So I'm working on creating a fictional world for D&D use and for writing stories. To force myself to do this I have created a blog for me to create stories and notes on. It's doing ok but I was wondering if anyone had any advice on World design? I would really appreciate it.
If you want to take a look at it the blog page and Facebook page links are bellow...
As far as world building goes for D&D, I prefer to take the classical approach. Start with a small village or town and work your way out. It looks like you are already past that point however. My advice is actually try and do most of the "heavy lifting" yourself, especially if you are going to be the DM. I was trying a collaboration with my players but that has failed as no one wishes to put any time into it other than me. I am ok with this since they have fun and that is what is most important in a homebrewed world, a fun factor and a reason for them to want to explore, but a bit of help from time to time would have been awesome.
The best setting/world I ever made was isolated at the start to just one city. The whole game was bottled up in adventures inside of only one city. Don't think too hard on the overall world, establish a single contained culture in that world. Figure out it's politics and geography, it's racial and cultural lines, how you want it to feel and how the NPCs should feel. Play in that, play in it at least once and even better to play in it more than once. Work out kinks and invent things. And as you go, you find catch-points that lead to bigger questions...
IF there is a temple or faith in that city or few of them that you've really explored and crafted how you like, what would the rest of the world have?
IF your city's politics works in a particular way and you vet that and love it and play in it, what are the politics outside of it? Other nations? Other kingdoms? Cities?
IF your city's best adventure are a particular flavor or kind--maybe you find you enjoy more Aberration stuff or Monstrocity stuff... maybe the world is less "fantasy monsters" and more "alien creatures". It's a good place to begin.
Technology level. Era. Cultural analog (Germanic? English? Italian city-states? Etc.). All of that helps you make the rest of the world both complimentary and different.
We're doing our own book on Kickstarter! It's going to be amazing--300 pages, art, and so much high quality content you'll be drownin' in it... Click here to check it out and sign-up!
"start small" just doesn't cover it for some people.
I would ask how much you read, and what is it that you read. Reading myths, legends, sagas, histories, etc from around the world is a good start to get ideas, but also expand it out to more contemporary writing and/or autobiographical stuff from different eras (or research science topics if it's sci-fi). While reading, keep a small notepad near by and note down details or concepts that you like. After a while, you'll have a pretty big collection of ideas to draw from. Add to that, you can also just randomly write down ideas that come to your mind that aren't included in what you read. Having an expanded collection of stuff to read, your worlds will also not just be reskins of Lord of the Rings/Forgotten Realms/etc in a blender. You could also start with a base legend or saga (say something like Tain Bo Cuailnge [The Tain], the Kalevala, or Tale of the Heike) and then rework it into a entirely new world. There's nothing new under the sun, so don't feel bad about borrowing details or concepts from older stuff.
The biggest thing is to make it relatable. The characters (NPCs, on your part) should be convincing. Do they act like real people? The greatest environment will go to waste if the characters are basically cardboard cutouts of people. Relatable characters make people more invested.
Nothing is going to cover it for all people--I'm not sure what the objection or pushback here is. You could say the same thing about anything, really--that's kinda the nature of forum advice in general.
Example: "reading a lot of contemporary writing and/or autobiographical stuff just doesn't cover it for some people".
We're doing our own book on Kickstarter! It's going to be amazing--300 pages, art, and so much high quality content you'll be drownin' in it... Click here to check it out and sign-up!
I was just coming to this discussion after hearing "start small" a lot, and sometimes that works, and other times it doesn't. If he's looking to write stories and not just play a campaign, he might want to look bigger. With a lot of people, small projects are better, but I'm personally someone who feels small worlds/stories are limiting and was just sharing what has helped me to get ideas for stories/campaigns. Like, my smallest campaign/story is kingdom sized. That's the size it started out at at conception. I don't do things small. If others are like that, hearing "start small - city sized" doesn't really help.
They're unfinished, but I found "The World" articles by the creator of the Order of the Stick interesting as a sort of mini-example of world building. That being said, I think it can also be fun to start with a pretty undeveloped world, and then expand it organically as the players explore around.
One thing I can never stress enough is knowing a little bit about everything. Knowledge of cosmology, geology, astronomy, physics, biology, etymology, and mathematics can really help.
Check out Terry Jones' Medieval Lives and James Burke's Connections, both are good series. I'll come back with some more stuff after I'm done running game tonight >_>
Whether or not you go big or small, I have a bit of advice that might do you: pick a single word that best embodies what you want the campaign setting to be about. This word is like your North Star, the place to which your compass points whenever you're generating or tweaking content for this campaign setting. Obviously you're going to have more nuanced ideas of the themes you want the setting to bring to a campaign, but this word is your fast-acid test for whether or not X or Y fits better (mine are Radical for Veranthea, Hyper for Hypercorps 2099, Cool for Mists of Akuma, and Survival for 2099 Wasteland).
Then brainstorm! Brainstorm, brainstorm, and brainstorm! Toss ideas at the wall and see what sticks (preferably many of them stick to one another), and whenever you are in doubt, refer back to your word. :) Shoot for more at this stage and just get everything you might want to include out onto a page, then filter out what makes the cut and what doesn't. At that point I try to give my hindbrain some time to process things and gradually connections I didn't initially think of emerge.
Looking over your blog here I'd also caution that (if you have not already) you should figure out a formatting structure for your world documents. I imagine you have something in your computer hard drive but if it is at all disorganized, do yourself a huge favor now and get it orderly, then stick to it.
If you do not intend to sell this (and do not sell advertisements on your blog -- ie you make no money from this effort) you can use any images you like without getting into trouble (though always credit the artist and link to their page). So if this is just for your group and so on, start building a strong visual understanding of Dhoubnom that GMs and players can share. If you *are* going to eventually sell this, make gradually sifting through the sea of RPG stock art something to do maybe once a week.
Also go download paint.net and toy around with it. It is totally free and you can make legitimately solid maps without having to take a course (just google 'how do I <<thing here>> "paint.net"' and you'll find advice to do what you need to do). Snag the "grim reaper color" tool plug-in so you can pull the white page backgrounds off your hand-drawn stuff in one fell swoop. Here's a fast tutorial (font type is free for commercial use from www.1001fonts.com, another place to stop by) of something that started as a pencil drawing--I know what I'm doing so bringing it to here took about an hour:
This guy here took a few hours of paint.net but goes to show you can get something really nice with time and effort. There's also some cool maps (and a few decent illustrations as well as compass roses) in the public domain you can repurpose. For instance, I needed a tournament grounds thing and I was like "there has to be one of these from Europe at some point" and low and behold
Finally, you can a save a word document as a simple PDF with just MSWord or OpenDocument, although I have to stress simple. This includes page backgrounds (fan product use whatever, otherwise there are good stock page backgrounds) but expect to get frustrated for any big document and add the page background last (using the "behind words" word wrap option).
Check out free PDFs for my designs (cyberpunk superheroic D&D 5E, eastern fantasy noir steampunk D&D 5E, and post-apocalyptic D&D 5E!) at https://mikemyler.com/ !
Always always ALWAYS start small. Build a little town where your PCs all end up, or a neighborhood in a big city where they can't yet progress beyond because they need to do other things, or a small dungeon they need to clear before they go back into the 'main world.' Get a feel for the place as a whole and then move beyond it to flesh out the details. I've always found that trying to figure out everything right off the bat leads to writer's block.
Also remember that you don't have to build this world in a linear fashion. If you're also looking to write stories set in this world, write some vignettes and short stories that capture the culture and the atmosphere of certain locations, that you can use as a base for stitching the world together as a whole. Work on it piecemeal until you have a more 'complete' world that you can then get into details for.
If you're really into this one aspect of the world and want to go down that rabbit hole, do so. Design every aspect of that thing even if most of it is never going to come up. There's no wrong way to build a whole world, for either DnD or written stories, but I've always found that starting with a small, contained location and then building outwards works the best.
I tend to start at both ends. Slapping down cosmology and a general theme for the world really helps me dig in and get into starting something small. Working from both ends can be really helpful; if you know there's a huge mountain range nearby, it gives you some idea of the problems and resources the city or town you're really working on can have. Big mountains nearby? Is the town in the rain shadow or not? If it's in the rain shadow, the town gets a lot of water. If not, it's in a dry shrubland or even a desert. Are those mountains volcanic or an upthrust or are they literally the bones of a sleeping giant? Upthrusts mean salt and sedimentary deposits, volcanoes mean iron, quartz, and gold, sleeping giant or dragon bones could mean anything at all. This all changes the town's behavior. Extra rain and an upthrust mountain range means more quicklime pits, and more quicklime pits means both more alchemists and more crops.
Just remember that once you make a decision, no matter what scale, it sticks with the world all the way through and will change everything - the addition of a flying race has huge implications on how your world wages war, delivers goods, and keeps in touch with itself. It eliminates castles as a workable defensive fortification, intensifies communication, shrinks the world by enhancing rulership capacity, and makes maps far more accurate. Actual [logistically] useful mounts do this, as well.
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So I'm working on creating a fictional world for D&D use and for writing stories. To force myself to do this I have created a blog for me to create stories and notes on. It's doing ok but I was wondering if anyone had any advice on World design? I would really appreciate it.
If you want to take a look at it the blog page and Facebook page links are bellow...
https://www.facebook.com/OlvenGrenleaf/
http://dhoubnom.blogspot.ca/
As far as world building goes for D&D, I prefer to take the classical approach. Start with a small village or town and work your way out. It looks like you are already past that point however. My advice is actually try and do most of the "heavy lifting" yourself, especially if you are going to be the DM. I was trying a collaboration with my players but that has failed as no one wishes to put any time into it other than me. I am ok with this since they have fun and that is what is most important in a homebrewed world, a fun factor and a reason for them to want to explore, but a bit of help from time to time would have been awesome.
My best advice...
Start small.
The best setting/world I ever made was isolated at the start to just one city. The whole game was bottled up in adventures inside of only one city. Don't think too hard on the overall world, establish a single contained culture in that world. Figure out it's politics and geography, it's racial and cultural lines, how you want it to feel and how the NPCs should feel. Play in that, play in it at least once and even better to play in it more than once. Work out kinks and invent things. And as you go, you find catch-points that lead to bigger questions...
IF there is a temple or faith in that city or few of them that you've really explored and crafted how you like, what would the rest of the world have?
IF your city's politics works in a particular way and you vet that and love it and play in it, what are the politics outside of it? Other nations? Other kingdoms? Cities?
IF your city's best adventure are a particular flavor or kind--maybe you find you enjoy more Aberration stuff or Monstrocity stuff... maybe the world is less "fantasy monsters" and more "alien creatures". It's a good place to begin.
Technology level. Era. Cultural analog (Germanic? English? Italian city-states? Etc.). All of that helps you make the rest of the world both complimentary and different.
manysideddice.com
+ A Table of Contents That's Better Than Nothing (hundreds of creative, storied items that are "better than nothing")
+ A Table of Contents To Worry Your Players With (dozens of weird, storied traps to make your players nervous)
We're doing our own book on Kickstarter! It's going to be amazing--300 pages, art, and so much high quality content you'll be drownin' in it... Click here to check it out and sign-up!
"start small" just doesn't cover it for some people.
I would ask how much you read, and what is it that you read. Reading myths, legends, sagas, histories, etc from around the world is a good start to get ideas, but also expand it out to more contemporary writing and/or autobiographical stuff from different eras (or research science topics if it's sci-fi). While reading, keep a small notepad near by and note down details or concepts that you like. After a while, you'll have a pretty big collection of ideas to draw from. Add to that, you can also just randomly write down ideas that come to your mind that aren't included in what you read. Having an expanded collection of stuff to read, your worlds will also not just be reskins of Lord of the Rings/Forgotten Realms/etc in a blender. You could also start with a base legend or saga (say something like Tain Bo Cuailnge [The Tain], the Kalevala, or Tale of the Heike) and then rework it into a entirely new world. There's nothing new under the sun, so don't feel bad about borrowing details or concepts from older stuff.
The biggest thing is to make it relatable. The characters (NPCs, on your part) should be convincing. Do they act like real people? The greatest environment will go to waste if the characters are basically cardboard cutouts of people. Relatable characters make people more invested.
Nothing is going to cover it for all people--I'm not sure what the objection or pushback here is. You could say the same thing about anything, really--that's kinda the nature of forum advice in general.
Example: "reading a lot of contemporary writing and/or autobiographical stuff just doesn't cover it for some people".
manysideddice.com
+ A Table of Contents That's Better Than Nothing (hundreds of creative, storied items that are "better than nothing")
+ A Table of Contents To Worry Your Players With (dozens of weird, storied traps to make your players nervous)
We're doing our own book on Kickstarter! It's going to be amazing--300 pages, art, and so much high quality content you'll be drownin' in it... Click here to check it out and sign-up!
I was just coming to this discussion after hearing "start small" a lot, and sometimes that works, and other times it doesn't. If he's looking to write stories and not just play a campaign, he might want to look bigger. With a lot of people, small projects are better, but I'm personally someone who feels small worlds/stories are limiting and was just sharing what has helped me to get ideas for stories/campaigns. Like, my smallest campaign/story is kingdom sized. That's the size it started out at at conception. I don't do things small. If others are like that, hearing "start small - city sized" doesn't really help.
They're unfinished, but I found "The World" articles by the creator of the Order of the Stick interesting as a sort of mini-example of world building. That being said, I think it can also be fun to start with a pretty undeveloped world, and then expand it organically as the players explore around.
Thank you everyone for the help. I'll take it all into consideration.
One thing I can never stress enough is knowing a little bit about everything. Knowledge of cosmology, geology, astronomy, physics, biology, etymology, and mathematics can really help.
Check out Terry Jones' Medieval Lives and James Burke's Connections, both are good series. I'll come back with some more stuff after I'm done running game tonight >_>
Whether or not you go big or small, I have a bit of advice that might do you: pick a single word that best embodies what you want the campaign setting to be about.
This word is like your North Star, the place to which your compass points whenever you're generating or tweaking content for this campaign setting. Obviously you're going to have more nuanced ideas of the themes you want the setting to bring to a campaign, but this word is your fast-acid test for whether or not X or Y fits better (mine are Radical for Veranthea, Hyper for Hypercorps 2099, Cool for Mists of Akuma, and Survival for 2099 Wasteland).
Then brainstorm! Brainstorm, brainstorm, and brainstorm! Toss ideas at the wall and see what sticks (preferably many of them stick to one another), and whenever you are in doubt, refer back to your word. :) Shoot for more at this stage and just get everything you might want to include out onto a page, then filter out what makes the cut and what doesn't. At that point I try to give my hindbrain some time to process things and gradually connections I didn't initially think of emerge.
Looking over your blog here I'd also caution that (if you have not already) you should figure out a formatting structure for your world documents. I imagine you have something in your computer hard drive but if it is at all disorganized, do yourself a huge favor now and get it orderly, then stick to it.
If you do not intend to sell this (and do not sell advertisements on your blog -- ie you make no money from this effort) you can use any images you like without getting into trouble (though always credit the artist and link to their page). So if this is just for your group and so on, start building a strong visual understanding of Dhoubnom that GMs and players can share. If you *are* going to eventually sell this, make gradually sifting through the sea of RPG stock art something to do maybe once a week.
Also go download paint.net and toy around with it. It is totally free and you can make legitimately solid maps without having to take a course (just google 'how do I <<thing here>> "paint.net"' and you'll find advice to do what you need to do). Snag the "grim reaper color" tool plug-in so you can pull the white page backgrounds off your hand-drawn stuff in one fell swoop. Here's a fast tutorial (font type is free for commercial use from www.1001fonts.com, another place to stop by) of something that started as a pencil drawing--I know what I'm doing so bringing it to here took about an hour:
This guy here took a few hours of paint.net but goes to show you can get something really nice with time and effort. There's also some cool maps (and a few decent illustrations as well as compass roses) in the public domain you can repurpose. For instance, I needed a tournament grounds thing and I was like "there has to be one of these from Europe at some point" and low and behold
Finally, you can a save a word document as a simple PDF with just MSWord or OpenDocument, although I have to stress simple. This includes page backgrounds (fan product use whatever, otherwise there are good stock page backgrounds) but expect to get frustrated for any big document and add the page background last (using the "behind words" word wrap option).
Good luck and have fun! :D
Check out free PDFs for my designs (cyberpunk superheroic D&D 5E, eastern fantasy noir steampunk D&D 5E, and post-apocalyptic D&D 5E!) at https://mikemyler.com/ !
Always always ALWAYS start small. Build a little town where your PCs all end up, or a neighborhood in a big city where they can't yet progress beyond because they need to do other things, or a small dungeon they need to clear before they go back into the 'main world.' Get a feel for the place as a whole and then move beyond it to flesh out the details. I've always found that trying to figure out everything right off the bat leads to writer's block.
Also remember that you don't have to build this world in a linear fashion. If you're also looking to write stories set in this world, write some vignettes and short stories that capture the culture and the atmosphere of certain locations, that you can use as a base for stitching the world together as a whole. Work on it piecemeal until you have a more 'complete' world that you can then get into details for.
If you're really into this one aspect of the world and want to go down that rabbit hole, do so. Design every aspect of that thing even if most of it is never going to come up. There's no wrong way to build a whole world, for either DnD or written stories, but I've always found that starting with a small, contained location and then building outwards works the best.
I tend to start at both ends. Slapping down cosmology and a general theme for the world really helps me dig in and get into starting something small. Working from both ends can be really helpful; if you know there's a huge mountain range nearby, it gives you some idea of the problems and resources the city or town you're really working on can have. Big mountains nearby? Is the town in the rain shadow or not? If it's in the rain shadow, the town gets a lot of water. If not, it's in a dry shrubland or even a desert. Are those mountains volcanic or an upthrust or are they literally the bones of a sleeping giant? Upthrusts mean salt and sedimentary deposits, volcanoes mean iron, quartz, and gold, sleeping giant or dragon bones could mean anything at all. This all changes the town's behavior. Extra rain and an upthrust mountain range means more quicklime pits, and more quicklime pits means both more alchemists and more crops.
Just remember that once you make a decision, no matter what scale, it sticks with the world all the way through and will change everything - the addition of a flying race has huge implications on how your world wages war, delivers goods, and keeps in touch with itself. It eliminates castles as a workable defensive fortification, intensifies communication, shrinks the world by enhancing rulership capacity, and makes maps far more accurate. Actual [logistically] useful mounts do this, as well.