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I'm starting a campaign soon, and want to limit the mapmaking I have to do. The problem is, Google Maps doesn't seem to have a strong indexing system to allow for filtered searches.
Can anybody advise me on finding maps of things like "a small settlement in the desert" or "a small lake in the mountains"? Note that these aren't my actual search terms (I know who's likely to read this!), so methodology is useful but links to such maps are not.
I'd suggest hitting up Wikipedia as a first starting point. There are categories at the bottom of articles which you can browse.
For example, if you look up Las Vegas, it will have the category "Cities in the Mojave desert". If you click that and scroll to the bottom *there*, you will find it is a subcategory of "Populated places in the Mojave desert".
You can also click the word "categories" itself to get a site with helpful advice for browsing categories.
From there, you have a name which you can google.
Loki has good stuff. It's also not a bad idea, if you have time to kill, to simply browse Maps or Earth and see what looks right in about the area you want.