Interesting article

[Ryan_Crown]

Ran across this page, which has some interesting articles:

Holly's Home Page

The World-Building Aids entry is especially interesting, as it discusses scientific aspects of weather and geography (and common mistakes writers make in regards to this science). In some ways it's probably more applicable to scifi than fantasy (as one of the advantages of fantasy is that magic can supercede science when necessary), but it still makes for some good reading, and gives you some things to think about.

 

[WooHooMan]

Mildly helpful, I suppose.
I find it interesting how much some people obsess over realism in a fantasy setting. You'd think some people would want some fantasy in their fantasy setting. I guess it depends on what you're going for in your setting.
Personally, i would prefer some guide to the concept of "internal logic and consistency" in a fantasy setting rather than a guide on "how to make your fantasy setting less fantastical".

I can see the "eternal city" article and the bit about underground settings being pretty useful, though.

 

[Ryan_Crown]

I will admit that much of my enjoyment of the world-building aids came from my love of science, as opposed to how much I would be likely to apply it to my writing.

 

[Jabrosky]

Mildly helpful, I suppose.
I find it interesting how much some people obsess over realism in a fantasy setting. You'd think some people would want some fantasy in their fantasy setting. I guess it depends on what you're going for in your setting.
Personally, i would prefer some guide to the concept of "internal logic and consistency" in a fantasy setting rather than a guide on "how to make your fantasy setting less fantastical".

I can see the "eternal city" article and the bit about underground settings being pretty useful, though.

It wasn't that long ago when I set out to create worlds that didn't have magic or anything else "supernatural" and had perfectly realistic workings even if they were made up. In the end I learned that a) achieving perfect "realism" in an artificial setting is impossible since we still don't know everything about how the real Universe works and therefore have an incomplete idea of what's realistic, and b) certain things I wanted in my world weren't all compatible with current ideas of realism anyway.

That said, applying scientific knowledge and principles to world-building can be fun. For example, a knowledge of biology and evolution can come in handy when designing fantasy creatures, whereas geology and climatology can help with map-making.