Geography, Geology, and Cartography. Oh my!

[FreeXenon]

The 4E preview book Worlds and Monsters was really inspirational too.

 

[Tamlyn]

Great ideas all. Thanks for the links and the suggestions.

So what fantastic locations have you used in your campaigns and how did the PC's respond to them?

 

[Doug McCrae]

Near where I live, there's a rock formation called the Whangie. It's a cleft in the rocks, near the top of a hill. Said to have been made by the Devil with a lash of his tail one night when he was travelling between covens and feeling frisky.

 

[Electric Wizard]

I love using huge, mysterious places to inspire players to explore, and form theories about, the world.

1) An ancient Eladrin palace complex that has been swallowed by jungle. The complex is built over a subterranean lake that, over the centuries, has broken the surface in many places. The ruins are deadly still by day, but at nightfall, horrible things emerge from the depths to feast.

2) Colossal monuments of jackals flank the sides of a majestic waterfall. Each jackal raises one paw in warning, while beckoning the adventurous with the other.

3) A weathered stone head the size of a mountain rises out of the sea several miles offshore. Over the years, a ramshackle alliance of criminals, freaks and outcasts have made it their home.

4) The petrified body of a massive prehistoric worm spans a desolate gorge like a bridge.

 

[Doug McCrae]

1) An ancient Eladrin palace complex that has been swallowed by jungle. The complex is built over a subterranean lake that, over the centuries, has broken the surface in many places. The ruins are deadly still by day, but at nightfall, horrible things emerge from the depths to feast.

Like the cenotes of the Yucatan?

2) Colossal monuments of jackals flank the sides of a majestic waterfall. Each jackal raises one paw in warning, while beckoning the adventurous with the other.

3) A weathered stone head the size of a mountain rises out of the sea several miles offshore. Over the years, a ramshackle alliance of criminals, freaks and outcasts have made it their home.

4) The petrified body of a massive prehistoric worm spans a desolate gorge like a bridge.

That's good stuff. There's something really cool about massive architecture of the past, like the statues on the river in LotR. I think Golarian has a fair number of crazily huge ancient edifices.

 

[Aeolius]

Like the cenotes of the Yucatan?

I always thought the Mayans never disappeared. They simply grew gills and are now waiting in the water-filled caverns which link the cenotes.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

You can't go wrong with massive stone ruins. Eberron had the continent of Xendrik filled with ruins of a lost civilization of giants.

Imagine a normal countryside, and smack in the middle of it is a towering wall 100 feet tall, 100 feet thick, and hundreds of miles long. Built from stones the size of houses. Going through forests, plains, crossing rivers. Gaps in it would be cherished, access to the top of it would be rare and settlements may crop up at them. Maybe it could be used as an elevated highway across the terrain.

 

[Aldarc]

So my game is taking place in my own home-brewed world (typical medieval European D&D) and I want to populate it with some unique landscapes, ruins, rock formations, locations, etc... I have the ones currently relevant to the high-level story arc, but I want some other stuff in there too to make the world interesting and feeling more "real". Something more for the characters to interact with.

So what have you created for your worlds? What great ideas are sitting in your craniums just waiting to be used?

For one of my campaign worlds, I wanted a more chaotic and unpredictable landscape. At one point in ancient history, dragons sought to purge the world of the mortal races by shortening the bridge between the material plane and the elemental chaos. Although the bridge was sealed, the material world was "scarred" by elemental anomalies that defied natural laws of ordinary experience. There were bridges made of water that crossed atop dry land. Waterfalls that flowed upwards. Floating islands and mountains. Ice formations in the midst of tropical jungles. Genasi were typically attracted to these elemental anomalies and made settlements near these locales. This is admittedly for the more surreal than the real.

 

[Jan van Leyden]

Two city locations I've created for my homebrew:

In a geographical location like Gibraltar, the now defunct empire has created a naval base in the cliffs, consisting of an underground harbour and an underground town for personnel and infrastructure. The naval base is still in use, but in a very diminished form. Thus, large tracts of this location are abandoned and outright spooky.

An ocean between two continents is shrouded by perpetual mist beginning some ten mile off the coast. Only in one location in the middle of nowhere, where there is a small island, the mist clears. This island, which has the form of a rocky spire surrounded by ring of habitable terrain, plays an important role for the ships on their way between the continents. It is heavily settled, sports several ship yards, and under the tight control of religious organisation. The atmosphere is a bit like that of Casablanca from the movie with the same name.

 

[amerigoV]

I always thought the Mayans never disappeared. They simply grew gills and are now waiting in the water-filled caverns which link the cenotes.

I did not see any when I dove a couple of Cenotes. But then again, they probably heard all the bubbles coming.