2

I created landmasses thanks to Azgaars Fantasy Map generator. It was not based on any consideration so far, like tectonic plates due to lack of expertise. It was done purely based on a personal preference.

Now I am clueless to where it would make sense having mountains on those land masses.

I would be intereste on your take

Edit: Thanks for all your answers and suggestions!

Cogadit
  • 29
  • 4
  • 1
    Please clarify your specific problem or provide additional details to highlight exactly what you need. As it's currently written, it's hard to tell exactly what you're asking. – Community Jan 28 '24 at 21:32
  • 2
    Ignore the bot. We understand what you're asking, sort of. With that in mind: "make sense" in what sense? Make sense geologically? Make sense for the purposes of writing a story? – KEY_ABRADE Jan 28 '24 at 21:33
  • 3
    @KEY_ABRADE I'd presume he wants "Make sense geologically", making sense for the story isn't something we can answer not knowing the story and is something he'd already know himself (knowing the story, or such of it as may or may not exist yet) .. I would guess that he's looking for some usable rules of thumb that can be applied to the map he's drawn by anyone without a deep understanding of plate tectonics that will give superficially plausible results for those that do? – Pelinore Jan 28 '24 at 21:56
  • 1
    Hello Cogadit, and welcome to Worldbuilding! You are overthinking it. To understand why I say you are overthinking it, perform the following simple experiment. Take a blank piece of paper and draw a rough outline of Africa; you may use this blank map as a guide. Then, without any external help, no cheating, draw on your rough map the mountain ranges of Africa, as well as you can, from your knowledge of the planet you are living on. Compare them with the reality. – AlexP Jan 28 '24 at 22:19
  • 3
    What I mean to say is that geography had been doing just fine for thousands of years before this new-fangled plate tectonics fad came in. Geography is primary; plate tectonics is a post factum explanation. Just draw your mountains as you want them, and then let geologists explain how they formed the way they formed. – AlexP Jan 28 '24 at 22:21
  • 2
    @AlexP isn't wrong. There's a fad today to make everything as "realistic" as possible. It's not as valuable as you might think. However, if you really do want to chase that rabit, start here. (An argument could be made that all questions like this should be closed as a duplicate of the linked question, but I'll leave that to a Meta discussion.) – JBH Jan 29 '24 at 05:39
  • @KEY_ABRADE Geologically – Cogadit Jan 29 '24 at 18:04
  • 1
    Can you say how having mountains in any particular position could help or hinder your story? – Robbie Goodwin Jan 29 '24 at 20:48
  • 1
    This will be hard to answer if you don't post an image of your map so far. – Nosajimiki Jan 30 '24 at 20:32
  • 1
    @Nosajimiki he did, must have gone with an edit, what it seems he was after were some useful rules of thumb and pointers he might apply to any map, so any specific map itself isn't really a necessity anyway, I presume from the edit message to all that he's found what he came for as well, so as he's new and that may be his only visit you could be talking to yourself there ;) – Pelinore Jan 31 '24 at 21:34
  • @RobbieGoodwin To me the topography gives geopolitical implications. A region in a flatland is more likely to be subjugated by foreign powers and would therefore have more variance in how the borders look. Also it gives different implications for military conquest. It helps a story if it is closer to military fiction or a political thriller/espionage. For a hero quest it would be mostly irrelevant imo. – Cogadit Feb 02 '24 at 20:11
  • @Nosajimiki I did. And I came to the conclusion that the community is right. I am overthinking it. I just continue making it up. Anyway if you would be interested in giving hints where you would put it, let me know, you will have it – Cogadit Feb 02 '24 at 20:14
  • @Pelinore You are almost right. Especially AlexP gave a good exercise – Cogadit Feb 02 '24 at 20:16
  • How could topography not be a fact of nature, wholly uninterested in anything political?

    Politics might embrace or arise from topography but if you want to reverse engineer your World so it starts from a topography that suits your outcome, are there no obvious problems?

    Flatland regions might be more likely to subjugation and is this your built World, or someone else's?

    Topography might have implications for military conquest.

    How could military fiction, political thrillers/espionage or any hero quest matter if this is your built world?

     – Robbie Goodwin Feb 07 '24 at 00:16

3 Answers3

5

Since you didn't place the landmasses out of geological considerations, you can do the same with the mountains, and then, only if you really need it for your story, find a plausible tectonic which can explain the mountains you have placed.

Tolkien wrote a lot about middle earth, but spent no words, as far as I know, on explaining why the mountains were where they were or why mount Doom was there; this lack of explanation hasn't bothered any of the readers of his work, even though due the law of probability it must also encompass a fair number of geologists.

Remember that your world has to be realistic enough to support your story, not to satisfy the scientific scrutiny of a multidisciplinary pool of scientists.

L.Dutch
  • 286,075
  • 58
  • 587
  • 1,230
  • 2
    Funny that you mention Tolkien because he actually did discuss why some of his mountains defied science. The Lonely Mountain for example, he knew was a geological improbability; so, he credited its formation to the Arkenstone itself. This is to say, it's okay to defy what is expected. As long as you know when you are breaking the rules, you can always put a nice magical lampshade on it. – Nosajimiki Jan 30 '24 at 20:39
2

Continental plates meet - where landmasses get close together, so where straits are or once were. There you will see mountains, like a crumpled cloth pushed up.

Finally, there are old leftover mountains- left behind where to plates met and melded together. Those are withered down.. slowly collapsing back in. Finally - some mountains are just the result of continents being high- and water carving large valleys away elsewhere- leftover pillars and plateaus..

Pica
  • 3,912
  • 11
  • 23
  • 2
    Don't forget the odd volcano caused by a random bulge in the mantle that has nowt to do with the plates floating on top of it. – Pelinore Jan 29 '24 at 16:02
1

Mountains can really be anywhere. Volcanoes on Hawaii, the Andes, the Himalayas - completely different types of mountains in completely different settings. There is erosion by water and glaciers and natural chemicals which can form mountains and deep valleys in pretty much any shape; which can level out parts of a mountain range and leave others untouched. Just choose the ones that support your narrative (whatever it may be).

Also, the mountain range which encloses the land of Mordor is in a rectangular shape. Good luck finding this shape on our planet.

YumYumPizza
  • 11
  • 1
  • 1
    "Mordor . rectangular" well, Tolkien's world *was* sung into being by a bunch of magic beings able raise and flatten mountains on a whim, they changed it's shape more than once, even from flat with no sun to a globe with one, so he'd got himself covered there on any unnatural appearing features I think :) – Pelinore Jan 29 '24 at 16:04
  • World building done right – YumYumPizza Jan 29 '24 at 17:12
  • Look up Aimogasta, Argentina. This is the largest town in a roughly square mountain basin enclosing over 1000 square miles. There is also a rectangular mountain formation in Mauritania that is enclosed on the North, South, and West, but open on the East just like Mordor, but these mountains have been mostly buried by the sands of the Sahara desert; so, they are not that impressive to look at today, but 20,000 years ago would have looked a lot like Mordor. – Nosajimiki Jan 30 '24 at 21:21