Worlds of Design: Worldbuilding 101 (Part 1)

If you want to make up your own adventures, your own campaign, instead of using something someone else wrote, then sooner or later you’ll need to approach world building. This is “beginners notes” for world building, it's not comprehensive. It's primarily for gamers, but much of it applies to fiction writers too.

Picture courtesy of Pixabay.​

“Nobody believes me when I say that my long book is an attempt to create a world in which a form of language agreeable to my personal aesthetic might seem real. But it is true.” - J. R. R. Tolkien

“Every moment of a science fiction story must represent the triumph of writing over worldbuilding.” M. John Harrison (author of more than 20 novels)

Some people devote big chunks of their lives to world building. Some fantasy or SF novelists have J.R.R. Tolkien in mind (see quote above), and how much time he spent on world building. Remember that a game world is a way to help people write their own stories, or to help you write your own story if you choose, so don't overdo the world-building. Your world is an adjunct to your game, not the goal. It's a means to an end, not an end in itself, unless you're very unusual. Read Harrison’s quote above, if you haven’t yet.

A mistake that many beginners make is to spend vast amounts of time on the world and not get around to what really matters, which is the game or the story. Most people can take the simple route. My friend Jeffro says you only need to know six things about the world to start the adventure. He doesn't specify categories; I don't think he was thinking in categories. In other words, you only need to know enough to let the adventure push forward. You don't need to know all the details about the world. Nonetheless, here are some questions you can ask yourself about a (fantasy) world.

• What are the players going to DO?
• Who are the main enemies?
• Terrain? (Do you NEED a map?)
• Is there “a war on?”
• Who/what dominates the local area?
• How “present” are the gods?
• Is there a great mystery?
• How much does magic influence the world?
• How common are adventurers?
• What is the speed of communication and transport?

Notice that I don’t mention the history of the world. Insofar as the history doesn’t make a difference to the players, why spend a lot of time on it?

What are the players going to do?

The first question is what are the players going to do? For the majority of game players, I think, games are about doing. They're not there to admire your world, and we can say that of novels as well. Even if you're talking about an entire world, it's part of a novel: what's important are the events of the novel. Occasionally the worlds are so striking that people are there in part to admire that - Larry Niven's Ringworld comes to mind. Tolkien’s world is often admired (in part because of the detail?), and so forth. But this is exceptional.

Who are the main enemies?

This can be anything from individual villains to entire nations or species. Individual villains can be more personal, more “me against him (or her)”. I'm going to get this guy or this girl no matter what. The large villains such as a nation or species can provide the feeling of being overwhelming, of inevitable failure or despair, and that may be a feeling you want introduced your game. I think the Underdark of early editions of D&D existed mainly so Drow could be a major enemy.

What's the terrain and do you need a map?

You probably need a local map (which will have terrain features) but not a world map. Games need a local map because players move about in it; novels often get away only with a large-scale map (so as not to give details away). Of course, if you're doing an RPG you can add to the local map as necessary and you can decide whether the new areas are mountains or something else. Maps are fun, on the other hand, if you make the entire world map now - that'll be much larger than you think- you limit yourself. Science fiction and fantasy author Glenn Cook (the Black Company stories among many others) doesn't like maps because they constrain what he's writing. So he doesn't provide many maps and it's hard to follow exactly where people are, because he's not worried about that he's worried about the events of the novel. Think about that.

Is there a war on?

War is a straightforward and immediate cause of action. It can be a generalized war on evil or can be much more specific. I always think of fantasy role-playing games as good against bad and that's the way I play. War also provides opportunities for action such as scouting the don't usually exist in peace time. War provides a focus that some campaigns lack.

Communication & Transport

I do want to mention communications and transport, which are two big questions. How fast is communication and how fast is transport? In science fiction we can have instantaneous communication, and much slower movement, though not the reverse of course. Movement speed is also communication speed in fantasy. Both are usually slow, as in a medieval world, but it doesn't have to be that way. Imagine a fantasy world with magical teleportation to any civilized part of the world readily available. . .

We'll come back to communication, transport, and the other worldbuilding questions in the next article.

 

[Li Shenron]

If you want to make up your own adventures, your own campaign, instead of using something someone else wrote, then sooner or later you’ll need to approach world building. This is “beginners notes” for world building, it's not comprehensive. It's primarily for gamers, but much of it applies to fiction writers too.

View attachment 122087
Picture courtesy of Pixabay.​

Some people devote big chunks of their lives to world building. Some fantasy or SF novelists have J.R.R. Tolkien in mind (see quote above), and how much time he spent on world building. Remember that a game world is a way to help people write their own stories, or to help you write your own story if you choose, so don't overdo the world-building. Your world is an adjunct to your game, not the goal. It's a means to an end, not an end in itself, unless you're very unusual. Read Harrison’s quote above, if you haven’t yet.

A mistake that many beginners make is to spend vast amounts of time on the world and not get around to what really matters, which is the game or the story. Most people can take the simple route. My friend Jeffro says you only need to know six things about the world to start the adventure. He doesn't specify categories; I don't think he was thinking in categories. In other words, you only need to know enough to let the adventure push forward. You don't need to know all the details about the world.

Sorry, NO!

You just can't title a thread "Worldbuilding 101" where your key idea is to claim worldbuilding is bad and useless and should not be done. That's like starting a conversation claiming you'll teach gourmet cooking, then just tell everyone what's the best way to get fast food. Or a primer on how to best invest your money that says "screw it, you don't need money, here's a list of things that will make you more happy".

Despite the fact that your suggestions ARE actually GOOD for DMing, I find the thread insulting, almost fraudulent, simply because of the title.

Worldbuilding is a side hobby of itself, like miniature painting. You don't do it because it's useful, you do it because you like doing it. How would it feel to start a thread Miniature Painting 101, and go "miniature painting is slow and expensive, you don't need it to play D&D, just use markers"?

Nobody in the miniature painting hobby thinks they can't play D&D without it, and similarly worldbuilding is an unnecessary extra, but it is never a mistake if someone actually does it for their own enjoyment. And who knows once in a while sometimes that someone could be a Tolkien, an Asimov or a Greenwood, and their hobby become something much bigger than expected!

 

[hawkeyefan]

Contradictions that, in this situation where in theory "all the evidence" is already present, are 100% preventable and thus should absolutely never happen in the first place.

Put another way - and I've had this happen - if I-as-player take some bit of setting history or lore and base some aspect of my play on it, then later the DM retcons that history or lore and makes it something different, I think I'm justified in feeling I've been wasting my time for however long I've been playing that character.

Do you have a specific example of this hypothetical?

I’d expect that, as with anything, a conversation could be had to work it out.

Also, how would you as a player know if something is a retcon versus it being the way the GM always intended it when he wrote his Silmarillion, and you/your character only just learned the truth?

 

[Fenris-77]

Despite the fact that your suggestions ARE actually GOOD for DMing, I find the thread insulting, almost fraudulent, simply because of the title.

Fraudulent? Insulting? Really. I'll pick this back up...

Worldbuilding is a side hobby of itself, like miniature painting. You don't do it because it's useful, you do it because you like doing it.

Well, yeah, sure. World Building is a hobby, you are correct. However, what is at issue is world building for an RPG campaign. Perhaps we should take the caps off and call it practical world building. And practical world building is pretty obviously not what you're talking about. You don't need the Silmarillion to play a campaign. It's a whole lot of time and effort, very little of which speaks directly to running a good game in many cases. What you need is one good adventure location, some good factions and NPCS, and a good idea what the dangers facing the world and party are (Dungeon World calls those fronts). You tie the characters in, maybe expand a bit to attach what you have to the character designs, and you have enough to start. Everything else is nice, but extra.

I'm not suggesting you shouldn't sit down and bang out pages on your world's cosmology, and gin up a nice map and detail all the nooks and crannies of that map. You enjoy, it makes you happy, of course you should do that. However, what people need to to do to run a campaign isn't what you like to do, and telling those people to do what you do is, well, the opposite of helpful. Not to start a campaign anyway. It isn't fraudulent or insulting to anyone to drill down to the essence of what's necessary in a design process. It's not ruining anyone's fun, it's just indexing what the most important moving parts are.

 

[Lanefan]

Honest question here. Do you not think that this reaction is a little bit out-sized compared to the problem? I understand being upset, and I'm not saying its nothing, but this seems strong.

Maybe, but one doesn't like to see one's experiences and-or memories invalidated.

 

[Fenris-77]

Maybe, but one doesn't like to see one's experiences and-or memories invalidated.

No, obviously not, that sucks. I also have no idea exactly what the impact on your character was either, or why the decision was made, which is why I asked. Having to, or worse deciding to, retcon elements of the fiction that bear directly on character concept isn't something I'd normally recommend or do myself. I'd have to have a really pressing reason to do that.

 

[Lanefan]

Do you have a specific example of this hypothetical?

Yes, though it's a long story; actually involving many characters (not just mine) and a very long run of play.

I’d expect that, as with anything, a conversation could be had to work it out.

Not so easily this time; the DM had - it seemed - been planning for some time that history as we knew it was going to be in some ways wiped out and replaced with something else; which happened some ten years (real time) into the campaign. This pretty much means so much for some characters' backstories both pre-adventuring and during adventuring (though to be fair some reparation efforts have been made since) and so much for any outside-of-adventuring character development e.g. making contacts etc. as many of those contacts no longer exist.

Some characters - two in particular, one is mine - were affected much more than others, as the histories (and geography!) of some parts of the world were not all disrupted to the same extent as others. (some parts of the world never noticed a thing until really odd reports started coming in from foreign lands)

EDIT to add: worth noting all the players have multiple characters in this campaign, and not all characters even of the same player were affected equally

Also, how would you as a player know if something is a retcon versus it being the way the GM always intended it when he wrote his Silmarillion, and you/your character only just learned the truth?

Because usually the DM will say so.

Retcons can be much smaller, too. I'm a big believer in precedent, for example, when it comes to DM rulings: if something works in a certain way once then it should work that way for the duration of the campaign. Even if some rule is later changed it doesn't and shouldn't invalidate what went before, it stands as played at the time.

In other words, no retconning of this session next session because a ruling was wrong; you're stuck with it, so get it right the first time.

 

[lewpuls]

Sigh. My title was "Getting Started with World Building". As sometimes happens, the editor changed the title, and as sometimes happens, his title may have been misleading.

I did not say worldbuilding is bad and useless and should not be done. I said the game is much more important than the world. And that you can waste a lot of time on building too much too soon.

If this offends you, I can only say that offense is taken, not given.

Sorry, NO!

You just can't title a thread "Worldbuilding 101" where your key idea is to claim worldbuilding is bad and useless and should not be done.

 

[Lanefan]

I did not say worldbuilding is bad and useless and should not be done.

In so many words, no you didn't. In tone? Well, that's perhaps a more open question....

I said the game is much more important than the world. And that you can waste a lot of time on building too much too soon.

You can waste a lot of time, to be sure, but it's immensely better to have too much prepared than too little.

 

[Fenris-77]

You can waste a lot of time, to be sure, but it's immensely better to have too much prepared than too little.

That's true, for sure, but I don't know that the immense open whiteboard space of deep world building is where 'preparation' actually happens. Not once you get past a pretty low bar anyway,

 

[dwayne]

It works so as to help the gm more than anything but only if the players take an interest in the setting it's self. It is all for nothing if they just slump along and caring and are just kill take the treasure and move on not even taking interest enough to be murder hobos.