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Suzy Yee and Joseph Browning
Art by Ravindra Rana
Expeditious Retreat Press
With the precedent set by A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe, Expeditious Retreat's highly acclaimed breakout publication, this follow-up book had a very hard act to follow. Though it contains a wealth of interesting information, it unfortunately (and almost inevitably) falls somewhat short of its predecessor. Presenting a guide to world building in the context of a godling's personal account of his own world building "final exam," the book strikes a very different tone than Western Europe did. This, combined with a completely different visual style makes the two books seem less of a "set" than the titles would suggest.
Note: Though the entire book is OGL material, there are virtually no game mechanics in it, making it useful to GMs using any system. That said, those looking for direct application to d20 games in the form of charts, tables, and so on, had best look elsewhere, as this is not a random world generator.
The Look
This is a 160-page soft cover sourcebook. The binding seems fine, and the overall physical quality of the book is very good. Interior illustrations are all black and white, and are consistent (not surprising, since all are credited to a single artist) and range in quality from good to so-so. Many of the illustrations are diagrams of various environmental concepts, and these are clear and, for the most part, fine. Text size is average and there is not a great deal of white space, but a repeated piece of art bracketing the text on the outer edge of each page is wide enough to constitute a fair waste of space.
One of the most striking problems with this book, however, is a surprisingly rough editing job. Other than a spell check, some sections of the book appear to have seen precious little editorial scrutiny at all. The most common errors are substitutions of one word for another ("sheath" for "sheathe," "lightening" for "lightning," "conquer" for "conqueror," "plant" for "planet," "ice burg" for "iceberg", etc.), but there are areas in which the text makes little or no sense without a conscious effort on the part of the reader to figure out what the authors intended to say. The formatting and editing in the appendix is particularly sloppy, with some entries misspelling the topic of the entry within the text describing it.
Section by Section
Mapping Your World
As a guide to the physical forces that make a world take shape, this section is quite useful, though it does waffle a bit in certain areas. Most notably, the authors spend quite a bit of time detailing the action of continental drift in creating mountains and then reverse course and suggest adding mountains first and then figuring out the location of the plates.
The section begins with a tantalizing discussion of axial tilt, seasons, and global temperatures, but backs off fairly quickly, recommending that world builders stick more or less to the earthly standard for these factors. This is understandable, since the majority of fantasy worlds are going to roughly mimic earth in some fashion, but I would like to have seen some options presented here.
More practically useful is the discussion that follows, on designing the basic shapes of continents and then reverse-engineering the tectonic plates from your rough continents. This is followed by information on mountain range formation and island formation, all of which is interesting and quite useful.
Each major subsection of this portion of the book is accompanied by a very general example narrated by the godling who is building the example world. These examples refer to several diagrams that are grouped at the end of the section, and I had a hard time relating the diagrams to the discussion, both because of the physical separation of the illustrations from the text and the lack of any sort of legend or identifying text in the illustrations. This is not to say that they do not provide a good representation of what is discussed, but I think the reader would have been better served with the diagrams placed closer to the text they are illustrating.
Ecology
This section manages the not inconsiderable feat of condensing the fundamentals of predator-prey relationships, food chains and webs, and cycles of decay and regrowth, as well as reflections on the effects of magic on such systems, into a mere 14 pages. The usefulness of this section is extremely broad, from creature creation to describing what a ruined castle might look like fifty years after its fall. The discussion of magical ecosystems, ley lines, and the flow of magical energy manages to be specific without being limiting, which is the ideal balance for a guide of this type. World builders who create a lot of custom creatures will very likely find this one of the most useful sections.
Biomes
While the ecology section offers a great deal of information about the processes of life, the Biomes section is likely to contribute even more to the verisimilitude of a newly-minted fantasy world. Going into great but measured detail about each of the major climate/terrain zones, this section contains a wealth of information with which can lend realism to a DM's campaign world. From simple but crucial concepts, such as where and why desert areas form, to the correlation of altitude and latitude in determining what types of environment can be found on a mountainside, this section is probably the most directly useful portion of the entire book in adding realism to worlds on the scale most likely to be noticed by players.
Mapping Your World (Part II)
Concentrating mainly on weather patterns, this section is a bit dry (no pun intended). Though useful, it doesn't manage to be quite as engaging as the Ecology and Biomes sections that it follows. Like the earlier Mapping Your World section, this one clumps all of its diagrams at the end of the section, and one must flip back and forth to the diagrams in an effort to correlate the text of the examples with the visual aids. It also suffers from the previous mapping section's lack of descriptive information on the diagrams themselves.
Culture
This section is aptly named, as it touches on almost every major facet of cultural development from mythology to technology. Though at times they seem to have drawn quite a bit of inspiration from the Civilization series of board and computer games, the authors go well beyond the factors that shape society on a macro scale and delve into areas that could be truly useful in giving depth to the cultures of a newly-created world. Burial, marriage, taboos, and the origins and evolution of traditions in a society are among the most interesting of the factors discussed. The role of the physical environment in shaping its inhabitants is also notably useful for world builders, particularly those who include multiple intelligent races in the same world.
Mapping Your World (Part III)
This section details the process of mapping the origin and spread of intelligent races and cultures within your world. Of the three Mapping Your World sections, this one was the most interesting to me. The procedure the authors outline for placing the "proto" races and tracing their likely expansion is unlike anything I've read before in a world building guide. It is both logical and interesting, giving both historical depth and a realistic sense of logical "flow" to the distribution of intelligent races within a fantasy world. A certain amount of constraint is required in order to fully adopt the methods described here, however, as it does not easily lend itself to some of the more fantastic creation story types, and is more scientifically based than some fantasy world builders might want.
Fundamentally, the authors recommend beginning with "ancestor" races that will later diverge into your modern intelligent races. Placing these ancestor races in logical cradles of civilization, such as river valleys, they then outline a basic logic for the expansion, contact, interaction, and conflict of the ancestor races and their eventual development and divergence into the modern versions. I began reading this section with the distinct feeling that such a "realistic" approach did not suit my own world building process, but the appeal of the ideas presented here was quite strong, and by the time I had finished it, I was trying to figure out how I would work such a progression into my own world.
Appendix
I was rather displeased by this section of the book. Basically a lengthy glossary of interesting geological formations, animals, plants, natural resources, and the like, it takes up far more of the book than seems necessary. The authors' explanation of this section is that each entry is a potential piece of color or inspiration for your world, but a significant portion of the included information is either of little use to a fantasy world builder or given far too much space in proportion to its usefulness. For example, when designing a fantasy campaign world, I doubt I'll need to know that the U.S. and Canada divert water from Niagara Falls for hydroelectric power generation, and I'm quite sure I don't need a 176-word essay on how vanilla is extracted, prepared, and preserved in a book on world building.
Overall
This book is a mixed bag, but most of what’s mixed in is good stuff. On the one hand, it has a great deal to recommend it. Thoroughly researched and logically outlined, the information it contains is of immense value to a world building GM. On the other hand, the quality of the presentation varies considerably, both in editorial discipline and in actual utility. Though the page count is 160, the last 40 pages are essentially an overlong glossary of only limited use. A book on world building could make better use of space than providing glossary entries for minks, martens, muskrats and otters (all of which occur on the same page in the appendix).
Though it rarely paints with too broad a brush, the book often diverges into minutia of dubious usefulness and this sometimes begins to feel like filler. At $27, it’s a bit on the pricy side. Though far from perfect, it has enough great stuff in it that I would recommend it for GMs who want to build game worlds on a sound foundation.
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