ACADEMY: Worldbuilding Revisit

[Misfit Angel]

Welcome to a special presentation on world building! During the September 2017 installment of Fic of the Month where I was interviewed for my work on Land of the Roses, world building was a topic that was brought up. I offered a vague glimpse into it at the time, promising to come back to it at a later point. Well, here it is!

World building can be a tricky task, especially since there's so much you can do with it. It can be as simple as describing a room, or as complex as creating an entire living world (or even further, for our space faring brethren!). The bulk of this article will focus on building a region for whatever purpose you like. It could be for a story, it could be reimagining Kanto, or it could be just for your own fun.

This article ended up being far bigger than I ever imagined it to be, so it'll be split up into multiple parts:

• Building a Nation (below this table of contents)
  Focuses on the aspects involved in creating the background of your region.
• The Importance of Geography
  A detailed look at how to build a visual map either for personal use or for attaching to a published story.
• Landmarks and Nature
  What makes an interesting landmark or wilderness setting?

Name/Map generators
If you're not interested in the nitty gritty and are just looking to fill out a few details of your already-established worldbuilding attempts, there are name and map generators to make that a little simpler:
These were submitted by LightningTopaz and diamondpearl876

• Fantasy Name Generators, literally any generator or creator you would ever want is here--including a Pokemon generator!
• Seventh Sanctum, a classic. You can find the generators under the "Generator Types" tab at the top of the page.
• Abulafia, a wiki-based generator site that has a plethora of options.
• Springhole, filled to the brim with generators and other writing tips that will come in handy for worldbuilding.
• Mithril and Mages, for when you need a name for just about any location.
• Donjon RPG Tools, which is mostly focused towards Dungeons and Dragons, but can still come in handy anyways. Worldbuilding is key to a good D&D campaign and most campaign managers I've spoken to use this for creating their worlds.
• Descriptionari, a database of articles, themes and ideas for when you're stuck.

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Building a Nation
If you've ever wanted to get into creating a custom region for your story, the most important thing (besides the characters and plot) is having a coherent country, state or territory for your story to take place in, especially if travel is a big part of the story. A good foundation for forming a country that a story takes place in is culture. Countries always have a defined culture that sets them apart from their neighbors, even in densely packed places such as the Balkan peninsula. Culture is typically what defined borders before the rise of imperialism in the Exploration Age, and it is once again becoming more and more relevant with the rise of various independence movements across the Middle East and Asia.

So, how does one define a culture? You usually don't have to look far. Personally, I draw inspiration from real world cultures. England, Egypt, China, Poland, Russia, Saudia Arabia, Brazil, nearly every nation on Earth is ripe for the picking when it comes to determining what kind of culture you want to work with. Even cultures that no longer exist, such as the old orders of the Roman Empire, the Mayans or the Ottoman Turks can be great to work with.

So what goes into a culture exactly? What kind of things can you work with? Answer: a lot. Cuisine, fashion, art, music, literature, ways of life, history and even faith go hand in hand with building a cultural identity. Let's take a look at each of those:

Cuisine
Cuisine is an important aspect when it comes to defining a nation. England is known for tea, Germany is famous for sauerkraut, Poland is known for kielbasa, China is revered for its countless variations of rice and noodles, Italy for pasta, etc. Due to our globally connected world, most of these dishes aren't unique to any specific place anymore, but they're still an important piece of heritage.

So, what can you work into your region's cuisine?

• Wine: Perhaps your country is known for its lush vineyards, or extensive fruit orchards. The wine could be mostly exported or a favorite of the population.
• Meat: Meat can be a taboo subject in the Pokemon world, since we don't know whether regular animals actually exist, and the ethical implications of farming sentient creatures can be pretty grim. But some cultures rely heavily on certain meats such as goat or lamb for their cuisine.
• Rice: There are many different varieties of rice, so you can get extra creative here. In rice's case, it could even lead to further inspiration for your country's geography, as there are mountain-friendly and tropical varieties as well.
• Veggies: Are there any staple vegetables that your country could be known for? Giant pumpkins? Exceptional lettuce? Great big bean stalks, capable of feeding a group of thirty, that are found nowhere else in the world?
• Grains: What kind of mass-farmed grains are common in your country? Corn? Wheat? Amaranth? Their derivatives such as breads could be interesting things to look at, as well.
• Luxuries: A lot of today's major countries had something that got them to that point, such as tea, spices, coffee or chocolate. Was your country one of them, or did they create a special dish that no one else had thought of?

Cuisine can also play a big role in the history of your nation, too, if you want. Wine wars, spice trade, tea being so sought after that a foreign power literally conquers your territory for centuries... the possibilities are endless!

Fashion
Fashion is another important aspect of a nation's culture, but it is admittedly becoming more and more blurred as time goes on. Even though apparel is becoming more and more uniform throughout the world (western casual, middle eastern traditional and tribal being the three major groups I usually work with), some countries still have their own spin on things. Perhaps your country's popular fashion styles can be based off of Mexico's colorful and wild styles, or maybe people are well refined and wear suits more often than not. Maybe robes and capes never went away?

Color can also be an important part of a nation's fashion. A lot of modern fashion doesn't do it anymore, but putting your nation's colors on your clothing was how you distinguished your little sect of men from that evil, barbaric neighbor across the river, who chose orange to represent them as opposed to your green. Who knows, maybe patriotism runs deep within your country's traditions and people wear a specific color as a symbol of solidarity, just as the Romans traditionally wore purple, gold or red to signify what they belonged to.

Art, music and literature
Art isn't something you can easily touch on in literature, as writers generally try to rely on the imagination of the reader to fill in the blanks. However, there are different art styles associated with different parts of the world. Norman tapestries, bonzai tending, Mesopotamian pottery art, renaissance paintings, grand or simplistic architecture... there's a lot that could be thrown into the mix of your country's present and history.

Music can be viewed the same way. Music is hard to write and a lot of it relies on the imagination of the reader, but like art, there are a lot of styles and fundamentals that could be touched upon. Any famous musicians come from your country? Any instruments wildly popular there? Folk music, poetic tales of past wars?

Literature, our chosen field, can be more broadly shown, since it's easy to write about writing. People write for all sorts of reasons: spreading information, forming laws, creating fantastic works of entertainment, keeping records and pushing scientific research to new heights. Perhaps literature is a deeply prized part of your country's national heritage and many famous historical writers came from your land.

Ways of life
Ways of life are another way to define a nation. From the steppe nomads of Mongolia to the wild drunkards of Scotland to the peaceful agricultural communities of South Africa, there are many walks of life that aren't strictly unique, but still deeply ingrained into a national identity. Your people could be extremely passionate about travel, aesthetics, certain sports or their own history, devoting large parts of their lives to keeping those traditions alive and well.

History
History is huge. Most modern nations have been around for several centuries, with some stretching their roots back a millenia or further. You don't need a detailed history of your region, but some basics wouldn't hurt. How did they come to be? Were they always successful? Did they fade into obscurity at any point in time, only to rebound? Or were they a powerhouse that maintained a vast empire at one point? How did they interact with their neighbors? What kind of reputation do they have? Are they peaceful traders, raging warmongers, ethically questionable?

Figuring out some form of leadership can be helpful, too. Most stories probably won't touch on whatever government your country might have, but it's something to keep in mind as little details like who the prime minister is, or who a past king was can pop up. I typically list out at least a dozen past and present leaders, their names, who they were and how they handled situations during their rule. Most of these details never make it into the story, but they could be nice bits of trivia that could appear in places such as monuments and museums.

If you're struggling for ideas, there's always the real world to draw inspiration from. My personal favorite historical stories include China, England, Russia, America, ancient Greece and Rome; they've each had enormous impact on the course of history and are absolutely full of interesting periods, people and ideas to look at!

Faith
Faith isn't something that you have to put a lot of effort into if you don't want to. Secularism is on the rise throughout the world and a story in a modern setting might not touch on religion all that much. But it's another avenue you can go down if you're looking for ways to spice up your country's people and history. Faith's influence on art, architecture, law and the lifestyle of the common man is nothing to sneeze at, but in the end, it's up to you if it's important or not.

Other things to consider
There are some other minor things you can add to enhance a nation. A name for a language is a good one (English being referred to as "Glastonian" in Land of the Roses). Social norms such as drug policy or views on certain types of relationships can also be touched on. The mixing of ethnicities in a globally connected world is another topic. The financial health of a country could also be an interesting thing to look at, I'm not aware of many stories that take place in a land that has fallen apart or struggling to stay together due to a crippled economy and social unrest.

Do remember, however, that not an entire nation has a uniform culture. Take England for example: things work differently in the agriculturally-heavy Westcountry compared to metropolitan London, and the same applies for the northern parts along the Scottish border. Sometimes these differences are so great that if they didn't have other things to bind them together such as language or history, they could probably be counted as their own separate peoples. The same should apply for writing. If the nation you're building is big enough for it, try to include regional differences, such as how hospitable people are, local cuisine, etc.

 

[Misfit Angel]

The Importance of Geography
This section focuses in-part on graphical design. If you don't feel comfortable with your artistic abilities, you are free to skip the visual process.

A nation's geography is probably the most critical aspect towards defining it, especially if it's used as the setting for a travel-heavy adventure. Knowing where one location is in relation to another is extremely important in forming a coherent storyline. Where does the story start? Where does it end? What locations are found in between, and what paths lead to them? Figuring that out can help to reduce plot holes, barriers and getting stuck without knowing what's next, or what options can work if you're struggling with a certain idea.

For this entry into the academy, I'll be going over my own personal method for constructing a region's geography. I use this method to build a visual map of where cities and landmarks are and the roads between them. Here's an example of a finished product I made awhile ago. Yours doesn't have to be as complex or detailed, so long as the fundamentals are there!

When building your own region, think of a few things first.

• Will a gym challenge be a big part of the story? If so, you're going to want at a minimum nine major locations: one for each gym and another for where the league is established. Eight doesn't have to be a hard limit, some smaller countries could probably get away with six or even four gyms.
• How about coordination? Will that be an aspect at all? You'll want to figure out where the contest halls are if coordination is a big part of your story. Tradition has always been five per region, but you can always change that. Usually, cities share a gym and a contest hall, but some cities lack a gym while having a contest hall.
• Where does it all begin? Usually when I think of this question, I think of where the main character would be living at the start of the story, or where the bulk of the first chapter takes place if they live somewhere else.

With these things in mind, you can start to design the basic framework of a map. When I'm designing a map, I always start with the main character's hometown and work from there. What is this hometown? Is it a bustling metropolis, or is it quaint rural village? Maybe it's somewhere in between? Where is it located? In the north, south, east or western part of the country? Is it in the agricultural heartland, along a beach, deep within a forest or up on a mountain steppe? These kinds of things are important for establishing the groundwork of the city or town later on.

In this example, we'll have the main character be from a small mountainside town that doesn't have much going for it. No interesting landmarks, no gyms, no coordination halls, etc. With a basis like that, I start building roads that lead to this town:

The main character's village is the orange dot. The green dot is how I differentiate towns from landmarks, with the landmark being a short walk from the town. What is this landmark? That's up to you! Landmarks, which I'll touch in on the main article, can be just about anything: caves, towers, monuments, parks, interesting ponds, castles, regular places with historical significance, whatever. The taller blue dot is a larger town and probably the first destination in the story (unless the landmark has a more compelling reason to be visited). Blue markers indicate towns with gyms.

Now that we have our first destination, it's important to think of how the rest of the country is going to look. Will it be a simple loop like Kanto was? Will it be a slightly confusing layout like Sinnoh? Or will it be a complicated web of routes leading to tons of different locations? For now, we're going to keep it simple and assume that this is a looped region:

Several new colored markers emerge: Red symbolizes where the Elite 4 reside. Orange, as stated before, is used to determine where the story starts. Green are landmarks. Teal represents a town that lacks either either a gym or a contest hall. Blue is a city with a gym, and pink is a city with a contest hall. This amount of colors can get confusing, so I normally just recolor everything to blue, green and red on the finished product, but you can keep things as they are if you want.

In addition to the orange roads, we see brown and blue roads, too. Brown roads indicate travel through a cave system or a tunnel. These can be particularly interesting locations for chapters, as they'd push your characters to limits the general wilderness might not. Blue, on the other hand, are sea routes, either covered by ferry services or on the backs of aquatic Pokemon. Things can be taken slowly in chapters focused on these areas, such as a compelling piece of character interaction.

You can see where mountains have sprung up (the cave systems), where shorelines generally are and clear routes of travel between cities and landmarks. From here, you can determine what kind of environments your cities have: coastal, forest, mountainous, plains, or if you're feeling particularly adventurous, desert or snowy. Figuring which landmarks are which (and whether all of the ones you've planted will actually remain, it's safe to overpopulate a map and then cut back on it) comes next.

From here, you figure out your names. I usually assign letters to each location, separating the cities and landmarks into their own categories:

Splitting these into three categories makes it simpler to keep track of what's been named. Simple open a text file, list down every letter in the red, green and blue columns and start coming up with names. I can't offer any advice for that, names are sacred to the author who comes up with them and you'll have to trust your own judgement.

For most people, this is probably as far as you need to go. The framework is there, you know where the roads are, where the cities are and the basic kind of environments that surround each. From here on, the visual aspect of building the map is purely optional, but it does come in helpful if you try it: figuring out the shape of the landmass, the topography (height of the land) and features such as rivers and mountains. The easiest thing to start with, in my opinion, is the coastline, since we already know where the sea routes are:

You'll notice that I've taken away the letter labels. It's a good idea to save a separate copy with those letters intact, unless you're already intimately familiar with what each location is.

When I was putting together the road network, I imagined the lower portion between the two sea routes as an island, so I started there. I've drawn the basic shape of the island in red, since it's an easy color to see and work with. I've also added other islands, either off of the large one, or around the landmarks in the sea. The method is rather simple, just zoom in all the way, use the pencil tool and start drawing a basic shape, taking the time to stop along the way so that you're defining the landmass with multiple, careful strokes instead of one big sloppy one. If things start looking too square of jagged, it's as simple as adding a few more pixels along a straight line to form an outcropping, or taking a few away to form a shore or bay.

Here, the islands have been recolored green, and a basic ocean color has been filled in around the routes to define them. The shoreline of the mainland, again highlighted in red, is pretty much complete, though I haven't strictly decided if I want to add a western or eastern coastline instead of keeping it like this. The islands are recolored to the first and darkest green color you see in the palette that appeared at the top. This represents land that is close to sea level; I've not decided at this point if any part of the largest island is going to be higher than a few feet above sea level, and I usually wait until the end before deciding that. The smaller islands will typically not have much height to them unless they've been created by cataclysmic volcanic activity.

A couple things happened here. The most obvious is that we've done away with the grid marks, as we no longer need to be careful about our measurements. Everything is in place and not much is likely to change at this point. We've also decided that there will be no eastern or western coasts, so we've filled out the entire landmass with low level terrain for now.

Another thing that's happened is the addition of a new route in the west, branching off of what we labeled Blue-N before. It leads to a small village, which leads out into the west via a cave system. What's over that way? The world! Most regions in the Pokemon franchise are depicted as isolated from each other, without clear roads into the neighboring lands (Kanto/Johto being an exception). While it's not necessary, adding a road or two into neighboring countries reinforces the idea that there's always something just over the horizon, even if the characters or story never make it out that way. It adds a dash of spice to the brew that is your world.

Now, it's time to get started on topography... This can get a little bit tedious, so if you're happy with what you have so far and want to stop, that's up to you.

First, I've started at where the story begins, the orange marker. Earlier on, we decided that this was a mountainside town, and mountainside towns usually have a bit of altitude to them. So I started by drawing where I want this plateau to be and how I wanted it to be shaped. I used the same method as drawing the coastline: multiple small strokes to define hills and valleys. This red line will serve as the basis of the next level of altitude, while the purple lines will serve for even higher elevation, which you'll see in the following image:

Since there's likely to be a lot more drawing of topography borders, don't stress too much on making them look as clean as your shoreline. Getting the rough lines down is the important part so that you can keep chugging along. Once you've finished with the basic shape of your hills, mountains and valleys, then you can feel free to go back and clean them up.

Generally, the cave systems pass through mountains, though I suppose it's possible for them to go underground and below sea level. In any case, I try to focus my elevated terrain around these tunnels and caves, and around the edges of the region in general.

Here's the basics of the topography. Not much is missing at this point, but... shouldn't there be a river or two somewhere?

I've highlighted the new rivers and a lake in red here. Valleys of low-altitude terrain are great for rivers. Rivers can also usually have tributaries that branch into them from the mountains. Lakes also typically form along these rivers, but isolated mountain lakes (none pictured here) aren't uncommon features. When creating a river that forms within a mountain, try to imagine the countours of the land that the river would follow; they never flow in a parallel direction of a slope, for example.

And this is about as close as we get to finished, at least for this look at how I make maps. The only change between this and the previous image is that the colors of the markers have been adjusted back down to just red, green and blue, and the rivers have been colored blue like the ocean. You can continue to make refinements if you wish, especially if you plan to share this map at all.

 

[Misfit Angel]

Landmarks and Nature

So, we've got ideas for our cities and we've got our map (I'll continue using the example from the previous post). We don't have a lot of ideas for the routes, however, or the green landmarks. These can generally be filled out as they're needed, but it helps to have a vague idea for some of them in the first place. Let's look at some examples:

Here in the southern river delta, we have a road extending between these two cities. If you look closely, you can see the two brighter circles amongst the low terrain. What are these two circles, and are they interesting land formations? In Arizona's Monument Valley, there are a pair of stone formations known as West Mitten and Merrick Butte which could serve as inspiration here. Obviously being this close to the ocean, and with a river running through the middle of it, this area probably wouldn't be a desert like Arizona, but perhaps a swamp of some sort, with these stone towers looming out of the fog?

How about the big lake in the middle of the valley? Is it in the center of a thick evergreen forest? Or does it supply water to dozens of wine vineyards? Maybe there's some sort of historical event such as a naval battle that took place in this lake? Or maybe there's some sort of strange scientific phenomenon attached to it, such as the red waters of Tanzania's Lake Natron?

Caves. Caves are fun for the writer, fun for the reader, but usually pure hell for the adventurous main characters. There's a lot you can do with caves:

• Just a standard cave tunnel with clearly defined entrances and exits. If they're along main roads, chances are that the local governments have made them safe and easy to travel through, but this is not always the case.
• A mountain gorge with little access to sunlight and fresh air, such as New York's Watkins Glen (if you're ever in upstate New York, this is a personal recommendation to visit the place, photos never do it justice).
• A crystal cave, with all sorts of fantastic stone formations that hang from the ceiling or sit on the ground, a perfect place for danger to lurk.
• You could even get creative and have the entire cave covered in water, such as this one.
• Always try to think of what fantastic creatures could be lurking in these caves. Giant Zubat swarms? A Steelix that likes to snack on unweary travellers? Maybe something even more sinister and unknown?

Let's take a look at the landmark to the southwest of the village where our character starts their journey in. Being in the wilderness, far from any big cities and up in the mountains, it could be practically anything. Maybe the ruins of a castle, or something from even further back in history. If you want it to be something currently in operation, it could be something as simple as a ski resort, or something as important as a prestigious university, or maybe a monastery filled with hermits who don't like travellers. It could also be a fantastic spot for an astronomy observatory, if your story has a scientific feel to it.

Let's take a look at that spot on the southern island. I'll forego the list of some of the obvious candidates (interesting buildings, education centers, etc) and go with something more exotic, since this island is fairly out of the way. A wildlife refuge? A zoo? A safari? A fantastic resort site? A lighthouse to guide sailors so that they can navigate the hazardous waters in the area would make sense, as well.

The last thing we'll look at is this pair of islands. When I was drafting up the basic framework of the map, I thought of the Whorl Islands from Johto. What mysteries would lie hidden in these islands? Does a mythical pokemon live here, perhaps the source for a major religion that's gripped the country's spiritual population? Or, there could be pirate treasure hidden in one of them, expertly guarded by a series of deadly traps to ward of robbers.

The point I'm making with these observations is that for your world to be interesting, it needs more than just cities, eight gyms and a detour chapter to a local park. I personally strive to have an interesting landmark or environment style on every route in a region, even if they don't sound that interesting on the surface. Since it's fantasy, you can get away with all sorts of crazy nonsense, such as crumbling sentry towers, swamps where the only paths of travel are atop giant lilypads, forests of eternal autumn, whatever your mind can think of. There's power in your thoughts, don't be afraid to unleash it!

Speaking of environments, a thought on them. Unless your region is small, it's likely to have several different habitats scattered across it. Barren plains, lush grasslands, overgrown swamps, various forests (pine, deciduous, mixed), etc. The more variety, the better, but try not to cram too much into a small location. A region with a desert, a jungle and permafrost tundra probably won't make a lot of sense unless it's massively tall like the countries of Argentina or Chile. Experiment with the landmass you've created and see what makes sense!

If you're ever stuck for ideas, looking at Earth is really the best thing you can do. There's tons to look at for inspiration: great wonders constructed by man throughout history (places of religious worship, ancient wonders like the Colosseum in Rome), cultural heritage sites (Broadway, the Lascaux cave complex) or natural wonders such as the Niagara Falls, Lake Victoria or Uluru, to name just a fair few.

 

[LightningTopaz]

A little bit of an addendum to the lesson, but I thought I would show you how I use the generators mentioned here to build both my remixed anime universe and fantastic Pokeworlds.

When writing in my remixed anime universe, I mainly use the generators to think of media--TV, movies, games, books, comics--that Ash and the gang would likely be fans of. When building a fantastic universe, they help in building a world's culture--what they value, what they believe, what they do for fun, who they see as heroes, and so on.

For the purposes of this post, I will be demonstrating Chaotic Shiny's Ballad Generator and Seventh Sanctum's Merchandiseable Cartoon Generator and Magical Girl Team Generator.

When using the Ballad Generator, I have one main rule when generating: A prompt will be rejected if it includes things that don't exist in the fantastic world I'm generating for (so no lawyers, newspapers, or bathrooms, to name some examples)

So let's suppose I generated these components:

A ballad sung by a soprano accompanied by a drum and a harp about a coin, a fearless maiden, and a unicorn. The audience usually sings along.

My response in creating a song (assuming I was building a fantastic Pokeworld where the classic Trio plus Serena were minstrels): might look like this:

"'The Silver Piece' features the common motif of an ordinary object that turns out to be magical, reinforcing the adage that things aren't always what they seem to be, a point also made by the chorus:

Though it may be a silver piece to you,
You may have to swallow your pride
For an ordinary object as this
May have great power inside...

Serena and Brock enjoy playing the song, and audiences enthusiastically sing along and suggest adventures for the lady to get into with the titular coin (there is an ending where the maiden is hailed a hero, but it is not often sung.)"

When using the Merchandiseable Cartoon and Magical Girl Team Generator, the process is surprisingly harder--how to create something that sounds neat, doesn't sound too much like something that already exists in our world, and would be easily Pokemonized? (If you're wondering where I got the TV show names Brock was watching in the remix of "Sick Daze", I used these two generators!)

To generate a few examples from both generators, and why they would be rejected or developed:

"Galactic Raiders"--I would likely develop this one--to me, it sounds like a male slant on something like "Sailor Moon", but I have used mixed male-female teams in creating shows before.

"Wonder Ladies"--I would reject this one--the name sounds boring, and somewhat vague--what makes these ladies so wonderful?

"Crystal Casters"--I would develop this one easily--not only is a jewel motif one of my favorites to work with, it also makes it easy to work in references to the Gen 3 and Gen 4 games (so there would likely be ruby, sapphire, emerald, diamond, and maybe pearl characters)

"Maximum Dragons"--I would reject this one--if the dragons are already at maximum, there's nowhere for them to develop. The only way this one might work is have the imagined show chronicle the dragons' journey to reach the maximum.

As you can see, creating media for your culture can be great fun with a generator at your side, and can really help bring your world's culture to life.

 

[diamondpearl876]

Posting here to say it is okay to have discussion in these threads, no matter how formal and official they might look.

I on one hand have a ton of trouble with worldbuilding aspects in my stories. Characters always come first and integrating worldbuilding things without overshadowing characters, I think, is a tricky balance, but... I'll definitely be using some of these ideas to try to improve in that area. ^^ Can't say I want to build my own region or anything, but! There's millions of ways to make the current regions (especially dull, dull Kanto) to feel a little more real and alive.

 

[AceTrainer14]

I have never built a custom region, and don't think I would ever have the time to (especially as I would end up blowing it all up anyway), but this has sparked a lot of thinking for my own regions. My version of world building is usually just looking at the cities and routes and thinking of how to make them bigger and different from whatever came before and adapting the layout for my own purposes. I have to admit I very rarely think of things like the cuisine or fashion or even how the townspeople may differ from the other neighbourhoods. I tend not to interact my characters much with townspeople, but much of the focus of my Alola story will see the small village people clashing with those in the neighbouring cities, plus there is a Kanto-Alola culture clash, so I think I will need to take some inspiration from here and try and sprinkle something a little fresh and original about the story

I feel that I should point out, given the current discussion in the Cliches thread, there is not much mention of having governments here. I think that a lot of a story can shaped by the type of government you choose to have, both in terms of how it could affect the plot and how it affects the region. Strong political ties could lead to tension, and there could be a north-south or east-west or even more erratically divided political allegiances through the country. The type of government could also impact on things like culture and food, and how prevalent Pokemon is in the world.

 

[diamondpearl876]

I have never built a custom region, and don't think I would ever have the time to (especially as I would end up blowing it all up anyway),

Truer words have never been said.

but this has sparked a lot of thinking for my own regions. My version of world building is usually just looking at the cities and routes and thinking of how to make them bigger and different from whatever came before and adapting the layout for my own purposes. I have to admit I very rarely think of things like the cuisine or fashion or even how the townspeople may differ from the other neighbourhoods. I tend not to interact my characters much with townspeople, but much of the focus of my Alola story will see the small village people clashing with those in the neighbouring cities, plus there is a Kanto-Alola culture clash, so I think I will need to take some inspiration from here and try and sprinkle something a little fresh and original about the story

Little things like knowing fashion and food and whatnot has definitely helped me with scenes that otherwise would be filled with blander details. I maintain the thought that Alola has a lot of potential on the worldbuilding front, so I'll be interested in your take on it when it gets here.

I feel that I should point out, given the current discussion in the Cliches thread, there is not much mention of having governments here. I think that a lot of a story can shaped by the type of government you choose to have, both in terms of how it could affect the plot and how it affects the region. Strong political ties could lead to tension, and there could be a north-south or east-west or even more erratically divided political allegiances through the country. The type of government could also impact on things like culture and food, and how prevalent Pokemon is in the world.

As much as I'm all for worldbuilding and love seeing people's interpretations, I'm not sure that many people associate Pokemon with politics and... I'm okay with that. I tend to be more interested in League interpretations since it's, well, Pokemon specific.

 

[Gama]

Firstly, great guide here! For Pokemon stuff I don't tend to create new regions from scratch, but that is something I'm doing for something else I'm working on, and this has given me a lot of food for thought towards that end.

@AceTrainer14 I think you're absolutely right about governments. This is something I've been thinking about with regards to Pokemon stories a lot recently. Notably in Pokemon games (unlike most Nintendo games) there is almost no reference whatsoever to government, and yet strong evidence (e.g. Pokemon Centers) that some must exist. The reverence with which Gym Leaders, Elite Four, and, in Alola, kahunas, makes me think that they probably have some sort of role in the administration of the region, which I find a useful jumping off point for stories personally. For example, I think Kanto, Johto, and the Sevii Islands having a shared League creates all sorts of opportunities for regional dynamics.

 

[Beth Pavell]

Are the Gym Leaders, etc really that revered, though? Whenever they're mentioned in the games, when it's not in their role as powerful trainers, it's invariably in reference to whatever side job they have. Considering that a great number of the people you talk to in the games are also trainers, that's nothing to suggest anything other than a high-status role as sportsmen.

The exception in the game I don't think is necessarily easy to generalise to all Gym Leaders: i.e; the mobilisation moment in Black and White. In the manga I've read there's a second exception insofar as - in typical shonen style - only a bunch of kids and Gym Leaders are capable of doing anything about murderous criminals; furthermore, it's quite clear that Gym Leaders, Elite Four, etc are capable of doing precisely whatever they feel like

 

[diamondpearl876]

I think it's reasonable to accept the help of strong trainers, particularly gym leaders and/or the Elite Four, to help with dealing with criminals head on - not so much with the investigation process or the process of indicting criminals legally. But there's also the possibility of having your world's law enforcement be required to have a certain level of pokemon training, too. What if renowned trainers, gym leaders, and the Elite Four were essentially back ups in really serious situations where the more strength there is, the better? The finer intricacies of involving trainers, gym leaders, and the Elite four with law enforcement in the pokemon world would be interesting to see and could work.

 

[Beth Pavell]

The point I often find myself making here is how easily fanon creeps in to discussions of the canon(s). It's not that fanon doesn't have its place in fanfiction - there's no better place for it really - but if you're going to argue a point from the canon a distinction needs to be made. Another issue where this crops up is the occasional "Trainers start at ten!" insistence - despite the fact that both the games and the anime are ambiguous on that at best.

 

[Gama]

Well I was more saying that these are things you could read into the games that are interesting.

The way people in towns refer to Gym Leaders as people who can protect the town and have some of authority reminds me of sheriffs in small American towns. And people who can do "whatever they want" so tend to have some kind of officially recognised authority, and clearly *some* kind of government exists.

"Sportsmen" is certainly a bit of an understatement since they also appear to be the main people able to enforce the rule of law, and I don't think it's a coincidence there's one per major city.

Plainly that's all not canon, but I do think it's within the scope of possibilities of the canon. I was just stating that it's an interesting area to explore from a world building perspective.

 

[Persephone]

I am not going to touch canon for the rest of this post.

I think it depends on how populated you interpret regions as being. If your Kanto has maybe 200k people in it, then individual towns with a strong trainer might be able to enforce laws on trainers who won't face justice willingly.

If it has millions or tens of millions of people, it makes very little sense for gym leaders to have any real legal role, since the police would probably have strong trainers of their own.

 

[Gama]

@Athena True enough. My interpretation is simply based on never seeing strong police characters that I can recall.

That said, I did feature a strong police force in a fan comic I did a while back.

 

[Beth Pavell]

A functioning police service would rather make the kid-trainer-saves-the-world plots of the games harder to justify, which explains why you never see anything like that in the games. That being said, I think it's precisely once that you see Gym Leaders fill that role (In Black and White), and once that the Champion does the same (In Gold and Silver). In both cases it's not more than pulling out strong pokémon and duelling with ne'er-do-well's who helpfully wear uniforms. That's a long way from functioning as useful law and order - hell, even a small English village c. 1400 would have had one man in every ten responsible for reporting local crimes to the hundred court.

 

[Nori]

I very recently found a place to get weather history, which helped me get a much better idea of what to expect the weather to be like at a certain time on a certain day of a year. I guess I'll make this a bit of a tutorial since it may not be entirely obvious how to get to the weather history section, get a non-capital city, or how to utilise the functions.

1. Head to the Weather page on timeanddate.com by clicking this link.
2. Find the city (or a city) within the country that you're looking for and click on it.
   • The country is the most important aspect at this step.
   • If the exact city you're looking for is listed, click on that instead.
3. On the page that loads, you'll find the current weather and some links below that, with "Yesterday/Past Weather" being one of them (as seen in the following screenshot, circled in green).
   
   • If this is the city you want, go ahead and click "Yesterday/Past Weather" and continue to step 4.
   • If you need a different city, do not click on "Yesterday/Past Weather" and follow the steps below.
     1. Click on the country towards the upper left instead. ("Japan" in the previous screenshot, circled in red.)
     2. On the page that loads, you'll find the list of cities for that country below the current weather. Click on the city that's closest to the one you're looking for.
        • If you're unsure about the location of a city, it's best to use a maps service to see where its location is in relation to the city that you're looking for, as the "mini" and "expanded" maps that timeanddate.com provides is hardly helpful.
     3. Click "Yesterday/Past Weather".
4. The page that loads will still display the current weather, but will display a graph for the past two weeks below that. Click on the drop-down box for "Select month:" (circled in red in the following screenshot) and select the month/year that you are looking for. (Note that the oldest data available may be different from city to city.)
   
5. Ignoring the current weather at the top of the page again, you will now have a graph for the last week of that month. You can click and drag the graph to change the date, or you can use the dates below the graph to jump to that date (boxed in red in the following screenshot).
   
6. If the graph is not precise enough for your needs, scroll down the page further to find the "hourly" weather section, and then select the desired date from the drop down menu (circled in green in the following screenshot) or from the dates underneath (boxed in red). (Note that the amount of available data in this section can vary by day/month/year/etc.)
   
   • Repeat step 5 if you need to change the month for the "hourly" section. (This is annoying, but there's no other way as far as I'm aware.)

Yes, you can search for the city you want, but you may get multiple results for the city (which may be confusing in certain cases) and/or the information available may be limited.

Hope this is helpful for anyone looking for a way to get more precise weather data for their story.

 

[Beth Pavell]

Here's another resource for those with an obsession with detail:

Moon Phases Calendar / Moon Schedule