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Awen (Early Access)

Procedural Tabletop Fantasy Setting Builder · By Levi Kornelsen

Playtest Alpha, Thread 5: Unifying the map.

A topic by Levi Kornelsen created Jan 19, 2022 Views: 342 Replies: 8
Viewing posts 1 to 6

I'm going to want to make this nicer later, but for drafting purposes, just grabbed some pencil crayons and blocked in the various biomes, as well as adding a couple more to fill in the gaps. 



1) (My first addition) Is a huge northern forest, shading from a fairly hot rainforest at the very east coast to a much more seasonal, temperate mixed forest in the west.  Two notable features here.  First, giant flightless "kicker birds", which...  Imagine that a lovely purple chocobo had babies with a rabid, hateful ostrich.  They'll potentially be very useful to someone, but they are filled with malice.  Second, down at the border with (3), those mountains?  Just completely chock-full of jade.

2) Is the ice wastes, with the giant frozen birds (possibly a larger flying relative of the kickers in the forest?  Dunno.)

3) Is the scrubland of the interesting (and sometimes wandering) stones!

4) Is forests extending up from the inner sea there.  These are riddled with caves, many flooded, and groan with winter ice.

5) The mushroom scrubland!  Notably, the weird little border I put on that is to mark "Elevation change", just so that biome border makes sense; I imagine the mushroom scrub as a plateau with a high western edge, tilting down toward the sea in the east.  

6, 7, 8) Is all grassland, but not all the same........

6) (my other addition) is overall quite cool, getting none of the warm wind, nor any of the underground heat the rest of the southern grasslands benefit from.  Like (7) and (8), there are large grazers here, and like (8) they are hunted by large cats, though the cats here get enormously furry in the cold seasons.  There are outcroppings of quartz in the northern areas.

7) Benefits from both the warm winds and presumably some of the geothermal activity so evident in the south; the winters here are largely just dry, not snowy.  This climate is ideal for the snakes that infest the area, which drive off a lot of other wildlife, excepting the shaggy beasts, which grow huge here (because they live longer?  Because they're a wildly different species?).

8) Is more temperate, benefiting from geothermal heat (and suffering earthquakes and likely other...   Events); bovines, wild cats.

9) Is the desert with the huge huge lizards; I'm going to suggest that with the elevation change I threw in to (5), it's likely partly a desert because it's in the rain shadow of that plateau edge.   Also, hey, does this share poisonous snakes with the bitey part of the grasslands?

10) Is the foggy boglands; it's down below the plateau edge of (5); very much isolated, this.   It kind of feels this might be a chunk that broke off the (5) plateau, maybe?   

....

So, look at where your biomes are, their neighbors, and so on; is there anything you want to add to your biomes given this map, or any crossover you want to check in on with the other biomes?

(For myself, I'm like, I feel like all the shaggy herbivores in 6,7,8 should be related, like, could these be Aurochs of different varieties?  Maybe with, like, more horns, just because that's a fun look.)

I'm thinking there might be an elevation change between 3 and 4, maybe more gradual than between 5 and 10, but still with 3 being a highland plateau. Maybe there's a mysterious row of rocks at the edge.

A smaller relative of the flying creatures in 2 is found in 3, or maybe they migrate there seasonally - when it's especially cold in 2, that's when you get some rain in 3.

I like the idea of 10 as being a weird isolated area, both by geography and by the deadly fungus lands. It would make being able to reach area 10 a big deal.

Very pretty.  The elevations definitely help explain why there are some semi-abrupt changes in biome.

I like the idea of herbiovores being related, the ones in the snakeland are probably a breed that tends towards massiveness as a defense against the constrictors.  Possibly these aurochs have elaborate horn formations that differ between sub-species that are used primarily as mating display rather than for fighting or defense (Thoughts being inspired by the elaborate variations in frills of the Ceratopsian dinosaurs).

This sounds good, yes!

Can we add some frozen things to the southwest or is it too late? Should someone have claimed that in the previous round?

I will be adding your bits in!

New map, probably tomorrow, and we'll be moving towards Kiths!

Those bears of mine @ h8? 

Maybe they are also in the mushroom shrub lands to the north?

Definitely!  They could be a seasonal apex predator if they migrate to eat all the delicious mushrooms and wildlife that proliferate during the warm humid months.

Did a quick redraw on a few bits; the new areas here are (1) and (5) from Rossum.

1) Is the whole island chain; shrublands biome with loads of caves, underwater passages.

5) Is a bay lined with wetlands forest - huge trees that grow right up from the water, like  mangrove/cypress/baobabs; vine-covered in many cases, and big enough to build a house in their branches.