For people living in many parts of Europe: if you want to know how a fantasy town should be laid out, just go outside.

What might help you: - Most villages or cities started either at a river crossing or the crossing of big trade routes, so you can evolve your village from that starting point (a crossing). When the villages started to get more populated, the town square came as well. - Terrain features are a thing, most roads follow the terrain, so if you got a good picture of the terrain in your mind, you get an idea of how to put the roads. - The side roads evolved from the main roads to get more space for buildings. - There are commonly farms or stuff like that laying a bit outside the village.

One note: the watermill shouldn't have any chimneys. The fear of dust explosions was well understood at the time, and you'd very rarely see any flames inside of a mill

I really like that the book suggests you put a town on a river. Almost all towns are on rivers, and it's something a lot of fantasy maps miss.

So I'm studying architecture and town planning/urban design/history of towns was one of many topics I learned. Here I'll give you a bit of realism when it comes to the history of towns but all below is just suggestions I guess. If you want to know more about this I would guide you towards the history of early Europe. Looking at old cities you'll get to types: one that started as Roman settlements and the barbaric settlement. Romans tended to create a settlement based on an orthogonal grid. The reason behind it is because those settlements were soldier camps in the beginning. Sorta like Roman camps in Asterix comics. Examples of such cities would be London in Britain, Paris in France and Heidelberg in Germany. With a little bit of practice, you'll be able to find those old structures (tho London might not be so good - fire swallowing city and stuff.) The second type is seen mostly in Eastern Europe (where Romans didn't come). They created a structure called Gród (in my language, Polish). Those settlements were much less regular. They were usually built near the river and surrounded by walls. Inside in the centre was the market (later on with a town hall) and somewhere near the outer wall was situated fortress with an extra layer of the wall. Somewhere between the two structure would be situated the church - both the ruler and the plebeian has easy access to religion structure. That being said there was also an additional small temple in the castle itself because if they were attacked and people would gather inside the fortress they still wanted to pray to the god for help. Best examples would be Poznan and Cracow in Poland. Type 2.5 would be an industrial city. During the industrial revolution, cities were rapidly transformed and the outline changed completely. Look at Barcelona for example. You can see an outline of the old part and then the part that was created during industrialization. Next example would be my home city Łódź. This city was completely built during the revolution and in progress, it has almost no greenery and there is no river nearby (I'll talk about greenery and rivers later on). Both examples are very different. During that period the urban planning only started appearing in the heads of humanity and Barcelona was transformed thoughtfully while Łódź was just building anarchy. There are also a few pointers I can give you. RIVER - Old towns were always built by the river because it gave them natural defence. Gates outside the city would usually come towards rivers and there would be no gate on the side with no river since that side was easily penetrable. A few days ago I saw some other guy on YT make a city map and while he's technique was nice he made a river flow THROUGH the city and this is a big NO No. You might wonder - but there are cities with a river INSIDE. This came later on when cities became bigger. GREENERY - old cities never had greenery inside. Nature was danger and the cities were free of greenery. Later on, as great forests started disappearing and cities grew larger in size people started missing the nature that previously was just behind the wall of the city. At some point, the walls were destroyed as they no longer held the defence capacity it once has (technology going forward I guess) and those places were later used as greenery area. It can be seen in both examples of Poznan and Cracow in Poland. My home city Łódź is different. Since the growth of the city was so fast no greenery was there and the only parks we have are small private parks that were the property of factory owners. During communism, there were taken away and now they are city property. Your map - as beautiful as it is it has some big errors. Firstly it is way too big to be a village. The city of this size would have a wall around it. I know it is weird but it's connected to how we see the size of towns and cities nowadays. Last year I was in charge of making a study on the development of Warsaw the capital of Poland. I found this great book (in both Polish and English) and if you read the chapter about the historical calendar you'll see how slow was the growth of the city (link: www.architektura.um.warszawa.pl/sites/default/files/Warszawa_rozwoj_przestrzenny.pdf) and with a historical conspect of my whole country is even more significant. If you wanted a village it would be much smaller and it wouldn't really have a town hall but a rich noble/owner of the city would rule the place from his villa. The mill also doesn't make any sense. For mills to exist you would need a river with a significant downslope and (at least on the map) it doesn't look like it. Such a river wouldn't have enough power to work mill properly. So that's all my points at the moment. Ask if you have any questions or disagreements.

I have never and probably will never play DnD, but somehow quarantine has brought me here

One thing i like to think about when building towns is: how do these people survive? Their gonna need water, food, building materials, ECT. If they are near a river or lake they likely have no need for a well, if they are further from fresh water then they may need a couple wells or aquaducts. If seasonality is a thing, how do they maintain food all winter long. These help me build my city to suit the environment the town is in

Yay for drawing town maps! Well-drawn town maps are underrated, especially with how long players can spend in one town.

Very interesting. One thing I've heard before that you can try if this approach doesn't work: draw your underlaying terrain first. You don't need all the individual details by any means, but know where you have cliffs, major hills, waterways, and floodplains. Drawing the city first and terrain to suit can make for very pretty, idealized cities. Which is great for high fantasy - Severen, from the Kingkiller Chronicles, has great theming with the upper class district being on a mountain that towers over the rest of the city. Minas Tirith, similarly, is situated on a mountain that's perfectly suited to having the tiered defenses that make the battle for the city so dramatic in the books. But if you want a city to feel a bit more real, and if you're having trouble with this method, draw the terrain first. Give yourself problems for the city planners to solve, then consider that in the founding stages of city building, they're not going to have the resources to do anything too fancy. A city forming at a river crossing might start with an inn and a few services set up for people crossing a ford, for example, or a mountain city in a pass (these would often have a more militaristic start - you can float an army across a river anywhere, but the only place you can reasonably expect to get a whole army over a mountain range is a pass, so a defensive country would probably want to fortify the passes that enter their territory.) With that early start, you're going to set down the early roads that go through the city, and they're going to be the easy roads. No crossing the river wherever you want, no building a ramp up a cliff face - those things, if they happen, are going to come later, when city planners try to impose a reformed road system onto things. Most medieval cities will never reach this stage - it's more an industrial/modern age idea. From there, consider why what goes where? A temple to the Drowned God in A Song of Ice and Fire will need to be near the coast, whereas a city that follows the Old Gods from the same series would have the upper class district near the Godswood. A temple to a sun god might be on the highest peak, such that it catches the first sun rays of dawn and the last rays of dusk. Floodplains, wherever they are, will be agricultural unless you have modern-style food transportation networks, in which case it might be used for lower class housing. Either way, there will be a buffer between that area and any higher class stuff. Unless you've got a society in which flooding is desirable in some way (beyond its agricultural benefits). If you've got the terrain set already, it can inform how your city would develop, giving you an organic, living city. This approach is a lot more work, especially if you feel the need to sketch the fledgling form of the city so you can visualize how it would develop, but it'll likely help if you're having trouble with the city-first method.

Thanks for the shoutout, glad you like the book :-) Your critiques are completely valid. Alot of drama and back and forth with the publisher behind the making of my second book, and it was much tougher to both write and illustrate than the first one!

Being raised at a farm I want to give some inspiration on field reality. Fields brought more valuable fruits than grasland, so they would mostly only not field land, when it was to wet, or steep. They would often plant mostly apple or sometimes cherrys alongside with pears on steep upper ground, where frost would not reach the trees as easily (they would not only war the fruits but also squish them and make some cheap alcoholic brew for the winter) . Weat is often planted in dryer ground. If you want to give a "realistic" medievial settting, consider that corn and potatoes were not brought to europe yet. Mills would often bei located outside of town, in order of decreasing fire risc. Forrest was also really import for keeping warm in winter, which is why they would chop down trees in the often community forest and pulling them home with horses (my grandma still used to so that in her younger years) Please forgive me die bad grammar or spelling, as I'm only a pescy german student :D

Me living in a medieval town in Italy I often go to the public library where I can find old maps to get inspiration. It's really great because then I can go outside and see the map from the "real world" perspective

The town map in the first edition ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS module T1: THE VILLAGE OF HOMMLET is one of the best town map references a RPG mapper can have. It got me started long ago, and I still think it's a mighty fine example of decent RPG mapping.

When you know you're going to get a heart from WASD20 because there's only 12 comments.

A couple of thoughts. 1. There would be individual trees, but not thick forest so close to the town. The trees that close to the town would have all been cut down to make the buildings of the town, after all, who wants to haul lumber from far away when you are mostly using the power in your arms and legs to move them (keeping in mind that in a village this small, there might not be any one who owns even one horse, let alone a team of them). 2. There should be more farms surrounding the village, and the crops should be fenced in, not the animals. Fencing in animals is a fairly modern invention. In this era, almost all animals would be free range. The barns were usually attached to the farm house as well, the body heat from the animals helping to keep the farmer and his family warm in the cold winters. 3. As some one else mentioned, the mill should be farther from the town. And possibly on the other side of the river bank. Mills were very dangerous. If some one accidental brought a candle inside a mill it would blow up like some one had dropped a 2000 lb's WWII bomb on it.

One of the best pieces of advice that I got before I began creating town and city maps was to think about what trades or goods or industries is the town known for. This will inform quite a bit of where things should be laid out inside the town or city as most form will follow the function of those industries! Thanks very much for this tutorial!

I like the idea of using medieval city builders as beta test for my towns depending on the stage of developement the town is in. What kind of resources should be near by, what kind of home industries should be involved, what type of warehousing structures should be up. Its also a solod means to figuring out the economy of the town. What's produced, wha'ts traded for, what's cheap, what's expensive, what is essential, etc.

I'm DMing for the first time in a few days and wow I'm so glad I found this channel. I'll definitely be watching these videos while I plot out my campaign lol

What can i say? You are the source of knowledge from which I draw every day to improve my map drawing skills. I've been following you for some time now and you've never disappointed me! Keep it up.

Dude you are the single greatest dnd guide. You have a great tutorial on how to play and do rpg’s. I myself am making a campaign, do you have any tips. Keep up the great work.

Hey! First i'd like to mention that i think your videos on map making are incredibly helpful! I've only just started getting into this over the last week and i've watched so many of your videos. Also, I'd like to mention as a bit of feedback on the river specifically, the erosion and sediment deposits should be flipped. The sediment deposit would be on the inner bend of the river, and the erosion would happen on the outer bend. Thank you very much for your content!

I love these little Townmaps, i'm doing it on paper which i soaked in Tea or Coffeé and then hand it to my Players when they visit a Kartographer or a Merchant who might sells it. My players love these Maps an even ask if they could have them to frame them and hang them on the Wall. Its a nice feeling that these Maps are getting such great feedback :) I often get asked where i learned these methods of drawing and i imidiatly redirect them to ur Channel. Keep up with the great work ur doing. much love.

I really enjoy the Town maps more than a Continent. You just feel the life and the story more seeing it closely.

Well done. I love how you walk us through the process. I can't wait for the next video.

You freaking legend, this is what i need and was looking for a long long time (talking about not only tge map but also the web site to connect maps)!

I would like to see a videos on placement and layout, both on a world map(like where should towns, cities, even mountains go based on natural features), and then on a regional level, what buildings usually go where, like does an inn usually sit in the middle of the town or what? But I enjoyed watching this, thanks :)

This is one of the most constructive comment sections I’ve ever seen I love it here

I love the control you have over your lines! It really demonstrates the care and patience you have for your process

Nice! To see an instructional video on how to go about it. I have two things that I feel could make it even better! First: having commons. The idea of commons (land that is owned by the community) is probably the most common way to have grazing land for your livestock in European history. This means that the farmland which is privately owned is located around the village is fenced off from outside areas (the commons) where the livestock grazes overseen by shepherds. I think it's a shame that this isn't something that most map makers seems to know about. The second thing is that I think the main roads should pass by the square. The place you'd put up stalls and markets is beside and not on the road.

planning to do a homebrew campaign, with a mayjor city that has lower classes upper classes and a sort of middle mixed race trouble class this really helped me get the layout done! thanks a bunch!

It is just really interesting to me to find stuff on the internet ive been doing for years Ive been drawing maps for like 7-8 years now not that consistantly but regularly And up until like 6 months ago ive never seen anyone doing the same As I do on the internet Back when I was a teen the only thing I had was the map from Tolkien and I started mimicing it than later changing up what I didn't like and so on And now its so strange to find all the videos with a style very similar to my maps And its just crazy how much you can achive with trial and error, and love for drawing (thats what I did 😅) Im just glad I found this channel, a home for my nerdy drawing self I always thought there were basically no people doing the same as I do Btw and advise on city maps to not plan roads at all Just the biggest ones and othervise leave some space between houses and the roads Will form themselves just like in medieval times And the same goes for small settlements Two big roads and space the houses out around them

I'm so glad you've finally done this one. I have to draw a city map and I didn't really know where to start.

Thanks again Nate. A great little map! Also, I think the sequence showing how to use World Anvil "in practice" for tagging was a really great way to merge the sponsorship stuff with your content (though I appreciate that wasn't the only reason you did it).

Regarding future videos on this subject - how about those parts which that guidebook DIDN'T cover sufficiently? I'm particularly interested in the "what roads make sense and where" and "what you're going to find near this or that place" part; even without a map drawing to go with it, simply doing a talk on these would be great. Also, I have to give big props to you for actually noting pros and cons of stuff sent to you as "sponsorship" and for promotion. This way it doesn't feel like a blind shill puff piece - instead, it feels like I'm getting an honest opinion review that makes me consider the strengths and weaknesses and actually think about the product in question. Well done - and I hope the promoters and sponsors aren't going to knock you for it, because to me it's leagues ahead of blind praise and nothing else that some channels give. P.S. It's also kinda pleasant to see something so nice as this map be made in a visual / quality style that I can follow myself, with my own limited art skills.

I've been working on stuff like this for almost 2 months now. I'm glad I came across this video because it's helped me make some edits to my towns and adjust the layouts

Town and village maps are fun. Drawing city maps are a pain in the butt. I usually start by stocking the town. listing important places, buildings and businesses, maybe a primary trade goods. Then I design the town with a bit of thought of placement of those important places. I also like to draw my buildings on 3/4 view instead of top down. It just makes it more visually interesting. I enjoy map making so much, I still design them, even though I haven't DM'd in years.

Please i want more of how to create a town, city and kingdom maps

This seems so fun and relaxing! I really want to try it someday, and take my adventures to the next level

I'm super late but I've been working on a map for a book I'm writing and your videos have been super helpful! I love the advice you give and you have a great way of teaching, it's super inspiring

A good resource for city planning would be the D&D cityscape supplement from D&D 3.5. It goes into a lot of detail about what buildings would go in what areas and road planning and things of that nature

Really cool! Your map turned out great! And it also makes me want to dive into World Anvil again.

I wish the KZfaq Algorithm recommended this to me 8 months ago. But I’m glad it recommended it to me anyway!

You name things so easily that I almost envy you... (what I really envy you is for your mapping skills! you're awesome)

Awesome map!!! Looking at non-fiction medieval maps is a great suggestion that I used back when I first started drawing my maps. My dream is to get out the watercolors and make some light washes on the grass, dirt roads, rivers and cobble stone roads.

Jay! This came at the perfect time! I am designing a small town for starting a new campaign with some family and friends. We’re all new and I’m so exited to start. I stumbled across your channel and I was hooked.

Nice effort! Takes me back to the 80's, drawing towns, ruins and dungeons because I couldn't afford modules (a luxury) and they weren't widely available.

To anyone who has software on a drawing tablet which they want to use here is a simple guide: I use jazza’s arty brush pack and it has everything you need to make a settlement I’m even though you don’t need it. Step 1: Make a rough shape in construction pencil (try use draw a big letter than distort it for the island or isolated feel) then fine-line and add a coastline. Step 2: Make a new layer and add trees and roads and stuff Step 3: Make another layer and add houses Step 4: Get a hex grid and put it on a new layer (Only for DND use from now) Step 5: Print and enjoy the amazing homebrew

To save you time filling in those forest patches you could make them fade into a simple crosshatch shading :) i like the look of your may tho dont be too hard on yourself ^^ and world anvil looks like a nice tool man will need to check that out

The first thing I would draw is a pre-existing thing like a river but then again it depends on what one has in mind for a village layout. Overall this one looks great and I'm impressed at the artistic details.

I love this stuff so much! These videos are very fun, but also super relaxing. Great to watch at the end of the day when I want to destress without zoning out :)

I like your drawing style . It makes for an attractive finished product. I would point out though that ina typical DnD world you'd certainly need to consider effective defences. Invasion by the evil hordes of various types has to be probable or at least possible., unless it's somewhere like Tolkien's 'The Shire' before Sauron became intersted in finding out where the one ring was. Defensive walls/ palisades, a guard militia, barrack, a lookout tower for instance. and natural defences such as water, rivers, lakes, sea, the lay of the land, hills, mountains. When I design and draw a town map I like to start from considerations like these, plus any form of industry, how close to other settlements, population. before beginning the drawing. I find that taking these considerations into account shapes the form of a town and makes it easier to decide what it includes and how it's laid out. Good video. Subscribed!

This Channel has lifted my art block

Yay been waiting for town map tutorials, you helped me draw my world map and now your gona be there for me with my towns and settlements. Although it seems trivial for those who don’t have access to these sorts of books if you could go more in-depth regarding each step like roads and layouts building placement and shapes (almost like you did with the world map making step by step, mountains, rivers forests ect I know it would take up quite a bit of time but there is Really nothing else out there like that and you’d be another 10 steps above the rest wen it comes to this stuff.)👍

Thank you Nate!

I need to pick up that book. Great video!

super helpful video, thanks Nate

Ironically I ordered the book the day before I found this video. Thanks for the heads up about the order inside the book, it will make reading it when it gets here easier.

Great video. easy to follow and lots of great comments below to help build a variety of map types and why they are that way. I will have to look at maps of some of the locals mentioned. Or read the books mentioned as well. Thank you. Keep up the great videos.

I know this video is old, but another factor that is lost is that in smaller villages houses were not always parallel to roads, additionally they'd have small holdings for the family animals, say a goat. As such they'd have small green areas and the house set back 5-10 feet from the road.

This was super cool to watch. Definitely giving me some ideas ! Thanks for sharing!

The town came out great! I might steal some of your ideas... I need to plan out a few towns for an upcoming campaign for sure, and this has been inspiring

Great video! I would love to see examples of how to go about drawing towns in different environments, like a desert town, or a town in an arctic setting etc.

great job looks awesome

Seems like you are wanting more of a FANTASY MAPS: CIVIL ENGINEERING, which I would totally buy.

You mentioned some of the buildings would have 5 or 6 chimneys. That would be rather excessive. In many places, the more chimneys you had, the higher status you were. Which means 2 or 3 at most for a small town like this. Perhaps with the Aalderman having 4 chimneys. Also, I don't know this for a fact, but I've been told that a watermill would usually be placed on a riverbend where the water would catch the most speed, thus providing more power for the mill. Otherwise, I absolutely love your style.

I just started my journey and your tutorials have really helped my group

Liked it. Would like to see a full city map!

The land it'self is the reason people settle their. Rivers, fertile land, forests, stone, and metal, are the draw. Terrain is important to how a village develops, and why. Rivers should be placed first, along with any major hills. The river should be that starting guide line, if not then a major road. Also distance from other settlements. One day or less travel time from any other village, town, or city. Remember, people walked, so 20-25 miles would be the longer distance. Why your village was settled is some thing to keep in mind. It might be a place to rest between two towns. A ford at a river. A sheltered inlet along the coast. IT could have hills or ridges that give good sight lines to the surrounding terrain, perfect for a tower or small keep.

I draw city maps all the time! Not fantasy ones though. I do A LOT of worldbuilding, but my worlds are modern. I'm kinda inspired to make a fantasy world now

This is going to be very helpful! Thank you so much for making this tutorial.

You should get yourself some staedtler pencils, they are round-grip and come from many different sizes, like 0.01 and even 1.2. It’s what I use and is perfect for drawing. Love your work!

Maps, maps, maps!!! (They're amazing!) Thank you for this informative, eye-candy video.

you make it look so easy. sick man :)

Thanks, this is really helpful

Thank you!

Those books are really sweet looking!

I have been loving drawing out my world maps, but city maps are something I've overlooked heavily for my campaign. I hope to get one done soon!

Turn down darkness on your screen if you can’t see the lines

All those trees look like little faces and it looks awesome.

Just what I was looking for

Thanks so much I was making a campaign and I was trying to make a map of a town. Obviously it wasn’t great... So thanks for making this video so it will help me to make better ones in the future. 👍🏻

I need one of those maps, thanks for showing us how to do it!

instructional books and tutorials are almost always just step by step how to do the specific example and rarely even touch on the logic one should aply to the task. I long for a "How to think when" series with lesons like "How to think when drawing a fantasy roleplaying map", "How to think when writing romance", "How to think when choosing a pet"...

This was very helpful, Ive always been meaning to learn how to draws these types of maps!

I love this channel. Thanks, Nate!

I love this! Roof styles, fields would be cool. Where to place things. Realism of what basics are needed, like freshwater source or well etc. Also maybe difference between European style towns with outlying farms to go to work in vs American homesteading style lived on farms with city centers. Differently sized towns. But love what you've done so far. And I loooove world anvil.

Yesss just when I needed it. Writing my first one shot!

I love this guy and I don't even play RPGs. Interesting stuff!

Wow great video again! Never though drawing a village would be that interesting.

Thank you for this, helps quite a bit.

Just watched a video of your from 2019 and now this one from 2020. You can really hear the fact that he's lost all hope.

I have been waiting _so_ long Could you try to cover natural development of settlements in depth? Your river and mountain comments about how things generally form really helped my mapmaking.

Looking to start a campaign based around this sort of more modern age city. Using this video for inspiration! :)

Plz do another phantasy map Nate you are my favorite map drawer and are very inspiring

Fantastic resource, consice and informative, also well made video, keep up the great work

Very good video and tutorials i just recently found them thank you and keep it up!

Any ideas for Mediterranean styles, the hollow cube with flat roof? Also, the Roman style and tile roof style?

damn you are way better at making maps than I, I may get those books

I bought this book on black friday, nice timing, nate! haha

Dude your maps are awsome