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GameMastery Guide / Creating a World / Geography / Terrain Hierarchy

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.

Archives of Nethys

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Coastlines