If you need accuracy to this level, just pay a geology student to do it as their thesis paper.
For one thing, I never design entire worlds when I build a setting, as I only really care about specific regions continents/subcontinents, island archipelagos, or large expanse within a larger continent. Unless you plan a globtrotting campaign from the start, there's no immediate need to design the entire world.
I seldom create entire histories, rather focusing on specific events of the past that have continuing direct effects in the current timeline. A rough draft history from the origins, to major events leading to current age. All of it could probably fit on a single page of text. More recent events that have more of a direct influence might get that much by itself - like the last 5 years or so. However, I never try to fully develop stone age, bronze age, iron age, etc. I create a quick overview, not an enclopedia listing.
While I do have some geologic knowledge, unless my setting is centric around metals, I wouldn't explore how much zinc is in the soil at any given place. On the other hand, I do try to include economic resources in the various places and if a region of iron mines or precious metals are found uniquely in one place or other, that's worth mentioning.
In the development of the regions of the Kaidan setting of Japanese horror (PFRPG), my published setting, I do touch upon the major tree types, flowers, and agricultural base in each province that gets an overview in the gazetteer portion of my upcoming GMs and Players guides to Kaidan. However, each region only gets a few paragraphs of content to describe what is there - so there isn't a lot of room for miniscule detail.
Most of my efforts have been on local rulers, major factions and cultural aspects, and might provide more detail in this type of data, than anything else, because interactions with people tend to be far more intrinsic in RPG play, than what kind of ores are locally found.
Of course we each use our strengths in the creative process, so I don't want to discount someone's metallurgical background development for their setting design.
I spend most of my efforts on the things that the player characters will do to interact with the setting more so than who was king a thousand years ago, or other barely relevant minutia.
I'd say it's more important to figure out the theme and what tropes you are using and what tropes you are definitely excluding. After that worry about the map.
As far as maps go, I generally and most concerned about geography (oceans, mountains), politics (borders) and habitat (desert, forest, etc). I don't think I have really given much thought into mineral wealth, although generally as a I move onto the nation side of things I get a rough idea of economy for a place.
Because I'm a cartographer, I always begin with the map, and the theme and tropes are half developed in my mind before I begin. The act of doing the map sparks ideas that make me theorize how best to represent those ideas into the geography of the map, and helps the theme and tropes become more developed. By the time I'm done with the map, I have a very good idea on what this setting is conceptually and as a launch point for further development.
|
I always start with the story seed I want to plant for the players, determining the major villains and their motivations. From there I usually move to creating a general world map and zoom into the area that I want to have the campaign set in. At that point I will delve into the general politics, history, etc of the region, highlighting major and minor events, organizations, and persons of note.
Doing a rough of the world gives a baseline to run with (at least map wise) if the players decide to go off the rails and hop halfway around the world. While I may end up freestyling the details until I can get something set to paper for future reference, I would at least have the world map to refer to for the immediate use. It also gives me something I can use for the starting point of a future campaign.