Natural places

[fete67]

Has anyone come into the problem when their designing their world that they put in one to many forests, mountains, deserts, ect? How did u deal with it?

 

[BeigePalladin]

umm, I don't think you can get that problem unless your world lacks nature entierly

think how many mountains and forests are on earth which, by all accounts, is a very small planet, even considering the cities - and I've yet to see a fantasy world with more than 2 (and one's always evil and scary, one's always blessed and pretty ¬,¬)

 

[Hans]

Has anyone come into the problem when their designing their world that they put in one to many forests, mountains, deserts, ect? How did u deal with it?

Well, I put my world on a roughly earth sized planet and then referred to terranean maps for the scale of landscapes. To give distances in descriptions the historical scale is one days travel ~30 km. That seems to have been the same througout history with the exception of sea travels. Ships are faster.

To say what is to much depends on the area your story is set in. With these scales you could travel for several days without change of landscape in one area or pass two or three completely different landscapes on a day in an other area. Too much is relative.

For a medieval setting don't put in lots of forests. Most land area was needed for agriculture. Today we have lots more forest land in Europe than in medieval times.

 

[fete67]

Thanks guys this gave me a lot to think about!

 

[legacyblade]

There's a book on the subject that I've had highly recommended to me

Amazon.com: World-Building (Science Fiction Writing) (9781582971346): Stephen L. Gillett, Ben Bova: Books
(no, that's not an affiliate link)

I haven't got myself a copy yet, but from what I've heard, it talks about how continents develop and how different climates and such arise. It sounds like a gold mine of information. I'm gonna buy it myself, read the reviews and see if it sounds like what you want.

 

[Hans]

I can't talk about that book, haven't read it, but we are at the moment in a situation where a lot of planet creation theories are thoroughly tested. Since a few years astronomers are able to detect planets in different star systems. A lot of them hold surprises that are not covered by current theories.
So it's a good guess that many "how to create a realistic planet or planet system" rules will have to be rewritten in the near future.

 

[Caged Maiden]

I think the main thing would be to actually look at terrain as it exists on Earth, and go from there. I watched a discovery program about a planet of dense gas and it had flying whales and stuff... I would love to be that creative, and I applaud anyone who is that much smarter than I am (I don't think I could keep that going for 300 pages) but, whatever your world is like, it has to be believable. Earth is easy, because if you want to do a whole planet, you can draw up one like Hans has, or if you only need a small part, you can take an island like England or New Zealand Or Madagascar (all very different) and copy their topography.
I based my stories on a continent about the size of Europe, and have gotten loads of use out of that small an area, so I don't think there's a right or wrong way to go, as long as you keep your settings believable. We can't be experiencing torrential rains on the coast while forty miles to the north it's a desert, unless there's a hell of a mountain range between..... which would make the sea level parts unusual...
Yeah, believability is key, I think.