World Building: Climate or Landform World Hooks

Having your world hook from a climate or landform approach can have some interesting adventures based on how the land is or isn’t shaped. It can bring up questions as to just why the world is this way and not normal. Piquing your players’ curiosity will get them interested in exploring and they may ask you something you had not thought about, which can help you create an adventure down the road. Here is some in-depth on climate or landform approaches.

If you use an aerial approach most of the action would happen in mountains, ships, and other flying things. In an inland sea or lake approach a major body of water is surrounded by land. This could be from something in the past that caused the body of water to end up this way and be a source of adventure all on its own. Archipelago where there is no real continents but many islands so water would play a big part in your campaign. Again this could be a source of adventure or adventures all on its own. For an oceanic hook there would basically be no land to speak of. It would be all islands, big and small. Kingdoms could exist on a single island or across several that were near each other. Water creatures would abound and anything with sailing would be a prominent profession.

If you want to go another way you could also have arctic world, where it is cold everywhere. This could just be how your world is or again some change that occurred from a past event. A desert land only would be interesting to create since water would be scarce and more than likely a source of wealth for who had the most. Fights to control water would probably happen between rivaling leaders.

Then there is the approach of forest being the majority of your world. In this kind of environment agriculture would be scarce and most people would be hunter/gatherers. In a jungle landform trees again would cover most of the land but this time they would create a hot, humid environment. This again would make agriculture very hard to do.

Mountainous terrain would get your players attention by not having much land to build evenly on. Travel would be more difficult in this kind of landform since it would always be uphill or down and slides during all kinds of weather would be prominent. Opposite of that would be a plains/steppes environment where the land was mostly flat. Great for agriculture but nomads are sure to be abundant as well. So would there really be true cities in this kind of world? A subterranean world would be highly unusual. Creatures are adapted to the dark and light makes their eyes hurt. Other ways to stay healthy without the sun have been adapted. Questions such as where and how would people farm for food would be in the front of your players minds?

Swamps and uninhabitable areas could abound making it difficult for large populaces to thrive as well as unstable areas that constantly change. And even volcanic or unusual weather patterns could make your players wonder just how they will survive anything.