The Shaman
First Post
Lessee...
*sound of computer whirring as Fractal Terrains launches*
My game-world consists of three continents: two are joined to by an isthmus just above the equator, and the third is separated from the larger continent by 1300 miles of ocean at their closest point.
The largest continent is about 8000 miles east-west at its widest point (but tapers considerably in the mid- and lower-latitudes) by 7500 miles north-south, stretching from beneath the polar ice cap to just shy of the equator. This is joined by the aforementioned isthmus to another continent that is 4700 miles north-south by 4200 miles east-west. The third continent 1300 miles away is 4900 miles north-south by 4200 miles east-west.
I tend to be more than a little bunghole-retentive when it comes to this stuff - I have a degree in geography, work with geographic information systems in my job, and occasionally make maps for publication, so I strive for a high level of verisimilitude for climates, biomes, and so on. My working map of the game-world shows prevailing winds, sea currents, typhoon storm tracks, monsoons, and rain shadows - from these climatic phenomena, latitude, and elevation I infer vegetation types: deserts, prairies, woodland, rainforest (tropical and mid-latitude), grassland, marsh, and so on. The climate information also guides placing geomorphic features like kelp forests, barrier reefs, and barrier islands as well as glaciers, salt flats, and badlands.
If I create a map from scratch, I start with plate boundaries to identify areas of volcanism and tectonic activity, including hot spots and geothermal features. However, using Fractal Terrains to create my base map, I infer the plate boundaries instead from the position of mountain ranges and land masses, and place volcanos, geyser fields, deep sea thermal vents, and so on accordingly. Next comes river basins and other drainage features such as seasonal wetlands and coastal deltas and estuaries - these also result in marshes and swamps being placed in the map in conjunction with other features such as grasslands or barrier islands. About this time I also study the map to identify key mountain passes - the largest continent on my current game-world is nearly bisected by a cordillera that stretches from the north pole to nearly the equator and there are seven or eight major passes that tie the various regions around this sinuous mountain range together.
From climate, landforms, and vegetation, I now have an idea of what animals and monsters live where - this allows me to identify migration routes for large herbivores such as whales and bison and place their predators accordingly, eventually cascading down to smaller species and creating some simple food webs.
Now I know climate, vegetation, landform linkages (prevailing winds and currents for sea routes, mountain passes) and a macro-scale distribution of wildlife and magical beasts, I can begin placing humanoid communities, from gnomes to giants: from landforms and vegetation I have a good idea of what trade resources are available in a region (from gemstones to furs to textiles to metals, and so on) - from climate, vegetation and wildlife I can infer subsistence practices and material culture and develop the cultural development patterns of the various humanoids. With trade goods and routes, subsistence practices, and vegetation and landforms in place, I can site the great cities around which the major kingdoms develop.
From here three things happen. First, I try to place one or two anomalous culture types, humanoid groupings that are not a reflection of their environment - later I'll figure out why they are where they are. Second, I place magical landscapes: a volcano that is actually a magma elemental demigod turns a fertile grassland into a blasted waste, the goddess of nature maintains a temperate valley filled with woodlands in perpetual spring deep in an icy mountain range as an affront to the goddess of winter, spirits of an ancient battlefield have twisted the vegetation of a forest into something dark and evil, and so on. Third, I roll it all back in time: taking the present I leap backward in time to identify the history, both natural and cultural, that exists in the present day of the game-world.
Now this sounds like an awful lot of work, I'm sure, and many, many GMs will tell you there's really no reason to bother - start with a small area and work up if and when you need to seems to be the norm for most GMs. I took this route with the setting I created for my threepointoh D&D game: about 90% of the action took place in an area about the size of Texas, with only a vague notion of what lay beyond those boundaries. So why bother putting the effort into a larger world?
First, it's not as time-consuming as it sounds. The game-world base map took about five seconds to create using FT, though I did cycle through about seven or eight worlds before I saw one that sparked my imagination - call it about ten minutes to create a map of the world showing basic landforms: mountains, plains, seas and oceans. The process of definining climate and vegetation patterns took about thirty minutes - I'm able to draw from my background in geography to sketch out these patterns pretty quickly. Secondary landforms, such as barrier islands, reefs, volcanos, and so on took about an hour, and from this I spent probably another hour on mineral resources of the different regions of the world - this is something that will continue to be developed as each region is detailed on a smaller and smaller scale. Exporting the FT base map into CC2Pro as a contour map made identifying river valleys and mountain passes easy - maybe thirty minutes to draw the large river systems, about ten minutes to pick out the important passes. As trade routes were extremely easy to identify on this map, I placed the major humanoid culture groups before working on animal and monster lists by region, which is where I stand at present - the wildlife lists will probably take me about an hour to complete, but defining the cultures and their relations will be the most time-consuming part of building the world taking me about twenty to thirty hours to complete. As I work I keep a list of ideas for places of magic and the 'wonders of the world' that get inserted later.
If you want a leg-up on the geography, you may want to take a look at A Magical Society: Ecology and Culture by Expeditous Retreat Press, or simply go to a used bookstore and find a good physical geography or climatology text book and a world atlas.
Second, I find that this kind of macro-scale work enhances the game considerably. In my threepointoh campaign, I didn't need to define a larger area because with the exception of elves who were native to the region, everyone else came from somewhere 'across the sea' or 'over the mountains' as refugees or conquerors - it was an insular environment so it didn't really matter what lay beyond the boundaries. However, this is a pretty artificial construct: one of the lessons I learned in studying archeology and history over the years is that humans are rarely limited to staying in one place and that trade across vast landscapes occurs in even the most primitive of cultures. A GM can create world that is small and insular, and even give it a high degree of verisimilitude, but a world that is wide open offers a broader spectrum of adventure possibilities, IMHO, and I wanted to capture that for my next fantasy campaign. It also helps me to answer the critical question of, "Why?" Why is the caravan route here? Because of this mountain pass and these natural resources and that concentration of merfolk pirates. Why do the orcs live on this highland plateau? Because in this jungle are kuo-toa that enslave them, in these mountains are fire giants who kill them, and because on these plains are the humans the orcs raid for food and weapons. The time I spend on creating a detailed game-world dramatically reduces the time I spend on creating adventures, as the adventures spring out of the circumstances of the game-world.
I don't know if any of this is helpful or not, but I hope it is.
*sound of computer whirring as Fractal Terrains launches*
My game-world consists of three continents: two are joined to by an isthmus just above the equator, and the third is separated from the larger continent by 1300 miles of ocean at their closest point.
The largest continent is about 8000 miles east-west at its widest point (but tapers considerably in the mid- and lower-latitudes) by 7500 miles north-south, stretching from beneath the polar ice cap to just shy of the equator. This is joined by the aforementioned isthmus to another continent that is 4700 miles north-south by 4200 miles east-west. The third continent 1300 miles away is 4900 miles north-south by 4200 miles east-west.
I tend to be more than a little bunghole-retentive when it comes to this stuff - I have a degree in geography, work with geographic information systems in my job, and occasionally make maps for publication, so I strive for a high level of verisimilitude for climates, biomes, and so on. My working map of the game-world shows prevailing winds, sea currents, typhoon storm tracks, monsoons, and rain shadows - from these climatic phenomena, latitude, and elevation I infer vegetation types: deserts, prairies, woodland, rainforest (tropical and mid-latitude), grassland, marsh, and so on. The climate information also guides placing geomorphic features like kelp forests, barrier reefs, and barrier islands as well as glaciers, salt flats, and badlands.
If I create a map from scratch, I start with plate boundaries to identify areas of volcanism and tectonic activity, including hot spots and geothermal features. However, using Fractal Terrains to create my base map, I infer the plate boundaries instead from the position of mountain ranges and land masses, and place volcanos, geyser fields, deep sea thermal vents, and so on accordingly. Next comes river basins and other drainage features such as seasonal wetlands and coastal deltas and estuaries - these also result in marshes and swamps being placed in the map in conjunction with other features such as grasslands or barrier islands. About this time I also study the map to identify key mountain passes - the largest continent on my current game-world is nearly bisected by a cordillera that stretches from the north pole to nearly the equator and there are seven or eight major passes that tie the various regions around this sinuous mountain range together.
From climate, landforms, and vegetation, I now have an idea of what animals and monsters live where - this allows me to identify migration routes for large herbivores such as whales and bison and place their predators accordingly, eventually cascading down to smaller species and creating some simple food webs.
Now I know climate, vegetation, landform linkages (prevailing winds and currents for sea routes, mountain passes) and a macro-scale distribution of wildlife and magical beasts, I can begin placing humanoid communities, from gnomes to giants: from landforms and vegetation I have a good idea of what trade resources are available in a region (from gemstones to furs to textiles to metals, and so on) - from climate, vegetation and wildlife I can infer subsistence practices and material culture and develop the cultural development patterns of the various humanoids. With trade goods and routes, subsistence practices, and vegetation and landforms in place, I can site the great cities around which the major kingdoms develop.
From here three things happen. First, I try to place one or two anomalous culture types, humanoid groupings that are not a reflection of their environment - later I'll figure out why they are where they are. Second, I place magical landscapes: a volcano that is actually a magma elemental demigod turns a fertile grassland into a blasted waste, the goddess of nature maintains a temperate valley filled with woodlands in perpetual spring deep in an icy mountain range as an affront to the goddess of winter, spirits of an ancient battlefield have twisted the vegetation of a forest into something dark and evil, and so on. Third, I roll it all back in time: taking the present I leap backward in time to identify the history, both natural and cultural, that exists in the present day of the game-world.
Now this sounds like an awful lot of work, I'm sure, and many, many GMs will tell you there's really no reason to bother - start with a small area and work up if and when you need to seems to be the norm for most GMs. I took this route with the setting I created for my threepointoh D&D game: about 90% of the action took place in an area about the size of Texas, with only a vague notion of what lay beyond those boundaries. So why bother putting the effort into a larger world?
First, it's not as time-consuming as it sounds. The game-world base map took about five seconds to create using FT, though I did cycle through about seven or eight worlds before I saw one that sparked my imagination - call it about ten minutes to create a map of the world showing basic landforms: mountains, plains, seas and oceans. The process of definining climate and vegetation patterns took about thirty minutes - I'm able to draw from my background in geography to sketch out these patterns pretty quickly. Secondary landforms, such as barrier islands, reefs, volcanos, and so on took about an hour, and from this I spent probably another hour on mineral resources of the different regions of the world - this is something that will continue to be developed as each region is detailed on a smaller and smaller scale. Exporting the FT base map into CC2Pro as a contour map made identifying river valleys and mountain passes easy - maybe thirty minutes to draw the large river systems, about ten minutes to pick out the important passes. As trade routes were extremely easy to identify on this map, I placed the major humanoid culture groups before working on animal and monster lists by region, which is where I stand at present - the wildlife lists will probably take me about an hour to complete, but defining the cultures and their relations will be the most time-consuming part of building the world taking me about twenty to thirty hours to complete. As I work I keep a list of ideas for places of magic and the 'wonders of the world' that get inserted later.
If you want a leg-up on the geography, you may want to take a look at A Magical Society: Ecology and Culture by Expeditous Retreat Press, or simply go to a used bookstore and find a good physical geography or climatology text book and a world atlas.
Second, I find that this kind of macro-scale work enhances the game considerably. In my threepointoh campaign, I didn't need to define a larger area because with the exception of elves who were native to the region, everyone else came from somewhere 'across the sea' or 'over the mountains' as refugees or conquerors - it was an insular environment so it didn't really matter what lay beyond the boundaries. However, this is a pretty artificial construct: one of the lessons I learned in studying archeology and history over the years is that humans are rarely limited to staying in one place and that trade across vast landscapes occurs in even the most primitive of cultures. A GM can create world that is small and insular, and even give it a high degree of verisimilitude, but a world that is wide open offers a broader spectrum of adventure possibilities, IMHO, and I wanted to capture that for my next fantasy campaign. It also helps me to answer the critical question of, "Why?" Why is the caravan route here? Because of this mountain pass and these natural resources and that concentration of merfolk pirates. Why do the orcs live on this highland plateau? Because in this jungle are kuo-toa that enslave them, in these mountains are fire giants who kill them, and because on these plains are the humans the orcs raid for food and weapons. The time I spend on creating a detailed game-world dramatically reduces the time I spend on creating adventures, as the adventures spring out of the circumstances of the game-world.
I don't know if any of this is helpful or not, but I hope it is.
