40+ Plains Features For Fantasy Worldbuilding23 min read

Meadow, Prairie, Scrub, and Steppe! Welcome back, Outlander, to the 10th entry in Mythic Ecology, my series on how learning real-world landscape features can enrich our fantasy worldbuilding and storytelling. In this post I return to my minimalist framework for Dungeon Masters, Game Masters, fiction writers, and similar worldbuilders to merge the realms of general myth and geomorphology. Last entry we looked at valleys. As I resume my journey sketching a framework for designing Yridia, my unique D&D 5e fantasy world, let’s learn some plains terms, with a visual guide!

A quick note on terminology: “plains” for this entry refers to grasslands and shrublands and the like, generally on flat terrain. “Scrub” and “shrub” mean essentially the same thing. Some terms like “steppe” and “prairie” have ambiguous definitions across regions, so sorry for any confusion.

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First, let’s revisit my minimalist framework for my worldbuilding. The 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.

Feel free to submit your own ideas, or draw outside the lines. Alright, let’s see how plains fit in.

Also regionally referred to as “prairie”, “pampas”, “veld”, or sometimes “steppe”. Grasslands, savannas, and shrublands in semi-arid to semi-humid climates of temperate latitudes.
[Settlements, Passageways, Battlegrounds]

Shortgrass Prairie / Dry Prairie – short grasslands in semi-arid climates, without trees unless near rivers and lakes.
[Settlements, Passageways, Battlegrounds]

Mesic Prairie – grasslands with primarily forbs like wildflowers instead of grasses, sedges, and rushes, in regions with moderate rainfall, drainage, and soil.
[Settlements, Passageways, Battlegrounds]

Tallgrass Prairie / Wet Prairie – tall grasslands in areas of higher rainfall and rich soils.
[Settlements, Passageways, Battlegrounds]

Grasslands, savannas, and shrublands in semi-arid to semi-humid climates of tropical or subtropical latitudes.
[Settlements, Passageways, Battlegrounds]

Tropical Grasslands – dominated by grass or other herbaceous plants.
[Settlements, Passageways, Battlegrounds]

Tropical Savanna – mixed woodland and grassland with widely spaced trees and thus no closed canopy, supporting grasses.
[Settlements, Passageways, Abyss, Battlegrounds]

Tropical Shrubland – dominated by woody or herbaceous shrubs.
[Settlements, Passageways, Battlegrounds]

Grasslands, savannas, and shrublands in Mediterranean climates of dry summers and rainy winters. Inland, lowland locations have hot summers but can cool if near colder seas. Has mild to cool winters in lowland locations but cold ones in inland and highland spots.
[Settlements, Passageways, Battlegrounds]

Chaparral – shrubland or heathland with a Mediterranean climate of mild, wet winters and hot, dry summers, with hard-leafed evergreens. Often associated with coasts and wildfires.
[Settlements, Passageways, Battlegrounds]

Garrigue / Phrygana – low, soft-leaved scrubland in Mediterranean regions with limestone soils, usually near seacoast and with summer droughts. Often has low, creeping dwarf-shrubs.
[Settlements, Passageways, Battlegrounds]

Macchia / Maquis Shrubland – Mediterranean shrubland with dense evergreen shrubs. Often has low, creeping dwarf-shrubs.
[Settlements, Passageways, Battlegrounds]

Matorral / Mediterranean Scrub – shrubland, thicket, and bushes in a Mediterranean climate.
[Settlements, Passageways, Battlegrounds]

Grasslands or shrublands of semi-arid or continental climate, with extreme temperature variation across both season and time of day. Often transition zones between Mediterranean climates and true deserts, or under the rain shadow effect of mountains. Overlaps with shortgrass prairie.
[Settlements, Passageways, Battlegrounds]

Alpine-Steppe – dry grasslands in alpine regions, with year-round frost despite high sunshine.
[Settlements, Passageways, Battlegrounds]

Shrub-Steppe – low-rainfall grassland with a patchwork of perennial grasses or shrubs adapted to drought and wildfire.
[Settlements, Passageways, Battlegrounds]

Subtropical Steppe – found in the driest areas with Mediterranean-like climate.
[Settlements, Passageways, Battlegrounds]

Temperate Steppe – found in humid continental climates.
[Settlements, Passageways, Battlegrounds]

Arid shrub habitats with extreme temperature variation across across time of day; some fluctuate seasonally as well.
[Passageways, Abyss, Battlegrounds]

Hot Desert Shrublands – desert shrublands hot year-round.
[Passageways, Abyss, Battlegrounds]

Divergent Desert Shrublands – desert shrublands with harsh heat but also harsh cold in winter.
[Passageways, Abyss, Battlegrounds]

Natural Meadow / Perpetual Meadow – an open field vegetated by grass or other non-woody plants. Also includes prairies from “Temperate Grasslands, Savannas, and Shrublands”.
[Settlements, Passageways, Battlegrounds]

Alpine Meadows – tundra grasslands at high elevations above the treeline, maintained by harsh climate.
[Settlements, Passageways, Battlegrounds]

Coastal Prairie / Coastal Meadow – grasslands along coastal regions. Often becomes coastal scrub.
[Settlements, Overlooks, Passageways, Battlegrounds]

Desert Meadows – grasslands restricted by low precipitation or lack of nutrients and humus. May feature desert wildflower blooms.
[Settlements, Passageways, Battlegrounds]

Expanses or complexes of flooded grasslands, grassy wetlands.
[Settlements, Omens, Passageways, Abyss, Battlegrounds]

Callows – seasonally-flooded grasslands in low-lying river floodplains.
[Settlements, Omens, Passageways]

Wet-Meadow – marshes fluctuating between brief inundation and longer periods of saturation, whereas meadows are dry marshes. May have sedges, rushes, and grasses. Also includes wet prairie and wet savanna. Includes cienega.
[Settlements, Omens, Passageways, Battlegrounds]

Floodmeadow – grassland or pasture beside river, subject to seasonal flooding.
[Settlements, Omens, Passageways, Abyss, Battlegrounds]

Floodplain – an area adjacent to a stream or river, enclosed by valley walls, which periodically floods, creating fertile lands.
[Settlements, Omens, Passageways, Abyss, Battlegrounds]

Heath / Heathland – shrubland habitat around free-draining infertile, acidic soils. Has open, low-growing woody vegetation like dwarf-shrubs. Moorland generally related to highland, cooler, damper climate version.
[Overlooks, Passageways, Battlegrounds]

Moorland / Moor – upland areas in temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands, montane grasslands and shrublands biomes with low-growing vegetation on acidic soils, uncultivated hills and low-lying wetlands. Appears where tundra retreat.
[Overlooks, Passageways, Battlegrounds]

Montane Grasslands and Shrublands – highland grasslands and shrublands.
[Overlooks, Passageways, Battlegrounds]

Potrero – a long mesa with one end sloping upward to higher terrain, usually at the flanks of a mountain, as part of a dissected plateau.
[Settlements, Overlooks, Passageways, Battlegrounds]

Machair – a fertile low-lying grassy plain.
[Settlements, Passageways, Battlegrounds]

Rift Valley – a linear lowland between highlands or mountain ranges, created by a tectonic rift or fault. May hold rift valley lakes.
[Settlements, Omens, Passageways, Battlegrounds]

Coastal Scrub – shrublands along coastal regions.
[Settlements, Passageways, Battlegrounds]

Mammoth Steppe – a dry Ice Age climate of grasslands and shrublands featuring grazing megafauna.
[Settlements, Omens, Passageways, Abyss, Battlegrounds]

Polje / Karst Polje / Karst Field – a large flat plains landscape formed from the dissolution of soluble rocks like limestone, with such underground drainage systems as sinkholes and caves.
[Settlements, Omens, Passageways, Battlegrounds]

Shrub Swamp / Scrub Swamp / Buttonbush Swamps – freshwater wetlands neither swamp nor marsh, transitional between swamps and wet meadows or fens, featuring primarily shrub cover.
[Settlements, Omens, Passageways, Battlegrounds]

I hope you enjoyed this tenth entry in my Mythic Ecology series! I look forward to continuing with it, I have some greater ambitions for developing this series into worldbuilding web tools. Give this a share if you liked it, and let me know in the comments if you have any feedback. I publish new posts on Tuesdays. In the meantime, I post original D&D memes and writing updates daily over on my site’s Facebook Page. Also, if you want to keep up-to-date on all my posts, check out my Newsletter Sign-Up to receive email notifications when I release new posts. A big thanks as always to my Patrons on Patreon, helping keep this project going: Anthony, Chris, Eric & Jones, Geoff, Jason, Rudy, and Tom. Thanks for your support!