World-building checklist

[martixy]

Are there any good worldbuilding checklists out there?

Where?

If not let's make one, I'll start:

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    Worldbuilding checklist
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Climate/Geography/Geology/Terrain

0. General rule: Pick one or two distinctive things that can identify whatever you're portraying. Be that geography, civilization, a character, etc.
 
1. Geology

 * Tectonics.
 	- Faultlines, underwater(mid-atlantic ridge), land - mountains, volcanoes...

 * Underdark / caves
 	- Caves generally form in limestone/sandstone and nothing else.
 	- Crystal caves.

2. Geography/Terrain

 * Deserts
 	- Rainshadows (Moisture hits mountain, causes pressure change, forms clouds, moisture is dumped before it can get over, you get desert on the other side)
 	- On Earth, many are at the 30° parallels(Sahara). Not from rainshadows, but because some kind of pressure condition prevents formation of clouds(air currents and such).
 	- Coastal deserts.
 	- Small/Large
 	- Rocky/Sandy/Snow(Hoth)
 	- Hot/Cold
 	- Salt flats
 	- Plains/Hills/Mountainous

 * Volcanoes
 	- Underwater, island-forming
 	- Underground(causing earthquakes and rifts)
 	- Regular cone-shaped

 * Mountain ranges
 	- Large Himalayan
 	- Volcanic
 	- Long(Andes-like)
 	- Tall/with jagged tops are new, word down/round are old
 	- Generally near coasts, rarely tall mountains smack in the middle of large masses of land(in the case of the himalayas, it's because the subcontinent of india pushed them up)
 	- Columns of rock(The Devils Tower – Wyoming)
 	- Floating mountains

 * Canyons/valleys
 	- Grand canyon.
 	- Unnatural valleys/canyons(regular-shaped, perhaps erroded by now)

 * Rivers
 	- Combine, don't divide
 	- Deltas, estuaries, etc.

 * Other quirky, random minor terrain features that occur on our planet.

3. Climate
 
 * Air currents

 * Water currents

 * Humidity, etc.

4. Biosphere

 * Marine life

 * Dinosaurs

5. Civilization

 * Growth/advancement: governed by 3 things:
 	- Food
 	- Trade
 	- Warfare

 * Linguistics.

 * Economics

 * Technology and warfare.

 * Family structure.

 * Horses
 	- Horseback riding is not really that much faster than walking. Pulling a cart is slower.
 	- There exists services in more civilized areas where you can trade horse, so you can get places faster.

 * Gender roles:
 	- Matriarchy
 	- Codified preference(in law, tradition, etc.)
 	- Male/Female privilege (less severe versions of sexual discrimination, e.g. one is seen as the default - for example in language)

 * Racial tendencies:
 	- Institutional racism
 	- Humanoid/Monster privilege

6. Nations

 * Farming: In medieval times 10 farmers were required for 1 person in a city.

 * Islands: Protection, but also limited resources. (See Japan)

 * Government:
 	- Erudocracy (Medieval technocracy)
 	- Magocracy
 	- Theocracy
 	- Matrocracy
 	- Monsterocracy

7. Cities

 * Growth: All about food delivery and waste management.
 	- Many cities were limited by how far away and back the farmers supporting it could go each day and return.

 * Architecture:
 	- Style
 	- Condition
 	- Layout

 * Coastal cities:
 	- Defensible harbour
 		a) Natural breakwater.
 		b) Artificial breakwater/fortifications.
 		c) Islands out of coast where you can put defenses.
 		d) Strong navy.

 * Castles and high-security areas are commonly built with lead sheets, so as to prevent divinations.

 * Question to answer:
 	- What is this city famous for?
 	- What makes this city different from other cities?
 	- What races live here?
 	- How does that effect the city?
 	- What is the wealth?

x. Misc

 * Cataclysmic events that have shaped the world.

Most of this is meant as prompts and reminders when fleshing the world. Like maybe when you're creating a new city, you forget about the idea of buildings of this city/nation having a distinct architectural style.

Of course, this is far from full, but it's the bits I've written down, when I remember I actually started this list.
If no one can offer a better alternative, help me fill this one out.

[nrg89]

My rule 0 would deal less with what the world is and more about what the heroes would do in it. Wether it's for writing a novel or building a campaign setting, I would say it's very important to describe what cool things people will do there.

The reason I find "what do you do?" to be by far the most important is because it not only guides you when you come up with things to put in your world ("it's about piracy on airships, so I'll put a pirate's port city somewhere with seedy gambling dens") but also it helps you make some of the most underestimated, but in my opinion most important, choices you will make; what to remove. You will put in stuff that seems cool, but the more you think about it just won't be fun and distract from what the heroes want to do ("this underground civilization just doesn't bring anything to the table at all when my characters will spend most of their time in the air, I'll use them in another setting").

When it comes to nations, kingdoms, cities and basically any faction at all I would add this to the checklist; Always try to come up with two things; one external conflict ("this port-city in this airship world has a big problem shipping their stuff through this mountain pass of harpies") and one internal conflict ("the church doesn't like that pirates are given safe haven here"). This makes it so much easier to come up with things to do for your characters at a given spot, and it also gives you fodder for character backstory since they could be actors in these conflicts.

Everything you listed is very good, you should think about what your world looks like, but above all it should be a catalyst for adventure and feel alive. That's what makes me pick it up, at least.

[Yora]

I agree. The first step is to decide on what style of adventures the world is for. This determines what elements of woldbuilding will be relevant or superflous for the world in its intended function as an RPG setting.

I believe that the conventional wisdom of worldbuilding actually has everything else backwards. Drawing coasts and mountains is not the first step but the last. Once you have decided on the purpose of the world and its theme, the next step is to figure out what races, factions, and nations you need to bring this vision to life. Then you can think of a history for these groups if you think you need one (though it almost never needs to be more than one generation or lifetime) and once you have all the components together you can start about thinking about how you arange all those countries, seas, mountains, swamps and forest on the map paper in a way that makes sense.

Starting with topography first and then trying to fill out all the details tends to lead to a lot of material that is not particularly crisp in its style and steers the creator into making something rather generic. Starting with the cool bits that are meant to stand out first leads to a much stronger and unique style for the setting.

[jqavins]

"World building" can mean two different though related things. One, which I'll call "setting building," is the stuff nrg89 and Yora are talking about. The other I'll call "planet building," and it's the stuff matrixy appears to be talking about.

I agree that the setting building is the more important part, and it should at least be started first. But to me it's the easier part to get started on, and probably easier over all. It's confession time: I have done very little of either in a very long while. But in the distant past, and in my on-going slow motion effort at creation now, I find it much easier to have a reason for this world, define relations between nations and between races, create historical backstories, etc. than to create a planet to put this stuff on.

So a checklist of things to consider during planet creation would be pretty handy. Aids for doing it would be even better.

My own example:

• Why am I running this world? To get back to basics and try to recapture the feeling when it was all new.
• What will the characters do? Pretty generic sword and sorcery. The setting is to be suitable both for pickup games and campaigns to be developed later.
• What's different about this world? Well, I could go on but I do not want to risk hijacking the thread.

OK, I've got my setting building well under way. Now I need a map to put it on. Umm... Well, I guess it will be on a globe. Oh, and the starting city is supposed to be at the confluence of two really major rivers, so I need those rivers, and... I really have very little idea how to put all this together. I need planet building help!

In this thread I had a conversation with GGambrel about my dream software for the purpose. My first post about that aspect may give some content for the checklist.

[martixy]

I suppose I might have mislabelled the list.

It's purpose is less of a checklist for you to go through every single item, every time you decide to world-build and more of a "these are the things that exist in the world that you can tweak to make your location special or stand-out".

Like, say your party suddenly veers into a territory you haven't yet fleshed out. And you know why they're going there and what they intend to do, so your setting building part is taken care of. But then you turn to this for inspiration. Pick two random things for example. Let's say dinosaurs and canyons. Okay, so it has to feature dinos in some way and has canyons nearby.

Well, maybe the canyons have created an isolated bioshere when the dinos have thrived for ages(like Jules Verne's book). So instead of having horses and oxen for transport and beasts of burden, they use dinosaurs.

Or maybe the canyons have exposed a great deal of the wealth of the earth and the town is a prosperous mining settlement.

Or maybe the winds rushing through the canyons at night create an eerie moaning sound and people say that it's haunted(whether true or not).

Point is, I meant for this to be a condensed, organized list of prompts rather than a formula.

[Zorku]

If I just post a couple of random tables for rolling Xd20s or percentile dice will that be what you're looking for, or is it somehow more specific?

[martixy]

If I just post a couple of random tables for rolling Xd20s or percentile dice will that be what you're looking for, or is it somehow more specific?

If it isn't, it can be adapted, so do go ahead. :)

[FreddyNoNose]

Another rule: throw out the checklist.

[jqavins]

Another rule: throw out the checklist.

Not helpful. Maybe such a checklist isn't helpful either - to you - but when you haven't got anything useful to add you should really just stay out of the discussion.

[FreddyNoNose]

Not helpful. Maybe such a checklist isn't helpful either - to you - but when you haven't got anything useful to add you should really just stay out of the discussion.

Wow, I was 100% serious. Checklist can kill creativity. Maybe you should follow your own rule.

[ahyangyi]

Wow, I was 100% serious. Checklist can kill creativity. Maybe you should follow your own rule.

On the other hand, checklists can inspire creativity by hinting that something we take for granted can actually be changed in a different setting.

[nrg89]

Wow, I was 100% serious. Checklist can kill creativity. Maybe you should follow your own rule.

I disagree. In my opinion, limits and structures like a list based work flow can (if used well) utilize your creativity by keeping yourself focused on the project at hand, so that when you come up with something new it's actually something interesting for someone and not just a gimmick.
It also helps if your players can understand what they're looking at most of the time, and if you can bank on some of the stuff you put in there to already resonate with your players emotionally, so in my opinion steering away too much from what players are familiar with is raising the bar for no good reason. You run the risk of doing that if you just make up everything as you go along rather than using a more disciplined and rigid process.

And, as I've mentioned, keeping yourself focused what players care about will help you get rid of stuff that just doesn't work out. I can't stress how important this step is.

The waste basket is the writer's best friend.

[Lemmy]

I like this idea... Helps me remember a few geological/geographical details I might forget (or simply not know) when designing the world.