Worldbuilding Talk Thread

[Weltall_BR]

I think that this is better left for the GM. It is in great part by filling these blanks that GMs make their campaign unique.

You should also consider the present as providing the hooks for a campaign. By setting the future, you are pushing the DM a certain way.

And lets not forget that you can always set your campaign in the past of the standard present...

[QED - Iltazyara]

I see the concept, and like it, but I also see it as a problem for most players. People playing role playing games generally want to influence events, the more mutability, options, and most importantly, results, that are available the better the game. Defining a timeline as event A happened, how it happened is unknown, and then event B happened, isn't terrible. But saying a city falls, that something happens on this day? That causes issues.

I was planning something like this for my world, as a long term thing, I currently have a very - and I mean extremely - racially diverse world. But it wasn't always like that, in fact it wasn't for the longest time. Gods, wizards, alchemists, demons, even the angels, crossbreeding all ended up with hybrids or conjurations, peculiarities and diversity that lead to new races. But at the start there were a dozen, at most. Now? More like a dozen dozen, only including major sub-species.

So I have a world which changed drastically, and I have a history of Seven Ages; spanning somewhere over 4000 years, in which events occurred. Around the world there are ruins, relics, castles, dungeons, ancient cities, inhabited and explore by modern races that don't even know who made them. What happened back then, why is there a tower atop Mount Silver, and why does a river of molten glass flow from its peak? Why after three thousand years can none save children enter the ruined city of Feraiz?

I plan on doing an ancient period, prior to the Age of Seven (Human empires), before even the Age of Elders (Giants, Elves, Dwarves and Gnomes), more than three thousand years before the current Age of Dreams. Back when even the dwarves were tribal, many still nomadic. Elves didn't study magic, they simply used it, gnomes built things and were capable of feats of engineering remarkable to all others; like a catapult. And not much more. If the Age of Dreams is my 'Post-Roman Empire' period, then I want to set something up in the Age of Gods as the 'Agricultural Beginnings' period.

This long term plan, along with the scale and variety of my world (160k words and counting), means I think I can avoid it getting stale. Going back and discovering those ancient events is great; and once your players have seen them, participated, then make them canon. Write them in as stories, maybe even tell them as legends to future players, or even the same ones with who are playing different characters.

That's what I've already done, a major event in my world is based entirely around the concept of one of my player's characters. And frankly, its probably the most interesting one in there.

[Tzi]

On some level I adopt that the attitude that the players actions and events MOSTLY do not matter to the world. Partly because it's an E6 campaign so the really high level, IMHO borderline godhood stuff is kinda always out of reach. But the players tend to impact local events more then global. So, the world happens around them and they can alter the course to an extent. Like they can prevent a region from falling to an empire which COULD radically alter things. Without the grain lands the empire starves and never conquers the world since it has little food to fuel it's armies for that sort of expansion. OR they players rise to become the Kings/Queens of this region and are recorded down as the epic rulers whose dynasty lasts eons.

Actually one of them consulted an oracle and wished to commune with the Gods, only to be granted a vision of a ceder tree bursting into flames and telling them that "Time defeats every villain and forgets every hero." The players may find brief traces of their former characters from a previous campaign on this world that happened centuries before the current time of the world, but ultimately nobody alive today would know of them or their deeds. They are lost to history. There may be only a single bronze plaque, an etching one of the players did in a brick, but the world kept spinning and moved on, their characters are bones and dust now. and their new characters? They too will do great things and then most likely when the next campaign happens, they too will be forgotten by that time. The great cities they fought to protect and enrich will be dust and rubble, their names on a clay tablet nobody can even read.

[QED - Iltazyara]

I do think you underestimate the enduring nature of a good legend, we have records dating back from thousands of years ago that were maintained, told and retold for those intervening millennia. In a fantasy world it is actually likely to stretch on even further, due to long lived races, or simply longer lived humans than was the norm for most of history.

I understand that with E6 they won't be defeating a mighty dragon alone, without serious cunning, ingenious traps, exploiting its ego and a good portion of luck. But really, that makes for better story to make into legend than 'A band of heroes challenged Dragon X to battle and slew it in five minutes'. If a commoner rises to kingship it is likely to be remembered for a long time, unless they are put down and their stories stamped out. Perhaps not centuries, but the lifetime of a dwarf, or an elf? It's more likely to be remembered than not.

As for the character who ended up embedded into my setting? He stumbled onto the planned level 8+ plot by level two, he followed the leads and beat CR 6 and CR 7 encounters at level four. There have been casualties; I don't pull punches. But the guy, a wizard with custom spells that don't effect the undead, fought his way through a tomb of skeletons after his barbarian friend got knocked unconscious by a sleep sigil. He made himself memorable by doing things you didn't expect him to be able to do, by surprising and astounding repeatedly. It didn't matter that he wasn't even level ten by the end of a campaign meant to last to level fifteen. If anything, it made it better.

We, as humans, remember millions of figures long dead that were important to 'us', or our ancestors, just because we were told they were important. People don't forget achievements that quickly. The difference for a medieval, classical, general fantasy setting is simply that it isn't everyone who remembers. But instead the village elders, the scholars, the historians, the nobles, the people who have the free time to care, the rest will only hear the stories, but for many that is plenty.

[Tzi]

On some level I see your point. I just went with mine as a partial design philosophy idea. But also following some real historical examples. The entirety of the Sumerians was lost to the world until the 1800's. For example the Epic of Gilgemesh, a now incredibly well known example of the oldest written novel we have, was completely lost until 1853 when it was unearthed by Hormuzd Rassam. And there have been people continuously living on the ruins of Mesopotamia since they became ruins. Many records that date back, were only recently rediscovered as of the 19th and 20th century.

But the design philosophy part is more of a personal DM style. I typically don't go for apocalyptic story lines. By which I mean there is rarely a big bad guy threatening the whole of the world. An enduring legend may survive and go through the ages, and you've made a good enough point that I might alter the longevity of ones legend. After all, among the Dark Elves anyway, there are a least a handful of still living people whom were there at the time of the last campaign. Though, as languages change, time shifts, weather erodes, stories tend to be altered.

[Yora]

I was just looking over the domain rules for ACKS, and it says that the area within 50 miles of a city or large town is civilized and the next 25 miles are borderlands.
Now for Americans, this may not be a lot. But here in Europe a 75-mile-radius circle is enough to cover entire countries. :D A single large town would be enough to to establish a country the size of Denmark or the Netherlands. Two and you can cover something like Hungary or Portugal.

This seems rather excessively large to me. Given the amount of city states in Greece, the whole greek world would count as "civilized" with only a few stretches of border regions.

Now ACKS concerns itself primarily with economy, while my interest lies more in danger and overland travel. But in a pre-medieval world (which I belive ACKS assumes), I think much smaller areas of interest would seem much more appropriate. What would you pick? Maybe half that distance? (24 miles civilized, 12 miles border.)

[QED - Iltazyara]

While I certainly do see what you mean, I think it should be noted that the total number for the influence range isn't that far off. Realistically, the distance a city has influence has been the distance from which it can traveled to in a single day. Usually with a message, or warning. So the 48mile per day range of a Light Horse, taken from the PHB, gives so indication of how far a city might influence the land.

But not all of that would be civilised, the surrounding ten or so miles would be heavily farmed, then sparsely, and by twenty miles out it'd only be one or two on fertile, or defensible locations. So it'd maybe ten miles of 'civilised' land, another ten or fifteen of 'inhabited' and out fifty, or even up to sixty or so, miles it would be 'borderlands'. Which isn't entirely appropriate unless you are looking at each town/city in isolation. If there are fifty miles between two big towns/cities, but nothing for hundreds on either side of them that fifty would be much more populated, baring terrain and climate, than the outer reaches on either side of the two cities.

Certainly the size of the civilised lands stated is too much, but 'borderlands', in the assumption that it means something along the lines of 'inhabited, but not controlled, wilderness' made up a much, much larger range.
And, actually, I don't think the concept that a single large town or city made a nation is entirely out of place. A concentration of more than twenty or thirty thousand people was a logistical nightmare to feed, so far more people lived in hamlets and villages spread out under the shadow of the city.

Our modern perception of scale is certainly skewed, especially so for Americans with their simply absurd amount of empty space. I don't think I could walk more than eight miles in any direction from where I live in the UK without hitting at least one other town, village, or hamlet. Even if it'd take me three miles to get out of my own town heading heading north. The amount of people in the countryside dwarfs those in cities, or did until machinery cut down on farming labour. Probably the biggest factor in the influence range of a city is how much land is needed to feed it.

[Yora]

I'm currently reading again the Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding (it's that damn good), and it got me once more thinking about the role of history in setting design. Lots of settings have backstories that cover thousands of years, while for the players the only thing that matters is the present. Past events only matter when they return and become a problem in the present day.

But stories of ancient heroes and how they shaped the present world are often pretty cool ones. Sometimes even more than the things that are happening right now. It's a common standard that the golde age of great heroes is long gone and the present day is just a shadow of it. I understand why Plato and Tolkien loved the idea (to tell the rest of the world how much they suck), but this isn't contemporary criticism, this is roleplaying! Why should we play in the boring times after the interesting things are mostly over?
So I was thinking, that I like the idea of campaigns where the players are not just drifting around in the wake of great history, but are actually riding the crest of the wave. However, paradoxically, I'm not a fan of epic stories. My interest lies much more in the outstanding individuals among the common folk. I also loath metaplots in campaign settings and am still considering the option of a small-scale public release of my own setting. How to solve these conflicting goals?

I think one quite interesting approach is to make the timeline rather short and most of the defining events rather recent. Why set the current year for a campaign in the year 2437 when you can also set the date to 437? The great city state does not need to be 900 years old. If it's just 90 years old, thats still longer than anyone can remember. A setting does not need to be still entirely dynamic, but it's sufficient to have things seeming to be settling down instead of being firmly established. Drastic changes like new empires or collapsing ones might be unlikely in the lifetime of todays people, but the long-term survival of recently established dynasties could still be uncertain and specific borders not yet be set in stone. I think one reason histories are often set at such long periods are because elves and dwarves live for so long, and something just doesn't seem that ancient if your grandfather has told you how he has seen it with his own eyes. But the simple and obvious solution here is just not making such races that extremely long lived. If elves live only for 300 years, that's still amazingly long for a human to consider. But a 150 year old elf wouldn't ever have talked to anyone who was alive just 500 years ago.

Since I haven't yet nailed down a clear timeline, I'm quite curious how it might turn out approching it from this perspective.

[QED - Iltazyara]

I certainly like the idea of having short timelines, although due to my beliefs in a 'realistic' timescale, I am constantly adding to my own. Primarily in the early stage, when all the races (save the four three that are the natives of the world) were primitive. Like the period when dwarves learned the secrets of bronze, the elves first started tapping into magic, humans were forming tribes and orcs... Well, I guess they haven't changed much. Going back that far offers an idea of how their societies might develop, and why they did, I think.

But that was a bit of a tangent, back onto it. Certainly working in the Age of Heroism (for the lack of a better term) is great, wonderful adventures, hard won experiences, dangerous battles in blood soaked temples, the founding of cities that will last millennia...

But, really, what actually makes it different? Unless you go back, and I mean right back, there will always be a before, a time of legends that have passed. Hell, in China, the earliest large dynasty made up an entire dynasty from before them and did that to gain legitimacy! And that was four thousand years ago. What of the Egyptians? The pyramids have been around so long imaging what it would be like while they were being built is hard, but back then, before the legends had a chance to fully develop into epics, there's somewhat of a lacking of suitable locations for those epics.
Year 2437, or year 437. What's the difference? Well, there had to be an event that someone started counting from. What was it, what made the count begin? Was there anything before that? That's probably the biggest question there, the closer you get to year zero, the more you need to know about it.

I'm writing, in my setting, primarily in the 200th Dreaming Year to the 697th Dreaming Year. But the Dreaming Years begin with the Age of Dreams, which starts 5886 years after the beginning of the Age of Founding, which is the first Age. The Age of Dreams is the Seventh, yet the second Age, the Age of Immortals (the preexisting races) cover over more than 3000 of those six and a half thousand years. It leave something behind, for people to perform legends in, even as the Age of Heroism (in my setting it's called the Age of Gods) begins. Four centuries of adventure, as the old order isn't there anymore, the mortal races are vying for power and the gods are out doing crazy things. Demons, heroes, angels, dragons, epic adventures or just a careful campaign cementing the security of the races. And then it switches over to the Age of Elders, because the Elves (with magic, primarily divine at first), the Dwarves (with weapons and metallurgy) the Giants (by being freaking huge) and the Gnomes (by virtue of isolation and inventing catapults, accurate catapults) manage to build themselves up to fill the power vacuum.

I could easily work out a setting in any of these Ages, but diversity, like that of standard kitchen sink D&D, would not have had time to develop. Most of the people of each race might not even know the others exist until they've become established enough to expand a bit, only those in the borderlands even know humans exist.

I might be being confusing, I think it's somewhat easier to say that heroics, usually, are something in the past because they really weren't heroic at the time. Maybe impressive, maybe even told and retold as stories countless times, but it might seem like a natural progression of events to those involved.

I think, if my setting has had one golden age of heroes, it's probably had five. and then it's had each of those successive ages, which have great heroes of their own, longing for the lost glories of the past. The elves wished for the ability to manipulate the magic of the world that the Immortal Wise had, all the while they reshape the forests and land in ways the Wise didn't think possible. The dwarves long for alloys and metals they find only in ruins, and then produce things that are not as strong at first, but more useful and eventually just as strong, if not stronger. The Gnomes lived in technological ruins, and spent all their time deciphering its secrets to live on their volcanic islands, only to realise they were doing things that couldn't be done by the builders of the ruins as they made things absurd.

Even further on, humans took over when the Age of Elders came to a close (well, the thought they did, they really didn't do as much as they claimed to), they longed for the elven magics, the dwarven relics, gnomish machinery. Yet they had catapults, good steel, magic as powerful as teleportation, and in greater quantities than those previous cultures. They saw small things they didn't have, and didn't see the great things they did. It's all a matter of perspective. Gondor held against morder, against overwhelming forces, for so long. They lost ground, but they held, is that really something a waning power would do? It is white stained grey, yet still standing strong. There's something to be said for thinking the glory days have gone, when they have simply been polished up before historians put them on display.

The chivalrous knights of history were, after all, not really very chivalrous.

And that was a long post that went off track several times, but I think it made sense. I hope.

[Yora]

Realistic timescale is thankfully easy to estimate. The transition from "cave-men" to settled communities seems to have been quite accurately pinned at 10,000 years ago. Then you have such convenient benchmarks as the first Kingdom of Egypt about 5,000 years later, Babylon 6,000 years later, the time-setting of the Trojan War after 7,000 years, the Roman Empire after 8,000 years, the High Middle Ages about at 9,000 years, and the present after 10,000 years.

Given the fact that the origin of settled civilization started in my setting when the fey lords were leaving and left their slaves behind, I substracted a head start of 2,000 years and set the total duration of humanoid civilization at 4,000 years. However the current pattern of settlement and regional powers is just 400 years old. I originally was thinking about 800, but I think it works better if I cut that in half.
In fact, I only moved year 1 from the start of the transition period to the end of it. The line of events wasn't really compressed, it's purely for the aesthetics and communicating to the players that things are still relatively new. It's a difference to say "The current age began 800 years ago when the clans overthrew the established order and things got quiet after 400 years of conflict", or to say "The current age began 400 years ago after a 400 year period of chaos". Also, players who are familiar with lots of setting would likely just nod at being told the game takes place in the year 950 and not think about it. But when the game is set in the year 350, you stop and wonder for a moment, that this seems to be an unusually small number.
You can still have tales and accounts of events that happened before year 1, but unconsciously, that was a different world from the one that exists now. That's precisely the effect people want to create when creating a new calender.

[Everyl]

I'm currently reading again the Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding (it's that damn good), and it got me once more thinking about the role of history in setting design. Lots of settings have backstories that cover thousands of years, while for the players the only thing that matters is the present. Past events only matter when they return and become a problem in the present day.

But stories of ancient heroes and how they shaped the present world are often pretty cool ones. Sometimes even more than the things that are happening right now. It's a common standard that the golde age of great heroes is long gone and the present day is just a shadow of it. I understand why Plato and Tolkien loved the idea (to tell the rest of the world how much they suck), but this isn't contemporary criticism, this is roleplaying! Why should we play in the boring times after the interesting things are mostly over?
So I was thinking, that I like the idea of campaigns where the players are not just drifting around in the wake of great history, but are actually riding the crest of the wave. However, paradoxically, I'm not a fan of epic stories. My interest lies much more in the outstanding individuals among the common folk. I also loath metaplots in campaign settings and am still considering the option of a small-scale public release of my own setting. How to solve these conflicting goals?

I think one quite interesting approach is to make the timeline rather short and most of the defining events rather recent. Why set the current year for a campaign in the year 2437 when you can also set the date to 437? The great city state does not need to be 900 years old. If it's just 90 years old, thats still longer than anyone can remember. A setting does not need to be still entirely dynamic, but it's sufficient to have things seeming to be settling down instead of being firmly established. Drastic changes like new empires or collapsing ones might be unlikely in the lifetime of todays people, but the long-term survival of recently established dynasties could still be uncertain and specific borders not yet be set in stone. I think one reason histories are often set at such long periods are because elves and dwarves live for so long, and something just doesn't seem that ancient if your grandfather has told you how he has seen it with his own eyes. But the simple and obvious solution here is just not making such races that extremely long lived. If elves live only for 300 years, that's still amazingly long for a human to consider. But a 150 year old elf wouldn't ever have talked to anyone who was alive just 500 years ago.

Since I haven't yet nailed down a clear timeline, I'm quite curious how it might turn out approching it from this perspective.

First of all, I agree that long-lived races tend to necessitate longer timelines. It was one of the first stumbling points I had when developing the history of my first D&D setting. I'd arbitrarily chosen the year 850 as the year the game was set, wanting it to be long enough after the start of the numbering that the details of the event that started the calendar would be mostly remembered as vague legends. When I put more thought into it later, I realized that something that happened 850 years ago is something that most elderly elves would have been personally told about by their grandparents, or even their parents, who experienced it first-hand; from an elf's perspective, the calendar started about as long ago as World War 1 started from ours. When rewriting the setting's history from scratch as a more experienced DM, I took those factors into account, and one of the results is that each major age of the setting's history is now long enough for even elves, as a culture, to forget details that weren't written down and preserved.

When I later made a humans-only setting, I found myself a lot less focused on history. Humans have a short enough life span that the details of anything that happened more than 200 years ago isn't really that important. I'm still sketching out vague histories, but I don't feel like I need as much detail when talking about political histories when nobody's alive who personally knew the founders of a modern nation, for example. It makes it a little easier to focus on the setting as it matters to the player characters now.

As for the "age of heroes" question, I think that one of the reasons that so many settings include such an age is precedent. If you ask, "what sort of interesting shenanigans can people in this world get up to," having legends of great ancient heroes answers that. Try hard enough, and you, too, can forge a legend that will be remembered for generations, or ascend to divinity, or found an empire, or whatever. Putting those "example" characters in the setting's legendary history keeps them out of the modern day, and neatly sidesteps questions like why the task of saving the world falls on the shoulders of a group of level-appropriate adventurers, rather than being handled by epic heroes. Forgotten Realms is an example of a setting that has too little history, IMO - the great figures are almost all still alive and kicking, at least in the last version of the setting I've read up on, and it really makes one wonder why all the epic-level, divinely-empowered superarchmagi can't fix problems that a squad of 7th-level player characters can.

If you just don't have a long history on the setting, then you can get around that. Perhaps the player characters really are among the most powerful and influential people in history from a relatively early point in their careers. But then, you need other elements of the setting to establish what kind of feats the setting is intended to accommodate. Not necessarily a bad thing, it just requires different setting-building techniques.

And I'm out of time to type right now, so I'll have to think about those techniques another time.

[Tzi]

When I later made a humans-only setting, I found myself a lot less focused on history. Humans have a short enough life span that the details of anything that happened more than 200 years ago isn't really that important. I'm still sketching out vague histories, but I don't feel like I need as much detail when talking about political histories when nobody's alive who personally knew the founders of a modern nation, for example. It makes it a little easier to focus on the setting as it matters to the player characters now.

That for me, is the best example of why Human only settings are really awesome. LIKE......

Just the lack of clutter and difficult questions that emerge are what makes this a fantastic idea I always go back and fourth on.

[Mx.Silver]

First of all, I agree that long-lived races tend to necessitate longer timelines.

I don't. Well, they do if you insist on modeling their history on a human model of generations but if you're willing to ignore that it's not so much of a problem. The fact that it will be fewer generations for them than it would be for humans isn't necessarily a problem in terms of stuff happening - one thing that tends to be glossed over when looking at human history is how much can and does happen within a human life-span. It also helps create an immediate, and fairly significant, cultural difference between them and humans - because they'll be operating on a very different standard of what 'living memory' means.

[Tzi]

Actually a variant Idea for a Humans only setting has crossed my mind.

In the context of the game world all are treated as if they are typical people, biologically capable of interbreeding and with fairly mix matched traits (This works a bit better in a pathfinder setting IMHO) BUT use some statistical sheets for say different variants?

To explain, in the land of Hyrule there are regular humans, but also some humans have pointed elf life ears but are called Hylians. I am unsure if the Hylians pointed earness is ever really addressed, but some are depicted as just having regular ears and others with pointed ears. The idea I had was that the in game world is one that is colonized by successive waves of humans whom over time carry differences. The First Men, often have pointed ears as they intermingled with the then dying out Elves. The Second wave were mostly rounded eared and carry that trait. The Third wave were brawny and strong and large in size as they staid the longest on the previously doomed world on the other side of a portal (As an example)

In this sense I could have some fairly basic variant stat sheets, keep everyone the same basic lifespan ect ect other advantages.

[Everyl]

Actually a variant Idea for a Humans only setting has crossed my mind.

In the context of the game world all are treated as if they are typical people, biologically capable of interbreeding and with fairly mix matched traits (This works a bit better in a pathfinder setting IMHO) BUT use some statistical sheets for say different variants?

To explain, in the land of Hyrule there are regular humans, but also some humans have pointed elf life ears but are called Hylians. I am unsure if the Hylians pointed earness is ever really addressed, but some are depicted as just having regular ears and others with pointed ears. The idea I had was that the in game world is one that is colonized by successive waves of humans whom over time carry differences. The First Men, often have pointed ears as they intermingled with the then dying out Elves. The Second wave were mostly rounded eared and carry that trait. The Third wave were brawny and strong and large in size as they staid the longest on the previously doomed world on the other side of a portal (As an example)

In this sense I could have some fairly basic variant stat sheets, keep everyone the same basic lifespan ect ect other advantages.

This kind of thing is quite doable. I've played in games that used variations of this, where humans from different backgrounds got stat modifiers based on their home cultures to reflect the differing conditions, education, and upbringing found in different places. Even some big-name settings use this - about half the races in the Elder Scrolls setting are just different ethnic groups of humans.

It's entirely possible to give your players lots of "racial" choices without having a single non-human or extended-lifespan character in the setting.

[Frozen_Feet]

How big a part does world history often play in World Building? Like establishing various written histories or general facts? Personally I do this a lot but often wonder if it's ever relevant.

Late to the party, but wanted to have my say

It should play a bigger part in world-building, but for actual play, it's usually not that important. Or put it differently: historical events in actual play are only important if they're the focus of or reason for that game's events.

Most world-builders screw this up by focusing too much on the scope and not enough on the details. What's important to a character is not what happened to the elven empire 10,000 years ago, it's what happened to his hometown or homeland 10 or 20 years ago. The games that get history and its influence over events right tend to not be fantasy, they're games like Twilight 2000 that specifically focus on alternate history.

So if you're making a world to actually play in, focus on near-history of the places and nations where the player characters would reasonably travel. Heap on the details on places of interest. Distant empires and prehistory only matter if there are fossils or other remnants of them right there. Details of those are not as important, because seriously: how and why would player characters even know them? Most people are not history professors. If you put something that's long been abandoned in your gameworld, you can leave the details for the reasons of its existence to your player's imagination.

[Tzi]

Late to the party, but wanted to have my say

It should play a bigger part in world-building, but for actual play, it's usually not that important. Or put it differently: historical events in actual play are only important if they're the focus of or reason for that game's events.

Most world-builders screw this up by focusing too much on the scope and not enough on the details. What's important to a character is not what happened to the elven empire 10,000 years ago, it's what happened to his hometown or homeland 10 or 20 years ago. The games that get history and its influence over events right tend to not be fantasy, they're games like Twilight 2000 that specifically focus on alternate history.

So if you're making a world to actually play in, focus on near-history of the places and nations where the player characters would reasonably travel. Heap on the details on places of interest. Distant empires and prehistory only matter if there are fossils or other remnants of them right there. Details of those are not as important, because seriously: how and why would player characters even know them? Most people are not history professors. If you put something that's long been abandoned in your gameworld, you can leave the details for the reasons of its existence to your player's imagination.

Currently I try to make any of the truly ANCIENT lore somewhat relevant to recent history. For example the players traveling to the Magog basin were there is a basin crater of the same name know that allegedly 3 centuries prior a fierce war erupted after the King of the city of Magog raided the walls of Sabyl and stole it's treasures. They then were visited by a Dragon whom proclaimed himself a living god and attempted to taint an ancient comatose Nephilim (Basically in the setting, Elder spawn of Primordial Titans and Star God Lovecraftian weirdness) that slumbered beneath the basin. In doing so the Gods worried about this powerful being, and being unable to truly kill it they released a great beast, "The Leviathan," Which is basically the Tarrasque of my world to fight the dragon and smite the wicked people who were aiding this dragon in its evil.

What they gather is that the area is tainted by the possibly corrupted dreams of the Nephilim, the massive skeleton littering the side of the crater wall is that of a Tarrasque like being. And the bones peaking of from the lake are those of an elder great wyrm dragon. The Nephilim goes back to ancient times, LONG before even the Elves ect, the Leviathan vs Dragon fight is recent. ect

It explains the massive bones that they had to use to climb down the crater, explains the demons lurking in the ruins, and MAYBE explains the volcanic activity in the area that has turned it into an ashy waste scape.

[Yora]

I just saw that the Red Tide Campaign Guide and Sandbox Toolkit is available for 8$. I've really wanted to give this one a try for a long time, as the reviews and comments people wrote about it rate it extremely high as a great guide to create campaign settings. It just had always been too expensive to buy it on pure faith alone, as this could very well turn out to be completely useless to me. But for this price this seems totally worth a shot.

[TheWombatOfDoom]

I just saw that the Red Tide Campaign Guide and Sandbox Toolkit is available for 8$. I've really wanted to give this one a try for a long time, as the reviews and comments people wrote about it rate it extremely high as a great guide to create campaign settings. It just had always been too expensive to buy it on pure faith alone, as this could very well turn out to be completely useless to me. But for this price this seems totally worth a shot.

Let me know if it is! I'm always looking for good stuff like this!

[Yora]

The first half of the book is 80 pages of the Red Tide setting. Some ideas that might be interesting to salvage, but basically another sandbox setting.
The other half is advice and tools for sandbox building, but from a first look I think it's also quite valuable for setting design in general. A good deal of the material is once again random tables to generate content and sample encounters, which I mostly find useless. However, the book also presents some interesting ideas how to figure out what things the world really needs to be usefull. And way to often I see people writing pages on things that make me think "and how will this ever matter to the players?" There are 50 pages for designing cities, border towns, and ruins, but I particularly like the idea of creating courts. It could probably have been condensed to 20 pages, and the really great ideas sufficiently explained in one paragraph, so despite being a 160 page book, there isn't really that much in it, at least as far as I can see and for my personal purposes.

I still have to really read it in detail, but I wouldn't call it a must buy for setting design, as some reviewers made it out to be. If it was just the advice section for $5, I'd probably do, though.
If you're interested in how one person made a solid sandbox, want to scavange it for ideas to steal, or have use for random content table, then I think $8 is a price that makes it worth the risk.

Though for $15 you can get the Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding, which I consider to have way more than twice the amount ofgreat material than Red Tide.

[Yora]

Here is a new idea I'd like to discuss. Quick and dirty town generation.

Not random generation, but making a short list of the essential basic information of the settlement. Very often the party will pass through a village that does not need to be fully fleshed out and populated by NPCs. But very often players will want to buy something, and the reply most likely is "sure, you can get it at the store, I guess". But I think villages can be made more interesting by preparing a short list of special traits for them. What things can be found there and which not? Not only for buying things, but also to have an idea what would happen if a crisis comes up. Or the PCs cause one. In sandbox games this is important, but I think it can also make general worldbuilding a lot easier.

Palisade (in case monsters attack)
Keep (or something much more dangerous)
Garrison (royal knights and soldiers)
Harbor (if location is near a river or sea)
Tavern
Inn
Weaponsmith
Trade Post (to buy and sell things not made by local craftsmen)
Stable (to buy horses or perhaps other mounts)
Mines
Temple/Shrine (to see a minor village priest)
Temple/Monastery (as a base for a local power group and with armed guards)
Criminal Gang (thieves, smugglers, slavers, ...)
Nonregular Cult (demons, apocalyptic, ascetics, ...)
Alchemist/Witch

When you make a village or town, just pick a few items from the list, and you should already have a good idea of what kind of place it is and be able to tell if something is available if the players ask about it.
Do you have any other ideas what would be good additions to that list?

[Super Evil User]

I'm thinking of doing something like Quest For Glory III, where a town on the border has problems with indigenous tribes. Any ideas as to how to create tension between these two groups? They're not kingdoms, so anything to do with war is a no no, although it will eventually escalate to a full-blown armed conflict.

[Everyl]

Do you have any other ideas what would be good additions to that list?

Things you might find in a town or village:
Minor pilgrimage destination (Local shrine/temple has some minor, probably non-magical relic; townsfolk are used to dealing with travelers, especially religious ones)
Rider's station (A place for people in a hurry to change horses, probably associated with a specific group or organization)
Natural baths (A clean river or stream, or nearby springs, hot or otherwise)
Geographic choke point (Mountain pass, ford or bridge across a river, etc.)
Brewer/vintner (Someone making drinks in large enough quantity to trade)

[Vitruviansquid]

Not having played Quest for Glory 3, I don't know how useful this advice would be, but you could set up a classic farmers vs. nomads competition. One side is a farming culture that sees the land claimed by the nomadic herders as simply wasted and unclaimed. When they move in to claim that land and farm on it, the nomads see the encroachment as taking away necessary grazing land to feed their herds. Either nomads or farmers might have a military advantage (either by the availability of horses for nomads or availability of industrially produced weaponry for farmers) and routinely attack the other party to obtain goods less available in their own economic systems.

You might also have cultural misunderstandings that create hostilities. People from one group might make negotiations with a representative from another group only to find out that representative didn't have the authority required to, say, sell land, set up large trade deals, give military support, and so on. It's also perfectly possible that the two sides hate each other simply because of baseless rumors and paranoia.

[Super Evil User]

Baseless rumors won't work. We need something concrete enough to justify an armed conflict. Like a hostage situation gone awry in the past or something along those lines.

[White Blade]

I'm thinking of doing something like Quest For Glory III, where a town on the border has problems with indigenous tribes. Any ideas as to how to create tension between these two groups? They're not kingdoms, so anything to do with war is a no no, although it will eventually escalate to a full-blown armed conflict.

The town is on a choke point for a traditional route of trade for the indigenous tribes but blockades them because of an old insult, past violence, or the incivility of the tribes themselves. The tribes, in turn, have suffered economic degradation and viability loss. Then, some ruffian from one group kills a traveler from the other. That side goes to capture the perpetrator. The other side claims it is an invasion.

Bam! Instant war, nobody really to blame. Alternately, back up to before the ruffian kills the other ruffian.

[Super Evil User]

That reminds me of Fire Emblem Awakening for some reason.

[Oneris]

Is anyone familiar with ways to generate believable weather and climate from wind patterns? I guess I could follow Munroe's example with Cassini, but I'm not certain if it will work with a planet larger than earth, or with a modified amount of land mass. What would be the effect on climate if all the land mass was concentrated on only one side of the planet?

[Yora]

Depends entirely on the degree of believeable you think is needed. Climate models are about the most complex systems in the universe. I just place mountains, coasts, forests, and deserts in a way that it does not immediately look like it's impossible to anyone who knows some basics about weather. A huge number of factors, like height and angle of mountains, chemical composition of the atmosphere, energy output of the sun, and so on won't be defined, so it's impossible to say what exactly would happen anyway.
Simply not being glaringly impossible is good enough.

[White Blade]

That reminds me of Fire Emblem Awakening for some reason.

I don't know of it, my only inspiration was the real world.