Good sources for making a Homebrew World

[Jakar]

Hey there guys and gals and all in between.

I have finally bitten the bullet and have begun to make my own world.

Does anyone know of any good books, websites etc that will give me a few ideas and a few guidelines on how to go about it?

Cheers

Col

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe is unbelievably good and useful. I would start there before looking anywhere else.

 

[Ry]

A few people found my amusement park analogy helpful as a way to go from cool setting idea to game material.

 

[John Morrow]

Does anyone know of any good books, websites etc that will give me a few ideas and a few guidelines on how to go about it?

Here are a few good links to check out (that lean toward creating worlds that are more realistic than fantastic):

http://www.sfwa.org/writing/worldbuilding1.htm
http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/9329/wcreate.pdf
http://curriculum.calstatela.edu/courses/builders/
http://web.archive.org/web/20020202....fi/~vesanto/link.useful/worlds/citysize.html
http://www.cix.co.uk/~morven/worldkit/index.html
http://www.io.com/~sjohn/demog.htm

 

[bodhi]

Nightcloak's GM's Notebook

 

[Psion]

If you can dig up a copy or don't mind using the PDF version, the World Builder's Guidebook is still useful to me after all these years.

 

[Desdichado]

Ray Winninger's Dungeoncraft articles: the first and last resource any homebrewer needs, as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

GURPS Fantasy is very good for developing original fantasy worlds. Yes, it's not d20, but most of the book is system-less information that can be applied to any game.

Eruvian is pretty neat for developing your own campaign world. You can organize the individual components of your setting in a tree structure, it auto-generates links between the components, and you can get lots of feedback from other users - and indeed, get others to write material for your setting, too.

 

[GlassJaw]

Ray Winninger's Dungeoncraft articles: the first and last resource any homebrewer needs, as far as I'm concerned.

I'd definitely start here as well. I don't think it's the only resource you'll need but it's definitely what I'd read first before anything else.

 

[Desdichado]

I'd definitely start here as well. I don't think it's the only resource you'll need but it's definitely what I'd read first before anything else.

Well, granted, other resources can be helpful too.

But you can do pretty well with just those articles in a pinch.