[TASK] Worldbuilding: Let's Map It Out

TASK ONE: ISLAND MAP

As we are about to come to some conclusions on writing style, and features are starting to be added into the engine quite quickly, we need to start actually making our world. This is a task, not just a discussion. We are going to start world building.

Obviously we still need to do a lot more than just this: What's the goal of the game? What kind of quests? Jobs/careers? It's very overwhelming -- which is why we work in chunks. :)

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I think we have indirectly settled on an island for our immediate location, no?

I say we start on the very beach that we all worked to build the past few days as demos. There's no reason to throw it out as it fits into our world quite well (which is the reason I chose that setting). We can branch out from the shore into the city/town, the forests, and so forth.

So, let's begin.

• What kind of climate should the island have?
  I went with a dreary, less-than-tropical island similar to Blecki's story posted on the original thread. I think this is an ideal climate for our island, and fits the theme well. Alternative options?
• What are some staple buildings and locations in the town?
  Church, the harbor, a hospital, town hall, grocery store... Let's compile a list of every building in the city that the player will be able to walk in.
• Just outside town?
  Forested areas. Is farming viable on an island like this? What kind?
• Where does the player start? Maybe there should be alternative starting locations?
• What's on the other side of the island? Can you follow the shoreline all the way around?
• Is the island mountainous, hilly, or just flat forests? Any unique landmarks?
  Caverns, old ruins, abandoned homes.

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@piggybankcowboy You've been doing some research on islands like this, correct? What kind of things have you learned? Anything you can share is welcomed! I suggest everyone helps out, of course.

If we can answer these questions and get a list of buildings in the town, we have an amazing starting point to begin writing out the actual game world.

TASK TWO: WIKI

I will contribute to this task as soon as I have time, but if someone else could start that would be great. For now, just a list of all the buildings we settle on will be ideal, with links to their pages (they can be blank). Another page that compiles all the other information about the island would be ideal as well.

The wiki is going to be insanely helpful in organizing our world -- git issue threads are not going to work out in the long run.

Yes, I have quite a bit to say on this matter, actually, but real quick, I'm completely for the "island as a starting point" idea, because it makes a lot of sense. Glad you made a task for this. I'm busy with work for the next few hours, but I'll be back after with notes organized into a long reply, if that's cool. I haven't had time to update my idea repo with things like climate notes, and geology, so I'll just try and do that here.

The Iceland-Azores Pattern:

Using Iceland and the Azores as a sort of template, we can create a smaller (but not too small) island with some levels of diversity. We have to assume that the player will be spending the first block of levels, here, so providing variety without over-doing it will be key. Otherwise, we sacrifice diversity in the rest of the world.

Climate: Iceland is likely a bit colder than we want our starting island to be, but I see no reason went can't bump up the average temps a bit without getting into too much trouble of a conflict with geology, location and climate. I'm also on board with the idea of starting off with a colder island, saving the more southern-tropics style islands for later in the world. Up to the group.

Either way, I'd like to give the environment some edge without making it too harsh or inhospitable. Our island should be subject to rough seas and storms, but not as a constant barrage. This is a bit of a cliche, but our sample task gave me the impression of a fishing village/community, and my own regional bias can't help but connect rough waters with good fishing. This is contingent upon whether or not we want to implement weather effects in the game, which is favorable, but tricky since there might be times it conflicts with room descriptions.

Otherwise, I picture a cooler, breezy place where people can comfortably be outdoors with a light sweater on most days, and are highly connected to the environment around them, so they don't mind some storms or rain.

Geophysics: Iceland is host to interesting volcanic activity, but I'd like to save that for different world areas. Instead, I'd rather focus on geothermal vents and geysers. They will provide us with an interesting geological centerpiece so our island home isn't just about fishing and sandy beaches. In fact, I'd like to see very little in the way of sandy beaches.

We should have some, but keep them on the smaller side. Geysers tend to be around rock, and make sense on a larger rocky island. This also allows for some small cave areas for the sake of quests and exploration. So, a rocky island, formed by older volcanic activity, but any volcanos are long dead. Both the Azores and Iceland have active volcanos of varying types that account for their formation, but again, I don't see us getting into any trouble with students of vulcanism when we don't have any of those on our island. The island itself serves as evidence of past activity.

Ancient volcanic activity also allows us to make the surface nicely fit to support greenery up to and including a decent sized forest, lending another diverse area for players to explore early on.

Size: Big enough to support one large town (with a port), and maybe two or three smaller settlements, but not so big as to seem like an entire continent. Depend on our day/night cycle and timing, players should be able to walk the island end to end in under a game day of they keep moving non-stop.

Starting area: one of the smaller settlements would make a bit of sense, but we'll have to really hash out why a player is starting there. As much as I liked our Lighthouse task (and the idea of starting in or near a lighthouse for metaphorical reasons), it just seems arbitrary if we don't have a good reason for it. This can be hashed out later, though. Given the genre of our MUD, we don't have the luxury of some mystical hand-waving with new character appearances.

Buildings: I will be back later to add to this, likely after midnight my time. I need to collect the rough maps I sketched out, and won't be home until after then. Sorry about the delays, been an abnormally hectic week.

[Blecki]

In regards to where the player starts;

We could have a newbie-only area where everyone starts. It would have to keep older players out, and give the new player a little area to explore and go on a quest in, before they are thrust out into the wider game.

The great thing about the setting is that such a place actually exists - it's called school. The player could start in a highschool, supposedly as a senior, and after completing the tutorial quest, they would 'graduate'. We could even go so far as to instance this quest for each player so that other newbies can't interfere with it.

Having a bunch of adult teenagers and twenty-somethings roaming around as bewildered newbies with completely irrelevant back stories is pretty much how the real world works.

[Blecki]

I've created this map.

https://gist.github.com/Blecki/6fd725d87217c01abd29

[Trevoke]

I really like @piggybankcowboy 's suggestion for the island's weather. It also gets us out of just making the sky grey and rainy.. This isn't Scotland :D

I like the idea of graduating from high school to start, but if we don't do it carefully, I think it'll limit the RP potential. Not sure how many people will want to be 18-25-ish at the start of their experience here.

Nice map! I was going to try and do something similar, but I'm really happy with what you came up with -- mine would not have been that good. You made it very small and self-contained. I imagined that the town was a smaller part of the island (as you might have guessed from my description at the top of the tower)

I created a Wiki Page for Port Ivy on the repo.

I also started playing with http://www.lauzet.com/argon/ to try and re-write Blecki's map but I don't have the energy for it right now.

[Blecki]

It should be easy enough to expand in the gist. I made the town the entire map.. I can imagine a bit of the island stretching north a bit into some wilderness. There could also be a barrier island of some kind to the east.

[Trevoke]

I was kinda hoping we could make the gist part of the org but I don't know
how to create a gist as an org.

.. Nor can I send a pull request to your gist for changes :)

On Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 9:55 PM, Blecki notifications@github.com wrote:

It should be easy enough to expand in the gist. I made the town the entire
map.. I can imagine a bit of the island stretching north a bit into some
wilderness. There could also be a barrier island of some kind to the east.

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Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub
#72 (comment).

[Blecki]

No, gists aren't really meant for that. You could stick it into the wiki though.

[Trevoke]

Done :)

On Tue, Sep 30, 2014 at 10:20 PM, Blecki notifications@github.com wrote:

No, gists aren't really meant for that. You could stick it into the wiki
though.

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#72 (comment).

If we make the entire island just the town, do we mean to force the player off the island as soon as possible? For some reason, I had it in my head that the player would be sticking around for the first 10 or so levels (based on nothing, really, since we haven't discussed progression), do a few small quests to get themselves going, then branch out to the mainland realms. Making the whole thing a town seems limiting, and more like a MUSH environment where there is no combat or leveling focus.

That said, I like the layout, and I apologize for not contributing as I said I would, and I'm trying to catch up (life got in the way). If we're going with the one-town-island, and making this a designated noob area, as mentioned, then I'd like to turn my focus to lore, so that we can give this place some more character using @Blecki's buildings and their corresponding denizens.

So, what do we want the player to experience, here? Tutorials? Basic exposition? A starting quest or two? I'm imagining something like the shipwreck being haunted, or the bookstore having a secret basement vault of strange books, belonging to some cabal involved in magic.

[Blecki]

The map can be expanded...

But we should avoid planning too much too early. It's a lot of building. I personally prefer dense worlds over the vast. Vast worlds with small player bases feel so empty.

Ahh, I just misinterpreted what I was reading, then. Good point, though. A big empty world sounds boring.

[ConstableBrew]

I love the creativity you guys have. My stories when I GM D&D are basically all rip-offs of whatever novel I happen to be reading.

Before mapping everything, shouldn't we focus on describing some plots? Why are players here? What are they trying to accomplish?

It would be great if we can creatively solve newbie onboarding and avoid homogenizing everyong. Could someone start off as a shop owner? A local resident with some job at some local failing business? A tourist taking advantage of deeply discounted airfare and B&B? A post grad completing some field work?