Newbie in dire need of feedback and motivation.

[XCali]

Thank you so much, Omri! Thank you so much for the kind introduction (I may have been a little nervous signing up). You have some really good maps, and they certainly do fire the neurons I need for inspiration.

My issue isn't particularly with "three continents". If you ask the average person to draw a world map in the quickest time possible, they're bound to draw 5-6 blobs (North America, South America, Eurasia, Africa, Oceania, Antarctica, maybe.) My issue is that these continents look like some alien has gone to 3 different planets, used a tractor beam to lift them all, and then just plopped them down in the middle of an ocean. There's no cohesion or interaction between those blobs that make it look like natural tectonics. As I said before, I'm not exactly one for perfect geological formations, but it distracts me when they look like that (Even though I'm 100% sure my players don't care)

I'm currently in the process of learning the basics of tectonics. We can all looks at the Philippines or Halong Bay and think, "well, that looks cool". But I would certainly like to know WHY they look like that, what formed them, and why don't they stretch on into infinity.

As I said, I love the lore writing aspect and don't struggle with that. My main issue is getting over the mapmaking bump because, in my (maybe stupid) mind, I have to know what kingdoms and villages are close to what and what biomes they're in to get an idea of how those people's cultures arise. I have a ton of stories about them, sometimes borrowing from myself (from other world-building projects). Sometimes from other people. Sometimes my ideas. My main issue in that regard is the pitfalls of writing about stuff too close to home, a la Warhammer, with not!Arabias and not!Europes and not!Germanies. And my inability to think outside the box and come up with unique cultures. Although I guess it is difficult for just about anyone to do that.

There are quite a few people going for the more technical side of how continents are formed and shaped through tectonics, maybe their journey would give you ideas. (The link is just one of many on that journey)

On how to generate ideas outside the box, think about it, why do we have so many different cultures in the world? One of the reasons are how their areas waaaaaaay back forced them to adapt and through that adaption process their cultures organically formed around their reality. Some were forced to adapt in colder temperatures, others in Monsoon rain forests. All of that come with big questions on how do one survive with those challenges. I can just imagine the rain forest people had to find ways to make dry burning material, and keep their meat fresh by processes like smoking them, otherwise the meat would rot quickly.

Stuff like that force a people to figure out how to survive and because of their solutions to those problems, culture change alongside accordingly.

(Let's throw that into a fantasy perspective, for example. I made a name up, Haer Glover. As I imagined the people there, I thought of vikings, but the ones that wanted to settle new lands, maybe because of something that forced them to abandon their previous land. So sea faring warriors, that was forced to settle a new land when the storm ridden seas were too dangerous to sail continuously. THEN, I made a name, Fire Mist Mountains, and through various cultural references imagined monsters coming when the deep banks of fog dropped down into the valleys. The people from Haer Glover had somewhere decades ago started repairing an ancient bridge keep and posted a watch there. Then one night, the fog came rolling down... and so the monsters starting attacking once more. Bam Adventure hook, all from the idea of sea faring warriors that had to resettle in a new mysterious land.)

Hope that gives some idea how to go about following the story instead of trying to slap a story onto a place.



(P.S. It gets easier to post after 5 posts.)