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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sword of Spirit" data-source="post: 6833309" data-attributes="member: 6677017">One thing you should decide pretty quickly is if you plan on doing top-down or bottom-up design (or more likely, a combination of both).While others will disagree, I strongly recommend starting your geography with a top-down skeleton (you can then fill in the details however and whenever you need to.)The reason I suggest this is because I've seen plenty of fantasy world with messed up geography because they did bottom-up geographical design.Just take the Forgotten Realms. So they start with a Europeanish setting, and say, "hey, we want some Arabian Nights style stuff!" They stick it over on the edge of their world, and tada--Calimshan.Then their world gets bigger. And bigger, and bigger. And you start getting other Middle-Easternish areas on other borders. Then they finally make the entire Arabian Adventures subcontinent of Zakhara, making a world that looks a lot better and makes more sense in a general sense...except that you now have Calimshan and other lands stranded off in the middle of places they don't fit. Oh, and this world that is supposed to be based on a Europeanish fantasy? Well it's now got about twice as much Middle-Easternish square mileage as it does Europeanish.I call that a design failure--because it is contrary to the designer intent of having one type of setting with a dash of something else at the edges. (I personally enjoy Middle-Easternish areas, but I don't like the sloppy design failure of implementation.)That is just one example from one world.Now, if that sort of thing isn't a problem for you, then you can go bottom-up instead. But my recommendation to preserve  design intent and continuity is to draw out an outline of your continent (even if it's just a coastline) with a scale and write stuff on it like Western-Europe, Classical Greek, Middle-Eastern, East Asian, Great Empire of the Dwarves, Orcish Hordes, Great Fey Forest, Petty Feuding Fiefs...etc. Whatever places you know you want (or might want) in your world--just point out where they are relative to each other and the continent so you don't screw it up unintentionally.</blockquote>

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