For awhile now I have wanted to begin developing my fictional archipelago of Zui’Zui-Ta in earnest, for my Yridia D&D 5e Campaign Setting and fiction writing.

In The Anatomy of Story (2007), John Truby identifies the Island as a symbol of the abstract, the social, a laboratory and microcosm from which to cultivate utopia or dystopia. The Ocean as a symbol, Truby says, possesses the dual aspect of its surface, an abstract and flat contest — literally open water — versus its depth, which evokes the floating weightlessness of a full freedom of movement, but also the untethering of death. That gets the juices flowing on classic storytelling themes, but let’s talk worldbuilding.



I want to start with a basic framework for my worldbuilding, a simple system that arises just as naturally as the landscape. A system which I can evolve, expand, and revise over time. Drawing upon and modifying aspects of Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Cycle as well a The Angry GM’s work on Narrative Structure, I decided to keep it concise with just six archetype tags with which I will flag all the various real-world land features in my Mythic Ecology Series:

1. Settlements: habitable regions of either Work or Play, Familiar or Exotic, offering diverse narrative functions: a Day in the Life, Home Base, Personal Reasons, Gathering Supplies. Can subvert tropes with Ruins or Escape.

2. Omens: sensational, temporal, or particularly pointed features that offer narrative functions of forshadowing, and good or evil portents. Can subvert tropes with a Wild Goose Chase.

3. Overlooks: sites of magnitude and grandeur, living monuments which can function narratively for finding resolve, invoking spirits, or as a Call to Adventure. Can subvert tropes with Dread or Betrayal.

4. Passageways: transitional journeylands, including magical portals, functioning narratively for initiation and return, thresholds and tests, shortcuts and setbacks.

5. Abyss: a void or confined space presenting scarcity or temptation, desperation and danger. Can subvert tropes with a Timely Rescue or Secret Refuge.

6. Battlegrounds: sites fit for epic, sprawling encounters and climax conflicts. Can subvert tropes with Alternative Solutions.

Of course, you may find my choices sometimes arbitrary, so feel free to submit your own ideas, or to draw outside the lines. Anyway, here goes!