I've just started making notes, and getting material together to make my world. The basic conception is that it will form a sort of ringworld, a band of land that is approximately twice the size of the world in diameter.

There is one basic climate, hot, humid and wet -- wet tropical, in other words, and there are going to be a number of reptilian and tropical rainforest races, as well as numerous crumbling empires and deserted cities.

I am going to utilise something akin to Ballard's crystalline area, as per his novel, as one of the campaign's major nemesises.

I'm not familiar with Ballard. But your world concept sounds very interesting. I don't imagine this is the first world you have created though - correct?

Basically, the novel is based on the idea that patches of the world are being changed into patches of a crystalline material, ground, plants, animals, etc., and the novel is set around one of these areas, in Africa. My idea is that certain foci for essence flows are being transformed into crystal, that, in a century or so, the crystal will have consumed the whole world, leading to the prophesied destruction of the world. The players, when I get them, may have something to say about that.

And ye, it is not my first world, although I have played Rolemaster more in Middle Earth than otherwise.