Worldbuilding Idea: Fantastic Biomes as a Norm

Piggybacking off of that idea, I had an idea of my own. In the real world, cities/towns/village are situated in proximity to resources for either survival or economics/commerce. With that in mind, we could come up with some fantastical, symbiotic relationships between the humans and the surrounding geography. For example in this world's past, deforestation was a giant issue due to man stripping the forest of all crystalline growth in the name of fashion and vanity. In the current age in which the game takes place, there are now government laws making this practice illegal. Was it because the deforestation caused the area to become hazardous? (e.g., the crystalline forest diffracted sunlight. With the crystal plants/trees gone, satellite life some range away from the forest couldn't live thus affecting the ability to grow livestock and hunt AND the once diffracted sunlight is now concentrated in areas the humans are inhabiting, baking those settlements in high temperatures.) Or was the forest a holy site for beastmen and desecrating the site incited a holy war? These biomes can open up a lot of possibilities. This is not even touching on the types of creatures/monsters dwelling in these places.

Aye, it could work rather well. Sometimes you can get interesting combinations, too - take a job that's old as dirt in our mundane world and interpret it in a fantasy world. Mining happens often in mountainous terrain to my understanding, right? Well, I've always been fond of a floatstone mine idea. A village that mines it would have basic airships employed to ship miners and cargo. As the mine starts to run dry, the floating islands the ore creates gradually begin to sink down to the ground. How high they are is a great way of judging how much ore each mine has in it - once the mines land, they know it's running low. And that's just large floating islands formed of a certain ore being concentrated in those mountains.

There's a wide range of ideas we can have like that. Even instances of direct human intervention in our world could have similar examples, where certain species are bred in certain ways. Look at what's happened to our crops, for example. Imagine breeding all these crops in specialized ways to get the most out of a specific trait deemed beneficial.

zeldafan30 : I think simple ones should be the norm, actually.  We could have something like - most biomes are simple, then you have a few interesting ones that are complex, and then a few wonderous locales.  That would make up what our game's world is like, right? Plus, look at the deserts from golden sun I listed - each one is basically a desert, but could be argued to have a different elemental theme.  I think we should build our areas with that philosophy in mind, so that even similar areas we make have a clearly distinct feel from one another.

I think it would be interesting to look at how this would effect what kind of monsters you find in the locale as they would most likely be influenced by the same alchemical force, especially any boss monsters. In terms of items used for crafting equipment they could also originate from these locales like crystaline wood to make some artifact weapons. Heck even puzzle elements hinge on the type of location so this is definitely something that can make a location more memorable. I could see stretches of the overworld also being covered in types of locations like this so it would look less like the same trees, landscape and mountains when you traverse it.

This is abstraction that came into my mind to ease up the thinking process of biomes (or this is my intention, I hope this comes handy!). Keep in mind I just thought of them in a simple way without any given contextualization on a story, just a symbolic approach following a pattern.



Because element system is not done yet, but I see some coincidences on Elements + Fundaments/Aspects in the 4x4 table (that seems the option that's winning in the poll right now) I did this list:



Given that table, I tried to abstract the process of biome thinking just with a full table of possibilities and easing up a bit the process (but some funky biomes outside the scope of this post can be thought of, and I encourage you to do so, this is just for having a base we can work with)

Right now the biomes as Rolina stated follows an approach of:

Terrain + Element + Aspect (optional)

Rolina's examples follows this trend, for instance: Crystal Forest = Forest + Venus + (Aspect that makes it Crystal).

With this in mind, I made a list of IRL terrains (I'm a little biased since I've played Minecraft, but I tried to find other IRL non-MC biomes too; but you can find some others too!):

• Swamp.
• Forest.
• Tunnel/Cavern/Underground.
• Plains.
• Glacier.
• Volcanic terrain.
• Tundra.
• Desert.
• Jungle.
• Bamboo forest
• Savannah.
• A terrain where a waterfall is the most important thing.
• Mountain/s.
• Steppes.
• Mangrove biome.
• Reefs.
• Wide rivers.
• Taiga.
• Chaparral.
• Agricultural fields.
• Places where there's more buildings than a given biome (cities, capitals).
• Places where there's an even distribution of biome and buildings (villages).
• Places where there's an less buildings than a given biome (ruins, isolated monument).
• Beaches.
• Islands.
• Karst (no GS:TLA pun intended).
• Cenotes.
• Canyons.
• Underwater places.
• Underlava places.
• Frozen desert.
• Marsh.
• Moonsoon forest
• Lakes
• Tar lakes.
• Depressions
• A lot more...

These are examples that I came to my mind:

Mars + Swamp = Oily place with perpetual oil fires & choking fumes/smog

Anywho, since the idea behind this is pretty popular, and the methodology we'd approach is pretty though out, then I might move for a vote. If I get some nods for that, then I'll make the write up for the vote based on what's been discussed here.