A journey through a land of fantasy…

I know a description of my world’s political geography is going to take some time, probably as many as three posts to cover the regions I want.  I tried very hard to make my world diverse, and thus, it won’t be possible to talk about it all in one article (without allowing the article to span multiple pages).  I think, though, the actual process of designing Chorenn and its inhabitants is worth discussing.

You might have read World-Building 101 at the Game Master Foundation.  When I read it, I found that I created my world in a completely different order.   This probably reinforces the point that there is no “right” way of creating a world — just what’s right for you.  (I’d suggest, though, if you don’t know where to start, read everyone’s suggestions — they give great ideas.)  I actually started creating the map and then populated it, but there were many ideas I had to keep in mind while building the map, too.  As I have found in the entire campaign, it’s not as much a process of building a world as an evolution from one state to another.

I knew from the beginning that I wanted a contained continent, from which the group would not be travelling.  The story required that the focus be on Chorenn and its crown prince, and I didn’t want player characters from other nations coming in and wreaking havoc.  This had two effects.  First, I created the notion that the seas around Chorenn are notoriously rough and impassable, though calm enough in some places near the shores (to allow for seaborne trade between regions).  However, this didn’t sit well with me.  One of my personal limitations is that things must make sense — I’m science-trained and always look for consistency in systems.  (Which is one of the reasons that the magic system in Harry Potter always bugged me — too many inconsistencies over the run of the seven books.)  I already knew that in distant past times, Chorenn was settled by seafarers from another continent, and thus the whole “impassable seas” thing made no sense.  Thus, the second effect:  I decided that in general, Chorennii are not particularly inventive or prone to exploration.  They don’t venture beyond their shores because they think the seas are impassable and don’t care to try to overcome the barrier.

This definitely changed the atmosphere of the nation.  Now, I felt that the people were much more like Dark Ages Europeans.  They lived, loved, worked, and died without much thought about how things could be progressed.  Politically, they were more concerned with internal struggles and struggles with other regions than with what else could be out there.

Environment-wise, I wanted to stay somewhat in line with real-world climate and geography (e.g. deserts appear around certain latitudes, marshes aren’t going to appear in places that get lots of snow, etc.) so that the players wouldn’t have to suspend their disbelief too much, but the terrain needed to be varied enough to make the world interesting.  I found that the map I was drawing was about two-thirds the size of the U.S., so I applied its (very) general climate pattern, though I moved some regions around.

Then it came time to think about the regions and cities themselves.  I always default to the classic fantasy RPG setting for cities and towns, so I had to think about how to make them different from each other.  I also wanted to create cities and regions that my players actually had to think about — I didn’t want them to wander into a village and assume it was just a place to get adventure hooks from. 

Lastly, and this was very important to me, I wanted to give the players a healthy dose of reality.  NPCs have their own lives.  People have wants and fears, as well as prejudices and skeletons.  Lords aren’t just sources of rewards for dragon-slaying.  Justice isn’t like we expect today; a person hauled away under suspicion of stealing a loaf of bread will not necessarily receive a trial, and if he does, the trial may not be fair at all.  While I certainly didn’t write this kind of thing down while designing my regions, it still adds flavor if you keep it in mind.

Thus, I thought about what realities and personalities I wanted to portray.  I had a few already in mind:

• One culture that was markedly different than the rest.  I wanted especially to use an Arabic culture, with a supreme deity to be worshipped, as a contrast to the polytheistic rest of the continent.
• Two cultures locked in an ethnic struggle.  (This was mentioned in Falco’s introduction.)
• At least one region that wasn’t under the control of the Chorennii monarchy.
• At least one region that was separated physically from the rest of Chorenn by some geographical barrier.
• At least one city that was famed for a specific reputation, so that the player characters could eventually venture there and find that reputation, even a good one, is not necessarily truth.

I also tend to play my NPCs waaaaaaaay too nice, so I wanted to create cities that had evil, grime, and intrigue, to force me to play their inhabitants, or at least their lords, as mean.

With all this in mind, I sketched a rough map on a throwaway layer in Campaign Cartographer and then slowly built the real map on top of it.  I carved the map up into the regions I wanted, then added the terrain features needed to shape the political geography — a range of mountains here, a sea there to restrict overland travel, etc.  I also kept in mind the seacoasts, putting in long (probably too long for realism) sea cliffs where I didn’t want an area to be easily accessed by sea.

Then, I added the cities and the towns, without marking in any little villages (since those are good to make up on the fly).  I also wasn’t far enough along to mark dungeons, but I did make sure I knew where the elves, dwarves, and other races lived. 

Thus, I had a map, and a good idea of the flavor of each region.  It was then time to design the regions.