Combined Worlds

01Jan07

The two other members of the Trinity, Chris and Griffin, have been doing some world-building recently. As a member of the trinity, I have contributed to their work by combining both of their worlds into one single geographical area. Some areas had to be expanded, such as the lower-right body of water, which was mostly of my design. I tried to keep it as realistic and as true to the original designs, so I didn’t add any peninsulas or anything. The biggest changes were in the coastline in the lower right, to compensate for the different widths of the images. This is the finished product (click to enlarge):

Pretty cool, eh? This is just the first phase, however, as there are many other issues to solve. If the other Trinity members agree, this could develop into something greater.

From this point we would have to fix all of the climate issues, so that everything is consistent (no rainforests next to deserts). The geographical features of the northern world would need to be established in the level of detail that the southern world has, using the same color key. The southern and northern cultures and histories would probably need to be revised, as would the races, in all likelihood.

Scale is also an issue. How big was the southern world supposed to be when compared to the northern world? If the scales are different, I would need to redraw the map. If not, we can move on to scope.

Deciding the scope, in this case, would be deciding how this map compares to the rest of the world and where it’s placed. The map would be expanded, adding more areas for cultures to be developed. If it helps rationalize the climate contrast, the worlds might even be rotated (click to enlarge):

…or maybe not.

After we have our world, we could develop the other areas and make even more cultures, or we could just focus on this area. This all depends on how big this area is in relation to the entire world. If it’s the size of Europe, we’d probably want to canonize the other parts of the world. If it’s the size of the Americas, then it doesn’t matter as much.

All in all, this would be quite the project to endeavor. It might be a better idea to all make seperate worlds with the thought of combining them in mind, so that we all use the same scale and won’t have to solve any geographical problems. Maybe when it’s all over we could write some less-than-good high fantasy fiction and become bestsellers.

Filed under: Trinity, World-Building   |  4 Comments