Talk:New World/@comment-2600:6C5E:7000:500:FCB0:2182:7672:A8B9-20180716161451/@comment-45.56.46.26-20180716194523

Although rivers are crucial to large-scale military strategy even today in our world, we cannot say the same for the last 600 years in the New World, due to extensive use of magic both for alleviating logistic considerations and overcoming terrain obstacles.

Areas that harbor large populations of demi-humans and heteromorphs, or are categorically more serious terrain obstacles, are marked on maps. Rivers are simply not all that strategically important.

That doesn't mean they don't matter at all, most villages lack sufficient magical resources to make natural watercourses a matter of no concern. It just means they aren't important to large-scale military operations.