Guide to World Building - Building the Basics
I thought about beginning this post with a quote from an author about world-building, but I just don’t know that many quotes outside of Mark Twain. Instead, I figured I would open this up with a bit of encouragement.
World-building is hard and it can be frustrating. Don’t fret if you feel like you aren’t any good at it as worlds come together slowly. Sometimes you’ll write pages on something and then, at the end of it, realize that you don’t like your idea in the least. Ideas are constantly morphing and changing, so don’t fret when something comes up that doesn’t fit perfectly in your world.
Basics
Now that we have conceptualized what our world will look like, we can begin building it. Of course, saying we build it isn’t as simple as that, and there isn’t ever a clear endpoint when it comes to building, but there is a good starting point.
Depending on how you like to work, and the time frame of when you want to use this world, there are different ways of approaching world-building.
One can work from the bottom-up, meaning you build a town and work your way up from there, this is the fastest way of using your world if it’s intended to be used in a game.
You could work top-down, creating the continents and then filling it in with nations and landmarks, though this is a long process and restricts you from using it until a large amount of work has been done.
Or you could combine both processes and create both small and large, which allows you to use a world quickly while having an idea of what exists beyond the borders… but does require a bit more work.
My world-building for Talia first started at the small village of Dimbell and then expanded to include a region known as Nedur. Eventually, I’d switch gears and create the landmass known as Talia which is roughly the size of North America while jotting down ideas as to what exists just beyond the endless horizons of oceans.
Bottom-Up
Bottom-up is creating a world starting with something small, and slowly make your world larger and larger. This is often best used when starting a game quickly and doesn’t require the GM to think about the larger picture, instead, they simply create what they need at the moment.
Often, this starts with a small village with a tavern, a shop, a few houses, a temple, and maybe a nearby forest where horrible monsters reside. You may even create a god if you have someone wanting to play a cleric.
Pros
The best thing about designing a world this way is that you can quickly get going with little thought about what resides just past the mountains. Large political struggles are outside your concerns and rumors spawned from fits of inspiration can give whispers to the wider world beyond the forests and oceans.
As your players move and explore this area, the land expands and more landmarks and villages are added before a nation’s borders end and a new nation begins. This type of design is slow as you only ever build what you need, but it can be quite deep as you can focus all your attention on a single locale.
Cons
Unfortunately, what makes this style of building so great is also its biggest problem. You start small and have little clue as to the rest of the world and its prospects. You may spend so long in this one section of your world, have it so fleshed out, that the location becomes too densely packed. Every rock has a name, a story, and little sense of the unknown is allowed to reside.
This also has the problem of making adventures too small. There is no sense of gravitas as everything exists in a single location and no rumors of the outside world lure you to leave. For the GM, this can mean hours and hours of work on something that your players will never ask or inquire about. You can add hundreds of landmarks in a small area, but the players might not even care about such minute details that have little to do with their time adventuring.
It can become a waste of time to detail so much of a small portion of the world when your efforts could be better used exploring more what your world has to offer. In addition, irregularities can pop up where small portions of the world don’t make sense when compared to the world as a whole when it is finished being built up piece by piece.
It's important to know when you've spent enough time in one place and when it is time to start working on something else.
Building
To build a world in this manner, think about what you want your adventures to be about. If you want a simple adventure of fighting wolves or bandits, plant a forest near your town. If you want thieves and cutthroats, you could build only a small section of a large city and only spend your time focusing on what districts the gang controls.
For most adventures, all you need is a tavern, a few houses, a shop, a few farms, and a forest filled with monsters. It doesn’t need to be deep but having a list of the major players, like a mayor and the innkeeper are important to get the ball going and giving your adventurers someone to interact with. Once you have the basic set dressing, you can then begin thinking about what else to include, a hook or something unique and interesting about the place. It doesn’t have to be grand, like a massive monument to the gods, but at least something of interest that can be worth visiting for adventurers, or protecting from monsters.
Example
Here is an example of a city I have written for Talia that is a bottom-up approach. This is only a small section, but provides an overview of what adventurers could expect if they came here, as well as hinting at even more that could be found out here.
Ferrum
This city was once a small village situated in the center of a land bridge that was all that connected Barrien with Mukul. An enterprising woman, Lady Sakhra Alia, took it upon herself to create a canal that would stretch across the twelve miles of land. While she wouldn't live to see the final work finished on the canals, it was her ingenuity and detailed plans that allowed such a marvelous project to reach fruition in 4128 AR. The family of Alia can still be found in Ferrum, their house one of the most prosperous noble lines in the city, and they are highly valued in the service to their genie parent, a dao located in the Plane of Earth.
The canal stretches for twelve miles with massive locks designed to provide ease of transportation for dozens of smaller merchant vessels, just a few large merchant ships, or one of the colossal warships. All along the twelve miles are shops, taverns, food vendors, and more with the most popular locations being in the center of the canal where the wealthiest reside.
Ferrum is a place of magic, planar travel, and extravagant wealth marred by the innumerable gangs constantly fighting for territory. The city is a technological marvel overflowing with new ideas, experimental machinery, and poverty. The rise of machines and automation has left many of the lower class in dire straits, barely making enough to survive each day. Here, science and magic are blended together so completely it is difficult to know which is which.
Not only do I have an idea of the formation of this city, but I know who is responsible for it and that their family is still important to the city. This approach has allowed me to create a city that feels alive and filled with places to explore, that it is filled with people who have an impact on its creation. I have a solid idea of its history, and because this is just a small portion of what I know about it, I have a lot more information written on adventuring here. It would be time-consuming to give every city or village this close attention, especially when my adventurers are not planning on visiting them in the years and years to come.
Top-Down
The process of making a world from the top-down is focused on creating a more continuous and whole world with fewer irregularities. This process is often done over a long period and starts with first forming continents and large landmasses. The large picture is first created and then slowly zoomed in to nations, kingdoms, seas, and eventually cities.
This greater view allows the GM to create a world with a fuller understanding of politics, how nations have formed along natural boundaries, where mountains and deserts make sense to form, as well as just how large one nation vs another is. There is a larger degree of wholeness that arises and helps make a more cohesive world without weird discrepancies between areas on the map.
Pros
The best part of designing a world from the top down is the control over the world. You can build kingdoms based on nearby natural structures, form a coastline in a specific fashion to best suit your needs. You are not constrained by what you have already written in another area, giving you greater freedom in forming the multitude of nations and landmasses you want to exist.
It creates a world with firm borders in hand so that when asked about specific things in the world, you can answer with greater confidence. You can accurately say where adventurers are in the world and their relation to others at large. Adventurers can feel like a greater part of the world, and can immediately run off into other places rather than the single place you’ve been working on. There is greater freedom to be had with a top-down built world.
Cons
One of the biggest downsides of this type of building is the time requirement. You can’t easily throw something out there while still messing around with coastlines, and so the world is a bit more ponderous. To first create smaller places in the world, it requires a greater understanding of the gods, magic, political struggles, and more; which all takes time to think and collect.
This also brings in a situation where you might spend hours researching and writing about specific locations in your world, but then never get a chance to use it or bring it to your adventurers. For some, that can be quite discouraging, but knowing what happens in random places in your world can help make your world feel alive for adventurers if they ever end up asking.
Building
The process of building for this style requires more effort than working from the bottom-up and involves more moving pieces. While you don’t need to start out knowing how gods and deities work in your world, it’ll come up far sooner than if you were just building a random village. To begin building, it helps to first rough in a map and start morphing it to what you want. In a future post, we will be looking at how to start building a world map but for now, we’ll skip over this portion.
Once you have your rough map designed, you can then start figuring out notable landmasses, major players on the world stage, like kingdoms or even villains, as well as natural formations that dot the landscape. You may decide to have floating castles, soaring cliffs overlooking a massive desert, ancient worm pits that lead to the underworld beneath your world, and this is the chance to start figuring out how your world developed with those elements in it.
Once you have the major pieces decided, like a pantheon, major kingdoms, natural wonders, forests, and the like, you can start placing cities and monuments. Slowly you’ll begin adding in smaller and smaller details, and while you can be running a game in your world while you are still figuring out those details, it might be difficult to have lots of information about smaller places until you get to those places.
My process for top-down creation is (in order): landmasses/oceans, mountains, lakes, major rivers, deserts, jungles/forests, capitals, kingdom borders, major cities, major landmarks, points of interest, and villages.
Example
Here is an example of a kingdom I have written for Talia that is just a top-down approach. I stopped before getting too deep into the weeds but still left several reasons as to why adventurers might care about this little kingdom in an out of the way location.
Kingsland
A small kingdom nestled between the antagonistic countries of Teoviso and the Magnan Empire. It's been forced, in more recent years, to step up its purchase of military contracts, and has tried to tie itself to many other kingdoms with defensive pacts. With one country expected to collapse soon, and another country dealing with a massive undead problem, Kingsland is trying to focus on its defenses. This type of heightened stress has made many of the people of Kingsland turn to a religious faction to help guide them forward, though strict laws are being enforced in regards to worship.
Apart from the sudden shifts sweeping through the cities, the outskirts and beyond have largely been ignored or unaffected by it all. Gnomes make up a sizeable portion, enjoying their days in the tall forests that dot across this nation before ending up in Süüder Forest.
I don’t provide large detail on what religious faction is causing these problems while providing clues that not all is right in this kingdom. Since I know the surrounding countries, I can include its relationship to them and how it has to react to them. Writing from the top-down allowed me to see the kingdom’s neighbors and imagine a type of relationship based on what is going on in the world at large.
Combining Both Approaches
If you have an urge to work on two fronts at once, you can create a massive world while still creating a deep location that your adventurers are currently in. This is a great way to immediately jump into your world and began playing in it, though it requires a good deal amount of work on the GM’s part that the other methods don’t. Not only do you have to think about the entirety of the world, but also dive deep into a small area and create lots of interesting parts there. If you enjoy world-building, this can be great as you can allow the world at large to influence the small section you are building out, and let that small section influence the world at large.
When building your world doing this dual approach, it can be easy to feel overwhelmed as you are thinking two different ways when it comes to world-building. You have to know when to stop building from the top-down in areas, as not every kingdom needs as much material known about it as one that your adventurers are currently romping through, and that if you allow it, you can get swept away in building instead of prepping for your adventures.
It can be nerve-wracking to look at a large world and see that one part of it has this deep lore and feel like everywhere needs that deep of a look at it, but that isn’t true. The only places that do are what is important to your adventure. Not every kingdom must be built from top-down while at the same time getting built up from the bottom. Writing a few paragraphs about a city your adventurers may or may never go to is more than enough to satisfy world-building until your adventure winds up there. Even nearby kingdoms don’t need an intense look at their history until your adventure calls for that.
Example
The best way I can provide an example of this type of approach is by looking at how the Dragonborn function in Talia, and their relationship to the world around them.
Dragonborn
Most of the dragonborns on Talia can trace their lineage back to their clan-dragon, the great dragon that are the progenitor of their clan. While it may not be strictly worship, the clans give great tributes to those ancient beings and often work inside of the plans of the clan-dragons. Some of these clan-dragons are still alive to this day, though most have been wiped out during the Age of Gods as they fought for one power. Those that still live protect the clans as if they were its children, though many of the chromatic clan-dragons treat these children more akin to slaves.
A dragonborn who doesn't know their clan-dragon is often treated with mistrust and suspicion, only outsiders and outcasts would fail their parents in such a way.
Most of the dragonborns on Talia keep to themselves in the Khilijian mountains, rarely venturing out from the massive chain. While traders are welcome at the largest of their cities, very few have been able to explore the mountains and those that have largely never return. Most dragonborns are focused on the goals of their clan and, by extension, their clan-dragon.
The Dragonborn have a place in the world while having a history within the world at the same time. They don’t just have a spot on the map they call home, but they have a reason to call those mountains home and have specific dragons that they are loyal to. Because I created a world from two different approaches, I could decide if I wanted Dragonborn in my world, as well as the history of them in it. Also, I could decide where they were in the world by looking at the map at large, and decide that they were homebodies that had few plans of expanding their holdings, residing in a chain of mountains in a spot in the world that I felt was appropriate based on the rumors my adventurers heard in their games.
What’s Next
Once you decide on how you want to build your world, you then have to start mapping it out. Next time will start figuring out mapping, and I’ll share how I’ve done it in the past and how I do it now. I first mapped out Talia as a small region, but then went through a few different processes until I found one that felt like the world to me. For your world, you may want to map your world the same way you build it, starting small and slowly adding onto it. Or you might create a large empty world and then work bottom-up in sections across the map as you slowly fill in the details with large amounts of history and lore.
Like what we are doing here?
Support us on Patreon!
You’ll get early access to deep dives, our Homebrew Hoard, monster stat blocks and more!
Follow us on Twitter to keep up to date on everything we talk about!
