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.

 

[hawkeyefan]

It seems important to remember that the setting exists for the sake of the gameplay rather than the gameplay for the sake of the setting.

That’s a great way to put it.

I’m currently thinking about what my next game/campaign will be when our current one ends, and some of the games I’m considering have a specific setting, and others have a very minimal or build as you go kind of setting.

For the latter, as I kind of brainstorm about it, I’m keeping things loose. I have a home base type location and a nearby adventure site, and not much beyond that. Some of the NPCs in each location have a but of history, so that’s something to consider because it informs their drives and their relationship with others. But beyond that, I don’t want or need much more.

 

[dragoner]

Generally, everything has to fit in three paragraphs, and if one can't write an engaging first paragraph, do not expect anyone to read the next two. The rest is notes for the GM.

 

[TBeholder]

Well, that's an interesting example, innit? Lets unpack shall we, because I do think it illustrates your point well, but it also (oddly) illustrates something like the opposite. Here's my first point, PCs find coin all the time. Unless you give them a reason to ask, they're never going to ask about the coins. Why would they? OK, so every now and then a PC might ask out of the blue, but mostly they won't, and I don't really think that's a controversial thing to say.

If I were that DM, I would telegraph the potential importance of the coins, probably using an adjective or two, perhaps old and interesting, or whatever. Without some telegraphing the players don't know to ask and are then either left asking about bloody everything, just in case, or asking about nothing, which is probably more likely.

It's a good example, indeed. Players don't ask details, GM doesn't tell… unless HINT HINT NUDGE NUDGE, it's not a railroad, just wheel marks ground into cobblestones.
Now suppose the detail level is always 1 step higher. That is, specific type of coins found in a given area is randomly generated all the time, unless either degenerate case (small foreign coin is practically absent, for lack of foreign sailors or other small spenders anywhere nearby) or overwritten by the plot ("It's a golden what? Wait, there was that merchant from the Mountain Kingdom who disappeared, right?").
This would both paint the setting a little better (you find the weirdest crap in a port, not so much in a deep rustic province) and make players pay attention, no?