1. Overload

    Overload New Member

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    What would be a good landform?

    Discussion in 'Setting Development' started by Overload, Aug 2, 2021.

    What would be a good sort of template continent for a fantasy story? It's all about this king who unexpectedly dying and his five sons all get part of the kingdom. I know I do want to have sort of a haunted forest(Cliche I know but..) and a set of waterfalls that surround a rock with spiritual implications(think sort of an island Uluru) and finally some Chinese inspired caves (because they feel like they should be in fantasy at least to me).
     
  2. Lazaares

    Lazaares Contributor Contributor

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    The shape matters very little; it might only appear on a drawing plastered on the 4th page of your print.

    What does matter, however, is what you depict and what influences your story. What are the dividing lines between these inheritor kingdoms? What resources do they have? When a character travels from one capital to the other, what do they see?

    You can easily create a sense of "greatness" by setting some scenes (discussions, stops, etc.) during travels, and those are also the scenes where I find it easiest to introduce these specific features of the land. With that in mind, the most valuable thing you can have is a simple list of geography features between towns ordered properly. Once you have that, you can chalk up any shape of map and just draw roads, then pluck them next to the road. Of course, it's even better if your geography makes some sense (no forking rivers, no deserts next to tundras, ...).

    When you describe a travel from Cologne to Zürich, it isn't really the shape that matters. More so, the description of Bonn seated on the Rhine, the gradual appearance of mountains, the busy Koblenz where the two rivers Moselle and Rhine meet, the picturesque valley connecting the lower and upper Rhine latticed with dozens of castles on either side, the pine-covered peaks of the Schwarzwald and so on up until the colossal waterfall in Schaffhausen.
     
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  3. SapereAude

    SapereAude Contributor Contributor

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    Continents are large. There's plenty of room on a continent-sized land mass to accommodate pretty much anything you want to put in your story. Look at the North American continent: the climate and terrain go from frozen, icy wastelands in the north of Canada to a myriad of climates and terrains through southern Canada, the United States, and northern Mexico -- to tropical or near-tropical climates in Central America. Mountains to deserts.

    The same applies to Europe -- Scandanavia to Spain, Italy, and Greece.
     
  4. Azuresun

    Azuresun Senior Member

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    Nothing wrong with cliches--cliches became that way for a reason, because they work and people like to see them. Remember that execution always trumps concept.

    As for the shape of the continent, I'd suggest coming up with the character of the kingdoms themselves, and then arrange the landscape to accomodate what each of them needs to be. For example, if Kingdom 1 is wealthy and culturally diverse and does a lot of trading, that implies something in the landscape that makes it attractive to visitors from afar--maybe it sits at a pass through a mountain range, or has a long coastline that allows it to do a lot of naval trade.
     
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