How does environment affect a setting?
The shape of the world affects the lives of the people who live in it. Like the shape of a bucket affects the water inside. It is something that is easy to take for granted, living in modern society, having roads and highways and access to nearly all parts of the map. Where I’m at in Colorado, where we ride horses everywhere, I’m a day or less from mountain tops, lakes, forests, prairies, rivers, sand dunes, all sorts of interesting geological formations. It’s all pretty easy to reach. In the world you are creating, that may not be the case.
In modern or futuristic worlds, technology allows for easy travel to nearly everywhere on the map. On a colonized frontier world, however, the lack of developed roadways has to be covered by transportation that can compensate for rough terrain, and the map might be full of holes and uncharted territories. Even in a developed world, climate can still affect necessities of living and travel. I very much appreciate my vehicular air conditioning and heating. Even if my car is messed up and only has 90 degrees or 45 degrees. Wait, my horse, I mean my horse. Yeah. Gotta love a horse with good AC and heating system.
Landscape and climate can also affect traditions. Even if the world is developed now… have the people always lived here? What methods for dealing with that environment now show through in the form of traditional fashions and behaviors? Why do we still ride horses everywhere in Colorado?
There are many factors that environment majorly affects. For example:
- Food: What food grows here? Do they hunt and fish? What kinds of animals? Do they forage? Farm? What kinds of crops? What surpluses can they trade and what do they treasure that they can’t really get there?
- Material Resources: Is there a large supply of timber? Clay? Are there mines? What do they dig up? Are certain metals and minerals easier to find?
- Travel: Is the ground level enough to make good roads? Do they have to rely on the river for transport through dense woodland? Does the difficulty of the terrain isolate them, or are they a trading hub that is easy for other places to reach? Is it safe to travel, with towns every day or so? Is it dangerous with brigands, broken wagon wheels and wild animals?
- Wildlife: What predators inhabit this land? Are they dangerous to humans? Do there tend to be a lot of venomous animals or is that nearly unheard of? Are the herbivores just as, or more dangerous than the predators? Consider the introduction of invasive species, of plant and animal, and how that might change a traditional way of life.
- Natural Disasters: Any location is going to be prone to different kinds of calamities. Forested and dry might lead to wildfires, which increases the danger of flashfloods in the rainy season. Is the geology unstable leading to earthquakes, possibly even volcanic activity? Anywhere near a river will have flooding. Flat lands may be prone to tornadoes and dust storms. Farmlands may have plagues of locusts. Sand storms and flashfloods may be found in deserts. Avalanches, in showy mountainous regions. Living near the ocean, consider hurricanes, and the possibility that a distant quake or volcanic eruption could lead to a massive tsunami. Remember also that these threats will exist in the folklore of anyone whose lived there a long time. What measures do they take to spot or prevent them? Also consider how a disaster may have changed the landscape, and how people would have had to adapt to that change.
- Structures: What environmental difficulties do their houses compensate for? Do they need to protect from raging blizzards and deadly cold weather? Do they need to stay cool in unbearably hot days? Are they so temperate that they can be open most of the year? What material resources do they have to build with? What kind of maintenance is required?
- Clothing: Consider plant and animal resources. Do they use furs? What kind? Do they use leather at all or do they work with plant fibers? Insulation helps with both cold and hot climates, which is why people in frozen climates may wear fur, and even people in hot climate wear layers of wrapped clothing.
- Skin Color: This is basically a measure of how near or far a people have lived from the equator. The closer they have been, the more dark skin pigmentation will help them. This matters less as societies develop, and intermixing of cultures is made easier by travel and communication. But even in a developed setting, consider where the ancestors of a character are from.
Paradise or Hell? Why not both!
Everyone in any world will find ways that their world is both paradise and hell. It is a fairly subjective opinion, and most interpretations will come out of an outsider perspective. The outsider looking in will be comparing it to their own environment and perspective. They may say, “This is a paradise/hell” but what they really mean is, “this is way better/worse than how WE have it”. That will likely be a shallow, un-nuanced and inherently flawed perspective, but still, that is the tendency of people experiencing a new thing: to compare it with what they know. That is what your audience will tend to do, also.
So remember that your audience will be comparing a setting to their own world. You can use this to your advantage. How do you want to portray the world? When contrasting the good and the bad, does pointing out the difficulties in a setting which, to us, looks like paradise come across as their concerns being petty and unimportant? Does pointing out the bright sides of a setting that is dark and miserable to us end up looking like tragic desperation? Are those things you want your audience to take away or do you want them to be sympathetic and place themselves in that world?
Another thing to remember is that people will tend to leave a dark and miserable environment, if they have the option. Cultural or environmental factors may prevent them from doing so, causing them to be trapped there.
Still, looking at it with an overall objectivity, especially if the people in that environment CAN compare their experience against that of others, or if their environment has changed in recent memory, it might build a common community sense of their relationship with the world. Cultures may have more a less a sense of “the world/gods will take care of us, we are blessed and fortunate” vs “we have been abandoned, our lives are hard and we don’t get to choose any better”.
Does the environment encourage optimism or pessimism? Do they expect disaster or would it catch them off guard? Do they have surpluses that make them wealthy and well prepared, or are they clinging to life by a thread? How does the environment help or hinder their lives, and is it in contrast with the way they simply WANT to live? Are their some people who live perfectly happily in the desert and some people forced there who consider it hell?
Examples of Environmentally Driven Worlds/Stories
Example 1: Minecraft
This game is not very complex to understand, but it has a tremendous depth, and I don’t mean just in mining downward. The overworld is massive, and I mean… really massive. It is basically never-ending, and it is made up of a patchwork of interacting biomes. Each one features different color palettes, different plant or animal life, sometimes unique or rare monsters are more common. Villages in each biome may have different resources, traders, and types of outfit.
I really enjoy how they’ve presented the different biomes not just in that overworld, but in the ocean, when I come across a massive coral reef, or in the Nether; a hellish extra dimensional underworld accessible by portal only, where they have recently added several new biomes, and several new forms of life tolerant of the massive lava flows and lack of water.
But even in the overworld, there can be some unique and interesting biomes. The ice Spires biome, or the mushroom forest, or even the full mushroom biome are especially strange and magical. They also integrate cultural elements. There is a rare red desert biome that not only has mountains of painted terra cotta in geologic layers, but is pockmarked with tunnels and abandoned gold-mines. In the tundra biome you can sometimes find abandoned igloos (dig beneath them and you might find a surprise), and swamps can incorporate witches cottages. All in all, Minecraft is something of a triumph of implied story through environment.
Example 2: Star Wars Planets
There is a tendency you see in a lot of science fiction, but Star Wars is one of the well known pioneers of this, which is to make alien worlds all one single environment. Tatooine is ALL desert. Hoth is ALL ice. There is SOME basis for this in reality as some world will just have a temperature that is generally too hot or too cold. There might be many parts of Hoth simply too cold to live on. Still, it tends to be a shortcut that is easy to take. When you look at our world, and every single environment we know can pretty much be found SOMEWHERE here, from the deserts of Tatooine to the frozen wasteland of Hoth. (There is a tendency to simplify cultures this way, also, but that will be discussed in another post)
But still, look at Tatooine especially, and the way in which Lucas shows the costumes, the decay, the structures, and the native animals are adapted to that environment.
So when building your world, consider what variety of environments there are in ours. It it just a hot or cold world? Is it a world where the jungle has just taken over everything? Consider that many worlds require a balance for a functional ecosystem. Water falls in the desert, nutrients from the desert are washed to the see and feed the plankton. Waters rise from the ocean and form clouds which sweep over land until they hit the mountains, causing them to shed their water and creating a verdant valley. All in all, single environment worlds are actually pretty difficult to justify working in the way that we know ecosystems to work. To present one realistically, you should compensate and think of ways in which nutrients and air can be replenished, and people can live there.
Example 3: Dune
I mean… this is one fantastic example of how an author has taken a hellish single environment world and designed the eco-system and life-cycles based on what it has and needs. Everything revolves around the sandworm as a keystone species; from what water there is, to the valuable resource that keeps the mining operation going. He shows two different communities: One colonial and simply bringing their comforts with them, seeing the world of Arakis as a hell; and one community that has learned to thrive within it, and been made stronger, and more resilient by their efforts and adaptations.
A great example of environmentally driven culture-clash comes when one of the tribal leaders spits on the floor at the feet of one of the nobles. This is seen as an insult to the nobles, and they take it as such. Yet to the indigenous desert dwellers, the gift of water, every molecule of which is precious, is the greatest possible sign of respect.
Example 4: Australia because Everything
Australia is a really fascinating example of environment in a few different ways. First in comparing it to England. England has, effectively nothing venomous or poisonous. Australia, as you probably know, is not only extreme in regards to temperature, but also an abundance of dangerous wildlife which may be very small and yet also extremely deadly, from spiders and scorpions, to the blue-ringed octopus. It is easy to see why the English hosted a prison colony there, even though the indigenous people got along just fine before their arrival.
Another factor that makes Australia fascinating to consider is the abundance of marsupials there. (PEDANTRY TIME!) Australia broke off from the other continents before placental mammals replaced marsupial mammals as the dominant life-forms on the planet. This is why Australian wildlife seems so strange by comparison. It is almost a way to look back in time. Consider also, the way human habitation has affected this environment. As Europeans brought rats and rabbits, on purpose or by accident, they began the process that replaced marsupial mammals in the rest of the world. Placental mammals are simply more efficient at turning food and time into babies, so they can out-compete for resources, and now rabbits are a huge problem for those in Australia working to preserve those indigenous life forms, like the Australian possum.
And when you compare Australia to New Zealand, there is a whole other level of ancient life. Aotearoa New Zealand broke away from the other continents before even marsupials popped into existence. The life forms on the two islands, before humans arrived, consisted of birds, reptiles, and insects exclusively. So it is almost like Australia’s Australia. They, predictably, have been even harder hit by the introduction of modern mammals, where it’s not just rabbits and rats that drive native animals to extinction, but house-cats are especially dangerous to all the birds and lizards, and even the Australian possum, a protected species in Australia, has a bounty on its hide in the smaller islands.
Lastly, in an example of people adapting to extreme environments, there is the Australian town of Coober Pedy. You heard me. It is isolated, off-grid with its own solar energy station, but is a popular spot for tourists for two reasons. First is that they are the largest source of gemstone opals in the world, and second because it gets so hot there, with cloudcover being extremely rare, that they build many homes and buildings, even hotels, down into the ground in structures called dugouts. Underground structures maintain a constant cool temperature. At 20-30 feet down, it stays between 50 and 60 degrees. This means they don’t need to waste massive amounts of energy on air conditioning as the days routinely go over 100 f for weeks at a time.
Conclusion
So as you can see there are many many considerations to take into account, and almost every aspect of a world is connected. The environment is a kind of a bedrock aspect which many other factors have to adapt and cater to, which is why it is important to discuss first. Many things you might put into a culture just for how it looks, probably suggests the need for it at an environmental level. For example, you wouldn’t want to have your islander community building dugouts in a temperate zone where the cooling insulation effect was unnecessary, and the first big storm would flood them out.
Can you think of any important aspects that I missed here? I’d love to hear your ideas, so please feel free to comment and share them!
With my next post, I’ll be trying out some fun exercises for designing a world-map, and establishing an environment. I’ll be using it to create a map for a fantasy setting we’ll develop together going forward!
See you next world!
—Charles