# Geographical Consistency LLMS index: [llms.txt](/dvw/en/llms.txt) --- Throwing paint at a blank canvas does not create the geography of a virtual world. To be immersive, everything should be where it is for a reason. Much as a designer might relish the prospect of creating their planned Magic Shoppe that’s bigger inside than it is outside [^23], at this stage it’s only ever going to serve as a prototype to demonstrate the principles involved. Although not a bad thing in itself (actually, it’s quite a good thing—I usually recommend it to newbie developers), piecemeal development of individual structures is not the way to get a whole world. For that, you have to take a more top-down approach, through various levels of abstraction. These levels (from most general to most specific) are - The world - Zones - Regions - Areas - Rooms Although in technical terms there may be a multiverse of parallel worlds (that is, different shards/incarnations), this is not something that directly affects the geography of a single such world. The layout of a world depends, naturally, on its genre. A “world” for a space opera might consist of several planets; one for a prohibition-era gangster game could be a single city. At this level, the main geographic features are placed so as to make sense. Depending on the scale, this can mean suns, moons, oceans, continents, rivers, mountains, deserts, forests, parks, freeways, roads, and so on. The main aims of the designer are - To create a believable overall map. Rivers run from mountains to seas; forests don’t appear in deserts; cities aren’t built on glaciers. - To partition the world so that it can cluster players. The world may be huge, but you still want people to meet up (but not so much that they never go anywhere). - To allow for the world to be extended, both internally (“Where can I put the new sponsor’s coffee shop?”) and externally (“Where do I put the expansion set?”). - To have room for some ideas you want to put in. “I’d like a city on the edge of a desert, so I guess I’ll need a river or a major oasis or no one would have built a city there.” - To provide for a meaningful ecology and (through resource placement) economy. - To be attractive to more than one player type. Just because a place is a slug-fest, that doesn’t mean interesting flowers can’t grow there. - To give themselves ideas. “Hey, that mountain lake would be perfect for a mystic kingdom of martial arts experts!” Interestingly, these same aims (apart from external expansion) apply at all the other levels of abstraction, too. “Hey, that ox-bow lake would be perfect for a rowboat-leasing facility!” Geographical consistency can be achieved in a number of ways. If spending a few hours learning about plate tectonics will help you place mountain ranges and volcanoes accurately, do so—your players will appreciate it. If something doesn’t make sense, there should be a very important reason for it not to do so. A player who wonders why there is a perfume factory in the middle of a quiet residential area [^24] should be able to figure out it’s a front for a bootleg distillery, rather than sloppy work by a designer. If something doesn’t make sense, it should fail for a reason that does make sense. An obvious way to get guaranteed geographical consistency is to replicate parts of the real world virtually. This is particularly useful for non-game applications, where teaching or exploring a real location might be a primary aim (“Welcome to Virtual Venice!”). Fictional worlds that use real-world settings are more problematical. It can be argued that depicting an environment with which players are already familiar is good for immersion (players already know and understand it); however, unless the depiction is highly accurate, it could be bad (incorrect or missing details will jar against the player’s knowledge of reality). There are problems of data-gathering and data-maintaining, both of which are expensive, and if recognizable real-world buildings appear, there could be legal issues (a virtual bordello set up in a virtual building, the real-world twin of which is occupied by a mosque, would bring all kinds of real-world laws to bear). Another problem of using the real world to give authenticity to the virtual world is that it may not be authentic in the context: A post-apocalypse Washington, D.C. would be unlikely to contain many of its most famous monuments, for example. Unless the designer is trying to make some kind of artistic point, replicating recognizable parts of the real world in the virtual world is usually a bad idea. As a rule of thumb, keep real-world proper nouns out of virtual worlds. If you want geographic consistency, use the levels of geographic abstraction. [^23]: Or, to be more original, bigger outside than it is inside. [^24]: This assumes that at least one of your world’s settlements is extensive enough to have a “quiet residential area.” A town in EverQuest is considered by the players to be “large” if it has 20 buildings.