Rules Index | GM Screen


GameMastery Guide / Creating a World

Geography

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 146
One of the greatest joys of creating your own campaign setting is the thrill and challenge of crafting an entire world, shaping it out of the primordial clay and setting it spinning in the void. Yet as much fun as this can be, it can also be a complicated and frustrating endeavor if you aren’t already an expert in the things that make our own planet what it is. When you run up against something outside of your knowledge base, it’s often tempting to simply say, “This is a magical world— rivers and mountains and deserts can go wherever they want.”

Tempting—but lazy. Your players deserve better. Take the steps to make your world realistic, and when you do want to break fundamental laws of reality and put a desert in a swamp, make sure you come up with a reason. After all, if you take pains to ensure that the rest of your world is realistic, those magical regions that break the rules will feel all the more fantastic and unique.

If you’re familiar with the real world’s geology, you’ve already got a leg up in designing a realistic world. It’s no fun to spend weeks or months creating the perfect setting map, only to have a geologist or cartographer friend point out something you did wrong. Yet if your game group includes specialists like this, you’re lucky! Don’t be afraid to ask your geology enthusiast friend to help you decide where to put mountain ranges, or to ask your meteorologist pal to help you define your world’s trade winds. At the very least, using your gaming group in this way keeps them from ambushing you with errors later on.

But let’s face it—most GMs don’t have access to these resources. In this case, a little research can go a long way. Read up on geology, meteorology, astronomy, and other earth sciences. Watch documentaries and educational shows on these subjects. Most of all, study maps of the real world, not just game products—as any student of geology can tell you, it’s shocking just how many scientific errors appear in maps from the most beloved fantasy games and novels.

Creating a World Map

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 146
The first thing to accept when you sit down to draw a map of your campaign world is that it doesn’t need to be beautiful. As long as you can understand your own scribblings, you’ll be able to maintain consistency and verisimilitude when running your game. If you don’t think of yourself as particularly artistic, buy some tracing paper and crib shapes and designs from maps you like. Try reproducing a favorite map by hand, or extending an existing map beyond its edge in the same artistic style.

When creating your world, you can use color as a handy way to keep track of forests, deserts, or oceans, or develop your own system of simple cartography symbols. These symbols can be extremely simple: inverted “V” shapes for mountains, crosshatching for forests, scattered dots for deserts, etc.—whatever makes the most sense to you. Some GMs prefer to draw their world maps on blank paper, sharing them with players as “in-world” handouts. Others prefer to use graph or hex paper, the better to precisely track distances and travel times. Still others use professional cartography software. The “right” method is the one that feels most natural to you, and the following advice applies no matter what media you use.

Starting Size

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 146
The kind of campaign you want to run should inform the scope of the map you need to create. If your game focuses entirely on a small valley in a mountain range, you might not even need to create a world map. On the other hand, if you’re intending to include long overland journeys, you might need to create a sprawling map of an entire continent, or even a whole planet! The important thing to keep in mind is that you don’t need to finish everything before the first game. Focusing only on the parts of the map that are directly connected to the next session not only eases your workload, but makes it easier to keep track of things. You’re learning about your new world as you create it, and if you do so in small patches over the course of months or years, your knowledge will grow organically.

Terrain Hierarchy

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 146
When it comes to drawing your map, keep in mind that the world’s shape follows a specific hierarchy. As you draw your map, it’s best to follow the steps below and make your decisions in this order—after all, it’s tough drawing rivers without knowing where the mountains and coastlines are.

Geologic Touchstones

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 147
Below are several handy bits of trivia about the real world that can help with fantasy map design.
  • Deserts and forests each cover approximately a third of the Earth’s land surface.
  • Oceans cover approximately 70% of the Earth’s total surface.
  • The peak of Mount Everest, at 29,028 feet, is the highest point above sea level on Earth. (The tallest mountain on Earth, on the other hand, is Mauna Loa, which from seabed to peak rises 33,500 feet.)
  • The lowest point in the ocean is the Mariana Trench, at a depth of 35,797 feet.

Coastlines

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 147
The first step is to divide land from water—draw in the region’s coastlines, remembering to add bays and harbors here and there (these make great locations for major cities). Scatter islands, inland seas, and lakes here and there, bearing in mind that a chain of islands extending off a coast might indicate an extension of a mountainous region into an ocean or sea. Unless you’re an expert on geology or cartography, don’t worry about things like plate tectonics or trying to map the curve of the planet, especially if the region you’re mapping is only a single continent or smaller. (Of course, it can’t hurt to freshen up on these topics.) One way to make this easier is to vaguely base the shapes of your continents on the shapes of Earth’s continents, a tactic used by many game designers and fantasy novelists.

Elevations

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 147
Once your coastlines are set, draw in the outlines of where you want your region’s major mountain ranges to run. A mountain range outline should generally be long and narrow, perhaps with multiple “fingers” extending from its length, since mountains often form as continental plates push together to “wrinkle” the surface of a world. Mountain ranges that roughly follow a region’s coastline are common, as seen along the west coasts of North and South America. Volcanic activity can also cause mountains to rise—now’s a good time to place some volcanoes (preferably in a line along a mountainous coastline or a range of mountains). Once you have your mountainous regions placed, you can draw an increasing number of outlines around those mountains to show gradual changes in elevation as you work your way down to the coastline. Don’t be afraid to make these lower regions wide and large—you’ll need somewhere to put your deserts and large forests. Also remember that mountain ranges extending into oceans are an excellent source of realistic island chains.

Rivers

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 147
Once you have the elevations of your region marked, you’ll be able to place rivers. Start near the centerline of a mountain range and wind downward on whatever curving course you want as you approach a coastline. Make sure that your rivers don’t double back across an elevation line once they cross it, since water has a hard time flowing uphill. One important thing to keep in mind is that, as a general rule, water wants to flow together rather than apart—as a result, you should avoid having your rivers “split” as they flow downward from the mountains, save to create a delta like those at the mouths of the Mississippi or the Nile. Likewise, make sure that you don’t have multiple rivers emptying out of a lake!

Vegetation

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 147
Sketch in major woodlands or jungles, placing them along coastlines and in lowlands, perhaps up to the edges of your highest elevations in places. Vegetation near a large water source like a delta often forms a marshland or swamp. Don’t go too overboard with these regions, though! Remember that areas you don’t turn into woodlands or swamps can be hilly regions, plains, steppes, badlands, or other relatively clear terrains. Deserts are a special case—place them in areas where there are few rivers (it’s okay to have one or two) and where there’s a mountain range to block the path of precipitation—this area is known as a “rain shadow.”

Tags

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 147
Now you’re ready to start naming your regions and placing spots of interest like cities, dungeons, and other notable features. Keep in mind some simple rules here—cities are almost always found on rivers or shorelines, and you’d expect to see cave entrances in hilly or mountainous areas. If you’re drawing in national borders, remember that such divisions commonly fall along convenient geographical features, such as rivers or mountain ranges. Make sure to place plenty of intriguing adventure sites, too—it’s a good rule to place three adventure sites within a few day’s travel of each of your cities.

Breaking the Rules

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 147
While these guidelines stress the importance of realism, don’t forget that you’re designing a fantasy world! Anything goes—feel free to have rivers flowing uphill, mountains that float on the ocean, deserts or forests that move, or swaths of ocean where the water drops away to expose portions of the sea bed. As long as you realize that these locations are unrealistic, you can design for them and explain them however you wish.