Setting Creation 101: Basics

Hi. So we're doing classroom numbering again, but this time I have no idea how far these ones are going to go. YOU WERE WARNED! World building and creating a setting are two different things, so you'll forgive me if I try to avoid using the term "world building" and fail a few times. World building is the act of fleshing out the setting you've got, which is something everyone's got to do. These are the details that don't REALLY matter but enrich the game with immersion and cool fluff. What WE'RE discussing is the big old grandaddy of that thing: building a setting from scratch. Today I'm just going to go over some very basic stuff then expand on minutiae or specifics later. Unlike our discussion on villains, this one isn't going to have a ton of structure, just some numbers and labels so we can organize this a little.


A: Question why you want to create your own setting in the first place. 


Yeah sorry, I have to start with this. Before we do ANYTHING, you need to understand that this is a lot of work. Ask yourself what your personal setting brings over a prepackaged or pre-existing setting. Think of what quirk or twist your world will have that would make a complete stranger want to use this setting over another. More on that later. If all you've got to answer this is that you want to flex your creativity and collaborate with your group to make something new, then I support you a hundred percent. You just need to know that this is a long, hard road and half-assing this process can make for a really bland game. There is nothing wrong with using a prepackaged setting. Adapting a television, movie or video game setting or altering the course of history is also on the table and, though that's work, it's still less than building something from the ground up.


B: Get some inspiration from somewhere. 


C: Figure out a spark of creativity or twist for your world. 


These two are too related to discuss separately, but one doesn't necessarily require the other. Obviously, you've got to pull inspiration from somewhere. This could be wanting to do your own version of a setting from a TV show, book or movie that would be too hard to adapt directly. Or, maybe one of those things are super neat but really doesn't have enough meat in it to flesh out a whole world. Obviously you could have also just...had an idea for a setting all your own or simply begun this process because you wanted to do this. That's fine, but ask these questions of yourself anyway. This is the first step of you putting your setting above others. As for suggesting sources of inspiration, do not discount ANYTHING. 80s kid's shows turned adult or twisted a little bit can be awesome settings. Concept albums like Queensryche's "Operation: Mindcrime", Frank Zappa's "Joe's Garage", or Rush's "2112" can be immense inspiration for a piece of your world, or even the world itself. Video games are obvious inspiration, but also look into the stories of canceled games like The Brutal Ballad of Fangus Klot. Inspiration is everywhere, tune your mind to find it.

There's also the idea of taking something more typical and adding a twist to it. Even small changes to a world can have huge repercussions, and a lot of your work can be done by following those consequences logically. For me, this is the most fun part of making a world and I highly suggest you do something to shake things up so your world looks less like a typical setting. I've seen a world that simply made elves the dominant species instead of humans, and even if that were the only difference it has over a stock fantasy setting(it's not) that would be an immense difference. Instead of being seen as insular or xenophobic, Elves RULE. They're everywhere. Humans are seen as adaptable and friendly at best...and overly gregarious and pushy at worst. Elves aren't seen as willowy and slender...humans are seen as broad or even fat. Other settings like Eberron simply turn the idea of racial stereotypes on their head, with its nature-loving orcs and tribal halflings. I could go on, but the point is that, for our purposes, the "norm" exists purely for you to fuck with it. Just don't go overboard, or else the setting may prove hard to remember for some players. As usual, your group may vary.


D: Geography


Okay first off, a discussion of maps is coming later. At this stage you don't necessarily need to sit down and make one. You DO, however, need to consider how your world is built. This goes hand in hand with placing kingdoms and cities of course, but thinking about just the lay of the land and its weather can help with that. A normal world has varied biomes, but keep in mind that you don't have to do that. For one, the existence of magic and the planes can easily throw a monkey wrench into everyday nature. For two, even if that's not the reason, people very rarely question it when climates and geography is wrong. Star Trek is notorious for its planets that have one weather type, one climate, and one people, and nobody seems to care much about that. Your world will very likely be more varied than Star Trek. However, don't be afraid to get a little crazy. Humans have thrived in strange places since history began, and a challenging climate can be an interesting backdrop to a story. This is also when you can start placing interesting natural formations like floating islands, massive volcanoes, tar pits or other things. This can give you a spark of creativity later on when you're defining special areas of secret and mystery, dungeons, ancient ruins, wizard towers, or even just freaky places people live. Basically, what I'm saying that even Mount Doom might have started as JRR Tolkien saying "I think I'll put a volcano over there.".

You should also think of how the world is divided and what biomes go where. Sketching out a map can really help here to visualize the world, but don't think you've got to do the final map now. Just put a simple, sketchy one together so you know the climates and thus where people are going to congregate and settle. Also keep in mind that people who settled in what's a stupid place to live now(Las Vegas) may have either done that for different reasons, or are simply STILL living there long after it's BECOME a shitty place to live.


E: Kingdoms and Cities


If you don't already have an idea for the tone and feel of your various kingdoms, there's two helpful tactics to get the brain-juice flowing. The first is to take some of your geography and just go "Okay, a huge amount of people live right here. Why, and how did the area shape them?" and if you don't like that, you can always try again with a different kingdom size or race. Actually, that's the OTHER hint: Pick some of your setting's prominent races, and decide where and how they might settle. You're gonna have to do that anyway, and nobody's going to fault your setting for having some big racially segregated areas. I can't think of a setting that DOESN'T have those. You can even kind of randomize your thought process using both trick at once. A huge kingdom of elves lives in these plains. How and Why? A small band of mixed orcs and goblins live near this active volcano. How'd that shape them? As I've said in the past, a lot of the time all you need for an idea is a seed. The rest can be built upon it: layered, pushed and pulled until you're happy.

With some little tricks out of the way, I just want to caution you against overpopulating or underpopulating your world. Both of these are bad. Too few areas of civilization and your game's gonna feel like a video game(Welcome to Midgard, literally the only city for millions of miles) and too much and there's a TON to remember. If you want your world to feel dominated by cities and dense populations, it's probably better for you to simply make the existing kingdoms larger instead of adding more of them. I don't have some sort of magic number to tell you since every group is different, but in my experience you want around five distinct major kingdoms/countries, with several of them being distinct groups of the setting's dominant race. Ideally you want to show cultural diversity in your world, instead of saying " all humans are like this, all elves are like this, all dwarves are like this...". Tons of settings do this, and you want to shake it up a little bit just to make it feel more like a world. Even something simple like some splinter groups not living near the "racial capital" or maybe two wildly different racial kingdoms goes a long way. You can accomplish this sort of thing with fluff notes on how people are in certain areas. What I'm saying, basically, is that there's GOING to be some kingdoms, countries or places that only get a few lines of explanation. This is good. This is what we're going for. It fleshes out the world without providing too much to remember, and puts emphasis on the larger, more populated areas. Don't think I'm cautioning you against putting a ton of rich lore, cities or areas into your game. No, I'm just saying too many major, important things in your setting can potentially lead to fatigue. A fatigued player checks out entirely and avoids as much detail from your world as possible. It's helpful if you can "sum up" what the kingdoms are like in a few sentences. That way, you can hook some interest and a player might read further then incorporate your setting strongly into his character's backstory or personality. That's sort of like your setting getting a gold star.


F: Organizations


We're getting a little long in the tooth here so I'm just going to make a few comments. Organizations like churches or guilds are where you can get a TON of enrichment going on. Organizations aren't necessarily tied to countries, areas or kingdoms and thus can serve as omnipresent plot hooks or presences. I mean, the Red Wizards might be from Thay, but you'd be hard pressed to find a major city in Faerun that doesn't have a building with at least a half-dozen members. In fucking FACT, those jerks once made it into some official basic source, so you'd even find the Red Wizards of Thay in fucking Greyhawk. But I digress. In addition, I've met very few people who ever get fatigued reading about organizations. For some reason these are seen as more...bite-sized and player centric than larger political constructs. You can include a ton of these without anyone ever really getting tired of them. Just be sure to organize the ones tied to countries or regions into that region's description. You want to minimize confusion in your setting document.

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So that's it for now. Did I say a lot? I think I did. Am I even close to finished? Fuck me, no. No, this is so fucking much that you can expect to see a lot of topics on this. Some on these things I've discussed, and some on OTHER concepts I've either forgot or omitted for length. In fact, you can also expect me to do some building along with you guys to help show what the hell I'm talking about. I'll put out setting documents, then discuss where the ideas came from and why details were defined the way they were.  A little duckie suggested I do an entire "Let's build a campaign" series where we take EVERYTHING I've discussed and apply it to a game. While we're not even remotely close to doing that...we CAN do it with a setting.