Bucnasti posted:

This is a pet peeve of mine, geography is pretty straightforward and with just a little bit of effort you can get a good understanding of how landmasses, bodies of water, and climates form in the real world and then build believable geography.

Also good geography can make great world building and interesting stories. Trade routes, border disputes, cultural migrations, are all influenced by geography, but if your geography is stupid then these things become contrived.

I don't think you need to be a slave to real world geography, fantasy worlds should have fantasy terrain, but if you don't have a good reason for something to be out of the ordinary then it should follow the rules that have already been established by the real world.