Landscapes for Writers and Game Masters - by Scott Rice-Snow (Paperback)

About the Book

"Landscape science viewpoints help tell fascinating stories, whether in fiction or at the table of a role-playing game. The world's varied terrain provides innumerable examples of scene-specific challenges and resources for story characters. Each region has distinctive land features, compelling story locations, and intriguing traits. Landslides, floods, coastal erosion, glacier movement, and volcanism have surprising aspects that can deliver fresh plot points and alter the social character of an imagined region. Characters traveling different river types encounter very different puzzles, opportunities, and combat environments. That same essential variety awaits within other classic adventure settings, such as caves, mountains, deserts, shorelines, and volcanic zones. Atypical landscapes such as tundra, karst, and vast glacier surfaces can breathe fresh air into stories told in many genres. This handbook, intended as a reference source for creative writing and game world building, delves deeper into many landscape characteristics that help set the tone, shape character behavior, and, in many cases, drive the plot forward. With chapters divided into diverse geographic environments, from rivers and shorelines to caves and volcanoes, learn how important setting and scenery are for the development of a storyline. Hundreds of examples illustrate ways that knowledge of the terrain can deliver plot points, add veracity, pose key problems, establish conflict, and naturally lead into the next scene. Discover how authors and game masters effectively weave their stories using land and terrain"--

Book Synopsis

Landscape science tells fascinating stories, whether in fiction or a role-playing game. Earth's varied terrain provides many examples of scene-specific challenges and resources for story characters, with distinctive land features, compelling locations, and intriguing traits. Landslides, floods, coastal erosion, glacier movement, and volcanism can deliver fresh plot points and alter the social character of an imagined region. Characters traveling different river types encounter very different puzzles, opportunities, and combat environments and the same variety awaits within other classic settings, such as caves, mountains, deserts, shorelines, and volcanic zones. Atypical landscapes such as tundra, karst, and vast glacier surfaces can breathe fresh air into any stories.

This handbook is a reference source for creative writing and game world building. It delves deeply into many landscape characteristics that help set the tone, shape character behavior, and drive the plot. Chapters are divided into diverse geographic environments, from rivers and shorelines to caves and volcanoes, and show how knowledge of the terrain can deliver plot points, add veracity, pose key problems, establish conflict, and lead into the next scene. Discover how authors and game masters effectively weave land and terrain into their stories.

Review Quotes

"Invaluable an innovative resource for the novelist and the video game creator. Exceptionally well written, organize and presented...unique...recommended."--Midwest Book Review

About the Author

Scott Rice-Snow is an emeritus professor of geological sciences at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, with published research in river, glacial, and karst geomorphology, as well as hydrology, geoarchaeology, and geoscience education. He also hosts the ground4inspiration.net website, documenting unique landscape features and their narrative/gameplay potential.