Making a world from coffee stains.

https://imgur.com/a/z8qCQ0h/ https://imgur.com/a/eRw0Mrp/

Any geological or sociological aspects I should be aware of if it’s intended to be Earth-like? Like biomes or where mountains and whatever would be. Some source explaining these things in layman’s terms?

I’m intending my pet project to start off somewhere around the 5,4 coordinates if you notice them (the westernmost part of the large continent that looks like a fish fin) which I see as being inspired by medieval Spain or early Renaissance Italy ruled by power hungry city states.

What things do I need to be aware of?

Edited by SpellcraftQuill on Jul 23rd 2018 at 5:47:52 AM

I'm getting a "404 Not Found" for both of those links.

Fixed the links: https://imgur.com/a/z8qCQ0h/ and https://imgur.com/a/eRw0Mrp/.

Remember that mountains parallel coastlines, and rivers flow away from mountains. Here is a wonderful website to get you started. This is probably the best place to begin. Another exceptional tutorial, more of the "do this, then do that" variety.

Edited by DeMarquis on Jul 21st 2018 at 12:26:33 PM

So can I use a Worldspinner world as a basis to know where to start?

I've never used it, but the world's they show on the slide show on their web site appear fairly reasonable. Some more guidelines: mountainous landmasses tend to be long and thin, flat ones are more rounded, bays tend to mirror the shape of the landmass they are a part of, lakes require an elevation between themselves and the nearest coastline, and make sure your bioms are compatible with the prevalent direction, tempurature and wetness of the winds and currents.

Those are good tips, but in general when designing landmasses it's more important to know why those things are like that in our world, than it is to follow those tips to the letter. Particularly if the world you're designing is in any way different from our world. Even if that difference is very small, it could realistically have a huge effect.

For instance: Mountain ranges aren't formed by tectonic plate activity alone. They are formed when tectonic plate activity forces up denser, harder rock beneath an area of softer rock and then wind and water erosion carve away the softer rock and soil, until only that hard rock remains. When erosion hasn't carved away the softer rock and soil (yet), for instance because vegetation is keeping the soil together or because the topography or climate isn't right for a significant amount of rain and wind, you don't get a mountain range, just an area where the land is highly elevated above sea level (the edge of the sea will, often have cliffs rather than just beaches). If there's no soft rock and soil to be eroded, you'll get a plateau instead. If the rock that's getting pushed up is too soft, you won't get a mountain range, but a bunch of hills.

Edited by Robrecht on Jul 24th 2018 at 4:51:42 AM

Of course, "tips" aren't meant to be followed to the letter, they're just guidelines. But many authors dont have the time or energy to commit to learning even basic geography, they want to concentrate on their story or on character development, and simply want to engage in just enough geographical worldbuilding as to maintain a sense of verisimilitude. So its helpful to have some general guidelines to follow. I wanted to provide guidelines that can immediately be utilized without much education—naturally, if the interest of the author is deeper than that, then there are many online resources that will facilitate a greater, more in depth understanding (I linked to some of these).

Yeah, it's more a piece of general advice of the 'give a man a fish, teach a man to fish' variety.

It helps to understand at least the basics of why things are as they are. It takes, relatively speaking, less time to learn the basics and extrapolate from that than it does to go back and look up specific tips every time you want to build a different world.

Cartographer's Guild is a great resource in that regards .