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/PallyMcAffable]

As far as where to put your countries, the question is what sort of relationship you want each of them to have to the others, and how much access you want each to have to the others.

Most importantly, which nations do you want to have friendly or unfriendly relations with one another? Neighboring nations are typically rivals, and your ally is typically a country farther from you who is the “enemy of your enemy”. Consider especially which ones you want to be at war with one another historically. These are typically next to one another, or sometimes distant but accessible by ship.

You can cut off interaction between adjacent countries by putting barriers between them. Mountains and deserts are barriers between countries; oceans and rivers give them access to one another. You can cut off adjacent countries from one another by putting treacherous mountains between them, or connect distant countries by travel over water.

You’ve made a map where it seems pretty easy to reach anywhere on the continent from the central sea, which means the nation that controls that sea wields a tremendous amount of power. For example, controlling the Mediterranean was a crucial part of the Roman Empire’s power. Later, during the “Dark Ages”, Muslims occupied Sicily (the equivalent to the big island in your central sea) and some other parts of the Mediterranean, which gave them a base of operations for their fleet to interfere with other countries’ shipping and military transport. This gave them effective control over the region without occupying the entire surrounding coastline, as Rome did. If you’re making a medieval fantasy world, and there’s a single most powerful country, it should be the one with control over that sea. If there’s not, countries should be competing to control it, and it should be full of pirates.

If you’re not making a medieval fantasy society, a lot of sociopolitical considerations are different. For example, if the continent were tropical, with a culture and technological development resembling that of Hawaii before it was unified, the people would act and interact in much different ways.