TAAL's GUIDE TO WORLD BUILDING
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PART 1B - THE DESIGN OF A MAP
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The second part of an apprenticeship is maybe the most difficult for an 
inexperienced builder: The Design of a Zone. If you haven't played alot as
mortal in our world, and do not have a lot of experience as builder, I suggest
you play some mortal before designing a zone.

When designing a zone you should try to consider the different types of players,
and their interests. In broad terms, players can be categorized into: PK'ers,
Roleplayers and Explorers. (Or a combination). All these should be taken into
consideration. Player Killers will want places within the zone that makes it 
possible to hunt down or kill their prey. Explorers will want quests to solve
and hidden areas to map out. Roleplayers will want NPC's to interact with.

At the same time, the zone should fit into the surroundings, but don't worry,
your supervisor will give you some rough pointers here. 

So, when designing a zone, the first thing you should do is plan. Try to come up
with good ideas that will satisfy all player groups. Also, in cooperation with 
your supervisor, you should try to think of the general theme of the zone. (A
zone should not be filled with various different mobiles just for the sake of it,
but rather be built to simulate an environment, with a believable and somewhat
natural ecology. For example, even though you put a cave in your zone, with some
monster in it. You should think of stuff like, can this monster coexist with
other monsters nearby or in the same cave. How does the monster feed. Do the 
monster have a developed culture or do they just behave randomly. There are lots
of things to consider, and all this should be done before you map out the zone.

When some rough ideas are in place, you should design a map of the zone. Most
likely you will be given some pointers from your supervisor about fixed stuff
that is in the zone (such as "a road"), and what type of environment is the
general feel of the zone (such as "mixed forest"). You should also be informed
somewhat about what lies in the surrounding zones, and where your zone would
connect to that zone (see below for more information on this).

A map can be drawn by hand, or in a program that is commonly used (such as MS
Paint) and easily readable by your supervisor. However, it is often best to
use the ASCII way of mapping, since this makes it easier for all that have
access to the zone to read the map.

NEXT: HELP GUIDE MAP  or  HELP GUIDE ZONES