View Full Version : Maps Terrain Types
03-28-2011, 10:01 PM
When creating a world, what different terrains do you typically cover it in? Now keep in mind I don't mean the basic stuff. I'm talking like unusual weather effects and land formations.
I've had a long island with an 80 to 95 mile wide lagoon at the end that was blanketed with permanent hurricanes. The strength would differ day to day. Had another place where a jungle and adjacent sea were flash frozen in an Eldritch Cataclysm. The result was a sea that was safe to walk on except at any given moment a wave would bulge the ground up and in some cases shatter it completely. It would rain down a massive torrent of water and ice chunks for a pretty good distance.
Anyway, what do you guys throw in?
03-29-2011, 12:26 AM
i'm rather fond of flying, floating, and submerged mobile islands / structures, myself.
07-11-2011, 03:17 PM
A village situated on an ice plain over part of an inland finger of the icy ocean.
Thick ice, easily enough to hold a human in some areas, alternating with thinner ice that a heavily-encumbered human might plummet through. The natives knew how to recognize such ice instantly, of course, but the visiting PCs were not as familiar with the environment at first and had to learn the clues.
In addition, gigantic underwater predators occasionally broke through the ice to attack whatever was above them -- again, the PCs had to learn to recognize the danger signs (such as a rumbling "ice quake").
This background was only the setting for the adventure, not the adventure itself, but it added a nice edge to things, including strategic opportunities such as when the party ranger ran intentionally across a thinner part of the ice so that the troll chasing him would plummet through into the frigid waters. Then there was that moment when the PCs discovered the ice dungeon that extended down into the cold waters . . .
07-17-2011, 12:44 AM
07-17-2011, 06:17 PM
I've got a couple - one is a large magic-dampening field that covers an entire nation. All it basically does is make magical casting almost impossible (subtract 10 levels from any arcane caster, multiply spell caster levels by 0.2 to cast higher-level spells (have to be 15th level to cast 1st level spells, 25th level for 2nd level), and messes with devices while they are in the area.
A caldera that is reminiscent of Mordor.
A couple of small areas that are allegedly from a (huge) dead god's weapon that have resulted in "dead zones". There is powerful magic in the areas, but any who enter them get sick within days and die within weeks - and magic doesn't cure the sickness. Effectively it's ground-zero from a nuclear device with huge amounts of background radiation.
My stuff tends to be "standard" stuff that has pockets of interesting things involved. Outside of the above, everything could be see easily right here on Earth. Some of the interesting things include a mountain chain that ends in a nearly impenetrable wall - and there is a large amount of water trapped in the water-table in the mountains - that SHOOT out of ancient holes in the mountains like horizontal geysers. Nothing strange about it... it's natural, just odd.
Like magic-rhyme's ice-village... nothing unnatural - just odd. (oh, and magic-rhyme, thanks for the idea... I'll be stealing that one!!).
07-20-2011, 06:37 AM
Sea of glass. the result of a fight between two fire deities. The "sea" was about 20 miles across.
A stepped lava plateau. Now the formation is more than possible, the unusual part is that there was enough elevation difference between the three levels to give you dofferent climates between them. Semi tropical, Temperate,, Arctic and tropical inside the massive caldera.
In a planer setting I used a plain of gears.In motion of course. It made movement interesting.
Worldtop the highest mountain on Thindacarulle at 40,000 feet has a livable micro climate. A mini forest a fountain, all the comforts of home. It is a main temple of Abba Eecreeana the god of magic.
I have one lake that is massive and very shallow. The shoreline will move five to ten miles between the rains and the dry season.
07-24-2011, 06:57 PM
I like that lake Tesral.
I've done the frozen ocean thing before and it turned out really nicely. The occasional wave would break through the ice and completely soak someone freezing them quickly if they didn't get some kind of assistance or heat.
I also like the idea of a huge dead god dropping a weapon that creates a kind of radiation. When I read the part about it being similar to a nuclear weapon drop I immediately started thinking of a Fallout kind of situation where the pieces of bombshell that were found were assumed to be a gods weapon, but were in-fact, the remnants of an ancient nuclear war.
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