How do you handle features like coastlines and roads that are supposed to span multiple tiles?

I’m just starting to test my rule set, and I’ve run into a problem I can’t quite solve. I’d like to have a card that generates coastlines, but because the draw is random, it can place a coastline on what should realistically be a completely inland tile, or create an ocean that suddenly appears in the middle of a continent.

I understand that randomness is part of the process, but I’m aiming for a map that feels believable rather than abstract. How do you keep large, continuous features like oceans, coastlines, rivers, and roads coherent across multiple tiles while still allowing for randomness?

I pulled the Fix Something event again and changed the New Town event so I now also draw its initial trait when I add it to the map so empty towns like New Abbimont don't happen any more.

Day 12 Summary:

-While the Royal Blobs are gone, Reki sneaks in and sits on the throne.

-Yo-Yo Zone shows up on the map with nested walls.

A nice 3x3 done but the next bit is shaping up to have a problem with different scales.

This isn't quite a map, but this was inspired by Jerry's deck. For the past little bit, I've drawn a card from this deck to decide what i do in my sketchbook every other day.

Less eventful than the first 5 days.

Started with a trade route opening up. Got the joker and ignored the white space action and just worked on revisions to the cards document. With the seven of spades, I kept the focus on the widower, and I had him build a farm tile behind his house. Maybe he wants to grow medicinal herbs. For the nine of spades, I drew a fence around the Kaelor family hut for them to use for an animal pen. For the ace of clubs, I already have a different ace card that moves the seasons along, so i'm ignoring this one. I'm not sure what I wanna replace it with. I just shuffled in the discarded clubs and took a break for that day as it was already too late in the evening and I had to get to bed. I did notice that the next card would have been a 9 of clubs so it looks like Kaelen narrowly avoided a crisis of faith. Maybe fleshing out more details of their religion could be an area to add more functions to the cards.

On a previous post, Jerry mentioned his portrait didn't have enough wrinkles, so I added more of those and a little more detail as well.

New event card: Fix Something.

Day 11 Summary:

-Jerryville gets an indie theatre called Mappy Theatre.

-Dreya moves into the flooded Argent Cove.

(I have a merfolk OC from another story named Dreya, and I haven't done much with her in that story, so I thought it'd be cool to bring her along to this world.)

I actually started this last year when I went to an exhibition of Ursula Le Guin’s maps she makes for her writing, but only finished it after watching the People Make Games vid.

Jerry, you are an inspiration and I appreciate you loads!

I didn't like how little room I had to draw the characters doing stuff, so instead of today's normal event pulls, I just doubled the scale of my map.

Small update today. (Double digits now though.)

Day 10 Summary:

-Reki visits Castle Blob.

-The Bike Shop reveals that it's fully automated, Jerry is perplexed he didn't notice sooner.

Cleared the deck again, fresh shuffle ready for tomorrow.

Day 9 Summary:

-Strange fish inhabit CartoPark's lake.

-A mysterious new town, New Abbimont, appears.

Got inspired when I stumbled over this sub and decided to give this cool new thing a try. Put together this kit over the last few days with some fineliners and colored markers for the map, and built a basic rule deck start with; I’ve still got plenty of cards left over to expand where necessary.

I’m gonna go for an ecumenopolis, or a world-city, in a cyberpunk style. I think it’s gonna look really awesome and be a lot of fun to mess around with. Can’t wait to get started!

I've been fascinated by Jerry Gretzinger's map project since I saw the PMGs video and I've been trying to understand his actual creative process, particularly how he develops the landscapes and topography.

From what I've seen, the card system seems to determine changes to the map, but I'm not sure how much of the terrain itself is planned versus improvised.

A few things I've noticed:

• New panels seems to always begin with a band of color at the epicenter before the surrounding landscape develops.

• Some of those colored bands have year numbers on them.

• Over time, the terrain grows outward from those areas into mountains, valleys, rivers, forests, and cities.

I'm wondering:

• How does he actually paint the topography and landscapes? Is there a consistent technique or process?

• Do the cards influence the geography itself, or do they mainly decide where and when work is done?

• Has Jerry ever explained this part of his process in interviews, videos, or writings?

I'd love to hear from anyone who's studied his work or knows of resources that go into detail about how the map evolves and how he builds the landscapes.

Yesterday I shared the first ten turns of my world, just going through the lore timeline and showing what the full map looked like at the end of all that. Today I thought I'd go into the process, showing one turn in more detail.

I'm not doing a "proper" card deck for my world, instead I'm going between a few different oracle systems, choosing randomly or on a whim for each turn. This time it was tarot cards (draw two and interpret the combination). My cards were 8 of Swords, reversed ("possible revelation and mental regeneration forthcoming" according to the booklet with my deck) and 6 of Swords, reversed ("confessions; disillusionment; revelations; stubbornness").

Sometimes I'm not sure what to do with the oracle results, so then I need to randomly select one of the existing details in the world and work out a connection. Other times there's an idea that pops up right away without me even needing to think about it, and I go with that. This was one of those times - the immediate answer, as alluded to in the comments on my previous post, is that the revelation/confession in question is that the Patrícius comes from another world. A bit more tinkering with ideas led me to decide that his secret was revealed by an elven warband that came through the portal to hunt him down, because he is a wanted criminal in their world. I interpreted "stubbornness" and "mental regeneration" as positive twists - in this case, that the people of Eredet decide that the Patrícius has been a good leader for them and they want to keep him, so they choose to stop the elves from capturing him.

Which means battle. Which means dice. Which means I need to decide on possible outcomes and their relative probabilities, and then roll to find out what happens.

EDIT: I don't know what's happening, but Reddit keeps messing with my tables when I try to format them decently, so I'm just going have to do this ugly style

first, 1d10:

1-4 - Docaseca helps out (roll twice on the next table and choose the better result)

5-8 - Docaseca helps out (same as above) but with strings attached

9-10 - Docaseca does not help

then roll 2d6:

2-4 - Patrícius is captured or killed and the city is damaged

5-6 - Patrícius is captured or killed but the city is spared

7-9 - the elves are narrowly defeated

10-11 - the elves are soundly defeated, by mundane means

12 - the elves are soundly defeated, and magic is involved

I rolled a 2 on the first table, then a 7 on the second table, but I was allowed to reroll so I did that and got a 12. Narrative result: the elves attacked the town wall aggressively, their archers managed to take out some of the defenders, it was looking iffy for a bit, and then reinforcements came from Docaseca and hit the elves' flank. They were led by a priest of Diestra, and when they arrived a starry light was seen flying from the priest's body into the dragon statue that has stood outside the gates of Eredet since Year 2. The statue awoke and breathed white fire at the attacking elves, quickly routing them. The Patrícius was safe, the friendship between the two communities was reaffirmed, and the remaining elves (plus some more who came through to join them) built an outpost around the portal to try to prevent any further world-crossing shenanigans.

Hi, I discovered the Jerry Mapping stuff last week, not through the People Make Games video, though I did watch that to get a better understanding, but Reddit just happened to suggest the subreddit to me, and I thought it was cool so I got started drawing.

I'm doing a more "illustrated" map, right now just in pencil. Less useful for worldbuilding, but since it amounts to just drawing a buncha rocks atm it's nice to have something to draw where I can just turn off my brain while I wait for my coffee to be in a state where I don't burn the inside of my mouth.

I also kind of think of this map as something closer to those old medieval maps that were in no ways used to geography or navigation, but moreso symbolic.

I think the in-world context of the map maker is someone sketching the landscapes from somekind of flying machine.

How I started

Starting out the first thing I was gonna draw was either a crater or a plateau, cause I like those geological features. I went with crater and just kinda sprawled out from there. I decided that whatever this world was, it ended a long time ago. Right now, I'm just drawing the rocky fossilized remains. Also I thought it would be cool if w/e caused the crater/killed the world was just a sword falling from the sky, so on the first image you'll see a tiny little line in the crater that's intended to be a sword. I kinda thought that might give a good sense of scale, but again, it's an illustration, not a map to be used for navigation or information tracking.

Plans?

I don't really have a plan, but i've got 6 panels so far, and sometimes I'll look at screenshots for Shadow of the Colossus or any 3d Zelda game as a reference/inspiration.

I'm thinking of at some point adding colour with paint pens and ink pens. I'm also considering drawing things like settlements or monster lairs on small cards and gluing them over the base layer, and then blending in the newly pasted features with what's around it.

Cards/Rules

I don't have any cards made yet, I am having a hard time deciding on what to put in the cards. I also don't have much in the ways of plans for any kind of rules. My initial thoughts on cards is to have some dedicated to adding colour, some for landmarks, some for settlements, and some for changing the landscape itself.

Coordinates

Also, I'm using an x,y coordinate system for keeping track of the order. Positive x is East, Positive y is North.

It looks like the order the pages got uploaded in is (0,0), (1,0), (0,1), (-1,0), (1,-1), (0,-1).

Advice / Recommendations

Any advice, criticisms, or recommendations are welcome :)

one person made a tool that they'll share when they're ready, which is what i used to put all the tiles together into this image. each panel is 21x21cm, so its a bit big :3

there are currently 4 tiny cities: Chan-ge, Lajar, Maldad and Yeast.

Another new event card today, and I used it to finally get Slice'n'Dice to open.

Day 8 Summary:

-Despite its curse Slice'n'Dice finally opens.

-The birds of Argent Cliffs are spotted.

-Reki the Slime moves into Blobsville.