I've been giving some thought about how to create some geographical difficulties traveling from eastern Flaness (Greyhawk/Keoland/Furondy) to western Flaness (Nyrond/Pale/Great Kingdom). Essentially I want to squeeze trade routes to a few points passing through powerful city-states, and giving the Bright Desert population a trading identity as well as nomadic herders.
One thing I want to do is eliminate the Duchy of Urnst and run the Bright Desert all the way north to the Nyr Dyv. But that still leaves the sea lanes. My thought was to make the Gearnat Straight and the three mountain ranges directing weather patterns into it become a very dangerous place for sailing. Hurricanes/severe winds become a major worry, especially between the Abbor Alz and the Headlands. I'd make the major ways to trade from east to west up through the County of Urnst and over they Nyr Dyv to Greyhawk one route, overland across the Bright Desert another, hugging the shore along the southern coast of the Bright Desert a third, and then I'd create a portage way across the neck of the Headlands (involving a river valley up, a tunnel through the mountain, and down to Irongate, giving the dwarves a powerful trading position). And that's basically it, three main routes with different dangers, and one that's relatively safe but tightly controlled and inconvenient.
Anyone else ever done anything like this? I know lots of folks want easy travel, but I like it to be more difficult and an adventure in and of itself.
I believe your general idea has some interesting possibilities.
First, I believe you switched east/west in your comment above. ;)
"Greyhawk/Keoland/Furondy" would be in the western Flanaess, while "Nyrond/Pale/Great Kingdom" would be eastern Flanaess.
Second, canon has the prevailing winds moving from the east to the west across the Flanaess - opposite the prevailing winds across most of the USA and Europe. Having the Abbor Alz and the Headlands, in Onwal, funnel the prevailing winds into the Sea of Gearnat works, if you make them higher mountains - especially the Headlands. As is, they aren't tall enough to greatly affect the prevailing wind patterns.
I am uncertain of why the trade route across the neck of the Headlands would be a useful route if the Sea of Gearnat is extremely dangerous to navigate. There would, presumably, be only a small bay north of Irongate that could be safely sailed. That doesn't seem much of a trade route.
Alternatively, you could use a combination of some of your geological changes in combination with adding geo-political and monstrous dangers to the various routes that already exist.
Perhaps The Urnst states know that they are the only reasonable trade route, so they extort extremely high tolls on merchants. Perhaps this has led to a war, or undeclared hostilities, between the two Urnst nations, so anyone traveling through them is at risk of being robbed by patrols or having their goods confiscated for the war effort.
Other routes may have dangerous weather, or be overrun with monsters.
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