Table of Contents
Maps and Flags
Creating alternative maps and flags is an important area of AH, with the two items often being worked on by the same group of people and in the same format. Thus they are considered together here.
Maps and Cartography
Map Thread - The series of main (stickied) threads in the Maps and Graphics Forum, for general posting of user-made AH maps.
Map Resources - A collection of useful resources for creating maps and other cartographic stuff.
Blank Map Directory - A collection of blank (empty) resource maps.
OTL Map Database - A collection of OTL resource maps.
ATL Map Database - A collection of ATL resource maps.
Map Colour Schemes - A collection of map colour schemes. A colour scheme is a highly standardized system of colour palettes for various countries, territories, political systems, religions, etc. that appear in political and statistical maps set in various alternate timelines. They're not necessary for map-making, but can prove useful.
Tips on making good maps - As it says in the title…
Flags and Heraldry
Flag Thread - The series of main (stickied) threads in the Maps and Graphics Forum, for general posting of user-made AH flags.
Heraldry - A general article on the art and science of heraldry.
Flag Resources - A collection of useful resources for creating flags and other vexillological insignia.
Heraldry Resources - Resources for heraldry-making (especially AH heraldry, of course).
AH.com culture
Map and Flag Contests - Contests involving making alternate history maps and flags within the framework of differently themed individual rounds, and subsequent voting for the winner of each contest round.
Map and Flag Challenges - A (nowadays more rarely seen) type of AH scenario hybridised with a logic game, wherein AH.commers get a particular map of an ATL world, and have to use their knowledge, logic and imagination to come up with a vaguely plausible scenario that can explain the situation seen in the map.
Map and Flag Continuations - A special type of collaborative scenarios or timelines, wherein maps and flags play a crucial role in the narrative and worldbuilding.
Map Games - A major, standard type of AH games in the Shared Worlds forum. It involves a (usually non-pre-determined) group of AH.com players starting with an initial map (often blank), and then gradually adding to it. Though the exact nature of a map game depends on its theme and focus, they can involve everything from building cities in a specific area/region, building countries (and infrastructure in countries), to building a whole ATL world, on a global map. Due to this, these games are generally also a worldbuilding exercise, and often require some collaborative team work to create a consistent world. Gameplay variations on map games can involve showing the events of a year in a regular map game, or adding whole countries. Nowadays, many of Map and Flag Continuation collaborative scenarios also appear as subsets or a particular subgenre of usual map games.
AH.com Map Reviews and Discussions - Reviews of real maps, alternate history themed maps and other fictional maps.
AH.com Flag Reviews and Discussions - Reviews of real flags, alternate history themed flags and other fictional flags.
Map-Flag Blindness Confusion Syndrome - A somewhat jokey description of a phenomennon that's actually quite real and occassionally recurring. Basically, an AH.commer mixes up talking about a map or map thread and calls it a flag or a flag thread, and vice versa.
Mapism - Some AH.commers love map-making so much, it's a borderline religion…
AH.com Heraldry - Some parts of AH.com had or have their own semi-jokey heraldry too, of course…
See Also
Tools for creating illustrated AH content - A collection of tutorials, resources and recommended software for creating artworks.
Resources Section Main Directory - The general useful resources database of the wiki, for other resources you might find useful when working on maps, flags, heraldry and other graphics and artworks.