Nope, water (at least, normal water) flows downhill under the force of gravity and an ocean/sea/big lake is usually as low as it gets. It doesn’t necessarily end up taking the shortest path, but it will inevitably carve a channel to the lowest point it can reach. Water is pretty unstoppable, most of the varied topography of the earth is just the long-term results of tectonic forces pushing rocks up, and then water that falls on those rocks trying to get back to the ocean.

You can also work backwards too, and that’s very handy. Say you want an important town on a certain place. Why was it built there? Add a river! Do you want it to be the center of a conflict? Maybe it’s at a strategically important mountain pass, or maybe there’s gold in them there hills!

Personally I really like post-apocalyptic fantasy and settings that take slightly more complex politics into account. Eberron is one of my favorite D&D settings, it frequently dispatches with a lot of the “good vs. evil” stuff in favor of having characters and races with more complex material motivations, and the Mournland is a lovely wasteland wracked with wild magical phenomena and dangerous people.