Worldbuilding Talk Thread

[Morgarion]

Does anyone else have trouble working out the right scale for the world when it comes time to map it out? I've drawn and redrawn the continent I'm working on probably two dozen times but I just can't seem to get something that satisfies me. I might get the distance between the cities where I want it ('two days by horse from here to here'), only to make the continent so small that there isn't any room for the monsters and secluded adventure sites. But if I increase the scale ('now it takes a week to travel from one end of the swamp to the other'), I run into the problem of having to figure out how a single state could govern so much area. It's so tedious.

[Eldan]

Don't map it out precisely?

I mean, have you ever seen medieval European maps? I've seen some. "Two days by horse" is probably more exact than a lot you'll get on them. Many are really, really vague, along the lines of "the town is between this mountain and that forest". There were no geometers in those days running around with instruments mapping out things. You're lucky if you have a Roman road still standing, because they have milestones.

It gives you a lot of freedom, too, while writing adventures. Need more space? Make more space!

[Morgarion]

I suppose that's one way to do it. I have a general idea about the shape and relative position of all the areas. I don't know that I've ever run or played in a game where the players didn't get access to some sort of visual aid for the shape of the world at large. At least, not any that lasted more than one impromptu session.

But you raise a good question. Is it really necessary to have it so thoroughly mapped out?

[Eldan]

I like a vague map that gives a shape. But tell your players that distances aren't necessarily exact and that there may be mistakes on there.

To illustrate what I mean, here's a genuine old map:

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Have fun measuring distances on that.

[Hovannes]

There can be many layers of conflict. On a global/divine scale is where I like to start – figure out what the gods want and how they intend to get it. By motivating the mortals all types of conflicts arise. Just look at the standard AD&D story line ancient conflict between the surface elves and the creation of dark elves based on the desires of Loth.

We can even look at our reality and the massive conflict between religions - just watch CNN for 20 minutes.

In any case, once you have the ‘big picture’ you can drill down to a given geographical location and see how each kingdom, city, town, or even village will be involved in the conflict. Campaigns can be developed to provide players an opportunity to change these outcomes (dragonlance).

I have found that strife, conflict, and war should come along in cycles otherwise the players get ‘burned-out’ going from town to town only to save the townspeople from mayhem.

Just my two cents;

[Trog]

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

Your thoughts?

Agreed. I tend to think of this as the Dragonlance model of setting creation for whatever reason. The entire setting was created as a backdrop for this huge conflict that the PCs will find themselves playing a major part in. The creation of layers of conflict within the setting allows for a much more diverse world and can fill in a lot of details about any one particular area just by relying on a a relatively short guide of reasons for the conflicts - the underlying structure of the setting and, probably, a major part of the adventure(s) set within that setting.

History is a great place to start building. Culture is another good area. Trade, Religion, Non-ruling groups with influence and agendas, all of these can layer in the richness of the setting.

My latest experiment in setting building takes place in my own version of the feywild and has been my most ambitious setting project to date (I ramble on about it in my blog) and it primarily has all regional conflict relate to on one key event: The elimination of the region's sole superpower, which happens prior to the start of the adventure.

What's left is all the power groups reacting to this change – filling the void, jockeying for position to be the next group on top, or to not be the one on the bottom, at least. Cultures I created in the region had grown out of the prior, more stable setting (and its historical establishment and growth) when the superpower was still around. With things changing you have those struggling to adapt, those desperately trying to cling to the past, those pushing for a future with them on top, etc. I've found it to be a surprisingly effective event to base a setting off of.

The PCs will get to influence events in the region to dictate small or large changes to the balance of power. It's important to note that these changes the PCs make aren't coming at the very end of the adventure but constantly all the way through it. Alliances and enemies are made and these choices influence future interactions in upcoming parts of the campaign. It is, I feel, this flexibility of setting that truly makes a sandbox campaign. Or at least any one that's interesting to adventure in for me, anyway. Vast amounts of interactivity trumps vast amounts of written data on a static setting and all written data should serve to paint the picture by which the PCs will make their judgement calls to influence the setting.

Anyways, I'm rambling, as usual. This is a good thread.

[Morgarion]

I've got another question about maps, but this one is more of a technical issue/request for suggestions. I'm nearing completion on the write-up of the setting I've been working on and I finished the map in Googledocs (or Drive or whatever it is now). I think it's kind of big; not the file size, but the actual dimensions of the image. I don't have any good drawing or image editing programs or anything. So, is there a good place to host it that will help me present it better? And remember, you're talking to a guy who made a world map using nothing but the straight line tool.

[zabbarot]

you're talking to a guy who made a world map using nothing but the straight line tool.

You're a madman Seriously though, what are the dimensions on the image, and what's the filesize? Most image hosting websites are only limited by filesize. Actually, what do you mean by present it better? Do you want to resize it or something?

[Morgarion]

It's in my Google Drive right now, so I'm having trouble figuring precisely how big its dimensions are. The text on it that is twelve point font is tiny and illegible when it is zoomed out all the way, if that gives you an idea. If I download it as a JPEG it's 120kb, which isn't large but its just lines.

What I want to do is put it somewhere that will let me either manipulate the image in such a way as to let me be able to see how big it will actually appear if I posted it here, or to automatically optimize it for the web.

[Morgarion]

Let me test it.

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That's not so bad.

[Yora]

Download the image, open with an image program like IrfanView (free), Gwenview (free), Photoshop, or GIMP (free) (and I think most opperating systems come at least with a bare bones image program), set zoom to 100% and the window to fullscreen.
Then you have it on your screen in just the same size it would show up in a browser.

Now that I think of it, when you're accessing the image online, you can right-click on it and select "View Image". Then you get only that image file and you should be able to click the image to switch between "show whole image" and "show at actual size" mode, if the image doesn't normally fit in your browser window.

[ArcanistSupreme]

I am now seriously considering dropping dragons completely or reducing them to a single type of creature without any spells. I've been working on my setting for over three years, and a dragon showed up in any kind of role only once, and I completely dropped that idea long ago.

For my current campaign/the only one that I've invested any time into developing, there is officially ONE dragon (although there *might* be one or two more, I haven't decided). He was sealed away long ago, and a cult worships him as the god of avarice and power. Few know that he is real, but the few that do seek to free him from his prison.

In short, he's a final encounter. That way I get my iconic dragon, but I don't have to worry about his mere existence warping the world until the very end. His stats are gonna be a $%^&# to tweak properly, though, since the campaign is an E6 world. Probably some rituals or MacGuffin will be needed to fight him.

On a related note, I find that this E6 world is much easier to deal with than a standard 1-20 one. It's much more believable that the world hasn't gone full Tippyverse, and power structures similar to those in the real world can exist without straining suspension of disbelief.

[TheStranger]

I can't believe I hadn't found this thread before!

On the topic of maps and scale:
The quality of medieval maps was, as has been mentioned, suspect. However, it's not hard to imagine a king paying a few wizards to overfly his realm, take a bunch of aerial photos (I can't remember if there's a "photograph" spell anywhere, but there should be) and make a map based on that. It's also possible to do surveys with medieval technology that result in pretty good maps, if you're willing to take the time to do it. On the other hand, try this experiment: think of an area you know well, like your town and a few surrounding communities. You know all the major roads and landmarks, you can get around pretty easily, and you've probably even seen some good maps of the area (or looked at it on Google Earth). Now, sit down and draw a map of the area from memory, with the level of detail you expect in a campaign map. Then, compare your map to an actual map of the area. My point is, the quality of medieval maps could range from pretty good to pretty lousy, depending on the reason for making the map, the cartographer, and the resources they had available.

As for the scale, there are several possibilities. First, there's nothing wrong with a small, regional campaign. Ok, your "continent" is the size of Ireland. That's fine - the rest of the world is out there somewhere, but you don't need to map it unless your players need to go there (and if they do, they'll be shocked by the scale of it).

Second, if you want to go bigger but feel like there's too much land, consider one possible real-world solution to this (and one that fits the tropes of D&D): a layered system of feudal vassals. Divide a realm up into a patchwork of duchies, counties, and baronies, until you get down to each lord ruling, at most, a half-dozen communities no more than a couple days' ride from his manor (and each village can have a commoner mayor). Ultimately, they all owe allegiance to the same king, but he's not micromanaging every village out there; it's all delegated to people, who delegate to other people, who keep delegating down until it gets manageable. Insert some wilderness in between if you want to further limit the number of communities. Then, abstract most of that away unless the players actually visit it. This blob on the map is ruled by the king of Heartlandia. There are an arbitrary number of vassals under him who administer all that, pay taxes, and contribute levies if needed. But you don't need to name all those people; label the blob "Heartlandia," assume that this implies a complex system of feudal obligations (maybe work out an overview of how that works), and be done with it.

In reality, it's the same way modern governments do it. I live in a town (barony). The town is in a county, which is part of a state (duchy). Along with 49 other states, it makes up a nation (kingdom). You can split authority up a bunch of different ways, and change the names (province, prefecture, earldom, etc.), but each level delegates some or all of its power to the level below it according to some established rules, and in the end it works fine (until it doesn't, and there's a rebellion or something). Nor is it dependent on modern transportation/communication technology - there have been plenty of large realms all over the world throughout history. Some only lasted as long as a strong leader could hold them together, but others lasted for hundreds of years.

[Yora]

I think most settings are actually a lot bigger than they really need to. The problem is that two of the best known fantasy settings that probably most people have as a mental reference, are both huge. Middle-Earth is huge in scale, because the heroes go on a months-long journey, but the story itself really only describes the places they visit on their route, so the actual setting is much smaller than the map would suggest. The other one is Forgotten Realms, which really is just massive in size regarding content. One man sketched out the basics and drew up the map, but large parts of it were actually done in detail by numerous other writers over decades.

The North is only one of maybe 40 regions of similar size and at the most includes 20% of all the content that exist for it. But even all by itself, it's allready a quite large and very detailed setting.
GMs and players are always only going to use one region at a time, which has it's specific culture and people. It is much more sensible to create one such region in detail and do it very well, then to have 20 generic countries that only gloss over the basics. The entire Dark Sun setting is probably smaller in content (regardless of the distances on the map) than the North in the Forgotten Realms.

[TheStranger]

That's true in some regards. I think it's the result of a desire to have the world (not necessarily the same thing as the setting) be roughly earth-like in size. So you end up with large continents, and you want to fill them in. I don't think there's anything wrong with that, but I also agree that you can just draw up a regional map and only go beyond that if you need to. As you said, the LotR setting is huge, but the story only requires that a few small areas be filled in. Also, that setting was the (unfinished) life's work of one man, who enjoyed the process of filling everything in in minute detail, creating extensive lineages for each character, writing the backstory of all those ancestors, etc. For those of us who just want a place to play in, that's way too much work.

In general, I like my setting maps to cover the "known world," as that concept is understood in-world. Sometimes that's a large area, sometimes it's a small area. Sometimes it's understood in-setting that there are distant lands where the people look and talk different, and those might not be mapped out. But again, parts of the setting will just be some lines on a map and maybe, among educated characters, a rough sense of what far-away places are like. I'm not going to do the work to name every earl in a country the campaign isn't going to go to, but I don't want a Rome-like empire to be the approximate size of Rhode Island, either.

[QED - Iltazyara]

I spend a lot of time working on my maps, going through versions as I learn tricks to make them. I really enjoy the process myself, and honestly I pay no attention to scale except as a vague thing.
Not only is scale not all that important in a medieval style map, it means those fancy and awesome town/tree/place icons look somewhat ridiculous.

As for the size of your image, well, I'll link mine. Only open the spoiler if you have a stupid size monitor, or are willing to scroll for a bit. This is V2, so I restarted from where I had half of the thing coloured/detailed.

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If that's the full size of your map, pixel per square inch kinda thing, then don't worry, you're fine. I might be overdoing it at four A4 pages wide and 600DPI, but I enjoy it. If anyone wants them I'll give links to my resources, they're free things but I'll need to dredge up the links.

Edit: Other couple of things I should mention;

I look at it from the perspective of outlining, I do all these really big outlines, naming lots of gods and giving them titles, making nations and giving them land in the world. But really I don't do anything with them, instead focusing on one area (Elemaray in this case) and surrounding areas. Like creating a map of Europe, but only colouring in France and the countries that border it. The rest are outlined, you know where they are and sort-of what they're like, but no details.

It helps me because the concept of people from a far off land is a common one, so it's good to know where those far off lands are.

[ArcanistSupreme]

Wow, your map looks amazing! The best I can manage is this, which I made in Gimp. The actual file looks better than what that site would allow me to upload, but it's still nowhere near that level of quality. I would be very much interested indeed in taking a gander at that software.

I find that starting with the map helps me immensely in imagining the different kingdoms and factions. That mountain range allowed this country to develop in relative isolation and peace while the lush forest that sat on the border of those two countries became a point of bitter contention. Borders and relationships develop naturally just by thinking the consequences of natural features through logically. And they are fun to draw!

Incidentally, the site that I put the map on has helped me immensely in organizing my campaign world. Obsidian Portal is pretty basic in what it allows you to create and the formatting it permits, but it's free! I'll echo that wikis are great; they allow me to organize and link my thoughts and ideas in a way that I could never achieve with a notebook. One big advantage of having it online is that my players can add adventure logs and even pages (which I get to approve as GM). It can also be built in pieces as a new region or character is needed, and it can be edited in seamlessly.

Here is my campaign, if anyone wants to peruse it. The tone is a little schizophrenic, as my players have a tendency to be a bit more light-hearted with my setting than I am (and I will admit that I am occasionally driven to sarcasm in retaliation).

[QED - Iltazyara]

Well, the software I use is Photoshop, but by resources I meant brushes and settings I use.

The trees and some of the symbols I've used before are from http://starraven.deviantart.com/art/...shes-198264358

Mountains, so very many mountains from http://www.cartographersguild.com/ma...n-brushes.html

And wonderful town symbols from http://www.cartographersguild.com/ma...-elements.html

I also make sure to put a white outer glow on all of my text, so it's nice a visible not matter what I put it over, that's become very important as time has gone by.

Really all I'm doing is clicking presets down and drawing vague lines between things. I did a video showing how I make my regions here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko_WwMariI8 although it's set to some rather random music.

I'm pretty sure the ABR files used for the brushes work with GIMP as well, but you might need to do a couple of extra things to use them.

Moving on to the idea of maps shaping demographics, politics and culture... Well, yeah, landscape defines how people live more than anything else really. What we perceive as elves, living in forests and the wild, could just have easily been dwarves; had they matured as a people in the same landscape.

Not to say how we define races is wrong in any way; it makes sense, dwarves by build and nature aren't all that suited to a forest, doesn't mean a dwarven forest culture couldn't exist.

Locations, towns, cities, sacred sites, rivers, forests, all these things breathe life into a world; they are both essential and useful to its creation. Elemaray has one, great and mighty, river. Their entire culture is built around the fact it floods, leaving the land fertile and bountiful. At the same time they have no other real sources of water, having to dig into hills to get to water tables; this means they have to be advanced enough to get at the water and transport it.


For those far from the river anyway. The entire place was built off of one idea "There is only one river in Elemaray. Period." I went from that and found ancient persia, a bit of egypt, tied it all together with being exiled from their former home and I had a nation.

Personally I use MS Word to store all my world information, I've gotten so used to using them that other forms of word processing feel clunky. I might be spoiled by easily accessible rich text and templates, maybe.

As a final note, google drive/dropbox works wonders. Especially if you put one inside the other so you have double copies! Heh.

Wall of text over, hope you enjoyed your read.

[ArcanistSupreme]

That's some great stuff. That video of yours makes it look so easy; it took me hours and hours to put together my map, and it still looks way more rough. More practice is needed, I guess! Time for some regional maps, methinks.

[Trog]

If anyone's looking for a quick, free, online photo manipulation program for their maps and such try out this site. It's handy in a pinch.

As long as people are sharing their maps...
regional map
larger area map

[Eldan]

Here's three of mine, then. Actually, the only three I could find. THe first two are demiplanes for Etherworld. The third is a map I called Wasteland, for a game that never took off.

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Numbers two and three were made by applying GIMP filters to an empty canvas to get a sort of random distribution, then fidding with colours until it looked like maps.

[Turalisj]

So, thought I should probably pop in here. I'm working on my own setting and was looking for some feedback/idea on it.

But seeing as it's 4am, I'll post a thread up on Giant (the into is already in two sites but I don't think people are willing to sign up to a forum just to critique) when I awake!

[QED - Iltazyara]

That's some great stuff. That video of yours makes it look so easy; it took me hours and hours to put together my map, and it still looks way more rough. More practice is needed, I guess! Time for some regional maps, methinks.

You say yours is way more rough, but in a lot of ways yours does the job better than mine. Sure it doesn't look as fancy, but it has good colour balance and defines itself well, not that much more you can ask for from a map.

And the area you saw in the video? I know for a fact that was two hours of footage that I edited down into that, and that's after having done the exact same thing a dozen other times. It may look effortless in the video, but gods it is time consuming. Still fun though.

I think overall I've done about fourteen A4 page pencil drawn maps, originally in black and white, the moving on to colour after three or so. Honestly I only changed because I got sick of drawing waves and trees to mark oceans/forests, five lines per tree, forty thousand trees on a map... Well, I always was a bit mad with my maps I guess.


... Or that could just be me in general, I probably should finish up the Elemaray region, only another ten thousand words and it'll be complete, probably. -sigh- That means I'm about 2/3 complete on an area the size of England (not Britain, just England), out of a world the size of Europe, as a note.

If a couple of people ask I could do a tutorial on how exactly I do maps, I have the editing software to manage it easily. It'd also feel nice to give back to the playground, so much stuff on here has made world building that much easier for me.

[ArcanistSupreme]

And the area you saw in the video? I know for a fact that was two hours of footage that I edited down into that, and that's after having done the exact same thing a dozen other times. It may look effortless in the video, but gods it is time consuming. Still fun though.

That makes me feel better. And I have fun with it too. It's weird how doing so much repetitious detail work can be so satisfying.

[NothingButCake]

Right now, I am actually worried about my 'countries' being too big [rough map], although when I think about it, the map labels cultural groups as much as it labels states, so it may be more fractured than it looks, e.g., the League of Ash is eleven city-states (and a twelfth nomadic group) and the Baha'kar and Nchi are names for racial lands that have distinct subcultural groups and lands.

Is there a point where for X area of land, there should be more at least a certain number of distinct states (unless there is a particularly effective empire).

[Yora]

I think the only really important factors are the numbers of people and the distances between the major settlements. If there's a decent density of farming villages around the cities, it's not a problem if huge stretches of area are completely uninhabited.
Compared to Bangladesh, the size of Canada is massive but has only 20% as many people. In an area of any given size, there are more than 300 times as many people living in Canada, but when you go to the few big cities, they are just as crowded as anywhere else in the world.

[TheStranger]

That's a good point - it's a lot easier to unite thousands of square miles of trees than to hold together an empire full of people.

I do think you're skewing large, though. Assuming your world is roughly earth-sized, you're looking at every nation being the size of one of the largest modern nations. Historically, there have been a few empires that size, but most have been much smaller, and the large ones rarely held up for all that long. As you said, however, those areas may not be as unified as they look on the map.

[NothingButCake]

Thanks for the advice. I actually went and quickly did approximations of state lines (literally scribbled in) and I think it looks more reasonable now, though it still trends big. I think I will pull in on the League of Ash city-states though (or those lines represent the most stretched areas of influence).

Anyway, to get back on topic: I do think it is important to seed your world with adventure hooks and I think that it just makes sense. For me, a living world is one that is constantly changing and there are always points of potential change. What shifts it away from real-world to narrative/game is that the heroes exert an increasing level of gravity on these points. The more powerful they are, the further-reaching the consequences of their actions or inaction.

I also believe the differences, real or imagined, between peoples and persons are far more interesting than cosmological tales. To me, things like gods/religions and otherworldly planes should serve the personalities of your peoples. I think, "This culture cares about X, Y, and Z, and this is their approach towards Religion 1 and Religion 2, so Religion 1 should be shaped this way and Religion 2 should be shaped this way," and as I develop Religion 1, it develops idiosyncrasies and other elements that I then go build back into that culture (e.g., "If Religion 1 should be shaped this way, then this deity or concept should look like this and it would be cool if it had element Q. Element Q in Religion 1 would then enter this culture that way.")

I also like reducing the physical differences between fantasy races and rather focus on shifting their cultural tendencies. The races should not be at war just because they are different races but rather, they should have organic conflicts with others or among themselves based on their worldviews and histories and just random feelings*. Similarly, I avoid sapient races that are just inherently evil for no reason.

*Random emotions, illogic, and irrationality are important to depth of culture, I think.

I do tend to neglect ecological depth. I really appreciate people who can do that and I think it is important especially since it influences the people living in that environment so much, but I just do not have the patience.

[QED - Iltazyara]

I also like reducing the physical differences between fantasy races and rather focus on shifting their cultural tendencies. The races should not be at war just because they are different races but rather, they should have organic conflicts with others or among themselves based on their worldviews and histories and just random feelings*. Similarly, I avoid sapient races that are just inherently evil for no reason.

*Random emotions, illogic, and irrationality are important to depth of culture, I think.

I agree with this entirely, evil is far to much a thing of perception and position for it to be applied entirely to a sentient, sapient race. The only things I take to be like that are entities made to enjoy acts that are evil, demons being the prime example.

It is to be noted however that throughout history the most notable feature is this; similar peoples (races) band together to fight different peoples, humans would rather ally with humans than elves to fight dwarves. But organic conflict is quite difficult, showing nation borders helps as they naturally develop in places of contention, or between conflicting cultures.

Lands which value individualism will likely look badly on a steadily growing empire, but have little quarrel with a city state that is happy to trade with anyone who they can.

One idea I had, and have been trying to continue with to moderate success, is to write down any random story, poem or saying that comes into my head and store them for later. They add flavour and greatly define a region for anyone who reads them. As an example;

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“Fire rages onward, ever burning through the sky,
Eternal the wind blows, guiding the flames.
Above all the tree towers, basking us in Its glow”

“The sand grows onward, guided by Its roots.
The land burns, scorched by Its glory.
Only the pure may approach, sin burned away”

“The leaves glow, golden as the sun
The bark sears, scorching as the lands
The boughs reach onward, grasping the heavens”

Of the Eternal Sabenorn, Sacred Tree of the Maray Peoples

I do tend to neglect ecological depth. I really appreciate people who can do that and I think it is important especially since it influences the people living in that environment so much, but I just do not have the patience.

When dealing with a fantasy world ecological depth is a nightmare, and most anything can be justified even without magic coming into the picture. Add magic and it's not only confusing, but also often utterly ridiculous.

Best to little more than attempt to balance the believable with the cool, awesomeness overrides most things from a player's point of view.

[NothingButCake]

It is to be noted however that throughout history the most notable feature is this; similar peoples (races) band together to fight different peoples, humans would rather ally with humans than elves to fight dwarves. But organic conflict is quite difficult, showing nation borders helps as they naturally develop in places of contention, or between conflicting cultures.

Lands which value individualism will likely look badly on a steadily growing empire, but have little quarrel with a city state that is happy to trade with anyone who they can.

I get what you are saying and agree somewhat, but I also kind of disagree here. Perception of difference is more important than actual difference, and we choose who we empathize with, even if it's unconsciously. Human history is a testament to our ability to imagine commonalities and differences, to find new and exciting ways to hate our neighbors and love the people who hate them too, and to use science and religion to justify cultural attitudes.

I also don't think lands that value individualism will necessarily perceive an empire poorly; it really depends. I mean, if we think of real-world cultures that tend to emphasize individualism over collectivism or more accurately, are perceived to emphasize the former over the latter, those are also the nations that have created the largest empires on Earth, e.g., United States, Great Britain.