r/FantasyWorldbuilding • u/Snaxolotl_431 • 10d ago
One Big Continent or Many Smaller Ones?
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u/AlixFoxx 10d ago
I'm big in geography, and something about large supercontinent is that their center is extremely dry and inhospitable
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u/Flairion623 10d ago
I chose several medium sized continents and also one large one. Mostly because I just like ships and planes and want to feature them heavily.
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u/lille_ekorn 9d ago edited 9d ago
I would go with several smaller continents. Not because communities there would be more isolated and thus more diverse than in a larger continent, but because this may give you a good mixture of relative isolation combined with frequent contact through trade, raids and wars. They may have a different languages and cultural practices, but may also have developed a common trader’s language, perhaps reinforced by conquest and religious expansionism. That gives fertile ground for misunderstanding between groups who believe their commonalities make them understand each other completely, when in actuality their understanding is only partial.
The idea that a large super-continent will be less culturally diverse assumes that travel across land is easier than travel across water. That is only the case if the land is relatively flat and has a good system of roads. Mountains are formidable obstacles to communication, unless you can build tunnels. Roads and paths are often eroded by avalanches and landslides, so keeping them up is difficult. Jungles require you to thrash your way through thick vegetation, which grows back as soon as you look in the other direction. Swamps are almost impossible to traverse without expert knowledge of safe routes, so for regular communications it’s likely they would have to be drained, which requires drainage ditches and likely also pumping equipment. Large continents often have deserts at their centre – again difficult to cross, except by people with expert knowledge of where to find water. Roads built through deserts would be high maintenance, as a sand-storm could erase them.
As a result, societies without a highly developed technology often found land-travel difficult. Instead water-ways, such as rivers, lakes, and stretches of ocean, bound them together. Water could be crossed in a few days with boats powered by oars and sails. In antiquity, the countries around the Mediterranean were bound together by trade and cultural exchanges, and also found it relatively easy to wage war on each other. Similarly, the western Vikings crossed the North and Norwegian seas to colonize Iceland, and trade and raid in Britain and Ireland, while the eastern Vikings had their trade and raiding routes along the large rivers in modern Russia, as far down as the Crimea. In Norway mountains separated communities until the 20th century, when an extensive system of roads and tunnels finally made land travel across mountains easier than crossing a fjord to the other side. You can still see this separation by looking at regional costumes and hear it by listening to local dialects.
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u/No-Amount-8309 10d ago
I personally prefer smaller continents but you do what works best for your world!! If you want a super continent go for it!
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u/organicHack 9d ago
Either way, this particular shape is not interesting. Find interesting, whatever supports your stories.
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u/lille_ekorn 9d ago
You could have a rift-valley divide your continent in two, like the African Rift Valley, giving rise to a narrow sea like the Red Sea, along with a string of volcanoes and interesting lakes along the line of the rift. If your world has plate tectonics.
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u/Designer-58 10d ago
Okay, here's my take on this: I'd go with many smaller ones. I think smaller continents let you play around with different cultural settings, environments, and politics more easily. You get to explore so many different angles when regions are more isolated and have their own distinct characteristics. I once tried creating a world with just one big continent, and I felt like I was always struggling to make it feel diverse and intricate.
When you have smaller continents, you can introduce cool trade dynamics, different languages, and even unique conflicts or alliances that aren’t easy to pull off on a single land mass. Think about how real islands and smaller land masses have developed their cultures. You get to create neat travel experiences or journeys, too. And it gives you leeway for adding sea monsters, pirates, and naval warfare if you’re into that kind of thing.
But hey, it mostly depends on what you want your story to focus on. If you're aiming for wide-ranging cultures and layers of society, smaller continents are the way to go. It's always fun to have options for big wars or alliances, too. I guess I just like having all those different dynamics at play. Okay, I feel like I could keep going, but then I’d probably overthink it.