OTOH, AIUI Mordor looks artificially rectangular because it is in fact an artificial fortress. "A god did it." Depending on fantasy level, "bad geography" isn't well defined short of rivers flowing uphill, and sometimes even then...
True, and the mountains in the north of the Wheel of Time map are similarly artificial (having been created during the Breaking of the World -- that and corruption by the Dark One also explain why it's hot up there, despite the cold climate immediately to the south). But man, there's a lot of bad geography in fantasy that owes its existence to bad understanding on the part of the author . . .
. . . and yes, I do include the Doppelganger setting in that statement. :-) I did better there than I did with some of my earlier maps, to stories that have not been published, but in the end -- smart-ass answers aside -- I invented that setting when I was seventeen, and didn't yet know or care about a lot of the things I do now.
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True, and the mountains in the north of the Wheel of Time map are similarly artificial (having been created during the Breaking of the World -- that and corruption by the Dark One also explain why it's hot up there, despite the cold climate immediately to the south). But man, there's a lot of bad geography in fantasy that owes its existence to bad understanding on the part of the author . . .
. . . and yes, I do include the Doppelganger setting in that statement. :-) I did better there than I did with some of my earlier maps, to stories that have not been published, but in the end -- smart-ass answers aside -- I invented that setting when I was seventeen, and didn't yet know or care about a lot of the things I do now.