Guild World Map - Community Challenge

[Jaxilon]

J.Edward you are doing outstanding. This has got to be a lot of extra work.

Edit - not seeing the issue with rivers.

I see the lake exits to the Sea through the middle of my country but there are rivers running into that river against the flow which is why I had a question, however I have a way to handle this so I think I'm good.

Thanks again!

[J.Edward]

J.Edward you are doing outstanding. This has got to be a lot of extra work.

I see the lake exits to the Sea through the middle of my country but there are rivers running into that river against the flow which is why I had a question, however I have a way to handle this so I think I'm good.

Thanks again!

Yeah, some rivers were coming from mountain ranges at a weird angle.
All of the rivers and ranges are mostly just guidelines really. I mean, they form country boundaries along rivers, so those are a bit more important, but mostly flexible.

[Deadshade]

Edit - I thought I'd add - we have no idea what the climate is.
We could be in a very warm era.
Local conditions could greatly affect weather and climate.
Ocean currents and volcanic activity. Who knows.

And we don't know what the tilt of the axis is, and as such how much sunlight coverage there is.
What the rotation and proximity to the Guild sun... we could all be living on a Mercury-like world right now
Or conversely... pluto-like

Or, worse yet, the Guild sun could be a red giant and we'd like be toasting away in the chromosphere....

Oh you will be surprised how much we know
So for all those who are interested by climate and biomes I will list what we know and what can be deduced from there (assuming that the world is not just an undifferentiated random chaos).

- First we know that there is liquid water. This defines a very narrow window where the orbit is situated. The nature of the Sun is irrelevant - if it is a blue giant then the planet is very far. If it is a red dwarf then it is very near. In any case the energy received by the planet is in a narrow interval that allows for liquid water (rivers, oceans).
- Second we know there is an atmosphere. This can be deduced from the fact that the planet is populated by breathing creatures.
- Third we know the radius of the planet (approximately Earthlike). From there follows gravity by making some obvious assumptions about the average density.
- Fourth we know that the planet is densely populated. There is life on all longitudes and on latitudes between + 70° and - 70°. From there follows that the axial tilt cannot be extreme. This deduction is also strengthened by the fact that liquid water exists both on N and S hemispheres. Now whether the tilt is 30° or 0° is practically irrelevant and would modify only slightly the atmospheric and oceanic dynamics. It would modify the seasons but we don't need to go so deep.
- What is said in fourth also applies for rotation velocity. We know that it is not 0 and it is not insanely high either. Again whether a day is 4 hours or 40 wouldn't make much difference.
- There are (many) mountains. So plate tectonic activity is a necessity. From there one could even make an educated guess at the age of the planet (it can't be extremely old because then all mountains would have been eroded)

Now the consequences :

1) The temperatures are approximately proportional to the cosine of the latitude. This directly follows from the fact that the planet is spherical. The maximum temperature must be below 100°C and above 0°C to allow for liquid water. The presence of rivers having souces at high latitudes eliminates the low values. So it might be anywhere between 10° and 90°. When one doesn't know anything and the values are random in an interval, the best guess is the average. Here (90+10)/2 = 50. The temperature distribution follows once one have assumed the polar températures (low = colder world, high = warmer world).

2) As there exists an atmosphere, every rotating spherical body with gravity will organise the atmospheric circulation in latitudinal cells. With the Earthlike radius there will be 3 of them. This has major consequences on the distribution of high and low pressures.
Equator is necessarily a low pressure zone while the deserts are high pressure zones situated around +/- 30°.

3) Having deduced the dominating winds in 2, the adiabatic expansion of air rising along the mountains and at the cells' boundaries defines dry and humid zones.

4) There are other more detailed consequences like f.ex the thermohaline oceanic circulation and current distribution but we don't need to go farther to have an idea about climate and biomes that are consistent with what we KNOW.

Last word about magics.
It is the very definition of magics that it creates behaviour non consistent with the physical laws of a world.
In other words the magics creates a difference between the permanence of natural laws of a Universe (like gravity or energy conservation) and the specific local dynamics created by a magical mechanism.
But, and this is the real point, magics has to be wielded (by Gods, by wizards, by unicorns, by whatever one wants) in order to make its effect.
If there was no well defined being wielding magics, then we'd be back to the "standard" Universe with its natural laws.
The only difference would be that these laws would be called magics and not physics what would make a difference only in words but not in the rational fundaments of the Universe.
So "magics" is ALWAYS defined by reference to "natural laws" because it violates them by definition.
It cannot exist if natural laws, or a unicorn saying "Let there be gravity everywhere" what is the same thing, didn't exist because then there would be Nothing to be violated.
From there follows that the deductions we made above are generally valid regardless whether there is magics or not.
In the case that magics does exist (what is the safe assumptions by reading some of the texts here) we can only have explictely stated local "Strange phenomenons" on this or that place but there is necessarily some set of universally valid "natural laws" which makes the difference between a structured living world and an amorphous arbitrary chaos.
Of course one can also imagine the latter but this would give a very boring and uninteresting Universe what doesn't seem to be the case here

[Robbie]

I tried figuring out some of the climate dynamics of my last world and only got about half as detailed as that. Bravo! Although given that we've already warred over cheese, we could always war over climates, lol

Sent from my m8wl using Tapatalk

[jbgibson]

I was going to put this in my own map's thread (#40 - Ondeet) but I figure it'll get better circulation :-) here.

GuildworldNowBigger.jpg

This is very much a for what it's worth / your mileage may vary offering, but it embodies what Deadshade was saying about easily inferred truths. Any terrestrial ball even remotely Earth-sized is likely to sort out its general circulation into Ferell cells & Hadley cells that generate those drier (orange tint) and wetter (green) bands. Those in turn generate some prevailing winds something like shown. Those are averages, not even taking seasons into account, but they are enough to let us guess "oh, look - if mountains there, winds thus, so maybe desert or steppe downwind?" I needed such a thing to kickstart my creativity - any and every other Guildworlder is totally free to ignore or twist it to their own ends.

Robbie, as far as cheese warfare - of *course* there is cheese warfare. It was foretold: "Fromage to age there will be conflict"...

[Will Phillips]

Oh ****, the formerly Western continent's been suddenly and cataclysmicly moved to the north thousands of miles! It's the end of the world!

Might have to adjust my jungle setting on the equator then, heh.

[Falconius]

I wouldn't worry about it. I've got a jungle at the super south on my western edge (#11) next to a neighbour whom I assume is set in a Scottish type biome.

[J.Edward]

I just wanted to say I'm thrilled with all of the great maps I've been seeing from all of you Guilders, as well as the discussion and the flow of ideas.
I hope you all are enjoying this as much as I am.

[Azélor]

Then I'm going to build a wall to stop winter

On a more serious tone, instead of extending the world even further, anyone has thought to map the ocean floor? or maybe an underground realm?
Drows and aboleths need love too!

[J.Edward]

I had asked that question earlier, before increasing the planet size.
The options had been to map a habitable moon or an underdark or increase the planet.
People seemed to feel that increasing the planet gave more of a feeling of inclusion, so I went with that.
It could be cool to do both moon and underdark. Maybe if things go well and quickly, we could give it a try.