Climatology and world-building?

[CarlZog]

In this week's edition of What If, xkcd looks at what our world would be like if the layout of the continents were 90° off of what they are now. Largely, this is an exercise in applying basic climatology -- albeit with a lot of supposition because of the inherent complexity of it all.

Similar analysis could be applied to any game world design, yet I rarely see games that address weather patterns like this or assess the ecological distributions of their worlds with regard to climate and physics. The best you usually get is "it's cold in the north and south, and warm in the middle"

I suppose you could argue that these principles may not apply in some fantasy world, but for me the logical depth that comes from doing something like this would contribute to making a setting a lot more immersive.

Does this matter to your worlds or campaigns? How have you applied this to your world-building?

 

[Guest 85555]

I think the issue is this is a complex topic and "its cold in the north" is a lot easier for most gms than getting into the nitty gritty of weather patterns and how those are impacted by geography.

 

[Desdichado]

In this week's edition of What If, xkcd looks at what our world would be like if the layout of the continents were 90° off of what they are now. Largely, this is an exercise in applying basic climatology -- albeit with a lot of supposition because of the inherent complexity of it all.

Similar analysis could be applied to any game world design, yet I rarely see games that address weather patterns like this or assess the ecological distributions of their worlds with regard to climate and physics. The best you usually get is "it's cold in the north and south, and warm in the middle"

I suppose you could argue that these principles may not apply in some fantasy world, but for me the logical depth that comes from doing something like this would contribute to making a setting a lot more immersive.

Does this matter to your worlds or campaigns? How have you applied this to your world-building?

Not much. It's too complex. Given that things like the North African climate cycle, where the Sahara changes every few thousand years from being a huge, gigantic desert to becoming a lush green savana, is poorly understood in the real world (the same would be true for the causes of glacial maximums and minimums, the Messinian salinity crisis, or other global climate-changing events and processes) it seems a bit much to incorporate that into your worldbuilding and assume that you've done so in a way that's "correct." Generally, I do some rain shadows--maybe, and when I got especially enthusiastic at one point, I penciled in a jet stream, but that's about it.

 

[Yora]

I actually put quite some thought into the geological formations and climate patterns for my setting, but the results really are not that spectacular. It really doesn't look any different from a much more random map.
A gut feeling of what seems right to have in which places is usually good enough to make the climate seem plausible.

 

[Guest 85555]

I actually put quite some thought into the geological formations and climate patterns for my setting, but the results really are not that spectacular. It really doesn't look any different from a much more random map.
A gut feeling of what seems right to have in which places is usually good enough to make the climate seem plausible.

I tend to focus less on how climate and geography interact but put great emphasis on how geography/climate shape culture. To me that is quite interesting.

 

[Umbran]

Especially in a world where magic may well be violating what we normally think of as the laws of thermodynamics, I don't sweat the details too much. Just don't put hot sandy deserts right next to your polar ice caps, and you're okay most of the time.

As BedrockGames said, I play more with how the climate and geography shape cultures.

 

[S'mon]

I definitely use gut feelings and vague memories of GCSE Geography (I was lucky enough to do Geography back when it included some actual physical Geography!) to create stuff that looks right to me. So I tend to make maps that look a lot like bits of England,Northern Ireland or Scotland, eg my latest efforts for the Yggsburgh setting:

I tend to focus on things like the flow of rivers and for human geography a decent population density, ca 100 per square mile for farmland, with villages typically ca 4-5 miles apart - plenty of farmland is important too. If I see American-created maps with 50 miles between villages and/or no farmland I add in a lot of extra thorpes and fields, eg my version of the 4e Forgotten Realms Gray Vale:

I'm rarely creating at a large enough scale to worry very much about climatology, but I have temperature drop by elevation - handy for frost giants in the mountains!

Edit: Above maps created with AKS Hexmapper.

 

[rgard]

Especially in a world where magic may well be violating what we normally think of as the laws of thermodynamics, I don't sweat the details too much. Just don't put hot sandy deserts right next to your polar ice caps, and you're okay most of the time.

As BedrockGames said, I play more with how the climate and geography shape cultures.

Especially the dreaded "Pyromancer-Caused Global Warming"

 

[Celebrim]

In this week's edition of What If, xkcd looks at what our world would be like if the layout of the continents were 90° off of what they are now. Largely, this is an exercise in applying basic climatology -- albeit with a lot of supposition because of the inherent complexity of it all.

Because this is a game, generally speaking, your climate doesn't have to be real, just believable. Believability is a pretty weak standard, particularly because the player's view of the climate is so ground level and sporadic that they lack the perspective to be critical of it.

However, xkcd's basic world building approach can be found in most modern guides to world building and I would imagine is applied at some point to most modern settings. I wouldn't have been surprised if Eberron recieved that basic sanity check treatment at some point, though quite clearly in older worlds like Faerun it wasn't.

Does this matter to your worlds or campaigns? How have you applied this to your world-building?

I try to make my world believable, so I do this sort of basic sanity checking, but considering that in my world winds blow because air spirts cause the air to move, things fall to the ground because earth spirits drag them down, and rocks and all other substances are made of the four basic elements of earth, fire, wind, and water in various configurations in slight variation in outcome from what we expect of physics in this world is not surprising. When players decide to get all physics like on me, I point out to them that on Sartha sodium nitrate doesn't exist and the Count Rumford experiment, Willem Gravesande's experiment, Lavoisier's combustion experiment, and the Michelson–Morley experiment if duplicated by the players will yield different results.

I also would encourage most budding DM's to see this sort of grand vision of the world as being not the most productive world building that they can do, and the sort of thing that they should probably consider only after 5-10 years of gaming in their homebrew.

 

[ComradeGnull]

I actually try and think a fair bit about this when world building, to the point that at moments I have had to remind myself to ignore it so that I can move forward with creating things rather than binging on Wikipedia.

I remember a fair bit of 5th grade geography and landform discussions, so I try to work that in. I also live in the SF Bay area, so I'm very aware of micro-climates and the effects of mountains and large bodies of water.

At the very least, I'll always try to sketch out the direction of the prevailing winds, the currents of major rivers, the rain shadows and watersheds associated with mountain ranges, etc. If I decide I want a particular territorial feature (say, a big swamp) I'll try to build some surrounding territory to support it. Moving from the southeast to the west has also driven home the difference between geologically 'new' features and 'old' ones (sharp and steep mountains and hills vs. weathered, eroded, and rounded ones, etc.)

I grew up in a region of significant karst geology, so I tend to place those in areas where I want lots of interesting cave systems.