realistic geography

[Katerek]

Harn is dumb. (JUST joking)

When designing world stuff I follw the rules of dungeoncraft.

My favorite is "Never force yourself to create more than you must."

I try to do my maps with a certain plate tectonic logic to them, but I have found that time and again it never gets noitced by my players cause quite frankly they could care less. I throw some things in just for my entertainment, but by and large if it doesn't effect the overall storyline of the moment then I never mention it to my players and they seem fine and dandy with that.

As a general rule, water flows down hill. Ocean currents and prevailing wind patterns flow clockwise north of the equater and vice versa south of the equator. Again neat stuff, but my PC's typically don't fly kites so it hasn't really ever come into play.

Weather and geological patterns are all swell and good, but I have found that when necessary, I can make it rain and the players don't question that. They really don't care how mountains are made, just what is in the mountains.

One really good resource that is about is detailed as you ever really need to get is the World Builders Guidebook. I use it to great success. Anyone wanting world design tips that make some logical sense, it is an invaluable desing aid. It is currently out of print, but occasionally you can find it in the Second Edition bargain bin at most game shops.

 

[barsoomcore]

It is funny the things players do and don't notice. My gang climbs to the top of a mesa and finds a lake there. On top of a small mesa in the middle of the desert. Nobody seems to find it strange. They climb down a dry well on top of the mesa (right next to the lake) and find a whole bunch of caverns, some of which have puddles.

There's a long and very important (to the campaign mythos) story as to how this lake got there and what keeps it going. But they never wondered about it so they never found out. Oh well.

Players are funny.

 

[kenjib]

There's a long and very important (to the campaign mythos) story as to how this lake got there and what keeps it going. But they never wondered about it so they never found out. Oh well.

Players are funny.

I wonder how often players assume things like this are just DM license and how often they think that there is actually a reason behind such a subtle manipulation of geography.

 

[Khorod]

For non-DM players? Probably between 75 and 90% of the time.
Particularly if they don't see reams of background material you have written.

That's why I call one of my hobbies World Design. Campaign Setting design would be depressing if I kept most player's in mind.

 

[fusangite]

This is really a matter of taste.

It is a question of how magic-rich your world is. I like to have a world where magic is recognized as unnatural, exceptional, wherein casting spells is not an everyday event. However, 3E rules seem to work against this so I can understand you wanting there to be geographic implications to the quantity of magic in the world. Certainly, the old Runequest Glorantha world had magic geography in spades because magic was so common in daily life.

Nonetheless, I think that it is still important to have a world in which gravity and other time-honoured phenomena generally apply. If one is constantly surrounded by things that are weird, the players will have no sense of what constitutes and abnormal event when it happens.

So, if you do something extraordinary and magical with hydrodynamics, geology, plate tectonics, at least make it consistent.