"The Travel Book," for Other Worlds

Kim bought me The Travel Book from Lonely Planet on our anniversary earlier this month. (January 5th, to be exact. Mark your calendars!) It was a wonderful present, both for the thought behind it (I probably won't have the money for my biannual trip abroad) and because it's a marvelous coffee-table book, with two-page picture spreads and commentary on every country on Earth. Now it's a little weird how they gave every country, no matter how large or small, equal attention, so China and Macao get the same two-page spread. Sometimes, too, the commentary can be obnoxious, as with their remarks on Ireland's infrastructure. ("Thanks to the death of the Irish tiger economy, Ireland's efforts to improve its dire roads have been dealt a setback. Good ... The Emerald Isle is best enjoyed slowly." If I was Irish, that would make me set the damn book on fire.) Still, I highly recommend it.

The Travel Book would also serve as a great template for fantasy world-building. The emphasis on visuals would be worth emulating, to show the costumes, the architecture and the landscapes of an imaginary foreign land. (I've called for more landscape drawing in RPG art before. If people live in small towns, surrounded by wilderness, designers and GMs should make that ever-present wilderness real for the players.) If you aren't an artist yourself, copy paintings or photos off the Web and arrange them together to give readers a sense of the place.

You can also use the written summaries for inspiration. For each country there's a list of "Top Things to See" ("San rock paintings around Malealea and the aptly named Gates of Paradise Pass"), "Top Things to Do" ("Buy some birch twigs and give yourself a good thrashing at Almaty's Arasan Baths"), "In a Word" ("Su kwan (The calling of the soul)") and others. Even the best worldbooks, at least for RPGs, put far too much emphasis on threats to life and limb. You should give your players (or readers) a reason they'd want to go there.