D&D 5E What do I need to build a world?

[not-so-newguy]

"Core Assumptions" on Page 9 of the DM's guide might be helpful.

 

[Jester David]

I want to build my own world, as so many who play D&D do. My question is, what are the bare basics for the world to be playable?

1) Map of immediate area
2) Name for a couple places in said area
3) Vague ideas of the concept for the world if not generic fantasy

You can go really bare bones if that's what you want. You're not necessarily building a world so much as building a location and then expanding outworld.
(This is known as Inside-Out or Bottom-Up worldbuilding.)

You can go as small as a village around a small fortification by some dungeon (see Keep on the Borderland or Village of Hommlet). Or a little bigger like a province in a kingdom or small nation. Or even a moderate-sized city.

So far I plan on not having Dragonborn or Arracockra, but the rest of the races will be around.

Cool.
Just communicate that to your players well ahead of time. A one-page handout is usually good with any other limits or house rules.

I have a pantheon, though they pretty much have a 'Mount Olympus' type plane where they all live, as I don't think I will be playing with Planes too much.

Also fine as well. Just describing the planes as "the other world" or "heavenly realms" is often enough.

So, all of this being considered, what do you think I should work out before I try running a quest in this world? I might be able to do so now, but I wouldn't mind having some experienced people check my work. Am I missing anything specific that you would include in your world building process?

Well… you can literally write a book on worldbuilding. (Shameless plug) It's a big topic. But it really doesn't have to be.

I like to consider some elements like how all the classes, races, and now backgrounds fit into the world. If a player says "I'm a holy warrior who found religion after a life of crime: a paladin with the criminal background who used to be a member of the local thieves' guild" you need to know the god a paladin would worship, what's roughly illegal, and the details of the thieves' guild.
But you can also have your players help with that. When the player says the above, you can ask "What was the name of the guild?" or say "Sure. They operate out of the sewers of the city to the north. What's it called?" Let them do some of the work and incorporate it into what you're designing.

Before you actually start adventuring it helps to know a few of the names and details of the local business. The name of the inn, local problems, where people buy arms and armour, what is the town known for, etc.

Getting a map is also good. If it's just for a homegame you can probably steal/borrow one. Wander around the Cartographer's Guild or DeviantArt and see what people are sharing.

 

[ccs]

Paper, pencil, a few rough ideas. That's how it all starts.

You should also consider the people your actually playing with. Will they care about xyz? Will they enjoy it?

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

It’s tempting to go big, but these days I prefer starting with a small area. I’d rather work on a more vividly realized local area than a broadly written giant area.

When homebrewing, I think it’s important to look at what your players enjoy. I created a city with lots of intricate social connections and maneuverings, but the campaign ended up tanking in part because the PCs just wanted to cause some trouble, kill things, and take their stuff. It got ugly as I got more and more frustrated, and just made encounters more and more challenging.

One thing I do in my settings is to develop what makes it different from the standard Tolkien/Forgotten Realms/Greyhawk fantasy mode. What’s the hook that makes the world stand out?

 

[Draegn]

Start with a small area. No larger than the distance your players can walk or ride to and return to their "home town" in a single day. If you say that there is a "city of sin" or whatever 1000 miles away, your players will want to eventually go there.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

A lot of dirt.

It's a good idea to have a core concept that flavors your world. Know your pantheon and basic cosmology. Know who the major powers are in the area you're going to start play in. After that, though I'd start small. Detail a villiage, a nearby city, the country they're in, and maybe nearby countries, getting less detailed with each step. Include the known threats and possible adventure locations.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I want to build my own world, as so many who play D&D do. My question is, what are the bare basics for the world to be playable?

In plane-hopping games, I've created worlds from scratch as I describe them to the players, staying half a step ahead of them as they explore. So you don't absolutely /need/ anything up-front. It sure can help though, so I guess you have what you need when you feel comfortable to start running it...

So, all of this being considered, what do you think I should work out before I try running a quest in this world? Am I missing anything specific that you would include in your world building process?

Starting with races and deities is a good idea, as they directly impact character generation. In 5e, you decide for the campaign to use feats or MCing or DMG modules, too. Those choices may imply some things about the world. So, really, anything that can come up at chargen: races (including where they're from and how they relate to eachother), classes (and do certain of them, most notably Clerics, Druids, Paladins & Warlock have any special meaning/expectations/issues/history in the setting), skills (are any of them particularly respected/valued or looked down on or even forbidden) & proficiencies (are there any tools not found in the world, or unusual ones that are common there), and of course, gear (any deviation from the old D&D stand-bys, are there still barbarians using stone weapons, do the people of one city have primitive firearms, is late-medieval plate armor readily available, rare, or unknown, do elves make feather-light mail from mithra[/]l, etc).

Then there's the places PCs come from. Are they all locals who have long known eachother (convenient, but it implies that adventurers are pretty common throughout the world), have they been drawn to a big city or notorious ruin or edge of some wilderness or to a port in search of adventure (little less convenient, implies that adventurers are only common in places that attract them), or have they been gathered together by some powerful patron or singled out by a prophecy or some other unique experience (heavy-handed, implies they may even be the only PC-types in the campaign). Do the characters of different races necessarily come from different lands. Are there multiple human cultures spread out over the world with different attitudes, class proclivities, technology, or even languages (rather than just common, which is a very convenient D&Dism), or is the known campaign area all in regular contact and speaking common.

When it's time to go on adventures other things come up: do adventures crop up in settled areas, do you have to go looking for them, how do people get around - walking, horseback, carrriages, caravans, magical lightning trains, sailing ships, slave galleys, elemental-powered paddle-wheel cruisers, winged mounts, flying carpets, permanent teleport circles, spelljammers, gates.

What are the sources of adventure: ancient ruins, burgeoning evils, foreign plots, criminal conspiracies, dangerous wilderness exploration?

 

[Lanliss]

Ok, I am thinking of having the gods be one of the primary quest givers, and not just to clerics. They are a small pantheon, weakened by the recent war, and cannot handle everything themselves, though they will not necessarily make it evident that they are gods when giving the quest.

As far as the races, a recent thread inspired me to make the halflings a tribal race, who will build familial Zoos, with each family having their own little pack of animals to be inherited by the eldest child on the death of the current leader.

Forest Gnomes, when not a PC, will probably all be Druids or rangers, because of their lifestyle out in nature.

The majority of races will have pulled together, mostly leaving their hostilities behind. When nature is waging its own little war on sentience you can't be picky about your allies.

I might make all elves a more arrogant race. They are more in touch with nature, and have used this to build greater empires, and this lends itself towards them believing much more readily that they are the best race.

 

[discosoc]

There are two main ways of building a world. Top-down and bottom-up.

Top-down: Basically start by detailing all kinds of lore and maps, as well as the geography of the continent or entire world. You write up information about each race, create elaborate pantheons, etc.. This approach is highly detailed, and takes a lot of time to make into a workable setting that you can start playing in, because you're spending so much effort on stuff that won't have a direct impact on your immediate games.

Bottom-up: This is where you start by writing details of the region you will be playing in (perhaps a small town and the surrounding countryside), quick notes about mechanics-related lore (deity names and associated domains, etc), and then some very broad descriptions about how major forces in the world interact. You can also quickly describe the unique or core feature of the world, without getting into too much detail (most potential mages are rounded up and taken to the capital for training, but in reality are used in labor camps where they create magic weapons and defenses for The Secret Shadow War, which is largely unknown to the general population). With this approach, you want to focus your details on the places where the group is adventuring, and only worry about expanding the world lore when the players actually start going to new places.

I think most players gravitate towards the top-down approach and never really get anywhere after the initial burst of inspiration. The settings that seem to be the most successful for homebrew stuff usually start small and grow over time.

 

[TerraDave]

The secret of this: you can do it anyway you want to.

Then, you need to have that combination of will and enthusiasm to sustain it when your players start to make contact with it.