Geography issues (help)

[Guilberwood]

Hi there guys! This is my first post, so be nice, ok?

I'm running a campaing in a homebrew setting. they're level 8 now(after playing for 2 years)

Up to now, they have been wandering through a very small part of the territory (basically 3 cities a montain and a elf forest) and now it's time for them to move to a whole other part of the continent.

The problem is that I'm out of ideas of how to create this new area of the setting. Yes, I'm sure I could just create a few towns genrically, but I Want them to be diferent, to be unquie, to have it's own traits.

I'm kindda stuck, I don't know why but I just can't come up with good ideas for the geography of my world.

So, I was wondering if you guys could help me with ideas to make my citties unique and other geographical features I could add to my world.
Just so you know, it's a low magic world with very little history(the world has just been create 2000 years ago)

Well, thanks for listening to me

See ya

ps: Does anyone know where I colud find somo great maps to get inspiration from?

 

[der_kluge]

Guilberwood, you're a jerk. A jerk and a kneebiter.

Oh wait, you said nice.

Hi, Guilberwood, welcome to the boards!


Anyway, the standard answer is a question, "what are you looking for?" You mention cities, so I assume by geography, you really mean "interesting geography for cities"?

You might consider a book like Bluffside. The basic premise is that it is built atop a high bluff overlooking the ocean. The book itself has tons of information on the city itself (the city is also built atop some ruins, which probably won't work if your world is only 2k years old), but the concept is easy enough to work with.

What is the existing geography of your world like? Is it Earth-like/Tolkien-like? I wouldn't get too crazy then. Most people build cities where they are readily available. Most people don't form cities in hard to reach places, unless they have a reason to want to be hard to reach.


You could incorporate the history of the world into the geography. But, this seems unlikely if it's a low magic setting. Like, in a high magic game, you might have mountains created by a great god war or something. But, you wouldn't have any of that.

General stuff is swamps, mountains, rolling hills, plains, desert, canyons, rivers, oceans, islands.

In China, there is a valley of limestone columns. Someone here might know the name of it. That would be fairly interesting, and naturally occurring. You could build a desert like Monument Valley in Utah with huge rock formations. For a twist, you could then populate it with vegetation. Maybe it was once a desert, but no longer is.

Or you could incorporate various weather patterns. Like, maybe there is a field but it's always raining there. Like a constant storm that just stays in that one spot, so the valley is a horrendous swamp, and there are always tornadoes. That actually sounds kind of cool. I might have to use that one in my game. It might be hard coming up with a normal explanation for why it never stops raining in this place. But, your PCs probably don't have very many ranks of meteorology, so it might not matter.

Maybe animals or insects have altered the landscape somehow. Maybe there is a valley where all the xxx come to die. Where xxx equals some animal or monster native to the area. And because of this, flies and other scavengers constantly feast on the corpses here, and the sky is dark and always moving from a blanket of flies that hovers overhead.

Is that what you're looking for?

 

[der_kluge]

Aye carumba! Double post!

 

[jgbrowning]

http://www.bibliographics.com/MAPS/BRITAIN/BRIT-MAP-FRAME-LOOK.htm

This site is the massive ordnance survey maps of roman britain. It should give you some good ideas.

joe b.

 

[der_kluge]

Oooh! The elusive triple post. Now with delayed, someone-posted in the middle of it, action. Kung-fu grip sold separately.

 

[Guilberwood]

3 thanks (3 posts)

I liked the idea of a great plain/desert filled with huge rocks that nobody knows how they got there

I was looking for caracteristcs that could make th cities unique, specially because most a small cities(villages)

for example, I already came up with a city that will be famous for it's mills( kindda holand stuff) and another one (a dwarf city) that will be the world center of ALE

The world is very earth like, there are no underwater cities or anything like that, but the forests are infsted with centaurs and pixes etc...

A good tip I got here is always to ask "why would someone build a city here?"


thanks for the website too guys, very helpful

As I write this post, I have a pencil on my other hand drawing m new enhanced world map

See ya

 

[Hand of Evil]

In the mountains or a canyon, your could have the city built under a overhang, climbing the walls, peblo like. The forest, tree houses, but how about gnomes using gaint turtles, clay homes built on the backs of their shells. Marsh or swamp, the reed town, mostly just boats with reed building built on them, slowly moving from place to place, famlies owning many and coming together in a module design. You also have the termite mound city, city built on older city becoming mostly a cave structure.

 

[Guilberwood]

yeah
god ideia. I wa thinking of a tree house city, but it will be placed in a area that is flooded most of the time. So, when the tide is high, the houses are in the level of the water, when the tide is low, they are terr houses


what do you guys think?

Thanks for all

See ya