Worldbuilding Talk Thread

[Yora]

Useful Link: The Playgrounders Guide to Worldbuilding (Advice on the most common questions.)
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I often have ideas or questions about worldbuilding in general, and since pretty much everything who looks into this forum has something to say about the subject, let's have a general discussion thread about worldbuilding.

I got The Kobold Guide to Worlduilding from a player from my last group, and while I think it's a bit pricy at $13 for the pdf, it really is a very good book on the subject. If you can spare it, I highly recommend it.

I was particularly intrigued by one of the points that is made by Wolfgang Baur at several points. When building a setting, the goal should not primarily to create a complex and detailed geographical, ecological, and cultural landscape, but to create a situation of big unresolved conflicts that are about to blow up at any moment.
Or to quote:

"No, the goal is not an encyclopedic worldbuilding approach. The goal of good campaign setting design is to stack as many boxes of dynamite as possible, and then gingerly hand the whole ensemble to GMs so that they may cackle with glee at all the tools, hooks, conflicts, dangers, and purely delightful mayhem with which you have so thoughtfully provided them."
Wolfgang Baur - The Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding

It's something that has been part of my design approach for quite some time, but I've never seen it brought to a point in such a precise, and hilarious, way. However, what I always reminded myself of was "the setting is defined by the main power groups, not the locations". But it reminded me of another famous words from antiquity.

"Strife is the source of everything."

If everything is fine and there is no conflict, than nothing is happening. And I think that actually it is not even the main power groups that matter so much, but the conflicts that are happening between them.
You don't want to play in Middle-Earth to be a Hobbit enjoying life in the Shire or an elf being idle in Lothlorien. You want to play a dwarf fighting orcs in Moria or a Ranger scouting the borders of Angmar. And when you want to play a Star Wars game, you want to be a Jedi fighting the Sith, a rebell raiding Stormtrooper outposts, or a smuggler running from patrols and bounty hunters. The reason you get thrilled about playing a game in a specific setting is not because you enjoy the landscape or the culture, but because you want to fight in one of it's major conflicts. Even if you play a cute little mouse trying to keep anyone from getting hurt in Mouse Guard, you still play that character because you want to face the big scary predators of the forest.
Probably my favorite setting ever is the Mass Effect universe, and I can quite clearly say that it's all because the many different but overlapping conflicts of the setting. The Turians are allies of the humans as the two races have a lot in common, but they also had a big war not long ago and many people are still angry about that. The Turians are also hated by the Krogans for droping a bioweapon on them from which they still suffer, but it was the Turians who first gave the Krogans spaceships to help them fight the Rachni. And that's just the conflicts of one of the dozen or so species, not to mention all the smaller groups of pirates, mercenaries, terrorists, spies, militias, and so on. No matter where you go, there will be a couple of people who welcome you, and a bunch more who really hate you, and all for numerous very good reasons.
Also, remember the word "setting". It's the location where a story takes place, where it is set. The setting is nothing without the story. And to get back to that old Greek guy, without conflict nothing is happening.

So I think, at the very core of any setting, but even much more so RPG settings, are the major conflicts that define the world. And to go all controversial: The main conflicts have to be the starting point of any setting that is going to be a huge hit with the players and able to get a following of fans if it is published. Without global and regional conflicts, a setting is much more likely to be simply a background for a more or less generic dungeon crawl game that could also have been set anywhere else.

Your thoughts?

[Eldan]

I don't know. It's not how I build settings, I guess.

That said, most of the stuff I build, no one will ever play in, in all likelihood. It's been, oh, about eight years now since I last had a real world group and both my Skype groups play Planescape.

I still produce a few pages every week. And it's very much more in the "encyclopaedic" corner than the "stacks of dynamite" corner. But then, I write it more for fun and exercise than to actually play in, so I guess it's different.

I write the geography and cultures first. The conflicts arise from that later, usually unplanned.

[Weltall_BR]

I certainly agree, but I should point out that a boring world is not one without trouble, but without potential for trouble. Your example of Mass Effect fits that description perfectly: even though there is no conflict between humans and Turians, there is tension, which can become conflict in so many different levels (a spark between neighbor farmers can easily become a racial conflict involving the whole population of a certain area; or a badly chosen word can create a stall in a negotiation).

[Yora]

Yeah, I think that's true. It also matches with the Box of Dynamite image. It's not an explosion, but a high potential for explosion if the PCs tamper with it. Which they will.

[TheWombatOfDoom]

I'm more in Eldan's camp, but I think that's more because I have the tendancy to think of world building as from the ground up. What makes the world different from earth? What does it look like geologically? Where are the seas? What races are there? How did those races come to be? How do they communicate? What abilities do they have?

THEN I focus on the conflict. Some of my conflict ideas may change some of the world, but I need that base of the world, and the understanding of how it works, to develop what happens ON it. While I agree with everything said, that all is significant to story, which is often different from setting, though they often play into one another heavily.

[Yora]

I would think that both require each other. If you have setting without story, it's just a snapshot, but hardly a living world. If the story does not grow out of the setting, then it's just a generic story that leaves the setting pretty much unused and irrelevant.
I wouldn't say that you have to start with the conflicting parties and their specific positions, but I don't think you can just start with places that look nice and cultures that have interesting customs. You need to have at least a rough idea what general moods and themes will be at the center of the setting. What kind of tension exists in the world and in what situations will opposing entities clash with each other.

[TheWombatOfDoom]

I would think that both require each other. If you have setting without story, it's just a snapshot, but hardly a living world. If the story does not grow out of the setting, then it's just a generic story that leaves the setting pretty much unused and irrelevant.
I wouldn't say that you have to start with the conflicting parties and their specific positions, but I don't think you can just start with places that look nice and cultures that have interesting customs. You need to have at least a rough idea what general moods and themes will be at the center of the setting. What kind of tension exists in the world and in what situations will opposing entities clash with each other.

I can certainly agree with that....perhaps the key to a good world then is knowing what themes you are working with and introducing, and allowing your brewing for it to mirror that goal. What you're saying I think is - know where you want your setting to end up, which is mostly where the conflict lies. I guess the ever tricky thing is that its hard to get one without the other, but I think it's certainly easier for most in some degree to think, OH! I want X conflict, so Y is going to have to be like this, so that Z and A do this, while B is doing it's own thing here, because of C.

Where as I create a little in setting, then a little in story, and then back and forth. Often my setting influences things in surprising ways, too.

[Eldan]

I always start with landscapes. I like designing fantastic biomes and landscapes that are utterly unlike anything we have in the world. I once created a setting set entirely on a cliff thousands of miles high. The bottom was always shrouded in mists, the top vanished into the sky, no one knew what was there. All civilization was on ledges, in caves, or in very carefully built houses. Or I have etherworld, where the world was destroyed and everyone lives in demiplanes. I've had worlds where the days and nights lasted months each. I like to start with that kind of thing. Then look how culture might develop around that. Once I have several cultures, they tend to clash automatically.

[Stoney]

This thread is a big tall glass of awesome, Yora :) It's just what I need, because I've got to get the setting part of my setting going, and stop doing all the menial encyclopedic stuff.

All drama is conflict, and conflict really is the heart of the individual session, and the experience of storytelling. And there are so many kinds, and I want desperately to not forget any of them.

There's violent external conflict going on in the world, and then the internal conflict going on within a single character. In my setting, many of the powers are fueled by these internal conflicts, and when they're resolved, characters may find themselves with no reason or powers to fight in the big external battle.

Another great way to think about power politics in the world you're creating is the many overlapping spheres of influence. The way I like to run a session is a bit like The Big Lebowki's The Dude when he's talking to the crippled millionaire.

"Lots of interested parties. Lot of ins, lot of outs, lot of what-have-yous."

My favorite type of conflict is something I call the "three way ****-fit." Three kingdoms in close geographic proximity all want to fight, A, B, and C. The key to power in this type of game is to get any two of the powers to ally against the third, but plenty of things can go wrong along the way. Betrayal could threaten an A-B alliance against C, a kingdom D could break off from one of the kingdoms and shift the balance of power, or one of the kingdoms could be conquered, with tensions later building between former allies.

An even more elaborate form of this is an even greater number of competing clans or factions, maybe 5 or more. Geopolitics is always at work, and culture comes into play. Maybe these 5 now separate groups once perceived themselves as a single entity. In this case, the party members' task is usually phrased as a quest of unification, build a coalition and use it to bludgeon anyone who doesn't ally with you over the head. Hostile monarchs and would-be conquerors are killed or deposed, and the party handles or at least oversees the installation of a new government friendly to their coalition.

The best way to give a political campaign some sense of progression is to contextualize things more broadly once a local conflict is resolved. Now their uber-alliance has to take on an even bigger and badder faction in the world. Of course you could always go back later to something they thought they'd solved, and maybe their allies fall back apart again. The steamroller sense of progression is lost, but something more critical is gained--a sense of danger, that the party might not succeed in their ultimate goal.

You might be forcing your party into an all-or-nothing scenario, a last-ditch effort to kill the big bad guy, or they might take the more cautious approach and try to rebuild or find new allies.

I think that probably one of the ways to drive home the real thematic point of conflict and its resolution is to coincide dramatic internal conflicts and their consequences with the dramatic external ones. The party might meet a spiritual advisor who tries to lead them to enlightenment, but before he can do so fully there's an ambush. Maybe the character has to choose between staying and attempting to gain control over her own emotions, or rushing out immediately to help the party. Players then question later on whether they made the right choice, but there's really no right or wrong answer.

Also, I think that whenever you think of factions and geopolitical struggles, it's important to consider the role of individual character motivation for leaders. It's often too simple and boring if the only goal of the leader is to kill X, take over their lands, subjugate their people, and have sex with some of their women. The other factors to consider are the relational conflicts, do these two know each other? Are they family, as is often possible in feudal power politics?

Maybe there's something unusual that they want, like a trinket that is otherwise valueless to most everyone else--going in and taking it is the simplest solution, as the leader could be an ally after that, without having to incur the animosity of another faction. Humans don't always behave as logical agents, and it's important to consider this when fleshing out your factions and their leaders.

A lot of this is stuff I'm just remembering from a Gaming article, probably the one written on this site. Lots of good stuff in there.

[Grinner]

Hmm. You all are so classy about it. I just pick whatever seems cool at the moment and hash out a cosmology and overarching conflict from that.

[Fairy Lisa]

I usually start with a combination of the culture and the type of biome they are expected to inhabit and build around that. I’m definitely more interested in the anthropological aspects of worldbuilding than the geological aspects though, but I love both!

As far as the biomes go though, when I reference a mountain, I’m usually thinking of say, something that starts at Mount Everest and goes up from there, or if you say a forest, I’m thinking giant forests of Sequoias and Redwoods (which of course dictates the type of vegetation you would find because those thrive best in a Mediterranean climate, basically, wildfires would also have to be a regular occurrence).

I also love the effects this would have on life, both sentient and non-sentient. Your average centaur with the body of a horse probably wouldn’t make it very far in a world I designed unless I included vast expanses of decently flat land, but your non-average centaur with the body of a mountain goat would probably thrive, have exceptional jumping power and as a byproduct, incredible kicking power.

This is all before deciding the magical level (usually medium-high in my settings). Earth is a really beautiful place already, but give a Mad Artist/Scientist the creative license and power to do it all over again, and Earth goes from being a really beautiful place as just the template upon which you could do so much more.

[vorpalkitten]

So many wise people here :)

When I start writing something, first question that comes to mind is what feelings do I want to invoke in my readers? Awe at a big amazing world of wonders, or mystery of clandestine plots and insidious grimores, or helplessness before a horror you can barely begin to define, let alone oppose? It's like writing upside down; headrushing, oftimes confusing, and different.

My philosophy is to find a theme, find something you can explore head-on, upside down, inside and out. Break assumptions on how others tell you to write, and venture into unknown lands. This is the true strength of Fantasy, for it speaks to a more primal part of ourselves, it is dream given form, where thoughts and passions can be spoken without restriction.

So if I want to for example invoke helplessness in my readers, my first question is what inspires this feeling? The most obvious answer is fear, but fear is itself a reaction to what we don't understand. We fear the dark because we don't know what threats lurk, we write of terrible Dark Lords because the we fear the idea that an ordinary, human being could be so terrible. We fear death, and come up for explanations for what happens after death, because we don't know how we'll go on without the person we loved.

Our modern horrors are not big scary monsters or dread lords, for we can understand and therefore oppose them. They are forces of nature, infinitely mysterious and fundamentally abhorrent. I not only speaking of what are commonly called Eldritch Abominations, but of the terror of War, of the blind whims of the Fey, the threat of cosmic disasters, and the looming malevolence of men in black, agents of distant, uncaring and imperceptible government.

Once I know what emotions I want to invoke, and once I have a general idea of what themes I wish to communicate, I build my entire creation around it. If I want a world of adventure, I create a place where civilization is on the fringes to create a sense of constant threat; I place them in a volatile, mysterious and menacing place - a mountain range, covered by ash, caves and volcanoes; a place where conflict between not only orcs, but wild creatures, rival city-states and the ground itself is constant. Then I start piecing things together to explain how they survive, why they'd settle here, what kind of government is needed, politics between the states, professions, and so on till I get a good idea of whats going on.

Anyway, that's my two cents... I could use a drink.

[Tzi]

I start with the encyclopedic, conflict doesn't exist in a vacuum. Where are the battles? I mean to an extent I have knowledge of what sort of big conflicts I want.

But before a war can happen, an assassins plot, or some raiding horde can happen I need a world for it to happen on. The raw power of tectonic plates, of mighty oceans and of a vibrant ecology to support these forces in conflict.

Also responding to Stoney, I actually like Polar Conflicts or basically conflicts between two powerful factions whom have to attain vassal/ally states to act in proxy because direct war is to costly. Cold Wars, spy games, manipulating nations and peoples, even the factions within the factions. I try to have an overarching conflict that spills into all others. Even in a small country the big players in global politics are trying to have a hand and ensure a favorable outcome.

[Zaydos]

Used to be I started with encyclopedic. As I've had less time, or when I have a certain conflict I want to run, I've switched more and more to conflict based. My experience is that it's easier to make a conflict based world, but that to make a fulfilling one you ultimately have to end up being more and more encyclopedic. At the very least you have to have answers to questions before your PCs will ask them, or be good enough at off-the-cuff to answer them on the fly without creating contradictions (I ran a game for 3-4 months staying half a session ahead of the players, it was fun).

[Tzi]

Used to be I started with encyclopedic. As I've had less time, or when I have a certain conflict I want to run, I've switched more and more to conflict based. My experience is that it's easier to make a conflict based world, but that to make a fulfilling one you ultimately have to end up being more and more encyclopedic. At the very least you have to have answers to questions before your PCs will ask them, or be good enough at off-the-cuff to answer them on the fly without creating contradictions (I ran a game for 3-4 months staying half a session ahead of the players, it was fun).

That was the problem I had at first. The first setting I ever made was mostly NPC's, some conflicts, ect but I never thought to heavily about just the world that was there. A lot of stuff came up that I had to do off the cuff the first time.

I've learned the the encyclopedic method is really advantageous. Players might want to explore, might want more to do.

I did alright but ultimately I wanted more richness to the world.

[Sabeki]

When I build worlds, I want to figure out what the main sources of conflict will come from, than build cultures to fill the roles needed, and then I throw in mysteries and far away places to be explored.
For instance, if animals are the main threat, than I'll build Tribe A, then Packs A, B, and C, than throw in a hobgoblin raider party to the East. It works well for me. However, usually I determine the geography before the cultures, so to get inspired by real cultures (desert is Arabia, islands are Australia, etc.)
It works well for me.

[akma]

A thing I often think about instead of conflicts is problems(/limitations/diffucilities).

It could be as simple as shortage of metals, or complex as navigation in a city of moving clouds when flight is impossible. I think about how characters would handle those problems - in the city with almost no metals, martial arts are very common. Sometimes I put characters/factions that have special abilities/resources to help them deal with those problems - for example, no one can fly in the city of clouds, but there are wind magicians who can jump far and even move the clouds.

There could be diffrent ways of handling a problem, each way could represent a diffrent faction. They might need to use the same limited resource, have opposing values, or even simply quarrel over petty things.

I have a setting with a heavy focus on the availability of resources (among other things), and I did a lot of things with that.

[Mx.Silver]

Keep your themes in mind. Vorpalkitten's already commented on starting from a thematic perspective, which is good* but even if you aren't doing that you need to consider what else is being entailed or implied and whether this makes sense in context to what your already have. Getting away with murder, for example, becomes a fair bit harder in a world where your victim can be talked to after the fact, if not just brought back from the dead altogether.

This is especially important when it comes to social issues, and in the case of role-playing games (I would imagine) you also need to consider whether what you're including is something your players are going to be interested in or comfortable.
Fantasy in general has a rather long, uncomfortable history with 'unfortunate implications' on a number of fronts and this is something you need to keep a close eye on. If you/your players don't, for example, want a world where women are second class citizens then you need to pay close attention to what you're doing. Do not get trapped behind 'historical accuracy', that was a lost cause the moment you decided to set this anywhere other than actual historical earth.

As well as describing your fantastic races, it's important to consider what your humans look like. Try to avoid the situation where everyone who isn't white is from some far off 'exotic' land of garbled stereotypes. Try not to base your 'evil' fantasy races on real world cultures too much. Do not bring rape into things unless you are bloody sure you know what you're doing.



* apart from this:

Break assumptions on how others tell you to write, and venture into unknown lands.

Ignoring 'assumptions on how to write' is the fastest way to producing a trainwreck you're likely to come across. If you're starting out, pay bloody close attention to basic rules and guidelines of writing.

[Eldan]

Now I'm curious. How would rape come up in world-building, instead of, say, adventure-writing?

[Tzi]

Now I'm curious. How would rape come up in world-building, instead of, say, adventure-writing?

Possibly as a description of how a society acts or finds acceptable.

Either way it could be touchy, even if its basically your "These people are made of evil and even their buildings spikes of villainy have spikes of villainy."

[Morgarion]

When it comes to worldbuilding, I usually have a central conceit that captures my imagination and then I spin everything else out in relation to it. It's not usually something as abstract as a theme or an issue, but an image. A character, a city, a mountain vista - something distinct that I just can't shake. I prefer then to work my way quickly to 'the top'. I ask myself how it relates to the world around it and as I start answering questions, I 'zoom out' until I have a general sense of things on a global scale.

I like to work on the big stuff first because there are a few different areas I find it to be quite helpful with. The first is creating a sense of history. There are various settings in many media, both homebrew and commercially published, where the history is reified or (strangely enough) dehistoricized to various degrees. You have Kingdom X over here and Kingdom Y is next door, the Empire is across the sea, the barbarian tribes live in the north and that's the way it is because that's how it's always been. They go to war and conquer each other and free themselves, sure, but the borders never move. Everything was just founded ex nihilo. The questions about where these cultural, ethnic or linguistic groups come from is never even asked, let alone answered. For some people, these things don't matter much, but I appreciate the intricacy of being able to explain why everyone in the world speaks the same language or if they don't, which languages are related to one another and how did they come to be distributed as they are.

The second big aspect is representing interconnectedness. I believe it ruins a work's groove when adjacency does not equate to influence. So, if two kingdoms are next to each other, I think the history of the one should have some tangible effects on the other. And this goes back to the reification thing, too. All of the little things that comprise a culture come from somewhere. Maybe it's a neighbor, maybe it's the people who were around before you showed up and kicked them off their land. Maybe it's the guys who held you in bondage for a hundred years. A culture shouldn't just exist in a vacuum.

When I am dealing with components like theme and tone and how to evoke certain emotions in my audience, I like to rely on connotations of the images I'm using. I take a lot of cues from real world stuff - I do my best to let my interests in history and linguistics and cultural/religious stuff inspire me and play around with it until it's new and exciting and it really belongs to me (and my audience), rather than wringing out one-for-one transpositions. It's sort of sloppy, but I just kind of cross my fingers and hope that because the symbols and images that I'm working with evoke a certain response in me, that what I produce will send my audience in the right direction.

The problem with signification, though, is that the relation between the signified and the signifier are completely arbitrary. I'm of the opinion that we make meaning in a sort of relativistic way (which I guess is reflected in my worldbuilding process), so previous meaning-making that we've done will affect present and future meaning-making. So, if you employ a Japanese manga-anime aesthetic in your setting because guys with red eyes, animal ears, white hair to their boots and katanas mean 'cool' to you, then we've clearly made different meanings out of that imagery. And I apologize for that uncharitable caricature of anime - I am completely unfamiliar and ignorant of it, I just needed some hyperbolic example of difference in taste.

[Mx.Silver]

Now I'm curious. How would rape come up in world-building, instead of, say, adventure-writing?

Well, the origin of Half-orcs is probably the most relevant example. In fact I've seen it come up a few times in regards to hybrid races. Then you have some depictions of satyrs and centaurs.

[Sabeki]

Well, the origin of Half-orcs is probably the most relevant example. In fact I've seen it come up a few times in regards to hybrid races. Then you have some depictions of satyrs and centaurs.

For a second there I thought you were talking about people raping animals. Yuck.

[Morgarion]

Oh, sure. Because the animal is NEVER the aggressor.

[Centric]

When you consider the centaur might have sprung from retellings of charioteers or horse-archers, the problems of rape--> hybrid is more an unfortunate product of literalizing myths.

I'm like Morgarion in starting with an image and working outward, though my order is a little different. I think about what things lie outside the image that could have converged to make it possible. Land, people, history, magic, customs... And so it expands. In the end, the actual premise of the world may have little to do with my original idea.

Of course, games I run usually end up exploration based, with the world practically springing up around my players' feet.

Oh, sure. Because the animal is NEVER the aggressor.

Sometimes they are Zeus.

[Sabeki]

Sometimes they are Zeus.

They're all Zeus. Every. Last. One.

What have I done.

[akma]

And what approach do you take to building specific regions in your settings?

[Zaydos]

Well looking at some of my settings I've made...

Recent ones: These have been quick, dirty, and sloppy, with the regions developing as I need them, usually around what's necessary for the plot. This is to facilitate running a campaign while in college and with an active social life meaning I have about 1 hour a week to plan the adventure.

The Three Worlds: I made a map, 1000 by 1000 miles with the basic geographic features common across all three worlds (they have the same major mountain ranges, and coast line) then I decided the basic political aspects of each world. Hondaro had an isolationist empire based lightly on Tokugawan Japan which covered most of it and engaged in off and on border wars with two neighboring empires. Alli'ur was ruled by a benevolent priest-king called the Hallowed Emperor, a great wyrm gold dragon, there were a few kingdoms which had not yet joined the Hallowed Empire and the dragon refused to extend onto Masor or Hondaro (not that any of the Hondaro empires would bend knee to him), in a south-western corner there was a "no man's land" ruled by the monsters that had fled from the Hallowed Empire where a red dragon was gathering power, this was going to explode into full-fledged warfare within 10-20 years (3 years passed in game, this was planned to be the absolute last adventure in the setting, with 1.5 major campaign arcs before it one of which would take almost a year of travelling at relativistic speeds and the end of both would involve a time skip) with minor battles already being fought. Finally Masor was a mass of different kingdoms, many of which were never detailed, the most important of which (Ralxia) was standard generic medieval European fare because my players liked that.

Interra: Older than the 3 Worlds I can sum this one up as "badly". I was barely a teenager and a lot of the world is just "Fantasy Kitchen Sink" and I'd now scrap, the salvageable parts were the 3 original parts each of which was designed to be able to play a whole campaign centered around. The Dragon Marsh was built around an idea, a great swampland, and a pair of conflicts a disinterested tyrant king of whose kingdom the Marsh was only one province which got little support for the taxes and tribute it paid, and a black dragon with dreams of conquest. The next region, Invern, was the major city of the world, based heavily on Lankhmar (I had just discovered Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser) which was designed to allow for a mix of urban adventures and wealthy nobles with world spanning connections and plans, lastly it was built on a series of ancient ruins allowing for good old fashion dungeon delving. The last region that wasn't just stuffing too much into too little space was the dwarven empire of Karavin which, some time ago (within a dwarf's max lifespan) was shattered by an alliance of monstrous races, leaving a fractured western empire with dozens of claimants to the crown and the smoking remnants of an eastern one where the various monstrous factions started to divide the kingdom among themselves violently; this gave me a force of good (the old empire) that would have had global effects but is now fallen allowing for an age of heroes to dawn as individuals needed to now step up (thus giving reasons for conflicts to appear all across the world), and allowed me to set games in the region where the PCs either are reuniting the West or retaking the East. The other regions were put in for certain potential plots or potential campaigns.

[akma]

My approach to building regions is templates - basically a list of catagories, each usually spaning a few lines (could be 1 line, in rare cases could be a few pages. I also use the templates approach on other things, such as organizations).

The setting I work most on for the moment is a post apocalyptic setting, in which after a global war against indestructable shapeshifters, humanity were exiled (no other races).
The humans now live in cities which roughly correlate to the culture they once had, almost every city extremly isolated. Since they are extremly isolated, I want each city to be able to hold entire campaigns, so I work on them much harder than in my other settings. I also put more emphasis on making them very diffrent from each other (I put on emphasis on that in general, but more in that setting).

The template for a city in that setting contains 34 catagories, which I'm aware I'll never manage to fill (and even if I'll manage, I'll just add more catagories by then. The most I managed to fill is 17). I add stuff in random order (=when I think of them), but focus mostly on themes and moral values - if I have enough of those, it makes the rest much easier (I decided on a minimum of 3 of each in each city). I also focus on the resources they have available, I build a lot around that (usually this part comes very easily to me, at the very begining).

Some catagories are not critical - the catagory about the residents pastimes could easily be dropped entirely, but I like it since it helps me think of the city as more of a real, living place. The point for me is not finishing a city, it's letting it grow constantly.

A lot of catagories are specific to the setting - getting food and water does not deserve special attention in most worlds.

On my other settings, my templates are much more humble (=I actully want to finish them) and I feel the need to put much less in each catagory. Traveling between such places is usually trivial, and I expect players to pass many of them in a single campaign or even a single adventure.

In any setting, part of the template for a region is adventure ideas - a few 2-3 lines long ideas for adventures, based on that region (in the setting I mentioned above I also have a campaign ideas catagory). I always put it in the end of the template. I used to put adventure ideas as a requirement to everything, including monsters, but decided it was wrong.

[Tzi]

@akma

I'm curious about your templates. I find describing regions, countries, or even cities in details is pretty challenging. Mainly with stuff like establishing governments, who holds which office and best how to organize those details.