Let's build a continent!

[Prince Vine]

I am working on a new world for a game for a mishmash group of people I used to game with and some new people from work. I have some rough geographical ideas and some major plot issues, but I have large portions of the world that, while it would be relevant to have details, are largely empty so far.

The people I know are a wide variety of nerds, and I am not an expert in geology, meteorology, and sociology (I do okay with biology) and thought it might be fun to create a big group project to fill in various holes and try to, as a community, pull together a semi-functional, relatively internally consistent continent.

The basics:
The continent as a whole is of indeterminate size, other than sufficiently large for all the features. It is currently imagined as something like a reversed Africa, or Australia with the eastern half much wider on the North-South Axis, so roughly a thick rounded carpenter's square. For the sake of easy description I start by thinking of it in three main chunks; a northwest section, a northeast section and a southwest section.

The North and South are divided by a mountain range that continues turns into a rocky cliff along the Southern coast of the Northeastern section.

The entire Southwest is warmer than most of the rest of the continent and is predominantly jungles and savannas. The relative level of civilization is low. Most humanoids are barbarian tribes, with by far the most prevalent being the halflings. However dinosaurs are without a doubt the dominant lifeforms in the area, and the main obstacle to daily life the halfling (and sporadic others) have to contend with to survive. I like the idea of there being wild dinosaur-riding/fighting halfling tribes, I'm not sure why, but it amuses me greatly, as well being a good place for the wilder elves.
This area I assume will be a good source of barbarians, druids, rangers and the like.

The Northwest is the most 'civilized' section of the continent, I figure it must have some relatively prominent rivers, a major inland sea or lakes of some sort to promote trade and provide a stable resource-rich area for communities to grow. Beyond that I imagine the ground gets flatter as you go north away from the mountains, becoming a mix of prairies, forests and some swampland for good measure. As for as civilization goes, my gut feeling is fairly highly developed independent city-states that interact occasionally for trade and occasionally conflict, but with a general danger to the land (monsters? other threats?) that prevents very close relations.
This area also has the major technological innovation of this setting so far, wands. A type of wand has been created that can replicated easily by those without magical skill and it is used as a popular sidearm, much in the way the revolver was in the American West (game terms: I am looking at 6-12ish charge wand that deals a die of damage per charge with various types with a small effect, like several cantrips, with the uses counting as attacks so martials can get multiples and limits to the charges you can use per shot. The attacks or saves will be keyed off various physical stats, depending on the effect, there are even ones that make sense for Str or Con base, with a spellcaster maybe being able to sub their casting stat to reflect greater magical knowledge.) I imagine the overall feel to be a mix of wild west, ancient Greece, a good dose of the Points of Light and a touch of swashbuckling intrigue and duelling.
This is where I think almost all the wizards come from, as well as most of the bards, fighters, paladins, and clerics as well as the more urban rogues.

The Northeast is where stuff gets weird. At some point in history there was some sort of major change (disaster? ascension? powerful spellcasters/outsiders/fey scheme? we could work on this) that caused physics to go a bit wonky. The are gets rockier as you go south to the cliffs/mountains but the most noticeable feature is that the landscape has giant chunks of it floating anywhere between a few feet to a couple feet off the ground. I figure any number of oddities can go into this area and it will be sprinkled liberally with ruins, vaults and lairs of any number of monstrous/aberrant/mystical creatures/people. This would also be a great area to let outsiders, elementals and fey slip into world as well as any cults that may want to interact with them. In my mind I am referring to this are as the Highlands for a placeholder.
I imagine that any humanoids in this area have a lifestyle somewhere between the city-states and the tribes, something like self-sufficient tough villages carved out of the bizarre and hostile land and fiercely protected out of stubborn pride. They are probably not totally xenophobic as they would often be used as supply stops by explorers looking to find something worth the trip out to dangerous and surreal area. There are probably more dragonborn, tieflings and genasi coming from here than anywhere else on the continent.
This feels to me as a place where sorcerous bloodlines can come about easily, as well as prime location for those seeking power to search out pact patrons, with rangers and rogues always being helpful explorers and maybe the occasional calm-in-the-chaos monk retreat.

As far as other parts of the world, the only other part I have any idea of yet is that there is a section of ocean that is insanely dangerous and almost perpetually covered by terrible storms. These storms ring a continent of very nasty land-dwelling beasts and all humanoids live on strangely carved tower-mountains that keep them away from the deadly ground. They have a magipunk culture with airships to facilitate interaction between the different keeps, but they generally lack the ability to get through the storms to other parts of the world without complete failure or at least major damage (and there aren't really any places to get spare parts out there anyway so if anyone DID make it out, they never made it back.) This may be a future project.

In something related but not directly in use yet, my supervisor at work is working on a formula to be used to help influence the number of "heroic" people (those with the equivalent of class levels) to non-heroic people and then the relative numbers of each class within it (the ratio of stuff like Fighters to Clerics to Wizards and such) which may have a place in this form of world building.



I'm hoping that using that as an outline and starting point together we as a community can flesh out more and more details as time to goes on the point that this continent can become a fully fleshed out location with things like the actual geography, the geopolitical and racial landscape, names of cities/towns/settlements and variety of other interesting (and named) features.

[MercuryAlloy]

1. Tectonic Plates. You have at least two of them, since you have mountain range. Your mountain range is in the middle of continent, so there is three ways of how it can be:

They are getting closer like Himalayas, breaking like Rift valley in Africa or they are already gotten together like Ural?
First variant means that they are taller and still grow, and you have earthquakes there. You probably will find lemon stone and marble here. Oh, and sea shells on the hight of 5000 m.
Second means both volcanos and earthquakes and low seize mountains of obsidian and basalt. You also have many valleys with unique or reelect fauna there.
Third variant means that you have mountains of medium or low size since time wasted them. On the other hand that open many metals and other treasures of mountains, sometimes literally lay on your road, if only some local civilization didn't work out all easily accessible ones.

You also forgot that mountains usually don't just disappears near sea. They will became islands in first variant, they created drowned valley in second that stopes near mountain hillside, but they can disappears in third. In the third variant may have some islands far in the see with not obvious connection: for example Norway and Scotland mountains was parts of the same mountain range long time ago.

[SpacePiggy1245]

Now, for your dilemma for why the city states don't have much contact/control on land could be that orcs also inhabit the continent, and live on land near roads and trade routes, with anything that passes being attacked. These tribes could be quite powerful and could also have goblins as well. Maybe this could create early level quests for you players. Then a big side quest could lead to a final, massive battle between the orcs and the near-Greek armies of the Humans.

[Prince Vine]

I'm starting to think giants on two sides (and are in fact partly responsible for the geography to hold the dinosaurs and other...things off) who have assembled various subservient monstrous humanoid tribes into their personal fiefdoms and an abnormally high wolf (were and otherwise) in the forests. Travel and trade aren't impossible, especially for the wealthy or stealthy, but large scale stuff has untenable levels of attrition before they could try for conquest.

This may lead to the creation of a ritual-based magical communication or travel guild basically extorting each city with a sure way to get high-level envoys and information through. As well as tales of bold sojourners who take the hard way skirting the tribes and the woods who brag about how many runs they've made and who they've led.

Still unsure about the layout of the actual features within the edges of the continent though.

[Yora]

Barbarians on dinosaurs with ray guns and airships is just my kind of setting!

Love giants as a major power group. Have you thought about such classics as snake men, frog men, and fish men? In a D&D world, mind flayers and aboleths could also be cool.

In my somewhat similar setting, I am keeping the city states separated by exceptionally strong and violent forces of nature. Crossing the forests is very dangerous and it's impossible to build roads because the trees and shrubs keep growing back as fast as people could clear them. This becomes more plausible when the powers of magic are limited. There is not much high power magic in my setting, so sorcerers can't just remove all the monsters and clear the forest with a few spells.

[Jonagel]

First off: Neat that your supervisor is coming up with such a formula!

Second off: Rantings/Thoughts below!

Mountain Range: I think the 2nd variant is ideal. A rift valley allows for
1) some soaring peaks (Kilimanjaro is nearly 5,000 meters) to make traversing it difficult
2) cliffs/canyons/valleys within, which can be filled with old ruins, caves, giant communities, etc.
3) the southern coast of the NE region to be inhospitable to ports/fishing villages/etc. If the goal is to cut off north from south a bit, no sense in letting there be easy ocean access in the armpit of the continent

As for the more organized groups, I think you have to have reasons why none of them have significant kingdoms/empires. The easy answer might be "There are giants on all sides", but then why isn't most of the continent a Giant Kingdom/Empire?

North East City States (inhabited by plane-touched/inherently magical beings):
1) the chaos of the area is wildly uncontrollable, most expansionist city states have found it impossible to control large swaths of land outside walled cities/with magical protection. How do you feed these cities in that case? Magic is a big source, as owning a farm stead too far from a city state is generally crazy. Maybe some cities are closer to cave systems where the develop fungal farming systems, or enslave earth/water elemental as the world's best farmers.
2) the chaos of the area makes the mundane more dangerous. That casual level orc hunting party has at least one dragonborn orc and a level sorcerer. That Boar? It's enraged due to being touched by a flame elemental the wrong way.

North West City States ('civilized' city states)
1) A few centuries ago a tyrant tried to conquer many city states. Coalition formed, and won by a narrow margin. Now everyone tries to keep everyone else diplomatically in check? Could allow for more role playing and diplomacy related things.
2) Magical innovation is really wide spread? A group of peasants can get their hands on wands, allowing anyone to rebel and make a difference. Imagine if everyone in Feudal Europe owned a crossbow...
3) Being influenced by an outside group, maybe the giants? Maybe mindflayers? Maybe Djinn (who are actually responsible for the creation of wands)

South West Jungle/Savannah
1) Once upon a time there was an empire here, but the geography makes any real expansionism too challenging without the help of incredible magic. Jungle ruins, woo!

[Prince Vine]

So now I need some help with specifics in the main area.

I now have a naturally occuring mountain range on the west coast (pacific ring of fire style) and a second range (not naturally occuring) bordering the tropical area to the south.

I know frost and fire giants hang out in the west mountain area, as well as a couple humanoid settlements that have come to an 'arrangement' stone giants maintain the southern range and several hill giants, ogres, ettins, etc. roam the main area. Maybe Fomori closer to the northern coast.

Outside the giants we have the usual humanoid threats in the area, orcs, and goblinoids sometimes using or used by the larger (literally) threats.

I like the idea of a decent sized lake/sea, and I know there is a prominent forest that hides a large werewolf, wolf and dire wolf population. Maybe a swampy area somewhere too for the hags/black dragons/whatever, though a big swamp may make the map too cluttered.

Outside those ideas I have no idea what the geography should be and how the features should relate. I am making trade more viable but still quite dangerous so it falls into highly skilled or very wealthy or well-connectef people only (and gives easy early jobs).

I would appreciate any layout help.

[Jonagel]

Just made a quick doodle, something along these lines? I forgot about the big lake/inner sea, sorry! Just figured a visual would help get the gears moving/give people something to better wrap their heads around.

Swamp land along the river in the south maybe?

https://imgur.com/a/McMolic

First ****ty image!

[Yora]

I always like to design settings from the back. What do I want to do with it in a campaign? What ideas for settlements, dungeons, NPCs, and monsters do I really want to get the players involved with. Then I continue by thinking what a world needs to look like to have all these things being and important parts of the setting.
Whether you should include big swamps depends on whether you have some ideas for swamp monsters and swamp dungeons that you really want to use and show to players.

I'm not really excited about any monsters or ruins that belong into a desert, so my setting doesn't have deserts.

[Prince Vine]

I'm not really excited about any monsters or ruins that belong into a desert, so my setting doesn't have deserts.

I generally agree with one exception. Blue dragons. I like them enough to be sad to not have desert for them...might give them new territory.

Swamps fit more in the jungle area but for some reason I picture more dragons, hags, wisps and other cool monsters in a temperate swamp.