Understanding Scale & Distance

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Scale is the relation of objects on a map to each other.  Not specifically a tree to a mountain but more like one region to another.  To give the impression of a vast wasteland, it needs to be much bigger in size than the regions around it.  A deep, ancient forest should be quite large to allow for much of it to be unexplored.  Who fears exploring a forest if it’s but a few hours from one end to the other?  Make it several days if not weeks journey and you’ll give your players a sense of space and believably.

Scale is important to convey ideas of distance when you don’t specifically indicate it on a map.

Even if you don’t plan on adding a distance indicator to your maps, keeping it in mind while creating a map will help give you a better sense of the world you’re making.

To help give you a better understanding of what I mean, click here to see Google Maps in a new browser tab before continuing with the lesson. Once open come back to this tab and keep reading.

You might recognize this national monument.  For a moment, why not go into “street view” by dragging the little yellow person icon in the lower right-hand corner onto the walkway around the statue.  Just to give you a good idea of scale in case you’ve never been there in person.  Then start slowly zooming out.  Stop for a moment when all of Ellis Island is visible in your browser.  Note the size of the trees & buildings.  Now start zooming out again but keep an eye on that island.  See how quickly it just disappears?  That’s 27 acres that just went POOF!

So now focus on Long Island (that fish shaped landmass to the right of Ellis Island).  Long Island is the longest & largest island on the contiguous United States.  It is 118 miles long and 23 miles north to south.  Start zooming out again.  Zoom out till all of the US is now visible.  You can still see it, though now you can’t tell it’s an island.

You can close that tab now.

When creating a map, if you want to give a better sense of an unexplored area, make it much larger than an explored one.  If you want to give the impression of a well populated area, put towns/villages closer to each other.  If you want a forest with unexplored ruins, make that forest sprawl over a large enough area that the ruins would actually look lost in.

If you plan on adding an indication of distance (example: 1 inch equals 100 miles), it is important you keep that consistent throughout the map.  If you only make a world map, it’s not a huge deal but if you decide to make maps of local areas of that world map, you’ll need to keep that scale consistent throughout.  Later in the course I’ll help you with a few pointers on how to do this but for now you’ll need to decide just how large your world is, or at least how large the biggest landmass is in comparison to the rest of the world around it.  Once you have the main land figured out, you can make all other areas the right size for the story you’re trying to tell; such as being able to indicate “empires” by giving them a larger area of land.  Or making islands look isolated by making them appear tiny in comparison to the nearest continent.  Don’t think that means you can’t have a whole thriving population on those islands.

Click here to go to Google Maps (different than the link above) in a new tab.

Welcome to the Hawaiian Islands.  Slowly start zooming out, how long before you see any other land on your screen?  Keep zooming out to see it in respect to distance and size of the other countries on Earth.  Now zoom back in.  Continue to zoom in on Holualoa on the western coast.  Zoom in till the map indicates buildings then click the “Earth” button in the lower left-hand corner.   Look at all those buildings, businesses, & homes!  Just because a world map makes an area seem tiny, doesn’t mean you can’t have a well populated, modern city.

When creating your first maps, I recommend starting with the largest area you want to display and then moving on to the smaller regions to give a better sense of size to everything.