Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 1149320" data-attributes="member: 172">I've never been big on the "bottom up" approach. Even my first fledgeling worlds in 8th grade had me drawing region maps and nations first. None of this "start an adventure and build out" stuff for me... no sir! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />As I've grown older, I've refined my top-down technique. I generally go in this order with my world tinkering ideas:- Major Concepts: Ask the big questions before you even start drawing a map:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">What feel do I want? Cultures, campaign style, etc.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">What types of villains do I want there to be?</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">What other types of major powers do I want?</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">What are the major races</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Are there any "world hooks", i.e., major notable features of the campaign.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">What is the general cosmology and history of the game like</li> </ul>Then I make a map. I do the above first to give me an idea of what to look for in a map, otherwise I am just randomly searching. Of course, once you make the map, you can naturally be inspired with other items, but I generally find it helpful to have a few ideas going in.For my maps, I use Profantasy's Fractal Terrains to provide a basic world map, and then export things to CC2 to flesh it out. There is not a better tool or easier way to do your geography than this.After I have a map, I start to flesh out who is where, and start to work out the history and relationships. History and location are strongly linked, and location is sometimes hard to pin down without a visual represenatation. So the two are sort of linked.As I am developing that, I try to keep an eye to PC activities, and make as many regions as possible that would have activities for the players.After that, I generally jump to some more specific regions (a limited amount at first... the more detailed you get, the more time it takes) and start to flesh them out with playable aspects of the game. Cities, towns, local conflicts and recent developments, etc.Then I sort of return to the top and do it again, jimmying things around to make things fit better, explain things better that happened at lower levels, etc. It may take a few passes this way before I consider a world playable.I have tinkered with a few worlds this way. My mainstay world like this was made about 15-20 years ago, and I was still working on it. But I have run games in other worlds as well.I find the AD&D 2e World Builder's Guidebook an extremely useful reference for world building, as it has lots of idea seeds and really helps you flesh out a world with details.Edit: Here's my latest world building project, sort of on the back-burner since I have been running my Second World campaign:<a href="http://members.tripod.com/~sangrolu/newworld.html" target="_blank">http://members.tripod.com/~sangrolu/newworld.html</a></blockquote>

Verification