Walking through your ideas to their logical conclusion

[LoA]

So I was hanging out with my sister this weekend, and I was hanging around her boyfriend who's a seasoned Pathfinder GM for the official plays. I asked him for his advice on worldbuilding, and he told me that he takes each idea for his setting and then takes it to it's logical conclusion. He shared with me one of his ideas from a space game he created with a bunch of friends, and it was pretty funny and awesome at the same time. So he began walking me through one of my campaign idea's and I actually wound up with a much more solid basis for one of my campaign settings.

So this is what we came up with.

I used my american city getting thrown into a fantasy verse idea.

Three things we started with.
1.What kind of city was the town when it got sent here (economics, industry, resources, etc)?
2.What's the world like they're getting sent to (Climate, politics, etc)?
3. How has technology effected this world (machines, transportation, etc)?

First off, the town was a relatively small place had a lot of stuff in it, but there wasn't really any major industry there. Which means they couldn't replicate the technology they had here on earth. They had to restart from scratch with steam technology. The world I created is a series of island continents. I wanted to do this because I hate dealing with large continents, and I find transportation interesting.

The second thing I came up with was an island where half of it is in a polar state, while the other half is more temperate. Still gets cold, but it has a normal season cycle. There are constant conflicts between the various principalities(?) and races that may not end in outright war, but they cause problems for the whole land.

I'm setting it about a year or two after the city gets thrown into the world so some real progress can be made. For instance, one thing that's been solved, is that the ice lands have awesome game and herd animals to trade with the spring lands, but many americans have returned to their cowboy roots and started herding the game for the ice lands, and protecting them along the trails.

I'm still working on this, but I feel like I have a more solid foundation for the rest of the world building.

So what do you guys think I should think through next?

[Polycarp]

Your sister's boyfriend's advice to take things to their "logical conclusion" is a good one, and it's one I try to follow, though I think it's worth remembering that a lot of rather illogical things have happened in real history - I'm not the first one to say that actual history, were it presented as alternative history, would not be very believable.  The important thing is to not be tied down to determinism and to remember that there can be more than one "logical conclusion" to a situation.

Anyway, regarding your specific setting, it's hard to say what's next without a better background understanding.  You mention that there are other races, but I don't know who they are (standard D&D/Pathfinder races, or something else?).  What does "fantasy" mean in this case - humanoid races, dragons and other fantastical creatures, magic, all of the above?

Another issue is to what extent this world's physics are "fantasy physics."  One of the greatest contributions that "future travelers" could make to a pre-modern society would be an understanding of the germ theory of disease; even if you have no access to future technology, knowing that sickness is caused by little animals you can't see, and that you can prevent contamination by boiling surgical instruments and drinking water, cooking food, washing your hands, etc., would have a tremendous impact on societies that had previously believed in the miasma theory or something else.  But if this fantasy world has magic or other supernatural traits, disease may not actually work that way - for instance, if disease is caused by curses from invisible Sickness Imps, or if germs can be eradicated much more efficiently by a "remove disease" spell, then that very valuable knowledge turns out to not be valuable at all.  You've said the world is "fantasy" but you haven't mentioned magic, which - if it exists - is going to be rather important for figuring out how this society (or any society in the world, really) develops.

By the way, I believe there's a book series called 1632 that involves a small American town being transported to Germany during the Thirty Years' War.  I haven't read it, but that's what immediately came to mind reading your post.

[LoA]

By the way, I believe there's a book series called 1632 that involves a small American town being transported to Germany during the Thirty Years' War.  I haven't read it, but that's what immediately came to mind reading your post.

Yeah this is where I got the inspiration for my setting. It's existed in various forms. Originally it was set in eberron, but then all the angles that were presented by that began to overwhelm me. So I've been kicking around ideas based on this for years. I always start out with a good feeling, but then everything jumbles up, and becomes a mess, but I think that it's beginning to crystallize in my brain.

Sorry, you were right. I should have given more background for my setting. So far I have a an island that is set up in the northern part of the world. Half of it stays really cold, while the other is more moderate. I"m not really interested in fleshing out the rest of the world yet, so that I don't paint myself into a corner like I usually do. However I definitely like the idea of an island chain instead of one big continent. More versatility, and more emphasis on sailing and flying.

As for the other aspects of fantasy, I'm not quite sure what I want yet. I definitely want more races than humans, but I don't want them to be the standard set of races either. If there's one form of fantasy I really like it's talking animal fantasy, like Brian Jacque's Redwall books or even the chronicles of Narnia. So i'm definitely thinking about it. I'm also trying to figure out how magic works in this world...