World Building - Best guides

[Mercurius]

I'm designing a class on World Building for my private high school that I will be teaching in a couple months and I am looking for resources. I have a ton of stuff already, including quite a few RPG books dedicated to world building plus GM guides with major world building chapters, and a few non-RPG related books. But I wanted to ask the good folks at EN World for their favorite world building guides.

There are no real limitations to this question - it can be RPG books, chapters within books, web pages, non-RPG books, or just about anything. But I do want it to relate strongly with world building; in other words, try to avoid saying "The Encyclopedia Britannica is useful"; yes, it is, but so is Wikipedia and a million other sources. In other words, try to keep the focus on books/chapters/articles/websites that are specifically about world building. If there is a book or other resource that is just so useful that you can't help yourself, feel free to post it!

Because I will likely have a lot of what people mention I will refrain from "have that" responses. Thanks in advance.

 

[Starman]

Expeditious Retreat has some excellent books for that - A Magical Medieval Society, Magical Society: Silk Road, Magical Society: Ecology and Culture.

 

[creatorlars]

Love love this list, perfect for a classroom setting!
Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions

Also 2nd ed D&D's "Worldbuilder's Guidebook"

 

[Bluenose]

I'll agree on the Expeditious Retreat books; very good guides. I'll add [ame="http://www.amazon.co.uk/World-building-Science-fiction-writing-Stephen/dp/0898797071/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1287653463&sr=8-7"]this [/ame]even though it's out of print and hard to get hold of. There are quite a few associated with various Science Fiction games; World Builders' Handbook for MegaTraveller, GURPS Space, Savage Worlds Fantasy World Builder Toolkit & SF World builder Toolkit.

 

[White Tornado]

I really like "Maps Workshop - Developing the Fictional World through Mapping" by Holly Lisle. It's just four pages, but it inspired my current homebrew world. I can't provide the url right now, but it's somewhere on [FONT=&quot]http://hollylisle.com[/FONT].

I also like Creating a Realistic Fantasy World

(and the Wikipedia article on Worldbuilding is helpful, too )

 

[Hand of Evil]

Love love this list, perfect for a classroom setting!
Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions

Second this.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

The ones that I have are:

A Magical Medieval Society
Magical Society: Silk Road
Magical Society: Ecology and Culture
World Builder's Guidebook

I think that all 4 have their uses and are relatively different from each other.

Olaf the Stout

 

[Hawke]

I highly suggest this as a way to do world building as a collaborative game:

http://www.clanwebsite.org/games/rpg/Dawn_of_Worlds_game_1_0Final.pdf

 

[Hand of Evil]

Oh, ENWorld too....see DM Advice in my sig.

 

[Mercurius]

Thanks for all the recommendations; I haven't seen anything particularly new yet, although I was reminded of the excellent and comprehensive Fantasy Worldbuilding Questions, and with one or two new links.

Hawke, I love Dawn of Worlds; I haven't played it, but plan on using it in class.

A general question: In terms of chapters within other books, which world building guidelines do you find particularly well-written?