Worldbuilding 5 Week Challenge - With Gygax 75 - 12th February to 19th March

[DarK_RaideR]

10 hours ago, Jarric said:

So a couple of random, initial thoughts about my setting. Firstly, no humans - I think the fact that most settings have humans as the default majority population is pretty boring, and I want to make better use of other playable species by not having them play second fiddle to humans.

That's actually an interesting concept. I get the OSR vibe of trying to add some interest and value to humans as a playable race through game bonuses, while in turn making non-human races rare, exotic and mysterious again. I mean, I get it as long as it's a conscious choice for those reasons, and not ye old grognards just trying to turn back time because that's how things were back in their day. But I'm quite intrigued by you going the oppopsite way. Humans these days get the boring/generic/vanilla tag in their modern RPG perception when compared to all the other crazy races, so eliminating them altogether takes care of that, while clearing the slate for everyone else to play ball.

 

10 hours ago, Jarric said:

That second point is making me think of a TTRPG that would be an inspiration, and I'm hoping that @DarK_RaideR can remind me what it was called. D_R I'm pretty sure you ran a solo narrative playthrough of it on one of your challenge threads - I think it was a sort of bronze age setting, with a premise that distance travel had been all but impossible until recently when the mists had cleared and the world had opened up again. Do you know what I'm talking about?

 

https://freeleaguepublishing.com/en/games/forbidden-lands/

 

I think the quickstart pdf is free, let me know if you wanna look into more of them  If I'm honest, I also plan to handle supplies (food, water, arrows and maybe torches even) using FL's system.

 

10 hours ago, Jarric said:

I also quite want to do something with Irish mythology, because I love Irish myths and I've never really got round to building anything off them.

Very, very intersting.

[sylph]

20 hours ago, Jarric said:

also quite want to do something with Irish mythology, because I love Irish myths and I've never really got round to building anything off them.

Please tell me you've read the Iron Druid books.

[Jarric]

10 hours ago, DarK_RaideR said:

 

https://freeleaguepublishing.com/en/games/forbidden-lands/

 

I think the quickstart pdf is free, let me know if you wanna look into more of them  If I'm honest, I also plan to handle supplies (food, water, arrows and maybe torches even) using FL's system.

 

Awesome, that's the one, thanks mate! Just downloaded the quickstart guide (I love that the 'quickstart' is 152 pages long )

 

25 minutes ago, sylph said:

Please tell me you've read the Iron Druid books.

 

I have not... Tell me more!

[sylph]

1 hour ago, Jarric said:

I have not... Tell me more!

Ack! If you like Irish mythology, go read them!

 

Author is Kevin Hearne.

 

Here's the quick wikipedia summary which does a better job than I would of explaining without spoiling. 

 

"The series is set in our world—the first two books are set in Tempe, Arizona—where supernatural creatures exist. These include witches, vampires, werewolves, demons, elementals, as well as various deities from many mythologies. The entire series is told in the first-person point of view. In the beginning, the narrative is described exclusively by ancient druid Atticus O'Sullivan (aka. Siodhachan O Suileabhain), owner of the occult bookshop Third Eye Books and Herbs, as he becomes embroiled in the day-to-day struggle of gods, goddesses, and other supernatural creatures."

 

It's urban fantasy, but strongly connected to Irish (and Norse) mythology. I found them quite enjoyable and there are a bunch (8? 9?) so it scratches my itch for 'just one more book' in a very good way.

[DarK_RaideR]

16 hours ago, Jarric said:

(I love that the 'quickstart' is 152 pages long )

Well they didn't call it 'shortstart' now, did they?

 

17 hours ago, sylph said:

Please tell me you've read the Iron Druid books.

Oh, nice one. Those have been sitting on my goodreads wishlist for ages.

 

 

There's been some interesting back-and-forth chatter regarding this challenge on my thread, I figured it had to be shared here.

On 2/15/2023 at 11:15 AM, DarK_RaideR said:

I did some thinking on this, still debating the scale and focus. Is it going to be all about the desert planet, with a bit of spacey stuff a la Dark Sun? Is it just going to be one of the many worlds, like Tattoine or Dune? Don't think I wanna go full space crazy a la Metabarons. Gotta settle on this before moving on, but if I find out it's got me stuck, I'll just let it and reset my creative thinking based on what I'm going for.

22 hours ago, Jarric said:

Bear in mind that Gygax75 is designed to create the start of a campaign - a starting town, dungeon, and locale - with the idea that you'll build your campaign in the direction that your PCs want to go. As such, do you need to know at this stage in the planning whether there's other worlds out there?

22 hours ago, DarK_RaideR said:

Good call, thanks for keeping me grounded. I guess it's easier to start with the desert planet as the focus, mapping out a sector of space can be more work and it's not like players will indeed 100% head towards the desert planet. Come to think of it, might be better to make the players outsiders instead of locals of the planet. Maybe spacefarers who crash landed on it, or something. Justifies them having some spacey tech, provides grounds to justify local weirdness and survival being a challenge against the local environment.

 

What's everyone else been up to, creatively?

[Artemis Prime]

This week's tasks were pretty simple for me because I feel like I already have a good grasp on the high level concepts of my world. It's when I try to zoom in on the details that things get fuzzy, which is why I'm looking forward to a little direction when it comes to creating a small, well-filled in section of the map.

 

The original germ for this idea was the question of what happens after the big bad is defeated? It's not like everything automatically goes back to how it was before the threat arose. Lots of fantasy stories allude to the work that needs to be done after the conclusion of the book, but the one that most stuck with me when I read it was Tad Williams's Memory, Sorrow and Thorn, I think because Williams really pulls no punches when it comes to the far-reaching effects of the loss of life, the physical damage wreaked on sites of battle, and the disintegration of infrastructure. So I wanted to write a book that starts where most books end. How do you rebuild after a catastrophic war? You might even ask...where do we go from here?

 

 

Doesn't really fit thematically with my world, but it captures the opening mood pretty well, and listening to soundtracks is always a sure way to get my creative juices flowing.

 

Anyways, magic in my world is pulled from living things. Pull it straight from the earth, and you can get away with a lot, but too much concentrated magic use in one spot will leave the land dead and barren. Pull it from a person, and you can get a lot of power, but if you take too much they become a Husk, which is essentially a zombie. Mindless and soulless, they only thing they care about is feeding. The same applies to animals. Magical creatures, which includes people with the ability to use magic, die if they are drained too much. The conflict that precedes my story is a group of power-hungry sorcerers accidentally created hordes of Husks which threatened to overrun everything. They've been turned back and a safe zone established in the MC's country, but Husks still roam the wilds and the neighboring country is still occupied by large numbers of them.

 

Due to this recent history, magic is not trusted, even by those who can wield it. Pretty much all of the most powerful sorcerers were killed in the war as Husks are particularly drawn to those with magic. So the next generation is coming up with these powers that they don't understand and are afraid of, and don't really have anyone to teach them how to control it. I'm using a lot of the mechanics of D&D Wild Magic Sorcerers to flesh out my magic system.

 

Geographically, I'm basing the land on Southern France. It conveys the feeling of safety and plenty that they had before the war, which they desperately want to regain, and also the lush land provides a stark contrast to areas that have been decimated by magic.

 

I'm also taking some inspiration from Lloyd Alexander's Westmark trilogy where (SPOILERS!)

Spoiler

the long lost heir to the throne appears but recognizes that ruling isn't necessarily what they want to do and probably isn't in the best interest of the country either, so they set up an alternative government and go off to investigate magic further and continue to research ways to heal the land.

Anyways, that's more plot than world-building, but since I'm doing a book, not a game, I don't have to leave things open-ended.

 

Oh boy, I'm getting excited now that I'm organizing my notes.  Let's build some worlds, guys!

[sylph]

5 hours ago, Artemis Prime said:

Tad Williams's Memory, Sorrow and Thorn,

Oh, I remember liking this series quite a bit. I should dig it up again.

 

I like the concept, too, of beginning at the ending of something else. 

 

 

 

I have read the Prydain books, but not Westmark... I guess I have a few more titles to add to my reading list!

[DarK_RaideR]

Okay, I've expanded a bit on some bullet points, here's the gist of it with a few matching images from my moodboard.

 

1) The game is set in a desert world/planet. Surviving its environment is a challenge unto itself.

 

2) The player characters are outsiders to this world, spacefarers that recently found themselves in this world with little to no info about it.

 

3) Whatever technology from their world characters start with, is of limited use. Guns run out of ammo, motors run out of fuel, cybernetic limbs break or fill up with sand and there's nothing to perform maintenance/repairs with and so on. Local populations have their own spin on technology and it's not exactly clear if they're they're going through their own version of a post-medieval phase, if this is some post-apocalyptic situation where they scrounge and improvise, or something completely different.

 

4) Faiths, cults and religious institutions might exist. Gods and deities, not so much. If they do, they're distant and indifferent.

[MaeradCase]

On 2/3/2023 at 4:59 PM, Jarric said:

Create a general concept and a pitch for your campaign world

Man, I know I have concepts already in play for my world, but I haven't touched this assignment all week. 😅 I've finally sat down at the computer to get started because it seems like the trend is sharing the idea here and getting the nice feedback. 😉

• Get/create a notebook

Fortunately, I have that and a journal that I've already used and am using for world-building for my story's first draft, and notes for the intended second draft. I may not have piped up here, and may not have put in work for this assignment, but I have been making sticky notes while reading other books to keep track of points of inspiration for future use. To some degree, this also includes world-building - especially trying to seek out the means by which a caravan's journey would make sense. Also randomly researching farming for the folks that live in the mountainous region of my map. 😆

• Gather your sources of inspiration/make a pitch/assemble a mood board

So my current thoughts on how to make the caravan that travels from the dwarven mountains through the rest of the country, stopping in all the villages and towns like a carnival or traveling trade circuit is to try to figure out how slow travel is and how big the space between towns would be and how to make the countryside and weather change over the progression of their journey. My current point of inspiration for this premise is the Oregon Trail because some people made that journey one-way, some people didn't make it the full distance (maybe they settled down part-way because they were sick of driving, or maybe they were sick and died...), and some people went back and forth to be paid to help other people make that trip because they'd rather stay on the road. My characters fit in that last category, but I feel like a lot of the towns they go through are a mix of the people who did go to the harbor towns or slowly built up villages in the areas between the harbors. So I'll use the Oregon Trail to help me figure that aspect out for the journey of traveling with the caravan through the three major towns and scattering of villages I also included on the map I did for creative extra credit. 😉

 

As for the major towns, I have concepts not so much for the layouts, but for the vibes of each of them. The dwarven city would be a bit of an architectural feat - not so much the mines of Moria with the vast arches, but instead a natural cave system that over the generations has been developed in such a way that the history can be seen in the architecture of the structures built in the main cave and the rooms carved from the adjoining caves. Although I mean for it to be an internal cave system, this could very much take inspiration from the cave cities humans have built in our real world closer to the surface of mountains. (Example picture is of Vardzia, Georgia, but point of inspiration could also come from Petra, Jordan to some degree. 😀)

 

The three towns on the route are by the coast/at a bay, by a river mouth, and by a lake. I have ideas on how to make the river mouth town interesting (especially for having proximity to the edge of the map, in which case I think it's heavily influenced by a neighboring country) and slightly dangerous to the characters in that they have a conflict of interest with the residents there regarding their heroic endeavors being misinterpreted as unnecessarily aggressive. 😅 But there's also consequences that would arise in such a situation that I have questions to pester myself with, and now's not really when I'm thinking about that problem. 😂 The lake town is almost as easy for me as the dwarf city except my mental picture is of a lake with a city sprawled around it, and apparently that's pretty open for interpretation. Even though I've never been to the New England side of the US, I like the idea of the lower peaks of the Appalachians with their gorgeous autumn colors, and their breathtaking views where lakes and trees and hills get involved. Like this picture of Echo Lake in New Hampshire:

I'd be cool with making the town sprawl along the lakeside like this lovely shot of Lake Winnipesaukee also in New Hampshire:

I don't know if this one is also New Hampshire, but it fits the bill: 

 

So I guess it's time I told you a bit about this world that I took my D&D characters and threw them into via creatively composing the first draft of a story, rather than let a narrative play out via dice, friends, role-playing, and the course of many months of game nights. Alidavai is a girl who grew up between the lake town and the mountain city (maybe that explains my having settled on what those two landscapes look like) in a world filled with dwarves, elves, and humans. I haven't decided any history between the races, and I haven't decided no other races exist, but within the scope of the story, those three races compose the majority of the residents of the country the story navigates. 

 

Alidavai is traveling this country with a caravan in order to use her trade as a clock smith to repair the towers in three major towns along the route, built by her master long ago and well in need of repair. As she repairs them, some magic is activated that she isn't familiar with and that her master isn't around to explain it, but new characters from other worlds show up through portals (one per tower), and join up with Alidavai to complete the caravan route, finish the clock repairs along the way, and hopefully get answers on how they can all get home again.

 

To some degree, there could be an aspect of a traveling show in the caravan's business - like Buffalo Bill's Wild West show? If anything, it'd make for a way to present stories of the past as dramatizations observed or participated in by characters:

On the other hand, I primarily see the purpose of the caravan as an established trade route (for which maybe the Silk Road would also be a good reference point alongside, or in the place of, my original thought of the Oregon Trail for travel narratives). Their function is to deliver craftsmen or commissioned goods to the folks along the path, to buy local goods, sell commodities not available from local resources, and take products from one place to the next for the sake of moving goods in an annual system (whereas throughout the rest of the year, the residents would visit a local market).

 

At this point, I've been staring at a bright screen for too long and need to call this enough for this week even if it's not entirely akin to the example pitch in the Gygax pdf. Thanks for reading! Hope you like it!

[DarK_RaideR]

7 hours ago, MaeradCase said:

it seems like the trend is sharing the idea here and getting the nice feedback. 😉

Pretty sure the whole idea behind setting up this thread was to share thoughts, get feedback and spitball ideas

 

7 hours ago, MaeradCase said:

As for the major towns, I have concepts not so much for the layouts, but for the vibes of each of them.

That's why Week 1 calls for a moodboard, not any maps or layouts. No pressure.

 

7 hours ago, MaeradCase said:

I have ideas on how to make the river mouth town interesting

Your previous mentions of dwarf towns and drawing inspiration from real-world cities dug on the sides of cliffs has me thinking of a dwarven fortress on the edge of a cliff, with the side carved like a face and the river flowing out of its mouth like a waterfall. If it's not a dwarven location, I'd make it a river delta full of wetlands and any structures built on poles, with ramps or rope bridges connecting them.

 

7 hours ago, MaeradCase said:

I primarily see the purpose of the caravan as an established trade route

7 hours ago, MaeradCase said:

how slow travel is and how big the space between towns would be

If it's an established route and not a new path the caravan is more or less carving, as a rough guide I'd say put towns within a day's journey on horseback. That is to say, since you mentioned D&d, look up travelling speeds and calculate the distance someone on a horse could cover within a day (full ride with a bit of pushing it, not the default 6-8 hour march D&d assumes as a baseline). People would normally settle at such a distance from each other so that when they have to make the trip from one place to the other, they don't have to spend the night outdoors. That's under ideal conditions, if there's a natural obstacle in the way, the distance would be increased as necessary, but again there's a good chance someone has set up an inn or trading post right around the "one day's worth of travel from the previous civilized location" spot. Then tweak travel times depending on speed, since a caravan with several people travelling together would move slower, plus there's people on foot, carts loaded with stuff and pulled by animals, etc.

 

Hope these help!

[MaeradCase]

2 hours ago, DarK_RaideR said:

Pretty sure the whole idea behind setting up this thread was to share thoughts, get feedback and spitball ideas

 

That's why Week 1 calls for a moodboard, not any maps or layouts. No pressure.

😃 

 

2 hours ago, DarK_RaideR said:

Your previous mentions of dwarf towns and drawing inspiration from real-world cities dug on the sides of cliffs has me thinking of a dwarven fortress on the edge of a cliff, with the side carved like a face and the river flowing out of its mouth like a waterfall. If it's not a dwarven location, I'd make it a river delta full of wetlands and any structures built on poles, with ramps or rope bridges connecting them.

I can picture your suggestions, but for some reason my imagination is angling to use them for the elves. I shall contemplate their aspect in this world since I haven't really touched on them in my world building.

I do think the delta is likely thanks to reading a lot about the Ganges river, which also flows from mountains to an ocean. Houses designed for tides and floods would make for a good architectural distinction. 😃

 

2 hours ago, DarK_RaideR said:

If it's an established route and not a new path the caravan is more or less carving, as a rough guide I'd say put towns within a day's journey on horseback. That is to say, since you mentioned D&d, look up travelling speeds and calculate the distance someone on a horse could cover within a day (full ride with a bit of pushing it, not the default 6-8 hour march D&d assumes as a baseline). People would normally settle at such a distance from each other so that when they have to make the trip from one place to the other, they don't have to spend the night outdoors. That's under ideal conditions, if there's a natural obstacle in the way, the distance would be increased as necessary, but again there's a good chance someone has set up an inn or trading post right around the "one day's worth of travel from the previous civilized location" spot. Then tweak travel times depending on speed, since a caravan with several people travelling together would move slower, plus there's people on foot, carts loaded with stuff and pulled by animals, etc.

 

Hope these help!

Yeah! I'll be taking that into account! Oregon Trail was very much a process of following a river to an intended destination, and the Silk Road was a variable route to deliver goods and merchandise. The caravan is something of a traveling annual market to boost import/export numbers for the villages and towns.

I definitely want villages to be a day's trip away, though the convenience of an inn or tavern might not be afforded in all the villages like they are in the larger towns. But the caravan sets up its own camp nightly, so that doesn't bother them too much. I also think they'll stay in the towns for a week both for Alidavai's clock tower projects, but also to allow for market to be accessible and enjoyable. 😃

I will give more thought to the matter since it very much is a major aspect for my intended approach. 😉

 

Thanks for the input!

[Artemis Prime]

19 hours ago, sylph said:

Oh, I remember liking this series quite a bit. I should dig it up again.

It was good, but I've never done a full re-read. It suffers from the common fantasy problem of "too many characters in too many different places" in my opinion, so when I have revisited it in the past (it's been a while) I've just skipped the chapters with characters I wasn't as invested in.

 

19 hours ago, sylph said:

I have read the Prydain books, but not Westmark... I guess I have a few more titles to add to my reading list!

I liked Prydain better for the Welsh mythology and the more epic scale of it, but Westmark is still really good and explores some more complicated concepts.

Also, happy to return the favor as the Iron Druid series has just gone on my list.

[Jarric]

On 2/15/2023 at 8:48 PM, sylph said:

Ack! If you like Irish mythology, go read them!

 

Author is Kevin Hearne.

 

Here's the quick wikipedia summary which does a better job than I would of explaining without spoiling. 

 

"The series is set in our world—the first two books are set in Tempe, Arizona—where supernatural creatures exist. These include witches, vampires, werewolves, demons, elementals, as well as various deities from many mythologies. The entire series is told in the first-person point of view. In the beginning, the narrative is described exclusively by ancient druid Atticus O'Sullivan (aka. Siodhachan O Suileabhain), owner of the occult bookshop Third Eye Books and Herbs, as he becomes embroiled in the day-to-day struggle of gods, goddesses, and other supernatural creatures."

 

It's urban fantasy, but strongly connected to Irish (and Norse) mythology. I found them quite enjoyable and there are a bunch (8? 9?) so it scratches my itch for 'just one more book' in a very good way.

 

Awesome, thank you. I'm going to see if I can find this in the library on Monday now; it sounds right up my street.

 

21 hours ago, DarK_RaideR said:

Okay, I've expanded a bit on some bullet points, here's the gist of it with a few matching images from my moodboard.

 

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1) The game is set in a desert world/planet. Surviving its environment is a challenge unto itself.

 

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2) The player characters are outsiders to this world, spacefarers that recently found themselves in this world with little to no info about it.

 

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3) Whatever technology from their world characters start with, is of limited use. Guns run out of ammo, motors run out of fuel, cybernetic limbs break or fill up with sand and there's nothing to perform maintenance/repairs with and so on. Local populations have their own spin on technology and it's not exactly clear if they're they're going through their own version of a post-medieval phase, if this is some post-apocalyptic situation where they scrounge and improvise, or something completely different.

 

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4) Faiths, cults and religious institutions might exist. Gods and deities, not so much. If they do, they're distant and indifferent.

 

Ok, now I really want to play in this world.

 

17 hours ago, MaeradCase said:

My current point of inspiration for this premise is the Oregon Trail because some people made that journey one-way, some people didn't make it the full distance (maybe they settled down part-way because they were sick of driving, or maybe they were sick and died...), and some people went back and forth to be paid to help other people make that trip because they'd rather stay on the road. My characters fit in that last category, but I feel like a lot of the towns they go through are a mix of the people who did go to the harbor towns or slowly built up villages in the areas between the harbors. So I'll use the Oregon Trail to help me figure that aspect out for the journey of traveling with the caravan through the three major towns and scattering of villages I also included on the map I did for creative extra credit. 😉

 

I know nothing about the Oregon Trail, but from your description I'm now realising that The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett very much pulls inspiration from that premise too. Also, this sounds like a really cool setup for a campaign.

[MaeradCase]

5 hours ago, Jarric said:

I know nothing about the Oregon Trail, but from your description I'm now realising that The Long Earth by Terry Pratchett very much pulls inspiration from that premise too. Also, this sounds like a really cool setup for a campaign.

Most of what I already know is thanks to the efforts of the educators that created the original computer game. 😅 But it's a source of inspiration in that I can look into things about it to answer questions that come to mind or to develop my concept.

 

I am intrigued by your mention of Pratchett! I like a lot of his Discworld, but have yet to try any of The Long Earth.

 

Thank you for the positive feedback. 😃

[DarK_RaideR]

12 hours ago, Jarric said:

Ok, now I really want to play in this world.

Looks like I found my first player... Always good for motivation!

 

12 hours ago, Jarric said:

I know nothing about the Oregon Trail

Not even this?!

(Fair play, I resisted posting it when Oregon Trail was first mentioned...)

[Artemis Prime]

1 hour ago, DarK_RaideR said:

Looks like I found my first player... Always good for motivation!

 

Not even this?!

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(Fair play, I resisted posting it when Oregon Trail was first mentioned...)

 

I'll do you one better:

[DarK_RaideR]

Okay so I went through my collection of RPG books and pdfs to determine what I'll be using for this campaign. I know I said I'll first make the world and then find a system to serve it instead of the other way around, but it's started to feel a bit directionless. Furthermore, revisiting all these games, I realized they're all more or less tied to their world or at least a basic premise, to the point where it's rough to use them for something else. Eventually though, I ended up with Kevin Crawford's duet of Stars/Worlds without Number as my stuff of choice. I should mention that both Stars and Worlds have free pdf versions available with very little missing from each (as in, with the paid version of SwN you get an extra chapter about building and using mecha. Which is rather minor in a book that already includes a ton of stuff about sci-fi worldbuilding, planet detailing, space exploration adventures, building spaceships, spaceship combat, a system of its own and a sample world).

 

Stars without Number was my starting point, seeing how I do have a fair bit of sci-fi in my world, but skimming through the pages I realized it's more about the players having a spaceship and going around in a sandbox-y sector of space the GM has designed and filled with planets, then there's interplanetary factions etc. I want my focus to be more on the desert planet, so Worlds without Number is probably a better fit. I do however reserve the right to handpick SwN stuff and throw them into the mix. As a matter of fact, I made two rather important decisions regarding my project:

1. Players will not start the game with any access to magic/psionics. This allows such things to be weird, mystical and unpredictable as they will be faced down the road. It also invokes doubt in the Clarkian sense of "is it magic or just some super advanced technology" fashion. Hostiles with access to such things become more dangerous and players are given motivation to ally themselves with those who possess some of this stuff. Furthermore, given the expected lethality of it all, once the group has gained some access to these things, it's a good hook to rein in a player whose character died as they are now allowed to make a new one with access to the magic/psionic powers they've got access to.
2. Player drive and expectation will determine the development of this setting. This basically means that if they want to stick to the desert planet, I'll keep expanding it. If they're all about finding a way to get the hell off of it, I can slowly transition into a more space-oriented Stars without Number type of experience.

 

That said, both books are incredible toolboxes for GMs wanting to build worlds, regions, adventures etc so I'm sharing the questions from WwN that relate to this first week of our little challenge here. I'm answering them for myself directly below, but hope they help you too in your journey.

• What’s the name of this world for people in your campaign’s scope? Other people might have different names for it, but you need some kind of label to stick on your creation.

Oh boy, kicking off with the hard stuff already... I am a lazy SoB, so I'm heading directly to Sectors without Number and stealing the name of a planet. This, by the way, is a website featuring a generator that does all the calculating to build a sector of space based on SwN's system and tables and I'm loving it. Okay, I'm liking Shakhul here, but I'm renaming it into Shrak'hul and this is how the locals will refer to it. Also taking note of Kar Xabaina because it sounds cool. Not sure if that's the official name of the planet in maps where the player characters come from, or if it's the name some other alien culture uses for it.

• Are natural physical laws mostly the same as in our world? If there are multiple moons, a lack of stars, a great crystal dome over a flat earth, or some other obvious global novelty of reality, you need to decide on it at this point because the PCs will likely know about it as a societal commonplace.

I don't want to make this too off-the-wall, so a simple thing like three moons will do. Note for future use again, there might be some symbolism related to this, from superstition that good/bad things come in threes to magical theories or religious cults expanding on it.

• Are there any spirit-worlds, alternate dimensions, novel planes of existence, or other cosmological locales generally associated with the world? Don’t worry about gods just yet, but think about whether there are any heavens or hells or Crawling Darks that the natives of this world would likely know about. Of course, some such alternate planes might be established later in the backdrop creation as secrets known only to sages or sinister priests.

There might be in theory, but nothing real in the sense of contacting other worlds or summoning creaters from them into this one. Again, reserving the possibility of some alternate dimension of cosmic horrors existing, but that's to become a factor much later in the game and only if players take things towards it.

• Are there any grand global-scale empires or groups that impinge on the campaign’s scope? If so, give them a name and two sentences of description at this point. If you can’t give them a useful shorthand description in two sentences, then their concept is too vague; tighten it and try again.

Ouch, man... Okay, there's bound to be some wide-eyed insane bandits Mad Max style, complete with patchwork armor and tech, but they're too chaotic to form anything more than small tribes; I'm picturing them a lot like the bandits in the Borderlands videogames. I'm going to tap into Dark Sun for one of the major players, a large city-state run by a mad sorcerer-mage-king-tyrant. The planet's too harsh for a proper empire, but the city-state itself will be a huge sprawl. I'm picturing cyberpunk vibes (complete with constant surveillance) but meshing with a sci fi Arabic flavour.

Image from the Black Void tabletop rpg, for reference

 

I'm also picturing a nomadic race, much like the Fremen of Arrakis in Dune: in tune with the world around them, ingenious when it comes to surviving in it, deeply spiritual but also honourable and warrior-like because of the conditions they have to endure. I'm also making them a non-human race, which lets me make them even weirder, especially when messing with their culture, morals and alien frame of mind. It also gives me the grounds for space racism! Kidding, obviously, but it'll be easier to justify their clashes and tensions with the city-state, especially when it's not just talking high politics but the common person on the street dropping a derogatory slur about the others. I need a third faction because this binary feels way too constricting (hey, triple moons connection!) so this will be a mystic cult of weirdos and outcasts gathered around a major landmark, which they worship religiously. Still not sure if said landmark will be natural (i.e. a huge volcanic crater) or artificial (i.e. the ruins of a crashed spaceship) but I know it's going to serve as the major location where a deathtrap megadungeon will be based.

• How interconnected are the parts of your world? Is it easy to move from one region to another? Do the natives know a lot about their more distant neighbors?

I'm inclined to say most of what everyone knows about the others is mainly through propaganda and exaggerated stories. The people in the megacity especially are full of this, plus with a hostile environment outside, full autonomy inside and no one else to properly trade with, they're pretty isolated anyway. The local nomads might know a thing or two, but both other parties are either hostile and isolated (city residents) or super cryptic (cultists) so it's a one-way thing with no feedback. Likewise, there's no infrastructure for travel and not much need for it. Chances are the nomads do know a thing or two about traversing the land more efficiently though.

• Are there any vast global events that have happened recently? You can use the history tables on page 136 as inspiration if you wish, but this is the part where you identify any world-spanning catastrophes or dramatic universal changes that have happened in the relatively recent past. Leave distant history alone for now.

Taking a pass here. Things are rather stable in terms of recent history, although there's a lot of ancient history to dig up later on. I like to keep this a relatively calm place that's settled into a rythm, then introduce the outsiders that are the PC characters as agents of chaos and change.

• It can be tempting to add gods and religious faiths at this level of backdrop creation, but it’s generally better to save that work for the regional level, or even the kingdom level. Some settings actually do have a set number of universal deities that are honored and worshiped worldwide under assorted names and guises, but most worlds will have faiths specific to particular regions and cultures. The divine patron of one kingdom might be unknown in a neighboring region, or have no more than a few petty shrines.

This is fully in line with my decision to keep gods out of my world, at least in the more D&d sense of deities being actual, physical, powerful beings that interact with the world and the people in it. Religion shall be a more local and sociopolitical thing which I'll detail later on, but putting a pin on a thought that popped in my mind already: in the city-state, the mad sorcerer-mage-king-tyrant is in the middle of his project to have people worship him as a living god. There is, of course, doubt and resistance from the older generations, but with all the systemic power backing his aspirations, younger generations are being raised to only know his point of view and society is in the middle of this shift.

[MaeradCase]

3 hours ago, DarK_RaideR said:

Okay so I went through my collection of RPG books and pdfs to determine what I'll be using for this campaign. I know I said I'll first make the world and then find a system to serve it instead of the other way around, but it's started to feel a bit directionless. Furthermore, revisiting all these games, I realized they're all more or less tied to their world or at least a basic premise, to the point where it's rough to use them for something else. Eventually though, I ended up with Kevin Crawford's duet of Stars/Worlds without Number as my stuff of choice. I should mention that both Stars and Worlds have free pdf versions available with very little missing from each (as in, with the paid version of SwN you get an extra chapter about building and using mecha. Which is rather minor in a book that already includes a ton of stuff about sci-fi worldbuilding, planet detailing, space exploration adventures, building spaceships, spaceship combat, a system of its own and a sample world).

 

Stars without Number was my starting point, seeing how I do have a fair bit of sci-fi in my world, but skimming through the pages I realized it's more about the players having a spaceship and going around in a sandbox-y sector of space the GM has designed and filled with planets, then there's interplanetary factions etc. I want my focus to be more on the desert planet, so Worlds without Number is probably a better fit. I do however reserve the right to handpick SwN stuff and throw them into the mix. As a matter of fact, I made two rather important decisions regarding my project:

1. Players will not start the game with any access to magic/psionics. This allows such things to be weird, mystical and unpredictable as they will be faced down the road. It also invokes doubt in the Clarkian sense of "is it magic or just some super advanced technology" fashion. Hostiles with access to such things become more dangerous and players are given motivation to ally themselves with those who possess some of this stuff. Furthermore, given the expected lethality of it all, once the group has gained some access to these things, it's a good hook to rein in a player whose character died as they are now allowed to make a new one with access to the magic/psionic powers they've got access to.
2. Player drive and expectation will determine the development of this setting. This basically means that if they want to stick to the desert planet, I'll keep expanding it. If they're all about finding a way to get the hell off of it, I can slowly transition into a more space-oriented Stars without Number type of experience.

 

That said, both books are incredible toolboxes for GMs wanting to build worlds, regions, adventures etc

Sounds like your efforts to find an appropriate system turned up a great setting for your world. 😃 I haven't heard of them myself, but they sound up my husband's alley so there's a chance they are/were hidden among his ridiculously large game setting book collection. 😅

 

3 hours ago, DarK_RaideR said:

I'm sharing the questions from WwN that relate to this first week of our little challenge here. I'm answering them for myself directly below, but hope they help you too in your journey.

• What’s the name of this world for people in your campaign’s scope? Other people might have different names for it, but you need some kind of label to stick on your creation.

Oh boy, kicking off with the hard stuff already... I am a lazy SoB, so I'm heading directly to Sectors without Number and stealing the name of a planet. This, by the way, is a website featuring a generator that does all the calculating to build a sector of space based on SwN's system and tables and I'm loving it. Okay, I'm liking Shakhul here, but I'm renaming it into Shrak'hul and this is how the locals will refer to it. Also taking note of Kar Xabaina because it sounds cool. Not sure if that's the official name of the planet in maps where the player characters come from, or if it's the name some other alien culture uses for it.

• Are natural physical laws mostly the same as in our world? If there are multiple moons, a lack of stars, a great crystal dome over a flat earth, or some other obvious global novelty of reality, you need to decide on it at this point because the PCs will likely know about it as a societal commonplace.

I don't want to make this too off-the-wall, so a simple thing like three moons will do. Note for future use again, there might be some symbolism related to this, from superstition that good/bad things come in threes to magical theories or religious cults expanding on it.

• Are there any spirit-worlds, alternate dimensions, novel planes of existence, or other cosmological locales generally associated with the world? Don’t worry about gods just yet, but think about whether there are any heavens or hells or Crawling Darks that the natives of this world would likely know about. Of course, some such alternate planes might be established later in the backdrop creation as secrets known only to sages or sinister priests.

There might be in theory, but nothing real in the sense of contacting other worlds or summoning creaters from them into this one. Again, reserving the possibility of some alternate dimension of cosmic horrors existing, but that's to become a factor much later in the game and only if players take things towards it.

• Are there any grand global-scale empires or groups that impinge on the campaign’s scope? If so, give them a name and two sentences of description at this point. If you can’t give them a useful shorthand description in two sentences, then their concept is too vague; tighten it and try again.

Ouch, man... Okay, there's bound to be some wide-eyed insane bandits Mad Max style, complete with patchwork armor and tech, but they're too chaotic to form anything more than small tribes; I'm picturing them a lot like the bandits in the Borderlands videogames. I'm going to tap into Dark Sun for one of the major players, a large city-state run by a mad sorcerer-mage-king-tyrant. The planet's too harsh for a proper empire, but the city-state itself will be a huge sprawl. I'm picturing cyberpunk vibes (complete with constant surveillance) but meshing with a sci fi Arabic flavour.

/cdn-cgi/mirage/0b84f4fded09a02796ce59856b63e4c6d84a2108050961d5a408e66bfa221289/1280/cdn-cgi/mirage/0b84f4fded09a02796ce59856b63e4c6d84a2108050961d5a408e66bfa221289/1280/https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0225/4035/products/Image1_232ec48d-9716-46cf-a660-d4001709f5f5_500x.jpg?v=1619073658

Image from the Black Void tabletop rpg, for reference

 

I'm also picturing a nomadic race, much like the Fremen of Arrakis in Dune: in tune with the world around them, ingenious when it comes to surviving in it, deeply spiritual but also honourable and warrior-like because of the conditions they have to endure. I'm also making them a non-human race, which lets me make them even weirder, especially when messing with their culture, morals and alien frame of mind. It also gives me the grounds for space racism! Kidding, obviously, but it'll be easier to justify their clashes and tensions with the city-state, especially when it's not just talking high politics but the common person on the street dropping a derogatory slur about the others. I need a third faction because this binary feels way too constricting (hey, triple moons connection!) so this will be a mystic cult of weirdos and outcasts gathered around a major landmark, which they worship religiously. Still not sure if said landmark will be natural (i.e. a huge volcanic crater) or artificial (i.e. the ruins of a crashed spaceship) but I know it's going to serve as the major location where a deathtrap megadungeon will be based.

• How interconnected are the parts of your world? Is it easy to move from one region to another? Do the natives know a lot about their more distant neighbors?

I'm inclined to say most of what everyone knows about the others is mainly through propaganda and exaggerated stories. The people in the megacity especially are full of this, plus with a hostile environment outside, full autonomy inside and no one else to properly trade with, they're pretty isolated anyway. The local nomads might know a thing or two, but both other parties are either hostile and isolated (city residents) or super cryptic (cultists) so it's a one-way thing with no feedback. Likewise, there's no infrastructure for travel and not much need for it. Chances are the nomads do know a thing or two about traversing the land more efficiently though.

• Are there any vast global events that have happened recently? You can use the history tables on page 136 as inspiration if you wish, but this is the part where you identify any world-spanning catastrophes or dramatic universal changes that have happened in the relatively recent past. Leave distant history alone for now.

Taking a pass here. Things are rather stable in terms of recent history, although there's a lot of ancient history to dig up later on. I like to keep this a relatively calm place that's settled into a rythm, then introduce the outsiders that are the PC characters as agents of chaos and change.

• It can be tempting to add gods and religious faiths at this level of backdrop creation, but it’s generally better to save that work for the regional level, or even the kingdom level. Some settings actually do have a set number of universal deities that are honored and worshiped worldwide under assorted names and guises, but most worlds will have faiths specific to particular regions and cultures. The divine patron of one kingdom might be unknown in a neighboring region, or have no more than a few petty shrines.

This is fully in line with my decision to keep gods out of my world, at least in the more D&d sense of deities being actual, physical, powerful beings that interact with the world and the people in it. Religion shall be a more local and sociopolitical thing which I'll detail later on, but putting a pin on a thought that popped in my mind already: in the city-state, the mad sorcerer-mage-king-tyrant is in the middle of his project to have people worship him as a living god. There is, of course, doubt and resistance from the older generations, but with all the systemic power backing his aspirations, younger generations are being raised to only know his point of view and society is in the middle of this shift.

Pretty snazzy questions. Good prompts for developing the concept. I'm gonna copy them out for ease of use. 😉 I'll be back with answers for them, too, when I've got them composed. 😅

 

• What’s the name of this world for people in your campaign’s scope? Other people might have different names for it, but you need some kind of label to stick on your creation.

 

• Are natural physical laws mostly the same as in our world? If there are multiple moons, a lack of stars, a great crystal dome over a flat earth, or some other obvious global novelty of reality, you need to decide on it at this point because the PCs will likely know about it as a societal commonplace.

 

• Are there any spirit-worlds, alternate dimensions, novel planes of existence, or other cosmological locales generally associated with the world? Don’t worry about gods just yet, but think about whether there are any heavens or hells or Crawling Darks that the natives of this world would likely know about. Of course, some such alternate planes might be established later in the backdrop creation as secrets known only to sages or sinister priests.

 

• Are there any grand global-scale empires or groups that impinge on the campaign’s scope? If so, give them a name and two sentences of description at this point. If you can’t give them a useful shorthand description in two sentences, then their concept is too vague; tighten it and try again.

 

• How interconnected are the parts of your world? Is it easy to move from one region to another? Do the natives know a lot about their more distant neighbors?

 

• Are there any vast global events that have happened recently? You can use the history tables on page 136 as inspiration if you wish, but this is the part where you identify any world-spanning catastrophes or dramatic universal changes that have happened in the relatively recent past. Leave distant history alone for now.

 

• It can be tempting to add gods and religious faiths at this level of backdrop creation, but it’s generally better to save that work for the regional level, or even the kingdom level. Some settings actually do have a set number of universal deities that are honored and worshiped worldwide under assorted names and guises, but most worlds will have faiths specific to particular regions and cultures. The divine patron of one kingdom might be unknown in a neighboring region, or have no more than a few petty shrines.

 

[Jarric]

On 2/18/2023 at 1:58 AM, MaeradCase said:

I am intrigued by your mention of Pratchett! I like a lot of his Discworld, but have yet to try any of The Long Earth.

 

I haven't read the whole series yet, but I really love the first couple of books. They're co-written with Stephen Baxter, later in Sir Terry's life. Would definitely recommend them.

[Jarric]

Well I still need to write up my pitch from week 1, but in the meantime here's the tasks for week 2 for ease of reference.

 

 

Week 2: Surrounding Area

Map the land around the dungeon and town.

 

Gygax suggests “sitting down with a large piece of hex ruled paper and drawing a large scale map. A map with a scale of 1 hex = 1 mile … will be about right for player operations such as exploring, camping, adventuring, and eventually building their strongholds. Even such small things as a witch's hut and side entrances to the dungeon can be shown on the map. The central features of the map must be the major town and the dungeon entrance.” – EGG

 

Tasks

• Get a sheet of hex paper. Draw the following items on it. Name anything worthy of a name. If you don't feel comfortable drawing, lots of hex-mapping programs are available! I’m fond of Hex Kit by Negative Cone of Energy.

• One large settlement (define large however you like)

• Two other settlements (camps, larger or smaller towns, a keep, the home base of a fantasy race, etc.)

• One major terrain feature (covering at least three hexes)

• One mysterious site for exploration

• One dungeon entrance – at least!

• Key your map. The easiest way to do this is probably to number the hex rows and letter the columns. This will give you coordinates to reference. Note down the names of places and terrain types using these coordinates or write them directly on the map.

 

Regarding Scale

If your hex paper contained 23x14 hexes, a scale of 1 mile to 1 hex would represent an area equal to 322 mi² – about half the size of greater London. A 1:6 scale would represent 12,432 mi², roughly a third the size of Ireland. You may be tempted to ‘go big’ but the goal is to define one area in which characters can adventure. You don’t need to map the whole world. Scales any larger than 6 miles per hex should be dismissed out of hand. There will be time to draw a larger scale map in week 5. A lot can be done with just a few hexes!

 

Extra Credit

• Pimp your map. Stain it with coffee, burn the edges a little, or add some color. This will make your map feel like a real document and/or give it some presence at the table.

• Create a random encounters table. Make a 2d6 table (11 slots numbered 2-12). Put the least dangerous/most common encounters in the middle of the table and the rarest ones at the top and bottom of the list. Consider making a few of the encounters interesting NPCs. I also suggest including adventure hooks, like “2d4 goblins looting the corpse of a dead noble” instead of just writing “2d4 goblins.”

[Anim07734]

If you're playing digitally or don't want to track down hex paper, Inkarnate has a good area map option you can add hexes too.  My map below was made entirely with their free assets.

 

I actually did this a couple weeks back for one of my campaigns (and really need to sit down and do the same for the other campaign; so far I've just been making it up as I go based on the world map).

 

I don't have a defined "dungeon" because the campaign started with the starting town of Joyildi being destroyed, so now the party has to decide where to lead the survivors while avoiding their attackers.  I've got 3 other small towns and a bunch of scattered farmsteads; a couple ruins, if they want to explore; and enough terrain I can add stuff for them to find later.  I went with 5mi hexes to give more area while still providing enough detail for decision making; for reference, each of the towns is 2.5-3 days travel by road.

[MaeradCase]

On 2/19/2023 at 3:09 PM, Jarric said:

Get a sheet of hex paper. Draw the following items on it. Name anything worthy of a name. If you don't feel comfortable drawing, lots of hex-mapping programs are available! I’m fond of Hex Kit by Negative Cone of Energy.

I found a website called madisonpaper.com that offered hex-grid as a printable PDF. (I had to download twice because printing blue lines in grayscale ended up with no printing, so I downloaded their grayscale one for a successful second attempt)

I doodled my existing graphing paper map into the hex grid with moderate success (my thoughts shared below were composed this morning while contemplating it in my post)

 

7 hours ago, MaeradCase said:

I worked on the Gygax challenge of making a map, which I'm counting as a Draw Something success. Long thoughts pondered aloud in spoiler tab:

  Hide contents

I decided to remake my doodled NaNoWriMo map and try to figure out what a day's travel could get the caravan to in regard to villages, towns, farms, and established camp sites.

 

I printed off a hex grid sheet, and managed to make a meticulous trail 79 hexes long (that still doesn't feel long enough to me). The map ended up not filling up the page either, and I feel like I might need to contemplate elevation or something to reexamine and likely redesign my narrow mountain range since elevation ought to slow down travel. I might also extend the map to make more room for the rivers? Or zoom in just a tad so that the map can have a bit more careful spacing? Honestly, that sounds like slow work to do, but maybe I can manage that with a digital map resource instead of on paper...

 

Using a hex map did make my river squiggles have a solid path concept, so I like how that worked out. I still need to work on the map, and then color it in after I'm satisfied with the new layout (done automatically if I use a hex map digital tool).

 

My favorite thing I decided was to give the major towns significant outskirts - not because they're enormous metropolis cities, but because they have a significant amount of trade levels thanks to their location by water ways (I need to contemplate where my first clock tower town is located because its location in the hills doesn't fit that category, but I could instead choose one by the bay that could make a better population choice...) - thus they have enough import/export levels to support a grander scale of people, and thus farm land can extend further away and still be considered close enough to be part of the city.

 

I'm far from done. I'll either be trying a digital hex map system next, or I'll be re-gridding the map I've made onto a second sheet of paper. Either way my progress is just for having done a first attempt.  Even though it's a larger scale than only a dungeon near a town for the sake of the start of an adventure, I do like how I'm learning on each attempt a little bit more about my world's design. 

 

In contemplating the size of the cities I consider key to the narrative, two were placed by water which makes sense for the economy. The other is in a pass in a string of hills. While part of me thinks it should move, the other part of me has a brilliant plan to make that a good location due to maybe timber and quicker/easier passage than continuing the end of the hills.

Plus I want some scenic distinction so that the dwarf city, hill city, river city, and lake city all look different.

 

Anyway, thanks for reading my rambles. I'll be back with more later as I make progress.

[MaeradCase]

On 2/19/2023 at 3:09 PM, Jarric said:

I’m fond of Hex Kit by Negative Cone of Energy.

I just found this under the name Cone of Negative Energy, and I think it looks very cool! I have a couple games on itch.io so I might add on the paid templates from CONE. Do you have a favorite style you use on your maps?

[Jarric]

16 hours ago, MaeradCase said:

 

In contemplating the size of the cities I consider key to the narrative, two were placed by water which makes sense for the economy. The other is in a pass in a string of hills. While part of me thinks it should move, the other part of me has a brilliant plan to make that a good location due to maybe timber and quicker/easier passage than continuing the end of the hills.

 

I'd keep it in the hills - it's more interesting that this city is different, and it gives you a creative challenge to decide why it's different. Maybe it's natural resources? Maybe it's a last safe haven where lots of people stop to trade and resupply before an arduous leg of the journey? Maybe at this point the mode of transport for freight has to change, so this city is where everything is unloaded and reloaded? Maybe the local lord laid down extortionate taxes for goods wagons travelling through the city, so everyone unloads at the city gates, carries everything through the city by hand, and picks up with fresh wagons on the other side?

 

15 hours ago, MaeradCase said:

I just found this under the name Cone of Negative Energy, and I think it looks very cool! I have a couple games on itch.io so I might add on the paid templates from CONE. Do you have a favorite style you use on your maps?

 

I've actually never used this, I was quoting from the Gygax75 book at that point. I am going to check it out though, as well as the Madison Paper link you mentioned.

[Artemis Prime]

These are excellent questions, thanks for sharing! 

 

On 2/18/2023 at 5:25 AM, DarK_RaideR said:

What’s the name of this world for people in your campaign’s scope? Other people might have different names for it, but you need some kind of label to stick on your creation.

The country my story takes place in is Fruchtholme. I need to come up with names for other countries, but they don't really have a unified sense of identity globally, so I don't have a name for the world. To them, it's just the world, no name needed.

 

On 2/18/2023 at 5:25 AM, DarK_RaideR said:

Are natural physical laws mostly the same as in our world? If there are multiple moons, a lack of stars, a great crystal dome over a flat earth, or some other obvious global novelty of reality, you need to decide on it at this point because the PCs will likely know about it as a societal commonplace.

Natural laws are mostly the same, but I feel like I could do more here to add some novelty. I'll have to give it some thought. I like the idea of the stars being different, like not just moving in the sky from night to night, but at certain times, or maybe some other trigger, the constellations just change wholesale. Hmmm...some potential there maybe.

 

On 2/18/2023 at 5:25 AM, DarK_RaideR said:

Are there any spirit-worlds, alternate dimensions, novel planes of existence, or other cosmological locales generally associated with the world? Don’t worry about gods just yet, but think about whether there are any heavens or hells or Crawling Darks that the natives of this world would likely know about. Of course, some such alternate planes might be established later in the backdrop creation as secrets known only to sages or sinister priests.

As written, there aren't any other dimensions in my world, but at the beginning the MC doesn't know a lot about magic, so there's room for these things to be added once she finds a teacher and starts to learn more. Spirit worlds are out though, there will be no contacting of the dead in this world. Let them rest in peace, for pity's sake!

 

On 2/18/2023 at 5:25 AM, DarK_RaideR said:

Are there any grand global-scale empires or groups that impinge on the campaign’s scope? If so, give them a name and two sentences of description at this point. If you can’t give them a useful shorthand description in two sentences, then their concept is too vague; tighten it and try again.

Fructholme is on a smaller island that it shares with 2 other countries. There is a much larger landmass that has a lot more activity as far as empires and intrigue, but for the beginning at least, that doesn't really play a role in the story. The characters may eventually go there as part of their quest, but the world powers have better things to do than worry about an island that almost destroyed itself.

 

On 2/18/2023 at 5:25 AM, DarK_RaideR said:

How interconnected are the parts of your world? Is it easy to move from one region to another? Do the natives know a lot about their more distant neighbors?

Fructholme knows a lot about the countries that are on the island with it, but trade and communication lines have been broken by the Husks, so their knowledge of the current situation outside of their own borders is pretty limited. They also know most of the basics about the larger continent, but even before the war they took a rather isolationist stance, so it's kind of vague.

 

On 2/18/2023 at 5:25 AM, DarK_RaideR said:

Are there any vast global events that have happened recently? You can use the history tables on page 136 as inspiration if you wish, but this is the part where you identify any world-spanning catastrophes or dramatic universal changes that have happened in the relatively recent past. Leave distant history alone for now.

The Husk War, which is what kicked off this whole idea.

 

On 2/18/2023 at 5:25 AM, DarK_RaideR said:

It can be tempting to add gods and religious faiths at this level of backdrop creation, but it’s generally better to save that work for the regional level, or even the kingdom level. Some settings actually do have a set number of universal deities that are honored and worshiped worldwide under assorted names and guises, but most worlds will have faiths specific to particular regions and cultures. The divine patron of one kingdom might be unknown in a neighboring region, or have no more than a few petty shrines.

I haven't really added any religion to my world, but there is a group of nature worshippers, and I'll probably add in some other sects in various regions.