Help me fix a world.

[Fire Tarrasque]

This is a big one.
So, i'm currently a player in a campaign run by a friend. I like this person. They're a great DM.
But they have REALLY messed up their worldbuilding this time. Like seriously, it's really bad. I want to fix it, because A: FUN! and B: It's driving me slowly insane. I will now explain the world:

The world is just Europe. They didn't want to make their own map, that's fine. That's not the problem. Currently we're based in Europe, and Australia has been discovered but N/S America hasn't. To show how bad this is, none of these countries even have names. Colonization also isn't a thing yet.

Country one: Black.
Black is the smallest of the countries, but also somehow has the largest population. At one point they said said that they have 3x as large a population as everyone else How? I DON'T KNOW. The DM claims it's because a plague just swept the world and Black was the only country that had enough sanitation to not be murdered. How did the country that is the exact size and density that makes a massive plague worse get near magically good sanitation? I DON'T KNOW. In the world, they basically control Great Britain and the West half of France. How did they conquer Britain? I DON'T KNOW. They have no culture besides that, no history, nothing. This is why I need help.

Country two: Purple. Purple is the blandest. They don't even have one generic vaguely defining characteristic. They control northern Africa, but technically lay claim to all of Africa. None of this is actually colonized yet. That's it. Maybe some history about Rome? I don't know.

Country three: Red. Red is simultaneously the best and worst country. They have culture, but it's kind of nonsensical. They are the most technologically advanced, seeing as they have at this point deployed mass gunpowder weapons that work on the level of 19th century technology. They did this within six months. All of these weapons are also enchanted to explode if removed from their specific owner. They're also the main antagonist, so they're evil, and just kind of able to win against the three other countries at the same time. They are literally just generically evil. We haven't seen them do any evil things. They are literally just kind of evil. They also sell drugs to fuel their treasury. Just going to again try to list this out:
Hyper technologically advanced, generically evil, able to fight everyone else at the same time, and are drug dependent. They controlled at the beginning of the war: Germany, east France, Italy, and Poland. It's just a huge mess.

Country four: Yellow. Oh Lord Helix, yellow. I hate yellow with a passion, because it is just NONSENSICAL. First of all: They control all of Asia. Just all of Asia. Asia and the Russian borders of Europe. How does an empire of this size exist? I DON'T KNOW. Why does black still have more people? I DON'T KNOW. What happened to that plague from earlier? I DON'T KNOW. Apparently Yellow used to just be Russia and then recently conquered Indo-China. Some of the most population dense areas on the planet. Let me remind you, they still have less people than a country that is just WEST FRANCE. This somehow isn't in constant revolt because it's MEDIEVAL TIMES. What's happening? HOW IS THIS A THING? I'm not even sure this is a way to solve this. We might just need to scrap yellow entirely. It's just... Why? For all of the DM's strengths, which is basically everything besides this, this is just an abomination of world building. To be fair he built it in like half an hour. Oh, and I nearly forgot.

Country five: Japan.
Just Japan. Why isn't this part of yellow? I don't know. I think he literally just forgot to turn Japan yellow. I honestly can't think of any other explanation.

So, basically... Help. I need to fix these somehow. HOW DO I FIX THESE.
HELP.

[Shamash]

Don't make chian yellow, that's just... Wrong. Their color has to be red.

[Fire Tarrasque]

Oh.
I didn't think of that.
Yeah, everyone really thinks of it more as Russia than China. As I said, Indo-China is a recent conquest.

[Mechalich]

Okay...first you've skipped some important details, such as, what system are you using for this game? That matters, a lot. Is this an alternate history? Are there non-humans? What is going on? As it is you've got not much more than geography and a few bare-bones statistics. So any advice to offer is going to be super general.

Some things that can be said. One, if your world is just Europe with the serial numbers filed off, just use Europe (you can reasonably call Africa north of the Sahara, Turkey, and the Levant as part of Europe given how the Med influences culture and economics). Everything else can just be beyond the fog of war. Europe is conveniently blocked off by ocean, the Sahara, various Middle Eastern deserts, trackless taiga and the Central Asian steppe. It's more than large enough to handle any pre-modern setup you care to utilize. Just don't worry about the Silk Road or keep it really nebulous.

Having countries color-coded isn't the least original thing ever, but it's pretty close. Still, it works as a functional shorthand. Brief comments:
Black: a nation that controls Great Britain and a large chunk of France is certainly possible. That's a slightly more expansive version of William the Conqueror's actual empire. Medieval countries could have massive variations in population that seem to defy geography - because population was largely dependent upon arable land and arable land is not distributed anything like equally, but 3x much larger nations is still very unlikely. It is possible that sanitation could provide protection from plague - a country with a pathological obsession with killing rats would do pretty well against the bubonic plague actually - but it would need to be fairly extreme.

Purple: the fertile parts of northern Africa are basically the coast and the Nile Valley. Any nation established there is likely to be highly maritime in orientation (Phoenicians, Greeks, Carthage, take your pick). Expect high-density settlements oriented around secure harbors, with colonization by sea. Such a nation could claim a large amount of territory geographically but would likely have a very light footprint in most inland areas - probably limited to scattered pastoralism.

Red: Geographically this is not an unreasonable assemblage. The Holy Roman Empire controlled, at it's greatest extent, portions of France, most of Belgium and the Netherlands, Switzerland, all of Germany, the Czech Republic, almost the entirety of Austria, Slovenia, the northern half of Italy, Corsica and Sardinia, and good-size portion of Poland. So that's a functional model. A unified HRE under a hypothetical evil autocrat would be a massive power without any need for highly advanced technology. I'm not sure what drugs a medieval-era country could sell for money. Without modern chemistry you're limited to alcohol, cannabis, and certain mushrooms (you don't even get tobacco without access to the Americas), all of which are crops and only marginally more valuable than actual food in an agrarian economy. If their special technology is limited to special firearms, that can be fluffed as magical in some fashion (the difference between a wand and a gun is marginal in some cases). If this tech is the product of some specific process undertaken by a newly-empowered tyrannical ruler (for instance some sort of major demonic pact) that could account for the evil part too.

Yellow: China should not be part of your game. It's too far removed from anything happening in Europe to even be an issue. The exotic east in the Middle Ages starts around Damascus (for reference, the Travels of Marco Polo start around there too) and becomes for all intents and purposes inaccessible very fast. If you want a geographically massive but low-density nation in the east just use the existing territories: Belarus+Romania+Ukraine+Bulgaria+the Baltics+Moldova is a huge nation without even throwing in western Russia. If Russia seems cold and boring, re-fluff the climate a little (put a few volcanoes in the Black Sea, heat water, shift air currents north, boom).

Japan: No reason to involve Japan. If you want an island culture, conglomerate the various Med islands (Balearics, Corsica, Sardinia, Sicily, Crete, Cyprus, and the small stuff) into one nation.

[Fire Tarrasque]

Right, the ruleset.
Currently we're playing in 5e, anything from the SCAG, XGtE, or VGTM is allowed, though not MTOF or any scenarios. As for if it's an alternate history, I DON'T KNOW. That hasn't been clarified by the DM.

[PiperThePaladin]

I understand your frustration. My previous DM had... less than good world building, and as the campaign went on it became more and more obvious. Ah yes, let's go to the single desert that exists on this entire planet. After that, perhaps we will take a jaunt to the single jungle-island-where-the-high-level-monsters-live? Or to the one big forest where all the elves are?

I couldn't tell from your post if you want to engage in a fun world building exercise where you take something horrible and make it better and blow off some steam, like that scene from Ratatouille when Remy fixes the horrible soup, or if you are actually looking to improve your friend's game. If the former, I am looking forward to what fixes people come up with. If the later, under the cut.

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I don't think you should try to fix your friend's world for them. :( Trying to correct a DM's game, unless they have asked for feedback and you think they mean it, is like critiquing someone's driving when they have offered to give you a ride. Especially when the feedback isn't, "Hey, have you thought about throwing in some more female NPCs?" but "This setting needs an entire rehaul to be marginally cogent." In my previous DM's game, I kept my mouth shut, enjoyed the parts of the game that they did well, and channeled all of my world building frustration into making my own setting that fixed EVERYTHING THAT WAS WRONG WITH THEIRS. For the sake of being a good player and a good friend, I think that's your better option.

[the_david]

The plague thing actually happened with an ethnical minority group in Germany. This was partially due to them keeping the the tenants of their faith very strictly. Then people started blaming them for starting the plague...
I don't think I can tell more about this because of the forum rules.

Edit: Also, you're not playing D&D. You're playing Risk.

[Bohandas]

Country four: Yellow. Oh Lord Helix, yellow. I hate yellow with a passion, because it is just NONSENSICAL. First of all: They control all of Asia. Just all of Asia. Asia and the Russian borders of Europe. How does an empire of this size exist? I DON'T KNOW.

...

Country five: Japan.
Just Japan. Why isn't this part of yellow? I don't know. I think he literally just forgot to turn Japan yellow. I honestly can't think of any other explanation.

Actually, I think Genghis Khan controlled all of Asia except for Japan during the height of his empire

[Lleban]

Actually, I think Genghis Khan controlled all of Asia except for Japan during the height of his empire

When Genghis died the Mongols controlled most of Central Asia and northern china. By the the reign of Kublai khan the mongols controls basically all of Asia except Japan, India, Indonesia and most of Indochina. Also by that point the Empire was falling apart at the seems as the 4 khanates acted as independent states, so even the mongols had their limits.

Perhaps the drug that Red country makes is a magical by product of their advanced magitech.

[Composer99]

Apropos of the comments on the Mongols, the "yellow" country (*) not only comes close to being historically accurate, given the historical bounds of the Mongol Empire, but becomes even more plausible in a D&D setting where rulers such as Ghenghis Khan could conceivably use magic to improve administrative coordination, military strategy and tactics, and either be from a long-lived race or resort to magic to elongate their life spans. (Imagine a death knight khan.)

(*) Not gonna lie, it was a little cringe-worthy seeing that particular colour-coding used for the "stereotypical pan-Asian country". "Yellow" isn't just the colour Marty McFly hates being called, after all.

[MoiMagnus]

So, how to fix this universe? Here is some suggestions.

I will take for inspiration the Bronze Age Collapse (I suggest you the Extra History series on Youtube at this subject), and switching the role of China and Britain in it.

In short:
1) There was the Bronze Age. Bronze Age is an age of technological progress (similar to classical greece), and interconnected trade. However, this is the first time in Human history where we have significant interconnected trade, and countries are so much interconnected that they can't live without the other.
(The center of the Bronze Age was Middle East, and they don't have mines to make Bronze, so they depend on trade for their technology)

2) Then, "something" happened, and the civilizations collapsed, domino way. EVERY civilization collapsed, EVERY cities were pillaged, a dark age as nobody ever known during 500 years. The only surviving trace of civilization are:
+ Britain (or real life China), which was in trade isolation at the moment of the collapse, so didn't collapse.
+ A decadent North of Europe civilization (or real life Egypt)
+ Nomadic tribes
=> People remember of this age as the great Plague, even is the Plague was only part of it (in real life, people remembered it as "people from the sea are coming", "the 7 plagues of Egypt", ...)

3) Black empire is build from Britain's empire, meaning that it has Bronze Age mentality about family and state being more important than individuals (mentality you can still find in modern China). They expanded in France in search for fertile terrain to sustain their huge population.

4) Red empire is build from the ruin of the old Bronze Age. It correspond to real life Roman Empire. Technological expansion is reasonably sensible. If the Roman Empire didn't collapsed, the Renaissance would probably have happened 1000 years earlier. Also, you are in a magical universe, so with magically expanded lifetime, technology is easier to develop. About them being generic evil, you can switch them to being egoist and individualistic, which is a huge opposition to "anti-individualistic" tradition of Black's empire. They use drugs and technology to conquer the world for they own power (like Romans and Medieval time kingdom), which is in opposition with Black's empire view of expansion which is "minimal needed expansions".

5) Did you know that North Africa used to have huge forest everywhere and very fertile lands? It was before intense deforestation due to naval warfare during Bronze Age, Roman Empire, and Otoman's Empire. I think the same things happened in your universe and the Purple nation is dying because their lands are no longer fertile. They probably lost a lot of resources in trying to colonize lands far away behind the sea, but the ships never come back (krakens? or maybe they reached destination but can't come back for some reason?). It would be interesting for this empire to regularly sending exploration ships that never come back, and have a whole culture about "why do they never come back?"

6) The Yellow Empire is probably an Empire of Nomads. Their population don't grow because of regular internal wars for the control of the empire. They may not be united, but tradition makes that when dealing with foreign nations, they act as if they were a united nation. I suggest for them some druidic lore, so that they communicate on long distance trough spirits, dreams, and nature. From Europe points of view, Yellow empire control the whole Asia, while in truth there is a lot of little countries (the biggest being Japan) that are independent and slowly developing between the pillages from the Nomads.

[brian 333]

Black credits its sanitation with averting a major plague, but that's only part of the story. The real story has to do with a recent large-scale war between Red and Yellow which ended with plague taking more casualties than the soldiers.Black, paranoid of being drawn into the war, set up strong border defenses which allowed them to stop the flow of refugees from Red at the border.

An odd result of this has been the creation of Red culture settlements around Black fortifications when the refugee camps grew into permanent settlements. The risk of having a compromised border is weighed against the value of trade with central and southern cities.

Black, by maintaining a defensive stance, avoided having its industry destroyed or overtaxed with war production, and now exports farming equipment and textiles to both formerly warring nations. Black is getting rich.


Purple claims Africa, but there are entities south of the Med who contest that claim. What Purple actually controls is the Medeterranean coast, the northern Nile valley, and trading ports around Africa and coastal Arabia and west India. Purple focuses on maritime trade, working very hard to gain wealth and avoic losing lands.

Spain is the border between Black and Purple, but is owned by neither. Instead, two rival kingdoms own the center, one established along the Atlantic coast and the other in the central highlands. Each is being manipulated by the great powers who seek to dominate the region without the risk and expense of a war. The Mediterranean coast, especially in the south, is peopled by Purple colonials, while the mountainous north is peopled by an indegenous tribe which has been financed byB lack for generations as a buffer between Black and the Iberians.


Red is a polyglot empire, composed of dozens of kingdoms, principalities, and duchies. Part of the problem with Red is location; anyone who wants to fight a war does it on Red soil. The other part is the hash of laws, customs, languages, and cultures they must tolerate. The one thing these many fiercely independent groups have in common is a military tradition. Having fought one another for centuries, they were able to integrate their military units efficiently when war threatened. Indeed, they claim to have been winning the last war when the plague struck.

Yellow claims all of Asia, but if one looks closely one discovers many shades of mustard, dandelion, saffron, and lemon. India is home to many tribes which assert their independence, and Indonesia is as often at war with Yellow as it is with the various tribes that dwell there. China around the Yellow River is a peaceful feudal country constantly defending itself from the warlike northwestern warlords who answer to no master.

What Europe sees of the Far East is a single empire, but its empire is a thin veneer laid over hundreds of competing autonomous kingdoms.

[jqavins]

Haven't read the whole thread yet. Working on it.

Yes, it's quite the mess. And you haven't raised one of the most important questions: why hasn't red, with its 19th century cannon conquered the world? Is it only because they're trying to take on four enemies at once instead of one (or two) at a time? Then why are the stupid, stupid generals still running the show? I think The David is right that you're playing Risk, not just because of the colors but because Red is making one of Risk's classic beginner mistakes.

I don't think you should try to fix your friend's world for them...

Hear, hear. Unless you have the DM's commitment to make the changes you suggest (or something like them) and the other players' acceptance of massive ret-conning, then you're out of luck. The ship has sailed. You're dead in the water and sucking wind. You're up the cliché without an adage.

I'm not sure what drugs a medieval-era country could sell for money.

Opium. The unrefined mixture of morphine, heroine, codeine, and other less interesting compounds straight out of the poppy.

[brian 333]

In my take, Red is a polyglot empire which spends most of its effort keeping itself intact. The guns perhaps came about via extra-planar allies summoned to Red in a time of dire need and now are a dwindling force detached from their supply lines and thus are forced to take a defensive stance until their logistics network can be created in this world. While they can beat pretty much any army the world can field, every soldier killed, every gun destroyed, every bullet fired is irreplaceable. Under such circumstances, they can achieve victory after victory and still lose the war. Therefore they don't fight except at great need.

[GaelofDarkness]

Another take on Black:

If you're looking for a little more flavor for this country maybe consider a celtic-inspired culture. After all, it basically covers the territory of the six currently recognized celtic nations: Wales, Cornwall, Breton, Scotland, Isle of Man and (if you're counting this with Great Britain) Ireland.

If this is the case and they have a culture centered around druids, then maybe they mastered healing magic while Red was perfecting harmful technologies and magic? Maybe the population of Black is so much larger because they accepted suffering refugees to heal and now a generation or two later they consider themselves proud citizens of Black rather than their ancestor's home nations? Tied with strict border controls and superb sanitation that might go some way to explaining their really high population.

Alternatively, one interpretation of the Tuatha Dé Danann (major deities of pre-Christian Gaelic society) is not as divine beings per se but rather revered hero-figures who gained magical secrets to become far more powerful than their merely mortal cousins (In Lebor Gabála Érenn, they originate from the a faction of the perfectly human tribe of Nemed who travel "into the North of the world"). Maybe in this world, this tribe of hero-figures did in fact exist but went mad and unleashed the plague on the world while leaving the bloodlines of their kingdom unscathed. The people were so shocked they overthrew their monstrous aristocracy of wizards/sorcerers/whatever and now seek to make amends to the world - even if they deal with a cultural hangover from previously believing themselves the chosen people/most advanced civilisation/whatever. Red will never forgive Black and now thinks strength is the only path to security. They sell potent drugs as a means of subjugating their conquered territories. They see the subjugation as necessary, but they see doing so through euphoria-inducing narcotics far more palatable than by torture and threats of violence. They see themselves as the good guys, not because they're better than anyone else, but because they know that someone has to bring order and they know that if they don't someone much worse might.

The mad tribe that launched the plague has left artifacts tucked away in strongholds filled with traps, monsters and more where people were forced to pay homage to their masters as though they were divine. Et voila, creepy, trapped temples to raid for magical artifacts! Maybe they really did get their power from "north of the world" and Scandinavia and Arctic regions in this world are barely inhabited by any civilized demi-humans at all, and the North is instead a terrifying place of monsters and mythic magic.



To give Purple some flavor, you have so many options. Even by just restricting yourself to something from the Mediterranean region you could look at Egyptian, Phoenician, Cathaginian (though Carthage was initially a Phoenician colony), Berber (just look at Moorish architecture, it's gorgeous!), Minoan, Hellenic, Roman and Etruscan inspirations to name a few. If it really is ALL of Africa, then there's even MORE sources for flavor. And there's nothing that says your Purple can't have a culture comparable to actual Japan while your Japan has a culture comparable to the ancient Egyptians. As has already been noted, North Africa used to be heavily forested. Maybe yours still is and the region has taken a drastically different path than its real counterpart.



I'm calling the fourth one Blue, because that color-coding is really unfortunate. Blue could pretty easily be dominated by a nomadic culture that covers a much larger area than a sedentary one. Those talking about the Mongols above have really good points worth considering. Maybe the really densely populated regions like India just weren't densely populated in this world for some reason. Maybe the plague hit them exceptionally hard with a 95% mortality rate or something and the region is very post-apocalyptic in it's flavor. Maybe the region was already depopulated by a previous disaster, like an Empire-ending magical catastrophe.



I hope this helps, but I must add my voice to those saying you should only "fix" this setting in collaboration with and with permission from your DM. Don't tell the appointed world-builder his work is wrong and then walk all over it. Any issues you have should be dealt with together.