Starting your Worldbuilding
We've already built the foundation to launch a campaign. You know what you have to know to get the game rolling, but your players are curious sorts, they like to explore every nook and cranny. They have questions about the lore, and you don’t have all the answers, and you shouldn’t, you don’t even have all the answers about the world you live in. Why would you have all of them about a world you made up for fun? Now comes two options, you can tell your players that you have only thought about the functionality of the world. Just enough to move you forward, to craft the narrative you have all been enjoying. That you heard what they wanted and brought as much of that into the game as you felt was reasonable for your world, but, haven’t given the far wider world any additional context. However, now with the questions is to reach out, to show more of the world. Help engross your players (and maybe have them contribute more, this can be the Table’s main world, something you all build on anytime someone DMs.) I find that in approaching world building there are two main camps, there may be more slightly smaller ones, but the two big guys I am aware of, and for lack of terms, I dub them: Snapshot Builders, and Grand Architects. Now, to be a really good World Builder you will have to wear the badge, sash, and hat of both roles, but you can favor one over the other, I personally am much more of a Snapshot Builder, and I think one of the biggest flaws of most new world builders is the scale at which they start. To give some more context to the terms: SnapShot Builder: Someone who constructs set pieces of a world and then connects them together, or builds a world by connecting several campaigns to occupy the same place. Grand Architects: Someone who takes a top down look, building every detail as accurate as they can, making accurate timelines from the beginning of time, having dozens of gods already made, nations, a full map, list of dungeons and legendary heroes. I like the idea of building a society and then sort of placing it in the world, like interlocking bricks, allowing them to build off of one another slowly. In one game, the players could go through a dense forest filled with hassel and spooky monsters, but, quickly leave after going through the tomb of Bella, the mistress of Beasts. And in another game, the players could start out in a city lost to time, forgotten among the foliage, protected by a fearsome guardian monster, and it would be a lot of fun, for me personally, just to sneak the city into the thick forest the players played in with different characters, maybe even allow them to revisit the Tomb. In this way, of layering campaigns, and adding details each time, you can slowly create a more rich world every time you run a game. Likewise, if you’re a big snapshot builder, one day while you are casually working out an idea you have, you can just build a dungeon, and keep it in your back pocket and drop it in a world anytime you need it. Sometimes the lines need to be hand waved away, and smoothed out a lot to make the biomes blend, but, I find the way of designing smaller set pieces and cultures and then interconnecting them to be a lot more rewarding, and easier to do then trying to build entire worlds at a time. It also allows for expansions. Say, the party arrives at a village called Lor’Keth, the shaded village, the humans here have taken on a grey skin tone, are all bald, or nearly so, they are lithe, but not malnourished, and governed by a stern ruling class of no one species, it can be human, or strange Mushroom man, so long as it abides by a firm stance of honor and fulfillment by good works. But the village is only a small time stop for them. In a latter campaign they could reviest the village that lies in the shades of the mountain, and head into the Empire of Gromdell, and find that this is the cultural norm, that this firm code about self-fulfillment by good works is pervasive throughout the empire, that this change to humanity with the borders, the coloration and hair loss is an effect of some magic water drunken by the devote of the state religion, and more then that it extends to all humanoid creatures. The idea was the one village, and as the players grew to be interested in the village, it expanded, it branched out into the wider world. It grew, like a mold slowly spreading, feeding off of player’s interest. If the players should show no interest in the strangeness of Lor’Keth, it could be forgotten as a little town tucked into the base of a mountain, waiting to be explored. You would never build Gromdell, and never worry about it. However, if you are more of a Grand Architect you would have started with The Empire of Gromdell, and named a few prominent locations, maybe a national hero or two to really flesh it out - Give them some special feast or holiday. Detailed the state religion, decide that the empire has three kings, and an Emperor. The three kings are the leaders of the faith, the chosen heir of the Senate and Governors (often time a hero), and the Emperor’s next in line kin. When the Emperor dies the Three Kings then must elect from themselves who will be the next Emperor, and their throne of king passes down to the next in line so on and so forth. Probably a few dozen pages of notes, maps, and so on, but once the Player’s stumble upon Lor’keth, they find it unengaging and never want to reviest it. So now you have notes for a what if in a later game, but you may have wasted time for the game you are in now. You could have spent that prepping more encounters, but instead you build an Empire the player’s aren’t interested in. Now in my opinion, a combination of both positions works best. I say use Snapshots to build set pieces for the game, and intrigue players in stuff, however, if they like it put on your Grand Architect Hat and really get to work. While in Grand Architect mode, you will probably find yourself planting seeds for future developments, such as foreign relationships, immigration and integration, and dealing with foreign merchants. The other thing that I think is a huge boon for fleshing out the world, at least in a fantasy setting which is clearly the bulk of what I was using as examples here (Though, it is applicable to Sci-Fi settings as well) is development. Rather, how a group developed, and how species formed, this one is hugely applicable to any setting that has any outlandish elements, Sci-Fi, Horror, or Fantasy. Even modern if you want to add some supernatural or paranormal elements. For lack of terms in the general zeitgeist of the table top communities I look at, let me call them this: Tay’s 1st and 2nd Ponderings of World Building, or for Short, Tay’s 1st and 2nd Questions. Tay's 1st Pondering How did they advance culturally and develop technologically? There are a plethora of answers that can lead to different structures. If you are asking this about a culture or group you already made, it may help flesh out more of their society, more of their values. Answers can be things as mundane as the ages of tools, started with stone, went to bronze, then iron, and are now moving towards machinery. Or it could be that they developed a magic that allows them to sing nature into shape, allowing them to sing trees into houses and fields into growing wheat or pineapples or whatever. Maybe somewhere in the middle, or maybe they worship a living deity that provided what they needed to carry out his instructions. This simple pondering can also lead into spiraling out and creating magical weapons and wonders that suit the society. Tay’s 2nd Pondering The people in a society come from somewhere, where did these people come from? Now it seems like a dumb question, but it helps a lot. For one, it posies you to decide on a few things; first and foremost, who lives here. Is it 99.999% one sentient species, or is the demographic a lot harder to nail down due to constant population shifts? If they are more than one species, can they interbreed? What happens to the half-spawns? If they can’t breed, does society look down on them being together? How did the different species in the society come together? Did they used to be one population of one homogeneous species that took in refugees? Or was there some sort of magical or scientific accident that altered a portion of the population so much that they are now two separate species? I always liked the idea of a society of two subspecies of Elfen like creature. One that, over generations of magical indulgence, grew softer. The other, more working toilers, growing harder and bulkier. But both still having the anglier and fine features, the sharp ears, sharp noses, and the glassy eyes of an elf. One, well toned and strong of body as opposed to the soft and lithe one an elf normally has. I hope these help as a more in-depth world building experience, or at least added something. If you want me to give you more questions to ponder about World Building, don’t hesitate to ask. What are your worldbuilding ponderings? Read the full article