The best way to start with creating fictional maps for everything

In the world of storytelling 📚, whether you're an experienced fantasy author ✍️, a passionate tabletop game designer 🎲, or simply an enthusiastic daydreamer ☁️, there is a powerful tool that can transport your audience to distant worlds 🌌, uncharted territories 🌿, and alternative realities 🚀: the art of creating fictional maps 🗺️.

Countless tips and tools can be found on the vast expanse of the internet, precisely explaining to you how powerful these creations are and how you can design beautiful and breathtaking maps yourself or even better – have them created by savvy specialists. 🌐🛠️ Brush sets for Photoshop, Affinity, and Procreate hardly leave any wishes unfulfilled in this regard, and entire communities have formed around the grand world management applications. 🎨🖌️ There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, to each their own. 👍

Buut, as many applications as I've tested, and we'll also look at some of these big ones in the video, there are still questions and desires left open for me, and one of them is quite specific: Expandability. ❓🤔

When you're writing a story, be it for a game, a book, or whatever it may be, managing lore isn't the greatest challenge; it doesn't require an extensive system, that's quite clear. 📚🎮 But let's say you want to create your own fandom, a world, your own lore – suddenly, a lot more requirements come your way, ones that you often can't just jot down on a few pieces of paper; you need something more comprehensive. 🌍🏰 The big platforms, like World Anvil, do a fantastic job; pre-made entities guide you on how to perfectly capture a history entry, an ethnicity, a plant, a piece of cake, etc., to always keep the desired overview. 📖🌿 But what if I suddenly develop a new requirement that I can't cover with that? A valuable gem changes hands among a few people, and now I want to know who possessed the gem at the time of the event. What then? That's when the system reaches its limits. 🚫 We at FALANO stand for limitlessness and flexibility; our creativity and workflows must not be blocked, so such a tool was not an option. 🌟💡

But these boundaries also exist when we look at map designers. 🗺️🎨 There are excellent automated map designers that deliver incredible results in no time, and of incredibly high quality! 🌟🏞️ But now, I want to change a border or add a city, aaand... we're reaching the boundaries again. That's not very pleasant. 😓🌆

Great, Silven, you've just listed a bunch of problems for us, super, so how should we do it then? 🤨🤷‍♂️

The two magic words for me were "Vector" and "Notion". 🪄✨

Creating a map, no matter what kind, with vectors gives you the opportunity to incorporate all details at any time. Because you never run the risk that it can't be added later. You can easily create everything and organize it with different layers to neatly capture all sorts of history lines, climate information, country borders, and so on. There are no limits for you. 🗺️🖋️ Additionally, with most vector editing programs, like Affinity Designer, you can easily export image files and prepare the design beautifully for any desired section with an image editing program, always with the correct information from the lore. 📐🖼️

With Notion's help, you can decide for yourself which database structures you need for organizing your lore and can add new metadata sets at any time. It's easy and offers limitless possibilities for organizing your lore, even for entire teams that need to work with shared lore knowledge. 📊📚

For me, the combination of vectors for creating maps and Notion for managing lore information is the most boundless way to create and manage worlds sustainably. And it's also very simple and cost-effective. 🌍📈

In the following video, you'll find my explanations and tests of selected map creation and management programs, and how I created a vector-based map in Affinity Designer (it's not a visual feast, but I think the principle becomes clear 🤓). 📽️🗺️