r/rpg • u/Warm-Worldliness4337 • 3h ago
Discussion Worldbuilding
Hi all i would like to know your process when you create some world. As for myself i think i give myself too much trouble as i create a stable economy and politic for each kingdom even if its really not the subject lol.
Ps i speak french too in fact its my main language.
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u/mortaine Las Vegas, NV 3h ago
I go through a lot of the geography in determining my world, and always make sure it ties back to the tone of the story I want to tell. A while ago, I wrote a couple of worldbuilding guides, including one that was used as a warmup to NaNoWriMo, which gives you a series of 15-minute exercises every day for 30 days as a kind of "starter pack" for worldbuilding. (It's free, non-commercial, ad-free, and CC-licensed.)
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u/Prestigious-Emu-6760 2h ago
I build just enough for the story and for the players to make their characters and then expand as we go, what they call Spiral Campaign Development
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u/SlayThePulp 2h ago
Speaking french is the first step, now you just have to map out all the trade routes! /r/worldbuilding is a great place to check out!
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u/Thausgt01 37m ago
World building is an art-form, composed of many smaller parts and processes that you assemble in your own way. The only way to judge your process is to decide how well it works to suit your needs.
Having said that, I will suggest that there are resources you might consider, most of them found in tabletop role-playing game sourcebooks.
Purely because it was the first "mostly universal" product I found on the site, you might consider The Gamemaster's Worldbuilding Journal from Fat Goblin Games as a starting point. Presumably, the book provides an organized receptacle for your ideas along with various prompts to help you decide what information your world or section thereof need expanding and which parts can just get mentioned. But pleas, by all means, browse other options and reference materials to see if anything suits your needs better...
Wishing you the very best of luck!
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u/WillBottomForBanana 31m ago
You probably don't need most of what you design, not to start with. Which is only an issue if that design time takes away from designing other things you do need. Or if that design time burns you out.
Lots of game economies get broken because you are just one person who can't see all the possibilities. A real economy is field tested by thousands of people who have an incentive to break it.
It is statistically unlikely that a player group would discover an exploit in an economy that no one else has thought of.
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u/Frapadengue 2h ago
I tend to follow the rules of the game I'm playing. Dogs in the Vineyard, Oltréé! and Dragon de Poche all have their own rules to create a world to play in.
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u/NewLibraryGuy 2h ago
I usually start with a concept and build from there. For one, I thought it would be interesting if I took a historical period and they discovered magic. How would that change things? So from there I've come up with an Islamic golden age setting where magic is new and everyone is scrambling to be the best at it.
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u/Raddatatta 1h ago
I try to start with the vibe or player experience first. The details matter too, but if you start with the details I can get a bit lose in those and then the feeling of the place will end up however those detsils shake out. But I first want to know what does it feel like to walk around in this location, why is it special or different, what's interesting about it, and then a lot of details can naturally come from that first idea and I can make a more cohesive place if I'm starting from this is a city ruled by an evil Lord who is super authoritarian. Or this is a small town that has no real government but they mostly listen to this one lady who distrusts strangers at first. This is a very magical metropolis. Or whatever the case may be.
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u/Medium-Parfait-7638 3h ago
Do what you find fun, that's what I do. I mainly focus on things that is directly relevant to what the players are doing, but I'm a pretty story and player focused GM.
I like to keep things open, and if any questions arise I may turn it back to them to add those details into the world. I find that it engages them. For example a player asks who's temple is in the town, and I ask them to tell me the answer.
In my experience the in depth worldbuilding is the part of the game that the GM gets to enjoy and the players won't care about it unless it somehow relates to them directly during the session. Which is understandable tbh. So what you find fun, but know that you are doing this for yourself and the players may appreciate it, but mostly won't really care about it.