Virtual Femme

One of the things I love most about world building is researching the areas that I’m about to create.  Currently, I’m working on one of our thirty-eight biomes, specifically savannas, and I’m having a wonderful time reading about various grasslands, how they form, and what kind of life they usually support.  A lot of it came back to me from my college days as a biology major, but I haven’t been in a biology classroom for ten years.  I remember now why I loved biology and ecology so much.  Savannas, also known as tropical grasslands, are probably featured whenever there’s a movie or a documentary about elephants or lions, so I’m already thinking about what kind of magical, mythical, or downright scary beasts I can put in the zone.  In addition, I’m planning out what kind of areas could go in the zone.  Maybe we could have a hollowed out tree much like the one Rafiki inhabited in The Lion King.

I love studying ecology and biomes.  It really gives you a sense of how to put a world together and how key species can make or break a region.  Obviously, a game can hardly mimic all the intricacies that go into a single biome, but we can get the main features to create a more seamless and believable world.

I’ve always been bothered by games that stick a snowy zone right by a lava zone.  It’s always outraged me a bit.  I love the worlds where one zone flows right into the next one without any real definition.  Strangely enough, in the real world, one can actually find some seemingly strange biome patterns.  For example, one side of a mountain could support a gorgeous, wet jungle while the other side is a harsh desert environment.  This comes from clouds dropping their moisture as they travel across the mountain in a temperature change and having nothing left for the other side.  Next to the desert usually comes a prairie, or a temperate grassland, with moisture building up again.  This can actually be seen coming across North America from west to east.  The same desert effect on the eastern side of the Rockies is not mimicked on the east coast due to the age, weathered condition, and lower elevation of the Smokies.  The rain clouds don’t drop all their moisture before crossing the mountain.  Instead, it usually drops while crossing over the mountain.  That’s why some of the best farmland in the US was in the Virginias.

I was actually glad to know this much while creating the world map of Primordiax, and I wish I’d had the same luxury to do it for Threshold.  Most gamers aren’t anal enough to need that kind of depth in their world especially if they have the pretty graphics, but I know a lot of roleplayers out there that will appreciate a seamless, more immersed world.

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