Worldbuilding Talk Thread

[Eldan]

Unless you run a court intrigue game, government probably doesn't have to be detailed. The only things that really need to be detailed are things the players interact with, or background things that immediately give them a certain impression about a region. If they never own a tavern, they probably don't need to know the local laws on brewing or selling alcohol. A general outline is probably fine: "There's a King and a Queen. They have three sons, the oldest is commander of the border watch in the east, the middle one is lazy and useless and the third one is a priest in a monastery. The duke of X is councillor for finance and there's between six and twelve other high nobles around, ususally, to help governing. Most cities are ruled by guild councils."

[akma]

@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.

I break everything into little parts, then fill them a bit. It's hard to write a detailed description of how a city looks like - but if you break it to how the residents dress, the architecture and the landscape, it becomes much easier, since you can put a bit (2-3 lines) in each catagory and have a lot in total. It also helps in organizing everything, and to remind me to fill parts which I might forget about otherwise.

With goverments I either have an idea from the start, or create them so they will fit what I made already. I focus mainy on how much power they have to effectively rule the city - I might want crime to be rampant, or the people severly oppressed.

Goverments could be split into catagories too - social classes, rules and the legal system, strength of police, strength of secret police (if any), foreign affairs, preferred methods of action, priorities (do they care about the residents or their own wealth?) etc.

I admit I have a big problem with writing NPCs, so I can't help you with that.

[Tzi]

Unless you run a court intrigue game, government probably doesn't have to be detailed. The only things that really need to be detailed are things the players interact with, or background things that immediately give them a certain impression about a region. If they never own a tavern, they probably don't need to know the local laws on brewing or selling alcohol. A general outline is probably fine: "There's a King and a Queen. They have three sons, the oldest is commander of the border watch in the east, the middle one is lazy and useless and the third one is a priest in a monastery. The duke of X is councillor for finance and there's between six and twelve other high nobles around, ususally, to help governing. Most cities are ruled by guild councils."

I run a campaign with some cities/city-states having electricity and much of what we might consider modernity. Right now I'm kinda thinking along those lines, like "OKay who is In charge, Prime Minister, Grand Pooba, and then various ministers who might be important." Mainly since a lot of my settings over arching conflict is sort of Cold War Jockying for world power between two major States I might focus mostly on Major Industries, important officials and Military officials, Spy Agencies, ect for each and work from there.

I break everything into little parts, then fill them a bit. It's hard to write a detailed description of how a city looks like - but if you break it to how the residents dress, the architecture and the landscape, it becomes much easier, since you can put a bit (2-3 lines) in each catagory and have a lot in total. It also helps in organizing everything, and to remind me to fill parts which I might forget about otherwise.

With goverments I either have an idea from the start, or create them so they will fit what I made already. I focus mainy on how much power they have to effectively rule the city - I might want crime to be rampant, or the people severly oppressed.

Goverments could be split into catagories too - social classes, rules and the legal system, strength of police, strength of secret police (if any), foreign affairs, preferred methods of action, priorities (do they care about the residents or their own wealth?) etc.

I admit I have a big problem with writing NPCs, so I can't help you with that.

Okay as an example.....
Dahlia City
Resident Fashion: 1910's-20's American styled clothing with occasional steam punk flavor added in. Many woman wear cloche hats, though skirts can be shorter and shorter pairs of shorts also are common.

Architecture: Mostly brickwork buildings, occasionally Iron and steal, Skyscrapers do exist with the cities "Goliath Building" standing as the tallest in the city. A lot of Art Deco construction styles.

Landscape: Dahlia City stands in an oblong Canyon with buildings mostly being on the canyon walls. In some ancient time the canyon was a massive Terrarium with an adamentine and thick glass dome sealing the canyon from the outside. However the glass has long since broken and the adamentine ceiling has largely caved in well before the first buildings were constructed. Massive Adamantine beams and scrap still litter the canyon floor and huge bridges cross the canyon. The lowest levels of the city are occupied by the train depots as well as the mines and foundries.

ect ect.... like that?

[akma]

*snipped example*

ect ect.... like that?

You got the principle, but I do organise catagories a bit diffrently:

Spoiler

Show

Name of city
general description - basically a summation of the city in a few lines. Would be usefull if I had to describe it to someone.
Catagory A

Catagory B

Catagory C
.
.
.

I write things in your way when I'm sure I won't write more than a paragraph in any of the catagories, which is the case with most of my templates (NPCs, local organizations, cities in other settings, etc).

[Tzi]

You got the principle, but I do organise catagories a bit diffrently:

Spoiler

Show

Name of city
general description - basically a summation of the city in a few lines. Would be usefull if I had to describe it to someone.
Catagory A

Catagory B

Catagory C
.
.
.

I write things in your way when I'm sure I won't write more than a paragraph in any of the catagories, which is the case with most of my templates (NPCs, local organizations, cities in other settings, etc).

Woot, Yeah I've been like, basically searching for some sort of organizational structure for my world building project.

I've got countries, names, cultural ideas, wars, history ect ect.... all just kinda jumbled in a big mess in my head and notebook but like it needs to be written out and organized in a way that people can like read an make sense of. Especially my players. I've found in world building my biggest problem is basically my lack of organization bogs me down. Like describing regions, countries, cities ect....

[Morgarion]

One thing that I have done in the past that's worked well for me when I'm organizing my prewriting for fiction is to make my own wiki.

I don't actually go on the internet and start a wiki, but I open up a notebook and I start writing about the first thing that I think of. I introduce a country or a city, a character, a concept, a deity, a weapon, whatever. Then, I write about it until I run out of things to say. It could be a few lines, it could be a paragraph. It could be three or four pages. When I'm finished, I go back through and I underline all of the other things that need to be written about that were mentioned in the first description and write about the first thing I underlined, then the second, etc. until all the underlined words in the first entry have been covered. Then I move onto the second entry, and I do this until I get bored or run out of inspiration or whatever.

I've found it to be a good way to really quickly get things going. If you were more technologically inclined, you might do it in a word document or something that allows you to hyperlink the actual underlined words to their main entries.

[SquidOfSquids]

Well, looks like I've just failed my Lurk Silently check against this thread's awesomeness.

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.

^+1
Any setting needs at least 3 "powers" (countries, organizations, etc.) to be compelling. All too often, people create settings where its basically just good vs evil. These di-polar systems are inherently simple (ie lame and boring). The real charm of history/culture/politics is in the complex interactions between a multitude of interconnected powers.

A good example of this is the board game Diplomacy.

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.

Yup!
Also, from a "boxes of dynamite" perspective, having many overlapping layers of adjacency-relationships makes conflicts all the more interesting. For example, in Diplomacy, the geographic layout of the board creates two main theatres of conflict between close neighbours, the England-France-Germany triangle in the west, and the Italy-Austria-Russia-Turkey quadrangle in the east. In addition to this, there is a second layer of potential conflict between England-Russia-Germany in Scandinavia, France-Italy-Turkey in the Mediterranean, and Germany-Italy-Austria in the Alps. All these overlapping adjacency-relationships creates a surprisingly complex system with only a relatively small number of participants.

[Grinner]

One thing that I have done in the past that's worked well for me when I'm organizing my prewriting for fiction is to make my own wiki.

I don't actually go on the internet and start a wiki, but I open up a notebook and I start writing about the first thing that I think of. I introduce a country or a city, a character, a concept, a deity, a weapon, whatever. Then, I write about it until I run out of things to say. It could be a few lines, it could be a paragraph. It could be three or four pages. When I'm finished, I go back through and I underline all of the other things that need to be written about that were mentioned in the first description and write about the first thing I underlined, then the second, etc. until all the underlined words in the first entry have been covered. Then I move onto the second entry, and I do this until I get bored or run out of inspiration or whatever.

I've found it to be a good way to really quickly get things going. If you were more technologically inclined, you might do it in a word document or something that allows you to hyperlink the actual underlined words to their main entries.

It gets hard to organize the information cleanly after a while, though.

I'd recommend using an actual wiki. Fortunately, there's software for setting up personal wikis on your computer.

[TheWombatOfDoom]

I used to have different word documents dedicated to certain topics, and I've done the same with notebooks. One notebook is completely dedicated to extracting information from our world that potentially used for a campaign, story, or the setting. Things from battle tactics, to historical conquests, to diplomatic happenings, to culure intracasies. Its a 5 split notebook, so I have it categorized.

I generally have one word document describing the world itself, and general variants describing what is different from the "normal" world that we live in. What races are there? How do they function? Why and how did they come to be? What are the politics like per race? Cultural flavor?

Then I have a document that specifically deals with plot. Usually I type it out as if I were verbally telling someone the details quickly. I don't get too detailed, because I know how campaigns are able to wander, or not go as expected, so as long as I have a loose plot, I'm good. I also tend to make a major and a few minor plots, all of which they have the option of doing. I tend to allow my players decide which route to take, rather than railroading it all. A campaign direction is often decided by the first couple of decisions the group decides to take, and where it takes them.

[Tzi]

Well, looks like I've just failed my Lurk Silently check against this thread's awesomeness.


^+1
Any setting needs at least 3 "powers" (countries, organizations, etc.) to be compelling. All too often, people create settings where its basically just good vs evil. These di-polar systems are inherently simple (ie lame and boring). The real charm of history/culture/politics is in the complex interactions between a multitude of interconnected powers.

A good example of this is the board game Diplomacy.


Yup!
Also, from a "boxes of dynamite" perspective, having many overlapping layers of adjacency-relationships makes conflicts all the more interesting. For example, in Diplomacy, the geographic layout of the board creates two main theatres of conflict between close neighbours, the England-France-Germany triangle in the west, and the Italy-Austria-Russia-Turkey quadrangle in the east. In addition to this, there is a second layer of potential conflict between England-Russia-Germany in Scandinavia, France-Italy-Turkey in the Mediterranean, and Germany-Italy-Austria in the Alps. All these overlapping adjacency-relationships creates a surprisingly complex system with only a relatively small number of participants.

I'm trying to move away from heavily bi-polar conflicts Right now I'm was running heavily on the idea of a global "Cold War" as the main overarching conflict. Inspired very much by the conflict between the USSR and USA, I kinda have it depending on which side of the battle line the players come from, they are unsure of if what they know about "The other side," is mere propaganda or actually true about them.

But I decided to mix it up with a third power that is rising amid the chaos of post war world and the conflicts raging in the various "client," nations that the two other big players are manipulating.

So the world has a large scale Ideological war over more or less what is the correct way of life, who should rule the planet and how it should be governed and beneath that you have rivaling factions and ethnic nationalism threatening these very large powers whom are seek to hold order over an expansive world.

[Yora]

I've started working on my first actual campaign on the setting I am working since a short mini-campaign at the very beginning of the concept. And almost immediately ran into a problem. Turns out some things that look really awesome on paper actually don't work in practice at all.

I had the idea that society is heavily clan-focused. Since there is no state, no police, and no courts, people of a clan deal with their internal conflicts themselves and always show a united front against any othersiders, to make the clan an unattractive target for bandits and raiders. To make sure that nobody messes with you, and attack against a member of your clan would be answered with revenge by the whole clan. If someone can rob your neighbor without suffering consequences, you will be the next they rob.
In turn, any time a stranger shows up on a clans territory, people want to know who his chief is who is sending him. If the stranger causes any trouble, you can go to his chief to demand that the offender gets punished and any damages be paid for. If the person has no clan and no chief, or the chief is known to not keep his people in check, the visitor is not welcome and forced to leave.
The PCs wouldn't be wandering adventurers, but warriors of the clan who protect the clans territory from enemy warriors, raiders, and monsters.

Sounds cool, but as soon as I started planning a short adventure, it turns out to not really be feasable.
As 1st level characters, the PCs are at the very bottom of the ranks of warriors. If there is any kind of trouble that needs to be dealt with, the chief will send his experienced warriors to deal with it, and maybe have some of the junior warrior tag along so they may learn something. Which you obviously can't do. You can't have an adventure where the PCs follow a much stronger NPC and watch him doing cool stuff.
Also, you can use the trick of "all the old warriors are gone, so someone else has to do it" only two or maybe three times before it becomes silly. When the PCs reach higher levels and are 4th or 6th levels, then they can go scouting for trouble and dealing with it themselves, and that could really be a cool type of campaign. But for low-level charcters this setup simply doesn't work.

What was planned as a setting without central law-enforcement actually turned out to be effectively an even more strongly centralized law-enforcement. The PCs would have to stay in their district, would be completely unable to do anything in other districts, and be expected to return back to base and report any time they find something interesting to get the specialists to take over.
Unless it's a military campaign, the ability to roam freely and snoop around without any orders from a superior is actually quite important in a low-level game. When every village has a dozen strong men who are all 1st to 4th level fighters, there is no need for low-level outsiders.

Anyone else having stories to share about things that didn't turned out at all like expected in actual play?

[Tzi]

...

Anyone else having stories to share about things that didn't turned out at all like expected in actual play?

My first campaign world was a harsh lesson in that. Originally I was going to have it be the adventurers working for colonial governments to explore a largely vast uncharted continent. But players found exploration sometimes dull and I found I often had to make things far more intense and go from a sandbox of "find stuff and draw it on your map," to a lot of quest arcs. One being basically the Oregon Trail though will more Dire Bear related deaths then dysentery deaths. XD

Eventually though I found out I'm terrible at sandbox per say. But I managed to create a lot of cool Horror quests of exploring a haunted empty mining community, dealing with a werewolf in a small pioneer town and other such things and doing a lot to help build a pioneer settlement. A style of campaign I hope to expand on.

Actually in this new campaign world I might do a lot more of that even borrowing kinda from Pathfinders Kingmaker a little where the players are basically pioneers helping to establish a rough and tumble settlement. Sadly my last campaign world didn't get that far.

[Yora]

I think "pure" Sandbox doesn't work, or only for people who enjoy "pure" old school dungeon crawl. Instead of just setting out into the wilds to see if you find something interesting, the PCs have to start their exploration with the goal of finding something specific which they know must be somewhere around the general area. And they also need to have a reason why they want to find that place or the person or object found inside it, and what they want to do with it once they find it.
It's a goal-based adventure rather than a path-based adventure, but you still need a story. Again, unless the players enjoy hack and slash action for its own sake.

[Tzi]

I think "pure" Sandbox doesn't work, or only for people who enjoy "pure" old school dungeon crawl. Instead of just setting out into the wilds to see if you find something interesting, the PCs have to start their exploration with the goal of finding something specific which they know must be somewhere around the general area. And they also need to have a reason why they want to find that place or the person or object found inside it, and what they want to do with it once they find it.
It's a goal-based adventure rather than a path-based adventure, but you still need a story. Again, unless the players enjoy hack and slash action for its own sake.

Right now the sort of "Oregon Trail," quest arc has a few plausible starts.

Mainly the PC's are young people with their families setting out west into the vast uncharted expanse looking for a better life. As the post war world on their home continent is fairly bleak. So they have a material reason to want to go. The other is they are individuals allied together and working with pioneer settlers who unbeknownst to the settlers are heading into a territory that might house curious ruins the PC's are interested in finding. Or they are independent individuals who are looking to strike it rich beyond the borders of civilization. Idk if any of these hooks work necessarily.

Along the way they will discover certain gruesome things. For example a few empty homesteads, strange abandoned settlements. Living but very fearful settlements. And some unaffected at all. They will do little side quests but all the while this will ideally be wrapped up in a mystery over who.... or what is preying upon the pioneers out there. All while PC's have to work to help establish a town, defend resources from bandits, primitive monsters and other creatures that lurk in the wilds, deal with internal politics and struggle among very different people.

Good quest ideas? No idea, it seems exciting to me but it might totally crash and burn in practice.

[Tzi]

Races, so this is probably a huge topic brought up way too many times by us noobs to the art of Campaign making but....

Is there such a thing as too few? too many?

Right now I set about having just 4 relatively native to the world. But now my vision keeps expanding and wanting to add some. Or even remove a few. Sometimes I'm just torn.

Right now I've settled on 4..... kinda

Tyr: Basically Half Elves fully realized as their own independent race. The descendants of an ancient eugenics project between Elves and Humans. They just have a floating +2 to any one stat.

Azaren: Humans whose amazing Magi-tech and sorcery allowed them to escape the previously dying world by creating a colony within one of the worlds moons. However they used various forms of magic and alchemical mutagens to make themselves into something resembling a living Vampire in order to better survive in the harsh void. They occasionally teleport down to the surface to harvest for blood or forage for resources. The get a +2 to dex and a +2 to any mental stat.

Mau: Humans warped by magic into small sized catfolk while held in captivity by a very bored race of undead lich beings who grew tired of their world and wanted entertainment. They are kinda divided into breeds, Getting a +2 to two stats and -2 to one but there's variant breeds to select from.

Synthetics: Still no idea what I want from them, kinda considering scrapping them or just copy pasting Warforged more or less.

Basically thats whats ON the world. but I'm considering stating out some things like a version of lizard/feathered lizard like creatures. of whom some were stranded on the world long ago and have since become primitive. Another is possibly an offshoot of the Tyr. The lore being the Tyr waited out the rebirth (terraforming) of the world in demi-planes with distorted time. One Demi-Plane could have gone hay wire and the Tyr within may have turned it into a sort of dimension hoping city that travels the planescape. Those Tyr having emerged eons before the rest might be very different. Though they might be so advanced as to be unplayable. idk how I'd work them in.

Idk, should I stick with 4? Go lower? higher?

[Yora]

I try to keep the number low. But in the world of fantasy settings, "low" is still 10 or fewer.
I've done a couple of lists of humanoid races for some popular settings, and quite often you get numbers well over 50, and that's not just Eberron.

If you want to include another race, you have to come up with a culture for them or they are just funny looking humans or don't have any actual relevance at all. I guess it works for having scenes like the first one with aliens in the bar in Star Wars. The Purpose of that scene was to show that there's a huge galaxy full of people of which Lukes knows about as little as the audience does.
But speaking of Star Wars, that setting probably has well over 100 races, maybe even over 200. Yet in practice, the number of races that are frequently used and have more than single appearances in that setting is very low, well under 20.
You got your humans of course, then wookies, twi'lek, calamari, rodians, bothans, zabrak, duros, sulustans, ... and then things start to get a little thin already. Maybe also include weequay, gran, quarren, ithorians, verpines, and hutts. And if you are not at least a Rank 7 Star Wars nuts like I am, you probably already don't know what half of them are. And those are just 15 races. Mass Effect manages to populate an entire galaxy with only 9 races.

And I believe in most cases, every race should have at least two or three different cultures as well, so you get pretty big numbers rather quickly even with just a small handful of races like 6 or so.

With my own setting, I have six races. Plus planetouched, but those are only rare individuals and not entire cultures. What gets the numbers racking up quickly is once you star with the savage humanoid monsters like goblins, ogres, giants, and maybe some fey as well, and add to that dragons, and maybe critters like driders, and doppelgangers, and aboleths, and oh my...
I say keep it as simple as you think you can do it.
I pretty early on scrapped dwarves and halflings since I already have gnomes, and kicked orcs to make room for another race of strong slighly bestial humanoids. And with the orcs gone, hobgoblins immediately followed them and also bugbears for good measure.

[Tzi]

I try to keep the number low. But in the world of fantasy settings, "low" is still 10 or fewer.
I've done a couple of lists of humanoid races for some popular settings, and quite often you get numbers well over 50, and that's not just Eberron.

If you want to include another race, you have to come up with a culture for them or they are just funny looking humans or don't have any actual relevance at all. I guess it works for having scenes like the first one with aliens in the bar in Star Wars. The Purpose of that scene was to show that there's a huge galaxy full of people of which Lukes knows about as little as the audience does.
But speaking of Star Wars, that setting probably has well over 100 races, maybe even over 200. Yet in practice, the number of races that are frequently used and have more than single appearances in that setting is very low, well under 20.
You got your humans of course, then wookies, twi'lek, calamari, rodians, bothans, zabrak, duros, sulustans, ... and then things start to get a little thin already. Maybe also include weequay, gran, quarren, ithorians, verpines, and hutts. And if you are not at least a Rank 7 Star Wars nuts like I am, you probably already don't know what half of them are. And those are just 15 races. Mass Effect manages to populate an entire galaxy with only 9 races.

And I believe in most cases, every race should have at least two or three different cultures as well, so you get pretty big numbers rather quickly even with just a small handful of races like 6 or so.

With my own setting, I have six races. Plus planetouched, but those are only rare individuals and not entire cultures. What gets the numbers racking up quickly is once you star with the savage humanoid monsters like goblins, ogres, giants, and maybe some fey as well, and add to that dragons, and maybe critters like driders, and doppelgangers, and aboleths, and oh my...
I say keep it as simple as you think you can do it.
I pretty early on scrapped dwarves and halflings since I already have gnomes, and kicked orcs to make room for another race of strong slighly bestial humanoids. And with the orcs gone, hobgoblins immediately followed them and also bugbears for good measure.

Originally I was going to have dwarves and halflings as offshoots of ancient (Now extinct humans). I scrapped it since I decided I wanted to just take a D&D world, wipe it clean and settle it with new people.

One thing is I'm trying to avoid using conventional fantasy monsters or have them changed. More or less I'm doing a D&D world far into the future in a sense. And so far with races I've tried to have separate ecological niches per say.

The Tyr more or less fulfill the role as Human stand in and to an extent Elf stand in. Being basically Half Elves selectively bred for great traits. They have the most diverse cultures and divergent appearances. And interrelated by separate languages (All off shoots of Elvish)

The Azaren are kinda divided into separate cultures or I'm trying to do that but its slow going. I'm also trying to make them less generically evil like. Which is hard with a race of blood drinking humanoids who come from the moon. XD

The idea for the Tyr offshoot might be that they've developed their civilization within other planes. In city fortress Demi-Planes and in that sense they could be almost more Elf like or even to some extent resemble the Eldar of warhammer 40k (Borrowing a lot from that series). They also could fill the role of extra-Planar beings Since my world so far lacks a Tiefling or Assimar equivalent races. In that sense they could either be a race trying to suppress the Azaren and defend the Tyr who they recognize as kin, or they could be survivors having had one of their Demi-Planes warp and malfunction forcing them onto the campaign world.

10 might be a bit much. The main reason I've gone so low is my.... well for one I take an ecological niche approach. (These creatures have to share a world together which is hard when you have different species.) So I also try to have them all have at least Similar heritage. In this case every player race has some connection to humans as a progenitor race. Part of it is though that I always fear having an overcrowded world. For example the Tyr race largely is unaware of the Azaren or just hears about them as stories told by rural people or urban legends.

[QED - Iltazyara]

I'm quite sure the amount of races that should be in a setting is based on scale. In a world with wizards, gods, powerful outsiders and the like there will likely be dozens, or more, races and monstrous beasts across the world.

In the area any one player party might venture, or setting might take place? Probably not.

I have upwards of forty races in my setting, but in the area I'm properly fleshing out? Seven, including two races that classify as "Monsters" more than Races from a D&D perspective.

Worlds are big places, unless you put them in a modern or post modern style, and even then, you are going to have diversity. Including magic means the Greeks could have been satyrs, Celts elves and Afrikaans the humans, we have racial differences as is; just not fantastical ones like those seen in most settings.

[Tzi]

I'm quite sure the amount of races that should be in a setting is based on scale. In a world with wizards, gods, powerful outsiders and the like there will likely be dozens, or more, races and monstrous beasts across the world.

In the area any one player party might venture, or setting might take place? Probably not.

I have upwards of forty races in my setting, but in the area I'm properly fleshing out? Seven, including two races that classify as "Monsters" more than Races from a D&D perspective.

Worlds are big places, unless you put them in a modern or post modern style, and even then, you are going to have diversity. Including magic means the Greeks could have been satyrs, Celts elves and Afrikaans the humans, we have racial differences as is; just not fantastical ones like those seen in most settings.

Well the world is errr.... literally slightly bigger then Venus I guess (I actually took the time to calculate it for some dumb reason and for some reason decided to make it a sliver smaller then earth for no other reason then I felt like it. XD)

Right now I have a pretty big campaign setting. Technically infinite if I think highly on it consisting of any number of habitable planets within the material plane and then a strange immaterial chaotic infinitely layered other plane(s).

However to avoid clutter since almost everything happens on a single planet (Madara) and possibly inside one of its moons, I wanted to cut the clutter and focus on having races directly or indirectly related to the world.

So Really I have a handful of player races, defined by me as being races that can speak language, build civilizations and reason to some extent. I'm thinking of making it a general rule that any race on Madara will have to have a connection to its two former primary races of Elves or Humans.

Primitive monstrous humanoids whom lack language, civilization or complex reasoning ability. (For this I've made Ogres, Trolls, Gnolls, Kobolds ect simply primitive bipedal creatures with some understanding and are more akin to either chimps or ancestral species of human on our world.

[QED - Iltazyara]

To be slightly more specific and answer

Races, so this is probably a huge topic brought up way too many times by us noobs to the art of Campaign making but....

Is there such a thing as too few? too many?

I don't honestly think so. Although as Yora said, races balloon into cultures rather rapidly, so it adds extra work quite quickly.

From this particular Noob At Worldbuilding's point of view the limit is this; outline a lot, build a few. That strange avian race that comes to visit from Far Off Land X gets the attention of a player? Look at them more, set them up as something, until then write a paragraph on how they look, how advanced they are and their attitude to other people.

It has been a lesson I've failed at myself, the concept of outlining something and leaving it rather than detailing. Only the gods know how many words lie in all my scattered setting documents.

As a guideline look at the published settings, Eberron has eleven, Faerún a lot more but many of them are sub races. I think ten is a good number, but even as few as four could do if they are interesting enough.

Personally I've kind of been... Battered into submission? Yes, that works. On the subject of monsters, my players love them, love playing as orcs, gnolls, kobolds, goblins... Name it and they've probably tried it. To my own horror I've learned to compensate and work them in, one way or another. Because of this I end up with a lot of extra races to work out, but they usually aren't as detailed, only so many ways to spell "barbaric, evil, cannibal bastard" after all.

[Tzi]

To be slightly more specific and answer



I don't honestly think so. Although as Yora said, races balloon into cultures rather rapidly, so it adds extra work quite quickly.

From this particular Noob At Worldbuilding's point of view the limit is this; outline a lot, build a few. That strange avian race that comes to visit from Far Off Land X gets the attention of a player? Look at them more, set them up as something, until then write a paragraph on how they look, how advanced they are and their attitude to other people.

It has been a lesson I've failed at myself, the concept of outlining something and leaving it rather than detailing. Only the gods know how many words lie in all my scattered setting documents.

As a guideline look at the published settings, Eberron has eleven, Faerún a lot more but many of them are sub races. I think ten is a good number, but even as few as four could do if they are interesting enough.

Personally I've kind of been... Battered into submission? Yes, that works. On the subject of monsters, my players love them, love playing as orcs, gnolls, kobolds, goblins... Name it and they've probably tried it. To my own horror I've learned to compensate and work them in, one way or another. Because of this I end up with a lot of extra races to work out, but they usually aren't as detailed, only so many ways to spell "barbaric, evil, cannibal bastard" after all.

Part of it is me trying to figure out how these effectively separate species might get along. All of these homebrewed races kinda have differing levels of Magical knowledge, technology ect...

The Tyr being the most populous and most numerous generally are unaware of most other races other then themselves. For example the Azaren is more the subject of conspiracy theories, Tabloid journalism, far fetched tales of beings from the stars feasting on blood of livestock and people. The Mau, the Catfolk like pygmies are heard of by explorers and plaster casted footprints but like still widely debated. This plausible other race would be Tyr like as in an offshoot of them, but one debating how to make contact with their own kin and what their relationship is.

Part of it might be that I've boxed myself into having 1 race mostly in the dark about other races even existing and 3 or more other races that know whats really going on. Its sort of me thinking (Wow this makes a cool narrative) but then in practical gameplay what do I do with players that want to play these kinda cool and interesting basically extra-terrestrials? its been troubling me,.

[akma]

With races, in each setting I toke a diffrent approach:

My first, the expanding world (new areas are created each time you reach the horizon), has loads of them. In that setting I put the most emphasis on playability, planing things such that I won't have to explain about the world and players could just jump in (although I ended up breaking many conventions), and players could play whatever they want. Even though I dislike most standard races, I included them anyways, although not with much effect on the setting. I made up a lot of playable races, and have lots of potential and active conflicts with race and racism as a factor.

My second, which I described here (huge unfinished templates for cities), I call wilderness of thirst (I've grown to dislike the name), has only humans as a playable race. Not only that, but also a very small amount of monsters - last time I counted it was less then 10, but I'm thinking of adding a few (in many parts of the setting, there are only humans and nothing else). I decided as a theme that humans will be the villains (also, lots of playable races with only a few monsters would be very odd). There are so few types of creatures because I wanted to emphasize the extreme aridness of the world. That setting breaks pretty much every D&D convention, including some that will cause mechanical issues, so I'm thinking of building a new game system just for it.

In the rest I haven't spent much effort on races (in one of them the races are stuck togather in dome cities, but I haven't decided much other then that), partly because I haven't spent much time working on them. The number of races in them will probably be very big, I generally like diversity.

Well the world is errr.... literally slightly bigger then Venus I guess (I actually took the time to calculate it for some dumb reason and for some reason decided to make it a sliver smaller then earth for no other reason then I felt like it. XD)

I'm used to seeing people decide their setting should be bigger then earth for no reason at all. I guess it should depand on how much you need to fill it with.
I do my best to avoid deciding the size of places.

Part of it might be that I've boxed myself into having 1 race mostly in the dark about other races even existing and 3 or more other races that know whats really going on. Its sort of me thinking (Wow this makes a cool narrative) but then in practical gameplay what do I do with players that want to play these kinda cool and interesting basically extra-terrestrials? its been troubling me,.

Disguises?
Or you could use people tendency for self denial. If an alien will walk in a crowded street, I'm sure most people will think it's a disguise or some other form of trickery.

[Tzi]

With races, in each setting I toke a diffrent approach:

My first, the expanding world (new areas are created each time you reach the horizon), has loads of them. In that setting I put the most emphasis on playability, planing things such that I won't have to explain about the world and players could just jump in (although I ended up breaking many conventions), and players could play whatever they want. Even though I dislike most standard races, I included them anyways, although not with much effect on the setting. I made up a lot of playable races, and have lots of potential and active conflicts with race and racism as a factor.

My second, which I described here (huge unfinished templates for cities), I call wilderness of thirst (I've grown to dislike the name), has only humans as a playable race. Not only that, but also a very small amount of monsters - last time I counted it was less then 10, but I'm thinking of adding a few (in many parts of the setting, there are only humans and nothing else). I decided as a theme that humans will be the villains (also, lots of playable races with only a few monsters would be very odd). There are so few types of creatures because I wanted to emphasize the extreme aridness of the world. That setting breaks pretty much every D&D convention, including some that will cause mechanical issues, so I'm thinking of building a new game system just for it.

In the rest I haven't spent much effort on races (in one of them the races are stuck togather in dome cities, but I haven't decided much other then that), partly because I haven't spent much time working on them. The number of races in them will probably be very big, I generally like diversity.



I'm used to seeing people decide their setting should be bigger then earth for no reason at all. I guess it should depand on how much you need to fill it with.
I do my best to avoid deciding the size of places.



Disguises?
Or you could use people tendency for self denial. If an alien will walk in a crowded street, I'm sure most people will think it's a disguise or some other form of trickery.

It might be plausible that I'll do a combination of that. And maybe some segments of society knowing about these beings. For example governments, or rural isolated settlements having established contact and trade.

Possibly I might build that into a much bigger quest about the players maybe trying to unit the globe's nations and races in a fight against a much more grave threat. Like aberrational horrors threatening invasion ect.

[akma]

It might be plausible that I'll do a combination of that. And maybe some segments of society knowing about these beings. For example governments, or rural isolated settlements having established contact and trade.

Maybe the goverments spread propoganda that the so called other races are simply deformed people with rare genetic illnesses.

[Tzi]

Maybe the goverments spread propoganda that the so called other races are simply deformed people with rare genetic illnesses.

I might do that for one of the other races. Basically the cliffnotes history of the Tyr is that they are an ancient eugenics project between Elves and Humans to create a race of half elves with incredible adaptability and genes. This new race was made within demi-plane pocket dimensions that slowed down the flow of time within them (Acting as a sort of forward time travel device as well) While outside Elven magi and some other magic beings terraformed the dying world back to life so the Tyr would have a home. In the process some Demi-Planes failed or were lost into the other planes. One of those demi-planes actually survived becoming a kinda of Planeshifting city/craft. The Tyr there being awakened very early (Eons before their kin on the campaign world) so they have adapted differently and have had to fight to survive against demonic beings, creatures from other worlds ect... when some of them find the campaign world they consider it "home," for them but other Tyr might not recognize them as the other Tyr have only awakened 2,000 years prior to whenever "Present," is where as these offshoot Tyr have been plane hoping and world hoping for a great while longer. I don't yet have a name for this offshoot Tyr race.

[Shyftir]

Decide the name of the moving city/plane/ship that your "other Tyr" inhabit name them after that. (My suggestion is that you call it Sydon and the people Sydonites. (Tyre and Sidon being real historical cities and a small in joke for your players if they catch it.)

[Yora]

Here's a really cool statement about worldbuilding I just read: "Worlds are verbs."

Which I think is really smart if you think about it for a moment.
It may sound interesting when I say that in the Ancient Lands "a new group of humans has been living in the region for 100 years", "naga are interested in ancient artifacts" or "the magic of warlocks has a corrupting nature". There are humans, naga, artifacts, warlocks, and corruption. Interesting to know, but what about it?
Doesn't it sound a lot more exciting when you says "a new group of humans is expanding their claims on the region", "the naga are sending out their agents to hunt for ancient artifacts", and "warlocks corrupt the land with their magic"?

And I think this does not only apply to presentation, but also to how the creator approaches the creation of the world. There is too much temptation (or bad examples) of describing worlds by stating who is in it and what the locations look like. But in the end, what the players will care for is what's going on.

[Tzi]

Decide the name of the moving city/plane/ship that your "other Tyr" inhabit name them after that. (My suggestion is that you call it Sydon and the people Sydonites. (Tyre and Sidon being real historical cities and a small in joke for your players if they catch it.)

Have you been reading my mind?

I also might rip a name from Dark Suns, Actually my campaign is filled with references to Dark Suns, from the Tyr themselves (The name anyway) and the continent of Athasis. Plus the whole "used to be a desert world terraformed back to life." ect

Sydonite, I like it, Sydonite, Sydonim, Sydoreen. Sydori. Sydorim, a lot of possibilities with that name.

I think I'm going to run with them. Honestly when it comes to a multi-race world my big issue is probably over analyzing it and thinking to much on questions like "Why don't the slightly more advanced ones just conquer and rule over their primitive rivals?" Cause in traditional D&D the Elves in theory have the magical might to just say "Bend the knee humans" and enforce that.

Here's a really cool statement about worldbuilding I just read: "Worlds are verbs."

Which I think is really smart if you think about it for a moment.
It may sound interesting when I say that in the Ancient Lands "a new group of humans has been living in the region for 100 years", "naga are interested in ancient artifacts" or "the magic of warlocks has a corrupting nature". There are humans, naga, artifacts, warlocks, and corruption. Interesting to know, but what about it?
Doesn't it sound a lot more exciting when you says "a new group of humans is expanding their claims on the region", "the naga are sending out their agents to hunt for ancient artifacts", and "warlocks corrupt the land with their magic"?

And I think this does not only apply to presentation, but also to how the creator approaches the creation of the world. There is too much temptation (or bad examples) of describing worlds by stating who is in it and what the locations look like. But in the end, what the players will care for is what's going on.

Let me give it a try....

"Madarra, a Planet where once the oceans and sky were poison, and the world was nothing but sand, where life once nearly extinguish is terraformed back again. But many races now claim Madarra as their home. The Tyr are numerous and have been told since the dawn of their race it is their birthright. They struggle to put aside ethnic squabbles, rivalries, ideological disagreements and forge ahead to colonize the world. The Azaren, hunger for blood to sustain them and know Madarra as the world of their ancestors. The divided race colonizes, harvests and see's Madarra in many lights, some call it home, some see it as a breeding ground for livestock. The Sydori who walk on the world have come to know it as plausibly the origin of their kind as they see the Tyr and themselves as kin, and seek a place they can rest from the constant battles in the warping chaos of the other planes and the void between the stars. The Mau know this as home and have broken the chains of slavery and escaped an aliens zoo to return to it, nobody will deny them their place not a race of Liches that once owned them or blood drinkers or any pointy eared person claiming a birthright."

Amazing? Interesting? WAY TOO OVERDONE? XD

Side note, Yora, this thread is amazing.

[Yora]

I think that sounds still rather static. It tells who the people are and what they want. It still doesn't tell us much about what's actually going on.

The Tyr want to colonize. The Azaren want to fight. The Sydori want to be left alone. The Mau don't want to be slaves again.

This is important for the creator to know as their motivations. But for the players, all that really matters is what they do now. When the players are dropped into the world, they want to dive right in and join the action.
What action?!

[Tzi]

I think that sounds still rather static. It tells who the people are and what they want. It still doesn't tell us much about what's actually going on.

The Tyr want to colonize. The Azaren want to fight. The Sydori want to be left alone. The Mau don't want to be slaves again.

This is important for the creator to know as their motivations. But for the players, all that really matters is what they do now. When the players are dropped into the world, they want to dive right in and join the action.
What action?!

Well lets see, the Tyr are attempting to play catch up. The Azaren and Sydori are far more advanced then them. Thankfully the two are either crippled in sunlight (Azaren) or too few in numbers to stage a campaign (Sydori) but still they fear these weavers of Techno-Sorcery since they have spells and technology the Tyr lack. Tyr States are trying to uncover ancient Magi-tech and invent new things. While also handling the delicate relationships among themselves as not long ago the various Tyr nations were locked in periodic global war among themselves. They scars of said wars, atrocities, and disputes linger and threaten the delicate alliances that have formed.

The Azaren are torn. Many have become feral or become undead beings and Sinthas (The planets second moon) is difficult to live in for many. Many Azaren have settled on the surface establishing city states. However the Azaren are organized in to cliquish clans that often fight among each other for resources. Or fear one another for being overtaken with "blood pox," a sort of degenerative affliction that turns one into a marauding feral blood drinker. Many Azaren are ecologically conscious, and want to preserve Madarra, either for love of ecology, or simply to ensure a stable livestock supply on the surface. To the Azaren their word for Tyr, might loosely translate as "Lunchbox" So for them the current action is building their colonies on the surface, or purging Sinthas of ferals and undead or even escaping Sinthas to forge a colony.

The Sydori are very few in number, most of them still lost in the other planes, wandering. The ones on world are mostly scouting, setting the ground work for the rest of their kin assuming they can find them and convince them to settle (Some might chose not to finding a new way of life to difficult to adapt to.) Others are manipulating the Tyr to gain resources, seeing the Tyr as primitive cousins. Some actually care about their Kin and wish to be apart of them. The Tyr however are divided generally on if the Sydori's story about being long lost kin is true or if this is a trick.

The Mau are divided, some worship Azaren as gods, after the Azaren and Mau sorcerers used their magic to create the portal that liberated the Mau. The Azaren wizards wield the power of gods, granting wishes, weaving the weather and doing feats beyond the imaginations of the Mau. Others however see these "Aliens," as false gods using the Mau to sate their hunger for blood. Plus the Azaren being tainted with Necromancy doesn't help either for the "non-believers."

idk? Actiony? Still static?