Let me get straight to the point, there has not been an aspiring DM among us who hasn't thought of creating their own world, with its own history and races and fauna and flora.
But how many of us have stopped to think about the nitty gritty of actually creating the world where our stories take place? Is it possible for a continent to be shaped like that outside of magical shenanigans? Does it make sense for there to be a desert here? How would rain fall and travel?
I've recently turned my thoughts to this and was hoping to hear from people way ahead of me in that department if they know of any programs or websites that let you simulate this sort of geographic/weatherology possibilities?
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Came to thread very excited by the potential of the title and was disappointed.
On topic I'd very much like to see such a software, given that we can't accurately predict today's weather predicting climate and geology seems a bit of a stretch. There are guidelines of course, for climate setup prevailing winds based on Coriolis Effect, if the wind comes off an ocean/body of water the area is wet, if wind hits mountains it dumps all rain (mountains often have deserts in their shadow). Temperatures relate to latitude.
For continents, mountains and volcanoes you could build your own idea of tectonic plates but I not sure if science understands how those came into being very well and I certainly don't.
We are not literally building a world here. We are discussing world-building in a more general and usual sort of way which is imagining how things might be.
Is it possible for a continent to be shaped like that outside of magical shenanigans? Does it make sense for there to be a desert here? How would rain fall and travel?
Continents can and do have a wide variety of shapes. That one might happen to look like something else does not need to be a matter of magical shenanigans but is likely a matter of pareidolia.
There are a couple different types of deserts. There are the hot, sandy ones like the Sahara and then there are the cold, snowy ones like Antarctica. As long as there is insufficient rainfall for the region, then there will be a desert. This can come from a variety of factors such as mountains forming a rain shield, the area being too far inland for moisture to be carried, or a simple lack of clouds forming for whatever reasons.
This site might help. However, there are some things that really won't work out if you look at them too closely. 'Enemy races' are the worst offenders since it's impossible for all members of a certain race to have a universal culture on a realistic world. There are thousands of cultures here on Earth and we only have humans around.
Sim Earth is not a bad planetary simulator if you want to make sure that your deserts are in the right area.
Continents can have any shape you want, but once the continents are there, that will pretty much control weather and biome. Similarly, you can put almost anything you like into an appropriate biome -- you can have anything from sandworms to intelligent fire ants in the desert, but not Venus flytraps.
Regional/World Mapping forum at Cartographer's Guild has some of what you're talking about.
Closest I have come is creating a moon sized spaceship. Later upgraded to a larger size. Had # levels engine, fuel, habitat, and so on. Did not have more detail.
For detail, best I did was a 5 square mile island.
I am much better using pre-made stuff.
/cevah
There was an AD&D supplement that had a lot of good information on how to build a world, the World Builder's Guidebook. I seem to recall that it had rules and suggestions for building everything from a traditional temperate spherical planet up to and including some concepts that were pretty far out there, starting on a universe-level and working its way down through planets, continents, cultures, and kingdoms to individual cities, towns and individuals. It also had some basic geography information to help you account for how mountain ranges, deserts, oceanic currents etc. interact to affect the climate and so on. I haven't read the thing in over a decade though, so there's a very real risk I'm looking back on it with goober glasses.