The North is Cold

that's socially logical
a capital is built with time across the major market roads, unless there're big deserts/mountains or if oceans/lakes are better to travel

Monkeys are not people.

Nations (before the modern age) rarely stayed the same size for long. They were constantly expanding and contracting.

Capitals didn't move when the borders move, which is why London, Paris, Madrid, Berlin, etc. are closer to the borders of their countries and to their geographical centres.

I wish to know more of this setting.

the capital is often at the barycentre of the major towns (ponderated by size of population)
it depends on typography of the land too

the sure thing is that an ocean/river access is obligatory

I think in this case "capital" is just referring to the mega-city of the setting, which may or may not actually be the capital of a Nation which contains it. Depending on geography, a central location is likely to be very successful for trade, hence big center city. What comprises "center" will vary based on geography.

So, we each designed half of the world. I designed the North, the West, and the general structure, he designed the East, the South, and the Center.
From what I remember, here are some basics:
>World is a cylinder, with a vortex of magical energy surrounding the edges, the surface of the world as the bottom shell, going down infinitely, and the Center blooming up with a tree in the middle to form a shell on top
>Past the vortex is the Void, where souls go when they die
>Without sufficient magical force, the vortex is a one-way trip out

>Five classical elements shaped the five regions: Wind is North, Fire is South, Water is East, Earth is West, and Aether is Center
>North is the most magically inclined, as the vortex bled into the region a bit
>People primarily dress in full-body cloaks and wrappings to deal with the harsh winds
>Structures are primarily huge, magitech clockwork castles, on artificially suspended floating islands
>Society is ruled by golems that amount to being supercomputers, and there's a rigid caste based system shaped around magical potential and skill

>West is the most militaristic, due to having little natural resources from being in a massive fucking desert, and thus needing to raid the other regions
>Entire populace armed and trained to some degree
>Magical energy weak, so people developed technology separate from magic, leading to guns, efficient armor, and electricity
>Usually at war with everyone, but occasionally formed treaties with the South, offering protection against the East in exchange for oil and food

(continued in next post)

>South is not!Japan with a little bit of "volcano world" thrown in - lava everywhere, but the native life has adapted to it
>Completely inhospitable to most life
>Cities are regularly destroyed by volcanoes and have to be rebuilt, leading to an advanced nomadic civilization
>Use fire magic to form obsidian cities from the ashes left behind
>Theocratic nation lead by a divine emperor

>East was not!America with more water, until a research mage pushed his studies on ice magic too far, freezing over the entire East and killing most of the population
>He's the sole living member, with the rest of the population constructs and reanimated corpses produced by his research
>At this point, he's a mad scientist lich who considers the frozen remains of the East his own personal testing grounds
>He wants more live test subjects, though, so he sends his creations out to abduct civilians from the North, Center, and South

>Center is a non-Euclidean supercity with skyscrapers in literally every direction
>The city spans multiple continents, connecting them into one giant urban landmass
>The inhabitants are all faceless shadow-things, that listlessly shuffle along, called "Dreamers"
>They have no conscious presence in the material world - they all truly act in a collective dream within the giant tree in the center of the Center, which blooms over the whole world
>They are spirits perpetually locked between life and death, with this tree holding their souls as both sustenance and a mind of its own
>The dreams of the tree echo to the world below in the form of magic
>Sometimes, Dreamers wake up
>Their bodies are covered in bulging, unblinking eyes
>When they do, they will attempt at all costs to attack the tree and the vortex
>The most elite mages and soldiers of the North, South, East, and West are all sworn to protect the tree, though they don't know why
>If the tree died, and magic faded, the vortex would fall, and the ideas of "life" and "death" would lose meaning

Better go to Gensokyo.

youtu.be/CPxXRkWKtkQ
>Pennsylvania's in the east
>California's in the west
>But Kentucky is the state that I love the best because...
>The sky is up
>Earth is down
>In between, tornado spins around, and around, and around, and around, and around, and around, and around, and around

>the north is cold but not that cold
>the south is hot but not that hot, but hot to me.
>the west is unknown
>the east is a hermit empire

Dragon Age mixed those tropes a bit.
With the main focus area being in the southern Hemisphere near the south pole of the world.
So the south is cold and gets freezing the further you go. The far north is warm and tropical, east are an Island chain, and the west represneting the rest of the land mass with large desert areas.

A FUCKING BOOT.
Back to the drawing board, kiddo.

>The North is an Ocean With A Bunch of Shitty Little Islands
>The South is an Ocean With A Bunch of Shitty Little Islands
>The West is an Ocean With A Bunch of Shitty Little Islands
>The East is an Ocean With A Bunch of Shitty Little Islands
>We live on a shitty little Pacific Rim Archipelago

I fucking hated Wind Walker

...

>The North is temperate/cold-ish and continetal: think Siberia.
>The South is basically the Arabian Peninsula
>The West is an Ocean
>The East is an massive Himalaya-esque mountain range that obscures what is behind it (not much on the other side anyway).
>The Center is largely subtropical and temperate steppes, some of them low attitudes, some of them very much high altitude Mongolia-like.
Yeah, I do stick to the generally Europe-centric conventions, they are useful. There is little benefit in reinventing the wheel.

...

Wait, is this actually a thing? None of my GMs' or my own settings have ever conformed to something so weird and arbitrary. I'd maybe chalk it up to some of my GMs being geographically challenged, but as for myself, it's simply not something I'd considered. When I'm making an entirely new and fantastical world, I just add in whatever I like, Earth's geographics be damned.

Yeah, so?
What are you gonna do, call the cops?

>north is cold
>south is hot
What, so every world needs to operate with different physics? North and south are hot because the poles are there, and they're slightly different. If the poles aren't at the north and south, they're not the north and south then are they?

>The South Pole is Hot

I'm gonna tell you a secret, friend. Antarctica is pretty cold.

Best setting.

The center is south and the map doesn't extend past the equator

Each time I make a fantasy setting I make the world flat and put some major obstacle at the edges. Why? Because it means I don't need to explain anything.

>World is an island continent; expeditions into the ocean on all sides have either been lost or come back fruitless.
>World is a portion of a continent separated by an inhospitable mountain range taller than even the strongest dragons can fly.
>World is a portion of a continent bordering an immense flatland, varying from sandy desert to salt plains depending on the latitude, with no known life outside its boundaries.
>World is a portion of a continent, bordering another nation. The natives are brutal savages who live a tribal, violent life, and the fauna (and/or flora!) are even more vile than in our homeland. Although some areas of this land have been mapped, there is no reason to go there.

And if anyone asks why to any of that? Answer is that it's because that's the way the world is. Characters don't know everything, and players don't need to know what their characters don't.

>the center
>of a sphere

What the fuck are you guys talking about? The Core?

The centre of the continent senpai.

This is actually possible
youtube.com/watch?v=J4K3H9aNLpE

I'm developing a setting for generic fantasy rpg fun, and this is my current set-up:

>North/Center is swampy and cold (basically Finland writ large)
>South is temperate!Caribbean, with colder islands the further you go
>West is massive landmass
>East is desert, mountains, and jungles

Also, random magical storms constantly fuck with the weather, with rainstorms that can last years, biting blizzards that strike in the desert, and boulder-storms that rain hell upon rainforests.

My setting has East and West being the cold regions, with the center running north to south being tropical. I've been thinking of doing away with that, though, because there's no actual fucking reason that would be. And no, not magic, the world is in a normal solar system even if it's a medieval fantasy game.

>there's an user who still lives in the realm of mythology where the world of men is the meeting place between the hot and cold realms
Please tell me your ancient wisdom

Of course it's in the center, the egoistic fucks there who made the map decided it should be in the center.

>playing a game loosely based on the real world

>Game is set in a reality with 3 space dimensions and 1 time dimension

>game is in a setting with concepts of time and space

>game has a setting

that's a shit load of work to imagine dynamics for two worlds, especially if they're interacting

...

>having a game

>existing

So, Midnight?

Algerave did nothing wrong.

>The GM is a brilliant polymath who has created a setting based on an alternative earth where its position and distance to the sun were slightly different resulting in radically changed but entirely accurate and plausible landmasses forming, changing circumstances on the planet and resulting in a different but still human-like dominant species because the GM assigns to a structuralist interpretation of the theory of evolution and based on the newly evolved landmasses, winds and climates which he has calculated with nearly machinelike accuracy he has speculated and created different cultures with deep religious and cultural traditions that aren't just "Real Life Country X but with a twist"

>the north is cold and unknown
>the south is a desert and unknown
>the west is an ocean and unknown
>the east is mediterranian merchant states

>The North is a cold and desolate forest full of bears and angry natives.
>The South is a giant swamp full of murder-lizards and angry natives.
>The West is a vast and trackless plain full of horrifying weather patterns and yet more angry natives.
>The East is an Ocean. Thankfully, not full of angry natives.

That's correct though. The centre of a map is the place it was made. Chinese maps put China in the middle, European maps would put their country in the middle

>the BBEG's plan is to summon an army of fishmen to inhabit the Eastern oceans
>they wouldn't invade land or anything, they'd just exist angrily and natively in the oceans

>the BBEG is a self-aware entity whose plot is to fulfil as many cliches as possible

>everything in the middle is gothic.

America based setting?

>It's all archipelagos
>If you sail either north or south for like half a year you'll find these weird places where the water turns to ice

...

>The North is Cold
>The South is Hot
Like, what? 85% of the world's population lives in the Northern hemisphere.

Jokes on you in my game

>The west is unknown
>The east is an ocean
>North is both hot & cold (competing planar portals)
>Ok the south's still hot.

THE NORTH IS AN UNKNOWN

THE SOUTH IS HOT

THE WEST IS COLD

THE EAST DOESN'T EXIST BECAUSE GREPHLBLAX THE QUIVERING NIGHT ATE IT

For my maps I often put in a ‘far west’ that is a fantasy new world connected to the standard rpg setting by land, just separated by distance and an enormous canyon.

>The north is hot
>The south is cold
>The west is land
>the west is land
>The center is very hot

In my gm's setting the Equator is frozen and the poles are jungles.

Because the planet is in an artificial placement between two stars. The equator is frozen because there's a giant fucking Halo around the planet that's a giant magic circle against evil.

No one knows what night actually looks like as there are constant auroras and when people do see the night sky they freak the fuck out.

Oh and there's also a massive eye the size of mars outside of the ring staring at the planet that is causing interference so it can drop abominations onto the planet.

Also the Moon is a massive genius loci that a dragon god had been wrestling for millenia because no one will fucking help her because the gods are all petty assholes.

The gods are so petty when a thrallherd emerged they let all the psions get eaten by Aberrations they have been fighting for millenia

Chrono Trigger?

name one (1) way in which a story or campaign is improved by having colder or warmer climates in a different direction

I don't get it

UP IS NOT A DIRECTION

DOWN IS TWO DIRECTIONS: A JUNGLE PLACE AND A CAVE PLACE

>his world isn't flat

>north
>south
>east
>west

>"m-muh Euclidian surface geometry!"

>North and south are hot because the poles are there, and they're slightly different.

>Each time I make a fantasy setting I make the world flat and put some major obstacle at the edges. Why? Because it means I don't need to explain anything.
Built in explanation: it's turtles all the way down (if you really need to, this in some elephants)

>His world isn't a Great cubicuboctahedron.

>The North is West
>The North is East
>The West is North
>The West is South
>The South is West
>The South is East
>The East is North
>The East is South

>Playing a game at all

North and south are pretty much a given for a conventional planet. I mean, you could constrain the setting to the tropical band, so it's all hot, but that's not as interesting. And you could put your setting in the southern hemisphere so it's flipped, but unless you're specifically catering to the Aussie market that's just going to be contradicting people's usual associations for no real benefit.

As to the east and west, with the oceans and mysterious distant lands, that is something that might be nice to vary up a bit more. Though here your options are still somewhat limited:

>The setting's on the eastern end of the continent instead of the west, flipping the usual sterotype
This requires some finesse, since it has the potential to invoke notions of either China or America.

>The setting's in the middle of a vast continent, with unexplored lands at all edges
Potentially interesting, but pretty strictly limits the potential for coastal or maritime adventures. Plus oceans are a better limiter on the edges of the map; if you have a big stretch of land to one side, you need to have some idea of what's over there (even if it's not very well understood by people in-setting in the region you're focused on), since they *will* influence your region to some extent, and (in an RPG) players may want to go over there at some point.
Of course, here you're immediately going to have people thinking "oh hey, it's not!Central Asia!"

>As above, but there's a big-ass sea splitting up into the middle
Think like the Mediterranean, but turned sideways. This adds the fun of maritime elements -- potentially a bit more interesting than the above. Still has the issues with lacking hard boundaries though, and you're likely to get people going "hey, this is just the Mediterranean basin turned sideways!"

>A big island or archipelago, surrounded by water on all sides
Potentially interesting, but limits you in terms of scale.

Second image looks roughly like Europe.

...

It's better than putting your generic not!Europe in the Southern hemisphere for the sake of being different.

Honestly, Europe's geographic and cultural setup is fucking fantastic if you want a lot of realistic variety in a small area. Feels cozy as fuck.

>the north is cold
>the south is a desert
>the West is an unknown
>the east is a bunch of city-states with a large trade presence

>The West is the Best
>And we'll do the Rest

Reverse east and west and you've unironically got my setting, which my players have received pretty well. Literally nothing wrong with it.

My continent ends at the equator and not any further south.

Midly interesting.

The economic cores of any given country is often near major rivers. See Paris, London, Moscow etc. Rivers are awesome for economy. It doesn't provide just water. If it is navigable, it's an economic multiplier. Carrying good over sea or river are an order of magnitude cheaper than doing it overland.

Yo, someone should stop that Grephlblax guy.

>The North is Cold
>The Sourth is Cold
>The West is Cold
>The East is Cold

>>The North is an Ocean
>>The South is an Ocean
>>The West is an Ocean
>>The East is an Ocean

I wonder if I need to do something about my setting.

If I included a part of my setting where the nearest star doesn't rise above the horizon for 40% of the year, half my players would call that unrealistic .

Well i mean thats way above the Arctic circle, not much grows there to feed any substantial populace

The Underdark and similar tropes.

Dwarves dug too deep and such.

Mostly ripped off from Tolkien, who put most of the nastiest evils there where they’ll stay so long as nobody fucks with them in pursuit of riches/power, which interestingly is not a metaphor for uranium as much as it sounds like it is. Tolkien was most likely inspired by the fact that in most mythology the worst monsters dwell below the surface or in caves. Other than Norse, most nasties are evenly distributed anywhere but the top.

So you're playing Subnautica then?

That geography is unironically one of the reasons why Europeans eventually conquered the world. Even before, the advent of civilization, the harsh conditions in Europe forced it's people to adapt to itself, from the large forests and mountain ranges of central europe, to the harsh north and it's long cold winters, the nature of European people was shaped by these forces for untold generations, making them unique from other groups of people, who lived in other environments and conditions.
Europe's geography fostered the unending competition between rivaling states, where a singular state was never capable of uniting the whole region due to it's clusterfuck nature.
The legacy of the roman empire and ancient greek knowledge, along with various stuff coming from asia and the middle east, including ideas and new technologies, added to this clusterfuck of free for all competitive states of Europeans, resulted in the rapid technological advancements of European states that saw them eventually rise above all other nations of the time.

European supremacy was real and had Europeans been more ruthless, and less altruistic (and perhaps more far sighted and wise) they would have used that brief moment of near total supremacy, to ensure that no other race or nation of people would ever oppose them again.
Alas, the moment was wasted and now Europe is in a slow spiral of stagnation.
There is hope however, that when the current world order collapses, Europeans will find themselves again and shatter the shackles that enslave us to international financiers.
EU must be torn apart, and the stage must be set anew for European nations to strive against one another, and the rest of the world, so we can be once more honed like the edge of a blade.
youtube.com/watch?v=IUsbj-VJPVE

t. R9k