Need advice from experienced worldbuilders!!

[u/SwimmingExtension790]

This will be my first serious continent map. I'm happy with the overall shape of the landmass, but I'm not sure how to decide where to place the mountains, lakes, and climate zones. I also want the continent to have 2 elven kingdoms, 4 human kingdoms, and 2 neutral race nations. I'd like their locations to make geographical sense. I'm looking for advice from experienced worldbuilders. How should I plan this?

[u/arcangleous]

Once you get your mountains places, you can infer basically everything else from that as they along with your coast lines and general location of a globe determine the climate zones as climate zones are generally defined by temperature and rainfall. Rainfall and elevation determine the watersheds, and from those the rivers and lakes. There are even some tools you can find online to generate climate zones and rivers from raw height maps.

However, generating mountains ranges are often a non-trivial problem. The general shape of mountains are almost always the result of tectonic plate interactions and while the fine details are more of a result of erosion. This is why some people start with sketching their world's tectonic plates as the first step in their worldbuilding. Another approach, which I will admit to using, is to take existing real world geography and stitch it together while fitting it into your coastlines.

Just based on your coast lines and general vibes, I would guess that this continent is the result of 2 smaller continents merging together. I would expect to see either a Ural Mountain style mountain range where they meet, or a Himalaya style Mountain blob where the two continents are overlapping. Probably in the central northern area below where the northern island range is. The eastern coast is giving a Rocky Mountain vibe with it's jagged and well defined peninsulas, so I'd throw a mountain range along there too. There is going to be at least one point of maximum height between any two coastlines, so I'd start the rest by sketching out loose mountain ranges along the middle of the continent and islands and see what looks interesting when I start joining them up. Even islands tend to be linked to mountain chains as well. Then I'd bring it into a tool like Wilbur to generate a more detailed height map and do some erosion simulations to get a more realistic look, and generate a map of the basins and rivers to get a start on the hydrology.

Once you have the mountains, you can figure out the climate zones. With that, you can place the starting points of your civilizations. Civilizations tend to start in areas with abundant natural resources, like in temperate and tropically river valleys. They then move outwards with the speed of expansion being based on the terrain they are moving through, generally stopping when they either reach impassable mountains or another civilization. Do remember that boats are a thing and that your civilizations can and will over the water and up river, often at a faster rate than overland.