Trying to run a DND campaign for the first time but I don’t know anything about map making, geography, or geology. I want the physical features of the land to mostly make sense from a geological perspective and then conform the borders of my city-states and empire to their natural geographic constraints. How do I even begin with this?
just find a part of the world your players aren’t familiar with, rotate it so that our north isn’t the same direction as the fantasy world’s north, maybe skew or stretch it a little and then put your cities and whatnot where ancient or medieval humans did
Behold, the fantastical realm of Zelandus
About half the maps of Zelandus don’t even have Zelandus on them because of the damn Mercator Projection (the primary antagonist of this world).
just move them independently a little too and you’re set.
if you need even more obscuring you can use higher sea level projections or estimates from the last ice age where they’d be connected