What minor worldbuilding details have you added to your campaign world?

[Khairn]

That. Is. Awesome.

joe b.

Thanks. I usually try to to have each city or town linked through the descriptions with a particular sense. Its easier to remember for me and my players. The scented candles as a tool for measuring time just evolved during game play.

 

[Baron Opal]

The Sun and Moon are the eyes of the guardians of the mortal races. The Sun goddess gazes down upon Creation daily and observes the virtues and sins of Men. The Moon god gazes down upon Creation at night, but the night is also the time of Sleep and Death. So, His gaze also lingers upon those who have passed to ensure their safety as well. He can only look upon one world at a time, however, so His radiance is often lost to living Men.

Thus, nefarious deeds are best accomplished at night and underground.

The preeminent wizard's guild in the region is located by the sea. They, and the city that surrounds them, farm oysters. Through magical rituals and selective breeding they have managed to perfect a breed of oyster that produces a uniform grade and size of pearl when they happen to do so. Most cities mint their own coinage. This city produces "trade pearls", 100 gp each, that are used as currency for the wealthy the region over.

The fact that a 100 gp pearl is a component of a common adventuring spell was completely missed by yours truly until my players pointed it out.

 

[The_Gunslinger658]

To me, a setting really comes alive in its details. What details have you added to your game world to make it come alive? Not big picture stuff like "Sauron won" or "there are no sorcerers," I'm talking about the small stuff.

As of yesterday, a gnome baby's first word is almost always the word "why." This explains a lot about gnomes, including why so many others find them so tiresome.

Hi ya-

I am currently running a campaign in the World of Gygax er I mean Greyhawk. I am using Greyhawk as a framwork for my own world so with that said, here are a few tweaks to WoG I have enacted:

There are no Dark Elves, The Bad guy Elves in my world are called Red Elves, they have red eyes and Psi abilities. They are like the Japanese middle-ages type culture. Basically a very Anime like race.

Greyhawk City is the Capital of the Neo-Orion Empire, a just and kind Empire that rules about 25% of the surrounding area.

Well there my tweaks to WoG.

Scott

 

[Wombat]

One time, for fun, I pulled out a medieval recipe book and made munchies for our group.

After that there was a lot of debate over what specific foods were served by which taverns.

Since then, about every 3-5 sessions, someone will bring in "food from X tavern".

Kinda brings the whole thing home

 

[paradox42]

I have a lot of little details like this in my main homebrew. Some are immediately obvious, with actual mechanical consequences; others less so.

Halflings don't exist in the setting. Way back in the prehistory of the world, they used to, but they emigrated to found their own world long ago and nobody today knows where they went (very few are even aware that a race of small people called 'Halflings' ever existed in fact).

Fey don't exist at all on the Material Plane of this setting, though they do exist in other planes and even on alternate Material Planes. Sages have theorized that the catastrophe (the setting is best described as post-post-apocalyptic) called the Annihilation so traumatized the world and its natural balance that all the Fey that used to live there died, and with none left to repopulate afterward when the world began to heal- there aren't any today.

Elves have pregnancies lasting two years.

One elf subrace, known for their extremely high power and also for their extreme tempers and arrogance as a result, secretly has human "blood" far back in its prehistoric ancestry- the only signs of which today are the facts that (A) males can grow facial hair, and (B) the race "breeds true" with both humans and other elves- that is, a child of a super-elf with either a regular elf or a human always results in a super-elf. Due to the racial arrogance though, it's not generally a good idea to speculate about those signs in front of a super-elf...

Minotaurs don't have body fat. A well-fed minotaur just looks more muscular and strong than one who hasn't eaten as well. This is because the race was originally bred as weapons of war deep in the Abyss, and are descendents of soldiers left behind by a demonic invasion many tens of thousands of years ago, though no minotaur alive today knows this.

The clergy of the god (sometimes goddess) of Change not only have a custom of electing the head priest of the entire religion every year (in Catholic terms, this would be like electing a new pope every single year with every single priest from the greenest acolyte to the oldest teacher casting a vote), but that priest's first duty upon being elected is to select the religion's official color scheme for the year. Thus, one year the priests and temples are all decorated in red and silver, while the next it's yellow, blue, and orange. This has led to actual mechanical consequences in the form of the "Change Color" spells, which are on the Cleric list. The 1st level version can change inanimate objects only, while the 2nd-level version can change creatures too.

Roadkill reminded me of another one that's so ingrained I never even think about it anymore. The calendar of the world has 16 months of 24 days each, for a total of 384 days- each season containing exactly 4 months and 96 days. The suspicious regularity of this was not a result of divine creation (though some on the modern world think it is), but rather that the Ancient mortals of the Golden Age before the Annihilation were so powerful that they actually altered the world's orbit, as well as the sun's output, to make the standard year agree better with their (hexidecimal) number system.

And regarding that number system, the digits past nine go (in order): dec, mon, dux, trek, quat, fin. (Because the system is hexidecimal, their "ten" is our "sixteen" and their "sixteen" is our "twenty-two.") I drop these extra digits into game conversation now and again when something using the Ancient number system is conversing with modern PCs, and it's always worth some amusement. Particular favorites of mine are when the something in question talks percentages- for example, "75%" in hexidecimal is actually less than half.

 

[Ashy]

I've got lots, but here's one that leaps instantly to mind:

"The One" (i.e. the One True God) is the only diety in my world. His symbol looks just like a "O"; as such, a dwarven baker invented a snack made from potatoes that look just like onion rings... Folks in the church LOVE 'EM...

 

[paradox42]

In my Greyhawk campaign, there's a different visual effect for the followers of various gods' undead turning. Pholtus's is light radiating out from the skeleton's body, while Zagyg's is a kazoo sound while the skeleton's head spins around and pops off. Those are the only two I've thought up (the only two PC clerics).

I'm Cleo!

LOL @ Zagyg's effect! That's priceless. I ought to do something similar for my world, since I don't use the Positive Energy=Good/Negative Energy=Evil duality. Only gods who actually dislike undead grant Turn Undead to clerics.

 

[Ace]

As in Nifft's game an arcane mark cannot be forged. This is because it carries the essence of caster -- his/her/its magic DNA if you will. There really isn't any magic subtle enough to copy it.

All spontaneous arcane casters are using a related form of magic.

 

[reason]

...

Details are what make it all worth the while.

http://www.principiainfecta.com/archives/2005/03/worn_and_scratc.php

On warm days fisherfolk repair their nets and lines on the cobbled streets and seafront by the berths, quays and jetties. As the seasons come and go, names are scratched on the cobbles only to be smoothed by the feet of the next generation of seafarers and cityfolk. Almost every cobblestone bears a worn, knife-etched name where the fisherfolk congregate.

http://www.principiainfecta.com/archives/2006/01/tall_markers_on.php

The streets of the City Within are wide and solidly paved in grey stone. At each crossing of ways stands a marker; a tall iron rod set into a square stone base, each topped by a different design. Here a comical merchant figure or iron beckoning hand, there ten wooden balls in a ring or a pennent in green and brown. These markers serve the same purpose as route markers on the Known Roads; they can be clearly seen over the heads of a crowd and help to keep cityfolk from the Unmarked Ways that lead to the Farthest City - or from what passes for unfriendly Watch blades in those closest parts of Creation not of the Enclave.

Scrolls from generations past, lost amidst many others in the Library of the City Within, tell that marker stones once bore representations of the Traveler, the King of All the Ammand and noble families of Three Stones. All of these engravings are now of the flame of Burning Truth, however, as befits markers maintained by lesser priests of the Temple of Powers.

It's also hard and time consuming to produce good detail - which is why the best resources are those that can be mined for the sort of details that make things spring to live convincingly.

Reason
Principia Infecta

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

As in Nifft's game an arcane mark cannot be forged. This is because it carries the essence of caster -- his/her/its magic DNA if you will. There really isn't any magic subtle enough to copy it.

I thought this was already the case with arcane marks? Or am I remembering that wrong?