Where to Place Rivers on Your Fantasy Maps
Rivers are likely an essential feature for the fantasy world you’re creating. Water is vital for life as we know it, not only for survival but transportation or trade. Understanding where to place them on a map is challenging if you don't want it to appear arbitrary. But if you grasp how water moves through a landscape, it will go a long way toward creating a sense of realism for your maps and worldbuilding.
Thinking Three-Dimensionally
To place rivers realistically on your map, try to imagine the natural contours of the landscape. This is a simple cut out to show the height of perspective of the terrain. One thing that can be helpful is to imagine your map is a three-dimensional object sitting on a table. If you were to pour water over it, where would the water naturally flow and gather? This is where you should place your rivers.
You can see that water will always take the path of least resistance as gravity pulls it downhill. As it goes it will gather more water from run-off and joining together with other streams to form rivers.
Look for Natural Funnels
Here is an example of what it would look like on an actual fantasy map in isometric perspective. You can see from the arrows that you want to place rivers where valleys form between mountains which act like a natural funnel for the water to gather.
You’ll also notice the rivers between quite small and narrow at their source, and get wider as they join together on their journey to the ocean.
Check Out the Full Tutorial
Now that you understand where to place rivers on your maps, check out this tutorial on How to Draw Rivers on Your Fantasy Maps and put pen to paper!
I hope you found this little Map Tip helpful in your journey to map your story. If you want to support Map Effects and help other map makers, be sure to share this with someone who will find it helpful and pin it to save for later!
Happy Mapping!
- Josh