Geography as destiny - emergent world-building from maps

tl:dr; emergent world-building by pushing your fantasy world onto Map-to-Globe and giving it a spin to get a new perspective

After rediscovering the Map to Globe tool I have, in coherence with the current internet memesphere, been pondering my orb. I dumped out the world maps for my home campaign and had another look at them on the globe in rotations centered on different pieces of interest. The key thought driving this was assuming seas are the main long-haul roads between nations and cultures, is there anyone who ought to be talking or interacting with each other that I have currently left out?

For any fantasy world, there will of course be flyers, dwarf under roads, portals and other mystic and magical ways that geographic distant can be bent. but assuming the usual ~ 5% of the general population has a class and some small portion of that have significant magical abilities, most people and trade is going to go by water or land so where is next to where for the most part remains relevant.

Starting with the world map from Azgaars Fantasy Map generator

Then wrapping that onto a globe with Map to Globe.

As a first pass, centering on the Kingdom of Nathas (the campaign is set in the western end), nothing immediately looks different. The attention paid to the northern neighbours makes sense. The prominence of the central mountain range splits everything up - this perspective is probably also the mind-map of the great dragons that live in those mountains - all this is their back yard to their perspective.

Then giving the globe a spin - let us look at the nearest ocean basin - equivalent to nations bordering the Atlantic.

All these nations are engaged in maritime trade with one another, it makes sense that the players are running into ambassadors from these nations and that they are aware of them. The strong connections with those offshore nations make a lot of sense - primarily because sailors from there are going to turn up in the ports of the Kingdom at the end of their shortest possible voyage.

But what is beyond those islands nations to their east - is it reasonable connections further east are low?

Short answer yes - beyond is an ocean taking up a solid fraction of the planet, akin to the Pacific. Across the south there is a potential shorter route but it will be down in the cold regions. That the maritime nations on those islands focus west makes sense.

What about to the west of the campaign core? Here we see an enclosed central sea, something more like the Mediterranean or Gulf of Mexico.

Where the Eastern Ocean is mostly enclosed by the eldar culture group, this Central Sea is bordered by a range of cultures, both richer for trade and fiercer for sea-raiders.

Then lastly, the far side of the world - is it reasonable these nations stick close to home?

It makes sense these nations would be 'eastern facing' as the great sea behind them is a big empty expanse for the most part. Assuming that traversing the Central Sea is not for the faint hearted then it makes sense that the far west has little to do with the campaign core.

So - a couple of globe spins give a rapid sense of the regions of the world. As a brief aside, for reasons uknown my Azgaars file corrupted after I finished setting up the world (I did things in the wrong order, I believe) so I have a mixed bag of screen grabs and cannot use the Azgaars tools, being able to load them back into a globe and see the implications of 'who is neighbouring who' is great.