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So, I've been reading about Westeros, from George RR Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series. It's made me interested in creating a continent myself, for "fantasy" cultures. Or at least preindustrial ones. I'll post updates as I go if there's interest, comment if you'd like to read more or if you have any advice.

First, some basic rules:
1) The only difference between this planet and contemporary Earth is the arrangement of the continents, and maybe the proportion of land vs sea.
2) The continent is big enough for lots of variation in climate. The model here is Westeros, which goes from Siberia to France to Libya.
3) I'll only create one continent, but it's close enough to others to be settled by waves of migrants. I'm thinking more isolated than Westeros, no daily ships to Pentos. But more interaction than the Almean continents.

So, the first step is the coastline and topography. I've already mentioned how hopeless I am at doing this, so I have a few different options:
1) Choose a real-world island and expand it to continental size, maybe flipping or rotating it so that the resemblance isn't so egregious. The issue is how self-similar geography really is. For example, look at this picture: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/fe/Stewart_Island_map-en.svg/800px-Stewart_Island_map-en.svg.png. This island is about half the size of Rhode Island, is there anything implausible about a continent the size of North America looking like that?
2) Use a fractal map generator: https://donjon.bin.sh/world/ You can get a reasonable looking isolated continent if you play around a bit. The only problem is the grid-like artifacts you get from the algorithm. Any opinons how how realistic these continents look?
3) Try drawing the thing freehand, maybe with some computer trickery to make it look better. Any suggestions welcome.

So, which option should I choose?

If its only for your own personal reference, drawing it freehand can work pretty well - just sketch some random shapes until you find one you like, and scale it up with jagged coastlines.

If you're trying to keep it digital, I would go with option #1; there's nothing wrong with scaling something up like that, and if you pick a remote enough island no one will even be able to tell its a real place

The only real part of world-building that is subject to realism over creativity is climate, and even then its so hard to accurately predict that you still have a huge range of options - the actual shape of the continent is basically up to you. As for the climate, first steps are to designate the tropics and the poles, then draw in mountains, and a few major ocean currents, as well as general global wind direction. Wind blows in moisture from the ocean, and drops a lot of it on the side of mountains
For example, look at this image. The side of the mountain facing into the wind is green and lush, and the other side is a desert, and basically continues until theres a way for moisture to get into the air again. For example, lets say said mountain range was in the center of the continent, and the winds blew from east to west; the east side of the continent would be lush and fertile, while the west side would be a huge desert, all the way up to a few miles around the coastline, which would be wet again from evaporating ocean water.

Another thing to keep in mind is temperature - tropics are always warm, poles are always cold. Between those two ranges, temperature are more stable around large bodies of water, and get progressively more extreme (both colder and hotter) as you go inwards in the continent. Temperature always decreases with elevation. Tropics can actually be somewhat chilly (see peru) if there's a cold ocean current along the coastline, and likewise poles can be somewhat warm if theres a tropical ocean current along the coast line (see Aleutian islands) - though both these effects are only within a few miles of the coastline.

Other than that, everything is basically up to your imagination, so have fun making your continent =)

Thanks for the feedback.



I think I will go with the real island - part of the issue with drawing freehand is that I don't have graphics equipment or even a scanner. I'll look for a good unlabelled picture of the island and do some work on it.



Am I right in thinking that westerly winds are more common in this situation?

If you're placing it as a new continent on the earth (correct me if i misread this), then the winds would look like this:
Otherwise, you could:
1) copy earth's wind patterns
2) google how they actually form
3) pick some arbitrary direction

It's a different planet, but identical to Earth other than the different arrangement and amount of continents. That map of the winds is very useful. What's the latitude of the line that cuts through Scandinavia?

I believe (dont quote me on this) that its around roughly 60 degrees, but that's purely a visual estimate, so take it with a grain of salt xD

Yeah, wikipedia says it's the polar front at about 60 degrees. Thanks for your help with this, once I get image hosting I'll put up some maps.

A'ight, looking forward to seeing them!

OK, I start with an unlabelled map of Stewart Island https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Island and flip it left-to-right:


The continent will stretch between 60 degrees North (St Petersburg) and the Equator, so it's 96 times bigger in one dimension. If there's anything on the map that's inconsistent with that scale, leave a comment. The highest point on the island was 979 meters, and I'm making the highest point on the continent 6,190 meters. That's the same height as Denali, the highest mountain in North America. To get other elevations I'll just multiply the island elevations by 6.3.

For the scale, pretty much anything is reasonable/justifiable. Pretty much the only features that get changed by scaling a landmass that much are the climate, so heres an example climate I drew.

*Note everything beyond this point is PURELY creative and NOT something you *must* do; I've included it to help give you some ideas and general guidelines, take it with a grain of salt.

Now that that's out of the way, let me start explaining; the equator and 60 degree line are marked at the top and the bottom; the central black line represents roughly ~25-30 degrees, and the green line that's (mostly) below it represents tropical regions. The blue arrows represent water flow (chosen arbitrarily); the left one carries warm tropical water northwards, which is why the green line extends over a few small nearby islands - the warm water basically negates any chill from their northward position. The same thing happens on the right side, though a thing I didn't mark is that the cold area would still be relatively warm (similar to Peru's climate), simply because the water (and air) warms up pretty rapidly that close to the tropics.

The black arrows are wind direction (roughly taken from my previous post), with currents on the left side blowing warm air from over the ocean into the valley marked by the orange circle; similarly the mountain(black line) traps cold air (blue circle) out of the valley, keeping it nice and cozy during the winter (relative to its position).

The deserts are circled in yellow; the northern one is somewhat arbitrarily sized, and could probably be scaled up slightly, though it would still be bounded by the sea on the left and the valley on the right. One important note is that this is still a really cold area - its just a desert because it has very little rain fall, since its 1)cold (air holds less moisture) 2) moist air is blocked by the mountain range. As for the southern one, its due to the rain shadow effect detailed in one of my above posts.

I think thats it; feel free to ask questions for clarification regarding my drawing or the climatic determination process in general, though note I am NOT an expert on this, so I only know really general stuff
Beyond a few things that are generally going to be true (ex; tropics are near the equator, cold areas are north/south of it), the actual process is basically up to you to do as you see fit with, especially with something as complex as climate

You might be interested in these worlds.

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ìtsanso, God In The Mountain, may our names inspire the deepest feelings of fear in urkos and all his ilk, for we have saved another man from his lies! I welcome back to the feast hall kal, who will never gamble again! May the eleven gods bless him!
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Thanks for going into detail on this, it's really helped me. What's the actual climate of that desert in the North? I understand it's drier, but what does that mean up around 60 degrees North?
Here's my attempt at the climates:

The latitudes are circular arcs - I'm assuming it's some kind of conic projection. These could still use some tweaking. I think I'll have the ocean currents going the other way, as a better match to North America. I haven't taken the currents into account when doing the map. I still need to decide exactly how fine-grained to do the climate categories, and I don't know an appropriate climate for some of the coasts.

Yes, they're the sort of project I'm doing. He often uses Earth's existing continents and manipulates them in some way, even turning them inside out. That's a bit different to what I'm doing, but some of his planets have continents from scratch, and there's a ton of useful climate information in all of them.

The ocean currents are not arbitary. They are controlled by the winds and the coriolis force of the planet's rotation. If your planet has an axial tilt of about 23.5°, is about 40,000 km in circumference, then you will have winds as nmnmv123 indicated. But the currents suggested by nmnmv123 are not realistic. The warm,poleward currents are clockwise in the northern hemisphere, and counter-clockwise in the southern hemisphere.

Just as the eastern US is warmed by the gulf stream, and northern europe made inhabitable by same, the western US is tempered by the southward Alaska and California currents. Without them, there would be no fog on the west coast; the temperate rain forests of Washington and British Columbia would not exist. California gets its rain by cold area coming down from the gulf of alaska meeting up with the warm moist air coming up from the tropics; this meeting point is essential for our climate; too far north, and we get no rain.

So your climate on the western-most side of the continent is likely to be temperate rain-forest, the effects of the cold southward current would likely be cushioned by the fact that other than the western lobe, there is no "west coast". Not sure what the ocean currents would be like to the southwest of the continent, but generally continent shapes don't change the circulation of an entire ocean basin. There might be a northward warm current south of the continent and east of the southward cold current, with said warm current circling clockwise down the southwest coast, probably making that area humid in the north and Califronia-like on the middle coast. Don't forget that the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn (at 23.5° N and S) are important climactic dividing lines. South of the Tropic of Cancer is where the tropics start, first with desert, then south of that, savannah, and then tropical rain forest to the equator. The southern tip of this continent will be possibly much like Central America or SE Asia.

East of the continent, you will have hurricanes in the lower latitudes (and likely also on the west side, though the winds blow the wrong way for land-falling mid-latitude cyclones; they'd be more likely south of the Tropic of Cancer, though their trajectory would be like Pacific hurricanes, more towards the northwest, though occasionally scooting to the east). The east coast is perfectly shaped to vector cyclones up the east coast. Cyclones that hit New England are called "nor'easters" because when the counterclockwise flow of the cyclone is offshore of NE, the winds come from the north east.

Your big-ass valley in the north of the continent would probably be very cold, and prone to glaciation; it would lack any kind of warm current, unless there is another continent and a gulf-stream-like flow that could warm things up ala Scandinavia and Great Britain.. The rivers would be like those of Alaska, boggy, swampy and sluggish, and often frozen. East of that valley, in the upper latitudes, you would find arctic desert, cold and dry. Moving south the lowlying valley on the eastern seaboard is likely to be mid-atlantic in climate, verging southward into Georgia-like semitropical stuff, before succumbing to tropical areas like the Yucatan, prone to having a rainy season and a dry season.

Not sure if there are conditions that would give rise to monsoons.

Much also depends on whether or not there are any other continental masses within 5,000 to 8,000 km away from this continent and where they lie relative to the ocean currents and the wind patterns. I forget how wide this continent was, but parts of it are narrow enough that, other than being rain-catchers, some of it may make no impression on weather patterns. I think, if the map is of 60° down to 0° (+/-) then the continent would be about 6/9ths of 1 quarter of 40,000 km, or 6700-7000 km, making the widest part of the continent, at about 30°, about 5000 km. The continental US is about 4000 km west-to-east, and Canada is probably 5000 km; South America at the Peru/Brazil line is about 4 or 5,000 km. So you can have considerable variation in your continent along its east/west axis.

Having said all that, I am no climatologist or meteorologist; all is deduced (surely partly incorrectly) from what's available in my 5th grade geography class (that would be about 1962) and on the web. But on the ocean currents, I know I am right. Look at this page from UH Geography 101 site.

And keep up the good work. World building can surely exercise the brain and wear fingerprints on the ol' encylopedia!

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two neodymium magnets, and a pair of AA batteries. A very cute demo of
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Thanks for your comments. I'm assuming that any other continents are far enough away to not influence the climate patterns on this one. Or may just a simple influence - there could be a continent over the North pole, just to keep the pole as cold as ours even though it's not an enclosed ocean. I'm working on an updated climate map, but figuring out how to divide up the climates and represent them on a map is just as intricate as the climatography itself. If I'm using the climates as a basis for ecology and cultures, what's the minimum number of climates I need to represent? My guess is:
Desert: too dry for anything but hunter-gatherers.
Steppe: Pastoralists.
Mediterranean: The Fertile Crescent equivalent.
"Continental": Everything from Seattle to Chicago to Carolina, but warm and wet enough for agriculture.
Subarctic/Alpine: Too cold for agriculture.
Tropical: Both rainforest and savanna, hot enough for tropical agriculture.

Here's my latest climate map:

Red is desert.
Orange is Steppe.
Yellow is Mediterranean.
Teal is "Oceanic", Seattle or temperate islands.
Green is "Continental", more extreme temperatures than Oceanic.
Blue is Subarctic or Alpine, too cold for agriculture.
Purple is Tropical, both savannah and rainforest.
There's a cold current going down the West coast and a warm current going up the East, cooling down or warming up the islands on each side.

Pastoralism could succeed in a desert, while hunter-gathering could be hard in a steppe. The source of food depends not only on climate classification but also on more the details of the climate and non-climatological concepts (such as mineral distribution, types of soils, etc.). Environments with just the right details could even support a stable sedentary hunter-gatherer culture (such as that of the pre-Columbian Pacific Northwest).
zompist made a key for mapping Köppen climate classifications, with some category mergers: http://www.zompist.com/pckclimate.html

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ìtsanso, God In The Mountain, may our names inspire the deepest feelings of fear in urkos and all his ilk, for we have saved another man from his lies! I welcome back to the feast hall kal, who will never gamble again! May the eleven gods bless him!
kårroť

Cool, looks like you got it! I did a wind/current of your map, including in GProjector, if you want to see them just say and I'll post them or PM them to you. Not posting right now cuz you are well on your way, and I don't want to hijack your thread. Some differences in detail, but I'll go over those if I present the maps. I think knowing the other continents is important in order to understand the big picture of oceanic circulation, and land masses typically create a lot of weather. Even Siberia's weather systems impact North America; East Asia in general impacts the whole North Pacific basin. Keeping in mind that the equator restricts mixing of air masses between hemispheres. 7 major climate zones is just about right, at least on Earth. Other continents would have a large impact, potentially, on the development of tropical cyclones, which, while isolated and relatively infrequent, have major impacts on cultures.

_________________
(Avatar is an electric motor consisting of a bit of wire, a couple of paper clips,
two neodymium magnets, and a pair of AA batteries. A very cute demo of
minimal technology, and likewise completely useless for any practical purpose.)

Thanks for clarifying, it seems like you know a lot more about this than me - I had no idea how the ocean currents would be generated, so I just arbitrarily picked them for the sake of finishing the example (should have clarified that in my post).

Thanks. I think I have to go into finer detail with the climate, and I may as well use his system.

No, I'd like to see them. My climate map needs revising anyway, and it would be good to get a second opinion.



Fair enough. Call the continent I'm working on "Stewarta". Let's say there's an "Arctica" at North Pole, going down to about 75 degrees North, a bit smaller than Antarctica. There's "Pastora" in the Southern Hemisphere, Southeast of this one and covering about 50% more longitude. It goes from about 20 degrees to 40 degrees South. There's also "Neotropica" almost 180 degrees West of Stewarta, straddling the Equator from 15 degrees North to 15 degrees South.

Here's an update of the climates, using zompist's breakdown.


Here's the colour key with the Koppen climates:
Dark blue Taiga Dc
Teal Marine Cfb
Yellow Mediterranean Cs
Orange Steppe Bs
Red Desert Bwh
Bright blue Mountains Cwb?
Pink Savanna Aw
Purple Rainforest Af
Light green Subtropical Cfa
Dark green Humid continental Da/b

Edit to add comment about map projections.

So I took the time to add the other three continents, per your spec. I just made them as ellipses, as I had no other shape info.

I'm going to put these on imgur because this is a s.l. of data to dump on ZBB's servers. The url is stewarta-world. I took nmnmv123's equator location as a guide, so my maps show the southern tip of stewarta as south of the equator. My lat&long on the original map don't quite match up to gprojector's I imagine because of some rounding issue.

I didn't extend the oceanic currents because I'm pooped.

Added note:
G.projector requires that the input for its magic morphing of maps countless ways, be in an equirectangular projection. This means all lines of latitude and longitude are evenly spaced even at the poles. This leads to distortion especailly above 80°... Stewarta doesn't seem to suffer from much distortion. My advice is to maintain your master maps as equirectangular, as you will want to use G.projector at some point.

_________________
(Avatar is an electric motor consisting of a bit of wire, a couple of paper clips,
two neodymium magnets, and a pair of AA batteries. A very cute demo of
minimal technology, and likewise completely useless for any practical purpose.)

Thanks for working on this. Am I right in thinking there would be two desert areas, using that diagram? One in the rain-shadow of the Southern mountains, and one in the middle of the continent where the winds diverge at about 40 degrees North?

I think that the other continents should be finished before you actually find the wind, water and climate patterns, because continent shape and size are really important (think of the Gulf Stream Current and how it neatly fits with the shape of North America.) Island chains between and far away from large landmasses will also affect the patterns.

_________________
ìtsanso, God In The Mountain, may our names inspire the deepest feelings of fear in urkos and all his ilk, for we have saved another man from his lies! I welcome back to the feast hall kal, who will never gamble again! May the eleven gods bless him!
kårroť