worsen since areas that were once Hungarian were completely neglected after Trianon, the people were surpressed, discriminated and hungered causing many to move to Budapest causing it to be overpopulated and Ghetto areas got more frequent. And the people who stayed had it even worse. Same with other nationalities who lived in those areas like Svabs or Bunjevac
@@wladynoszhighlights5989 did the Hungarians not oppress the Romanians just as much, even more? Ever heard of the hungarian process of magyarization, abducting children from their families and brainwashing them into being hungarian? When trans6lvabia joined romania, a million people rejoiced and some ethnic overlap was inevitable yes, but keep in mind Hungary had lost the war, it wasn't meant to be fair either
@@wladynoszhighlights5989 what of the majority romanian areas? they were not much better off under hungarian rule. you must remember it goes both ways, as both nations repressed eachother's peoples.
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!
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!
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?🥳
TH-cam 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. :)
When I built the world for my DnD campaign, I sat down and had a little game day just for myself. After making a geographical map without any political entity, I then seeded human population and a few attributes and then started to turn-based develop and fight between settlements, emerging kingdoms or nations and other political forces. Kinda like a game of risk paired with model UN, but all based on dice so it’s sufficiently random. (If you know the system Stars without number you‘ll know the sort of thing I did.) It led to an awesomely diverse political map with the benefit that every time a player would ask „why is this weird exclave a thing?“ I did not just have an answer, but could give three different answers depending on how deep into history the particular NPC went (think asking somebody „why is point roberts a thing?“ - you either give the quick answer of the line on a map or you can go full „let me explain colonization to you“ mode). It took quite some time, but because it was like a second little game for me, I really enjoyed it and it definitely enhanced the immersion of my players who always marvel at the depth of my knowledge about a fantasy world.
you should look up Mappa Imperium" then, its kinda like a worldbuilding game that only requires dice and the book to create a DnD world in a fun way just like what you made. it was created by the youtuber nookrium, and he made videos about it. i think you gonna like its idea.
Not only did The Inheritance Cycle introduce me to fantasy it revived my love for it when I lost interest.
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.
Rule #1: No USA state borders.
S Q U A R E
Africa exists and also you could add some lore to a country that it was at war with country B and they signed a peace treaty with their new border going through some parrarel or Smth.
Flat borders tell stories on their own, recent conflicts over territory, resolved by committee and treaty.
Straight borders male more sense when the cut through pieces of land with very low populations. Take the border between Namibia and Botswana. It works because the amount of people living on that border is so small it can safely be ignored without many consequences.
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'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.
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 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.
Something else people seem to forget is that barbarian peoples would also exist as semi-nomadic tribes with no discernable borders, or in some cases the areas were simply uninhabited.
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!
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 find it more fun to imagine two neighbouring nations fighting to determine where the border between them goes, and the accident of war leading to something inconvenient. For example the war for control of a peninsula ends up with the border running *along* it. Or one nation ending up with land on both sides of a long fjord, making communication within the country difficult except by crossing that body of water.
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.
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.
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.💜
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.
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!
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 get so into the weeds with cultural details of my characters, and I love it every time.
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.
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 ^^
one argument against river borders (some, but not all) is that in many cases rivers arent the borders of a civilization, but it’s heart. a good example of this is hungary. the danube river, the second biggest european river, runs straight through the middle of hungary, and it’s capital budapest sits right on that river.
And further down the river is the border between Bulgaria and Romania. So a single river can be both the heart and the divider of nations.
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!!
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 !
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.
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!
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
Great advice. I'll add that you often don't need precisely drawn borders at all to build a great setting. Sharp, defined borders are a pretty modern invention. In the middle ages, borders between political entities were often fuzzy, even between established and powerful ones. You don't have to draw every border take your world fleshed out.
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 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.
Another thing I’ve noticed is that fantasy countries tend to be around the same size as each other, which doesn’t always happen in practice
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
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.
Congratulations on reaching 10k, I am so very happy for you 💖 It truly feels like we’ve been on this journey together!!
I drew my first map recently using rice to make the geographical borders organic. It's just a small town, but maybe I'll be able to use this advice for a bigger project someday.
Oh I just know this would help this project come to life! I only have a few modules bought, but I know this would help greatly! 'Grats on the 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!
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.
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!!!
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.
Congrats to your first, well deserved 10k subscribers.
I've loved this software since I discovered it a few years back, hope to win and hope this channel grows even more
I didn't know Campfire had a channel!
I am terrible at making maps. They always follow too closely something I already know.
But if making maps is difficult, what I find most difficult is to decide on the climate there. Climate depends on so many things: the land itself, mountains, forests, seas, oceans, landmasses across aforesaid ocean... it's so delicate.
Plus, climate influence how people live in a given region, and therefore culture, politics, history and maps too!
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 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.
Congrats on 10k! Been a long-time Campfire supporter and user and I can attest to its worth! Here's to winning, cheers
I love historical maps and enjoy seeing what causes borders to exist. Thank you!
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 always found the different ways fantasy maps are drawn fascinating.
I’m writing my first novel and it’s a sc-if apocalyptic, survival horror and it’s quickly becoming one of my favorite passion projects. Every day I’m falling more and more in love with the characters and plot I created. But that world building aspect is a BITCH. I’ve been struggling so much on what makes sense to create and what just seems so outlandish. But I’m also loving the challenge it brings me. It’s really forcing me to think about the bigger picture and how environments heavily influence people’s culture, their view on politics, and their perspective on the world. I think your video really helped me to think about how natural borders can both help and hinder my characters on their journey and how it influences the overall plot
Personally, I found the map very visually pleasing. Good job man!
Thanks for this giveaway and all your hard work building Campfire. I don't know where I'd be without it.
I've been building my world as a side-project for many years. And it all started with a map.
My ultimate dream is to create a huge RPG set in this world. I've been working on my first game, Red Sector, for over 3 years. It's the first step towards that goal. I've even been using Campfire for it as well. It's a "small" game I would say, but I'm hoping we'll use it to tell stories in interesting, unique, and unexpcted ways.
Hi, I'm here for the contest. I really love Campfire and I'm excited to see how much it's grown!
I've been using Campfire for a while now and would love to have unlimited access to all of its features.
This video was quite helpful and was pretty timely for me. I'm right at the stage of worldbuilding on my current project where this is relevant. I've gotten the geography and different species/races figured out and have used that to determine a lot of the basics of where people would settle and how movement would occur and so on, but I feel like keeping in mind the impacts that various political pressures can over time will help to really help make things feel more interesting.
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'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!
Something I think is crucial to keep in mind when looking at "just a straight line" borders is that they tend to be expressly colonial occurrences. Geographic features are much more prevalent determining factors when it comes to actual on-the-ground disputes -- after all, if you're going to claim land with the intent of holding on to it, you usually want it to have strong natural defenses for when your neighbors come back a few years later trying to retake it. Borders that completely ignore geography tend to be born from politics done at a distance, e.g. monarchs sitting in palace meeting rooms trying to decide how to "share" land a thousand miles away so their colonists don't start a thousand wars over it.
If you look a little closer at North America, you'll notice something important: the borders are a lot more complex to the east of the Mississippi River than to the west. The 49th-parallel line between Canada and the U.S. suddenly starts squiggling, the field of giant rectangles defining the different U.S. states gives way to a jumble of various shapes and sizes, and the lines all seem to pay more heed to natural boundaries like rivers and mountains. This is largely due to the fact that these borders were drawn when there were barely any colonists west of the Mississippi, so all the land claims were decided with more of an eye for distant economic necessity rather than local geopolitical sensibility.
While it's true that having every border perfectly follow obvious geographic boundaries makes for bland fantasy, throwing in random geography-ignorant borders with no consideration for why such a thing would happen i.m.o. makes it even worse.
Nice video! Campfire has made it so easy to update my writing from multiple devices, loving the software
i am currently writing a ten book series... none of in chronological order for the fun of it for the reader... that way i can drop in clues, easter eggs, red herrings, etc... one of the most important parts of the process has been creating a world map... starting with longitude & latitude... adding continents & islands... seas & lakes... ocean currents... wind currents... upwells... mountain ranges... biomes... natural resources.... country borders (which will need to change about seven times throughout the series)... cities & port cities each with trade routes... i also want to create continent, country, region, and city maps for the different settings that are visited in the storyline... it should be a lot of fun as i write to see what all needs to be created... wish me the best in my endeavor...
This was such a fascinating video! it hadn't occurred to me to work trade routes into my country borders or to have countries made up of former smaller countries. Worldbuilding is such a rabbit hole, isn't it? Congrats on the subscribers!
Yeahbsolutely. 😄
Never thought about borders this way... Thanks for the inspiration 😁
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.
Congratulations on 10K Subscribers (consider yourself having +1 more permanent subscriber). Thank you for hosting this contest. :) To all, good luck!
When I started to create my map (for a fantasy story), I didn't consider much about borders. This video has helped me a lot. It helped me to think of how border are important. The history of how the border were made/decided. This really helped improve my story. Can't wait for more videos. And yes please, enter me into the contest. :D
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!
The map for my current, overarching project is based on a really old map I made on regular paper over 20 years ago 😅
There are no hard borders in the main world as travel is free and aided by portals. Some areas are only accessible through portal or boat because they are islands.
In another world, there *are* very clearly defined borders as travel is restricted and regulated. Mountain ranges help with this, as well as several rivers and other bodies of water.
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!
I've discovered your app last month and I'm very excited about the news to come
I've only ever considered self map design for D&D and such until starting to write but, I confess I may have to actually venture into the political climate (and its history) of my systems more now.
Honestly, It's always good to hear that my interest in the history part of my world building project has helped to make the borders feel more realistic. For example, a lot of the borders in the "Barltad" "Tahnt" and "Fent" regions don't follow most natural formations because of the messy break up of larger states in the past that ended up lasting to the present
also p.s. "Ahikto" has over 240 countries in it... which is a far cry from the 2018 version of the world where there was only like, 35
Maps are critical, I know exactly what I see, but making attractive, legible, and helpful maps for my series has been a struggle. The area where the magical events occur is described as a somewhere that has never been mapped accurately, the borders within the area are not only different than what the government maps show, its borders change. I love how Campfire allows me to keep my maps accessible. I too admired Aragon's maps.
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 :)
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.
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! 🎉
Hello! I’m about to create my first map - I’ve started writing with only a basic handwritten map but excited about how campfire will help me create something WAY COOLER!!!!
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 ❤️
Perhaps looking at how borders were drawn in different eras from our own might be more useful for use as models for borders in fantasy worlds, especially (for many if not most fantasies) in the middle ages.
I've always found channels like this very informative and helpful! Congrats 🎊
Congratulations, and here's to 20k!
🎉
I hope your channel grows even more!!
I've been starting to use Campfire to keep track of all the info for my D&D home games and absolutely love it!
This video is over a year old now, but it's something that I just came across.
This is something that I've struggled to try to explain to other people getting into worldbuilding, about how natural boarders are a good start for nations but are not the end all be all, how nationalism or colonialism may make a nation that's typically locked to one region expand elsewhere, or how migrations of the past can lead to situations such as the Uyghurs of China or Kurds of Turkey/Iran trying to get their own independence and form "ugly" boarders. Granted, I tend to be the "more is best" approach to worldbuilding, and how events 200 years in the past can influence claims of the present and all that, and she just doesn't comprehend that scale of nation building.
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.
Maybe one of these days I’ll get around to actually drawing a map and make use of all these lovely tips!
I think expanding on this, its also good to look at available maps from eras where the avalible technology of the time may be analogous to your setting. Natural barriers are easier to overcome and negotiate/trade/unify/conquer your neighbors up over the mountains if you have access to aircraft - or big ass dragons. Also think of resource distribution/access (and if that resource is, was, or will be something that would be usefull given tech level, past, present, and/or future) and how that might effect what specific land/river/coastline may be fought over. Food cultivation is very important to consider as well! This is why some of the first recored human civilizations where in river valleys - fertile soil good for larger scale agriculture.
Gratz on the 10k! Looking forward to try this new module as soon as possible, I always had a thing for cool maps.
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.
I've struggled so much trying to build an amazing map for a giant futuristic city. Landscape design for skyscrapers and such, not easy. But I've had a wonderful time each time I do it
Hi! I'm not good at making maps but it's a skill I need to develop because I'm starting to run into blockades since I can't actually picture how far away things are from each other. So this video is wonderful timing.
Man, I am horrible at making maps. I started a new fantasy book that I desperately need to make a map for, but I’m honestly not sure where to start. This is going to be an amazing resource for me!
I write a lot but I’m so disorganized! Campfire helps with that. I didn’t know there was a TH-cam channel so I’m definitely subscribing :)