Of particular interest to
me is the construction of worlds and the environs that they allow us to work
in, my own opinion about these is that there should be enough to have a go at
but not so much that they stifle the creative atmosphere. When I came to design my own game, I looked
at it from the point of view that if the world map didn’t grab me immediately,
how could I expect it to grab anyone elses attention. With this in mind, I engaged someone who had
a more visual mindset to try and pull the notes that I’d written down into
something resembling an actual world.
Between us, we came up
with this...
Enough Continents to make
travel an option within the game, enough major points to make the beginning part
of the game interesting, but enough unchartered wilderness to make the world
something of an unknown quantity. I have
two maps of it, the first is above, the second is on the wall of my study,
where every time I think of something else to put in there, I write it on in
small writing so I’ve still got the space to play with, that map now looks like
this...
Now while there’s not much
on the face of it (me writing very small doesn’t help), it’s possible to see
where the world is starting to go and where it will go as time goes on. The point about this world is that it has a
dark side to the world as well, before the time of trials, when the world found
technology but there were concerns over this new development and wars broke out
over the use of machines over the use of magic, and those who practised the
heresy of technology were exiled to the far side of the world, there to make a
life for themselves. This resulted in
the following map...
This is going to be added
in when the nature world campaign gets to it and the various factions are
introduced, but back to the nature world for a second. As with all things in the world, I wanted to
make sure that the world has a “Just being discovered” feel to it, so the
artwork isn’t ultra-realistic, there’s no massive murals or paintings, nothing
that Turner would be proud of, it’s just the drawings from where travellers
have stopped to take time out and make an image. There are some places, the dead lands in the
north of Invicarn, where nothing lives, and as a result, the images coming out
of there would be slim to none, with people relying on the scribbles of those
who made it out to make any sense of it.
While a picture can tell a thousand words, sometimes the fact that there
is no picture tells the story all by itself. So the world locations look like
this (Hotos)
And this (The World Hole)
With places like this
added in (The Titans Causeway)
And then there’s the
artwork within the cities, wherein the main points of the city are covered,
such as Rashenjot, which is the capital city of Zargoldand, a map for the main
layout of the city
And then major points
within, such as the Path of Careful Footsteps
All to build some sort of
interest in the world itself and make people want to find what goes on next...
Still, my thoughts,
interested in everyone elses...
