For Video Game sub-tropes, see Overworld Not to Scale, Point-and-Click Map, 'Risk'-Style Map, and Sorting Algorithm of Threatening Geography. This may help explain why (with a little monster-powered-by-evil-source-you-are-getting-closer-to-in-order-to-remove Hand Wave explanation) you can't just acquire a boat and kill the sea monster now that the sea storm that it entered by is over.Īlso frequent in Tabletop Games for gameplay reasons, and, occasionally, in anime series. In that case, there will forever be one side of the map that you cannot see without breaking the book cover, though if you're lucky the map will be on the inside of both the front and back covers, covering up the left and right sides respectively. Sometimes complicated by opaque library book covers that cannot be removed from the book. A variation occurs when maps of real places are included in a novel where it helps follow the intrigue.

When the map doesn't make any geographical sense, it's a Patchwork Map, though these can be sometimes justified by the use of magic.

If the northern regions are cold and the southern regions are warmer, it's North Is Cold, South Is Hot. If the ocean is on the left side of the map, then it's a Left-Justified Fantasy Map. Fantasy world maps sometimes also have a tendency to make it seem as if the world is literally flat. Really deluxe worlds are proportioned like two pages side by side, thereby indicating they rate a hardcover edition with endpapers. Diana Wynne Jones's The Tough Guide to Fantasyland has a few things to say on the subject of maps, including the fact that if you're on a quest you may expect to visit every single place marked on them.įantasy world maps will often have roughly the proportions of a standard book page so that all the places in the fantasy world can fit conveniently on the map - the Law of Cartographical Elegance. Often drawn in elaborate script, pointing out the Doomed Hometown, The Good Kingdom, The Empire, various Fantasy Counterpart Cultures, each of the Standard Fantasy Races' lands, many of the Wacky Wayside Tribes, the dangerous Forbidden Zone ( Mordor) and the Enchanted Forest, alongside multiple florid warnings that Here There Be Dragons. Maps of fantasy worlds have been a feature of Fantasy books ever since L.

Have a High Fantasy story of a group of heroes traveling the world in order to fulfill their quest? Then you must include a map!

Avatar the last airbender world map labeled