So im working on my home brew world and I’m currently working on the biomes of the world and was coming to the hive-mind of the internet to see your guys thought processes towards this part of world building.
As someone who spends perhaps most of his worldbuilding time on environments, lemme walk you through my process:
Step 1: Just decide what you want, obviously, for a given region. Average temperature, elevation, precipitation, common wind direction, etc. (I have a really good map making engine I could recommend if you want, it pregenerates stuff like biomes so you could get an idea of how these things naturally occur). Although it doesn't necessarily have to make perfect sense from a geographic perspective (i.e. if you want a scorching hot desert in the northern hemisphere, go do that) but it should still make a little sense (don't put the desert right next to a tundra, unless there happens to be some sort of good reason why that would occur in your world). Really, the level of realism in the biome placement is up to you.
Step 2: What's this biome look like (speaking both generally and in a specific locale)? If a forest, what kind of trees (if you just say deciduous, that could be any variety of trees native to different parts of the world, I personally prefer specificity)? If a grassland or a desert, is the terrain somehow special? Why is it that way? Why is there coral growing like trees on land, or why is the desert made of salt crystals? If you want to make completely homebrew biomes, these are especially good questions. Should make some sort of coherent sense in relation to step 1.
Step 3: Just define some of the general flora/fauna. What I like to do is come up with a very basic food chain. This is also good for coming up with random encounters, I think. Say that owlbears are very populous in these woods and are at the top of the food chain, and mainly eat a really aggressive species of boar. They also compete with goblins for boar. The boars, meanwhile, eat this hallucination-inducing fungus (which also happens to be sentient) that makes them so aggressive, which is highly abundant in these woods.
I think biome generation is just a basic staircase from the big wide world stuff to the itty-bitty insectoid stuff. It goes World > Region > Biomes > Wildlife. Hope these steps help you climb down it.
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So im working on my home brew world and I’m currently working on the biomes of the world and was coming to the hive-mind of the internet to see your guys thought processes towards this part of world building.
Mythology Master
As someone who spends perhaps most of his worldbuilding time on environments, lemme walk you through my process:
Step 1: Just decide what you want, obviously, for a given region. Average temperature, elevation, precipitation, common wind direction, etc. (I have a really good map making engine I could recommend if you want, it pregenerates stuff like biomes so you could get an idea of how these things naturally occur). Although it doesn't necessarily have to make perfect sense from a geographic perspective (i.e. if you want a scorching hot desert in the northern hemisphere, go do that) but it should still make a little sense (don't put the desert right next to a tundra, unless there happens to be some sort of good reason why that would occur in your world). Really, the level of realism in the biome placement is up to you.
Step 2: What's this biome look like (speaking both generally and in a specific locale)? If a forest, what kind of trees (if you just say deciduous, that could be any variety of trees native to different parts of the world, I personally prefer specificity)? If a grassland or a desert, is the terrain somehow special? Why is it that way? Why is there coral growing like trees on land, or why is the desert made of salt crystals? If you want to make completely homebrew biomes, these are especially good questions. Should make some sort of coherent sense in relation to step 1.
Step 3: Just define some of the general flora/fauna. What I like to do is come up with a very basic food chain. This is also good for coming up with random encounters, I think. Say that owlbears are very populous in these woods and are at the top of the food chain, and mainly eat a really aggressive species of boar. They also compete with goblins for boar. The boars, meanwhile, eat this hallucination-inducing fungus (which also happens to be sentient) that makes them so aggressive, which is highly abundant in these woods.
I think biome generation is just a basic staircase from the big wide world stuff to the itty-bitty insectoid stuff. It goes World > Region > Biomes > Wildlife. Hope these steps help you climb down it.