As the early history of Australia (as far as Europeans are concerned) had it as a British penal colony, it might be interesting to make Golarian's Aussie analogue a "european" penal colony. I mean in addition to having the indigenous peoples and fauna, a few colonies of "european" expatriats trying to carve out an existence in an unknown land might be interesting. Reminds me of the Isle of Dread.I think that could be a good start. It sets up a lot of interesting conflict possibilities; between the colonists and the native population, the convicts and the authorities, the independence seeking colony and the government back home, the colony’s founding nation and rival nations who want to set up their own colony, etc.
The environment, climate, landscape and fauna, would be big factors; when Europeans first came here they were really, really unprepared, the harshness of the land was something completely outside of their experience – not to mention that as a distant penal colony they did not have the best access to resources. These factors would be mitigated somewhat in a fantasy campaign with magic, but the sense of isolation from the “civilised” world and unforseen / unusual environmental conditions should be emphasised.
Landscape features should be awe-inspiring, but not so much “grand” and “majestic” as ancient, rugged and unusual. Animals and monsters should be (for the most part) completely different to what you might find in other parts of the world, whether or not you actually go the route of mimicking real life Australian marsupials and/or mega-fauna.
The various Dreamtime stories and mythology is very cool, although I’m a bit rusty on most of them (and don’t claim to be any sort of an expert) – but there is a lot of potential there for things to be used or re-imagined for D&D. Some very general (and possibly somewhat erroneous) features include sentient animals and environmental/elemental features; spirit creatures, some friendly, some hostile (somewhat...
The BBC had a great series about early Man's conflicts with prehistoric fauna- Monsters we Met. The Australian one was interesting because it explained that a lot of the Bush of Oz was a man made enviroment- the landscape had previously been more wooded but was filled with horrible predators like giant saurians akin to huge Komodo dragons, so they ended up using a scorched earth policy of creating wildfires to clear the land of danger.
Okay, it was 60,000 years ago or something, but there's humans vs. dragons right there :)
nice map - although it looks a bit "too massive", with too little coastline and oceans (for now).
Might just lead to interesting weather patterns (like central Asia).
Same goes for "the players start in the west".... lets see if the BBEG live in the North and East - like in far too many settings... *yawn*
Question about the Gazeteer though - will it list some areas which are "free for development" by individual GMs (like the locations in Pathfinder #1 and #2 ?) ? ALso, will it list areas that are basically uninhabited wastes (so we don't have realms popping up out of nowhere in previously blank/deserted spots on the map
All that nagging being done - keep up the good work !