Worldbuilding

[Believe]

The main Cartographer program looks neat:

[Darkko]

I didn't even see that one haha. Ya that does look cool.

[Faille]

As silly as it sounds, I liked using Caesar 4 to create the plan for a working city. Downside was the editor was so damn ghey it was too hard to tailor the caesar4 terrain to the terrain of the city I wanted to design.

[Flinch]

Originally Posted by Varadox

It's actually based on Hadrian's Wall in England. Not that it matters much, I guess I just wanted to geek out there for a moment.

Oh cool, that makes more sense, actually.

[Faille]

bump

[Camerous]

damn Faille lol Necro much?

[Faille]

Originally Posted by Camerous

damn Faille lol Necro much?

pfft, its not even two years old!

But I'm doing some more world building atm and wanted to remember to read this more when I got some time. Sure a bookmark might have sufficed, but I was also curious to see if anyone had anything to add!

[Alarion]

thanks for bumping, as I am starting this process as well.

My usual process, which up to this point has never resulted in a finished product, is to draw up some maps of the continents on the world (I haven't done space stuff or anything yet). I place mountains and rivers as they make sense to me based on my very limited knowledge of geography and weather patterns, erosion, etc.

At this point, I usually have an idea of what I want the world to be, when things are done. So I just flesh it out piece by piece, section by section. Get the places established, then work on the lore/backstory, then the current state of things and go from there.

Haven't read the whole thread yet, but some interesting posts from what I did read =)

[Faille]

came across this site the other day

World Builders Home Page Build Your Own World!!!

its not too bad as a starting point, and have some cool tools for creating a more realistic world.

Still looking for something that can model a planets continents, and thus it tectonic plates, as well as weather patterns.

[Yago]

Hey all, just wanted to add my 2 cents on this since it has been necroed recently and it just so happens that I've done quite a bit of this in the past years.

Again, this has been my process and I'm not saying there's any sure way to go about it or anything, this is what worked for me.

Do you start off with one little corner and flesh it out as need be? Do you get possessed with some sort of grand theme or concept and build your world in accordance to that? Or are you (like me) mildly-to-severely OCD and try to account for as much as possible before you get down to dealing with any kind of story or ideas?

For me it was a bit of both. I'm a bit OCD myself, but when I sat down and wrote my first setting which has evolved over the years I did the mistake of getting carried away on the little stuff and not on the big picture. Like others said work on what's really important and don't spend so much effort on things like the exact details of a farm house, unless that farm house is important.

Here's how I broke it down:
1) What's the setting? Do I want to go Historical; do I want to go fantasy? How close to historical do I want to be? Think of a slider, a 1 being a recreation of history and a 10 being Disney land WoW.

Lord of the Rings would fall at about a 4 (very close to historical with low magic but a bit of fantasy) and WoW sits at about a 7 or 8. You get the idea. Once you have that in mind, it'll give you a rough idea of the other steps.

2) Society and Politics? Again, are you drawing from historical cultures and societies or are you basing it more on a free-thinking society? How enlightened is your setting? This will give you a lot to go on and a lot to start basing the meat and potatoes of your setting.

For example; in my large setting (the one I've worked on for several years) there's this whole ultra-conservative, zealously religious thing going on. Gods play a big role. They're important in every day life, and the culture and societies as a whole revolved around the worship of gods, their existence, and their influence on a particular race.

This then sets other things up for you automatically. Now you get a rough idea of who the "bad guys" if you want to call it that, are to each society. Who hates who, who's doing what behind who, and so on.

That alone can be the "engine" that drives the strife in your setting. Remember this; "Strife" creates romanticism, romanticism creates heroes. In every successful epic there is strife. Out of strife heroes rise. Without strife you have a hard time creating heroes and you have a hard time making people feel special.

You can create that strife several ways, see step 3 below, but step 2 can go a long ways towards laying the foundation for the strife in your setting.

3) Create strife and anxiety. Heroes rise out of strife and anxiety, at least in my mind. Aragorn rose out of the dark times during Sauron's invasion of the people of the west, Luke rose out of the oppressive empire and so on. Without strife it's very difficult to make heroes shine. I think that's what a lot of MMOs lack these days, there is no sense of strife and anxiety, it all feels like modern day USA fantasy land at a renaissance fair.

How do you create strife and anxiety? Well that's up to you, but here are some of tips on how NOT to do it:
-Don't go the EMO route "He did it because he got mad and started killing people". Think to yourself; would someone oppress this culture for the reason I made up? Would someone declare war on this culture for the reason I made up? Look at history, always refer to history for examples of how strife was created. Depending on your setting, gods are a very good method of creating strife, shoot we killed each other over Christianity for over 500 years, hehe
-On the opposite end, don't Deux Machina "He did it because he was omnipotent and just wiped everyone out, he's unstoppable". This could be good in one way, but it pigeonholes your setting and may make that culture, god, villain etc, a bit too simple and not so fleshed out. Conversely, by giving your Deux Machina some sort of "chink in the armor" you could end up with some interesting plot twists and setting material.
Players, readers, and so on want some form of ability to defeat the main villain eventually (be it a single entity, a culture, an army, etc). Perhaps you can express that weakness through some magical form, perhaps a lack of technology that is learned, and so on. This gives you lots of material to work with and enriches your setting even further.
-Blue vs. Red; I've argued this with people for ages; I just personally hate the concept of Blue vs. Red. I think that’s the number one way to kill all the strife and anxiety out of your setting by making the bad guys simply "the red team". Think wow here. Misunderstood evil, they're not really evil they just have a different point of view.
That's not a bad thing completely, but if you abuse it too much you lose the sense of heroism. You're not really a hero at that point you're more of a rebel, or instigator. It's a very modern thing as well. If that's what you're going for then sure, I personally don't recommend it.

4) Don't over explain things. Seems to me in the west we love to explain everything, everything needs to be explained to the reader/player etc. Don't explain it, leave some things a mystery. When you over-explain things you kill that sense of mystery, the sense of awe, and the sense of dread. It might also affect the heroism factor a bit since there is no fear of the unknown. Think back to when you were a child and things were unknown to you? Once you grew up and learned how the world "works" things weren't so scary anymore.

If you have magic, keep it mysterious. How does it work? No one knows it's a mystery. You have an arcane engine of some sort? How does it work? No one knows, the elder gods handed it down to so and so and so on. You have space travel, how does it work? Well this machine does it but we don't know how.

In one of the settings I had these cat girls, they were all female. They were cool until one knucklehead decided to "explain" how they'd be able to reproduce and at that point he ruined the whole cool and mysterious factor about them.

Darth Vader, good example. Pre prequal Vader was intimidating. We had this guy in black, who breathed hard, who was pissed off half the time and who wielded a laser sword and used mysterious powers. He could choke people to death and was feared by almost everyone in the galaxy. There was a sense of mystery about him. How did he get that powerful? Where did those powers come from? How did the sword work? Why does he breathe like that? Back then Vader was a badass. Now after the prequals he isn't as intimidating, he's a pissed off teen with a bit too many midichlorians in his vains confused on how the hell Padme died.

When you flesh out part of your setting regarding culture, gods, magic, etc, ask yourself if you've explained too much. Did it kill the sense of mystery you wanted to give? Does that subject feel special to you, or is it ordinary? Typically the status quo of the setting is explained in detail; after all it's the status quo and the normal everyday setting. Everything else that's outside of that (magic, gods, arcane mechanisms, certain key villains, etc) are lightly explained, enough to convey to the reader/player the basics, but then left as a mystery.

5) Is it Fun, is it Cool; After you've fleshed the above and brainstormed ideas got them down on paper, go back and review it. More so if your setting is mainly going to be for tabletop or PC gaming.
-Is it fun? Would you play as that race? Would you like to be a hero in that setting and would you have fun? In other words, would you like to be Luke Skywalker in Star Wars? Or an Elf in Lord of Rings?
If it's not fun then maybe you should relegate that race, culture, or material to background fluff and not as primary fluff. Conversely, is that material fun to the reader? Does it enrich your story or does it bore the reader? Remember boring kills fun. Remove as much boring stuff from your setting as possible or fix it up to not be boring. You might need to fix what surrounds the character (i.e. setting) which might then make playing a particular character fun. Again it all falls on how much strife and how many tools to combat that strife a reader or player has.
-Is it Cool? This is one of my own things. Does it -look- cool? Cool stuff sells, not cool stuff doesn't sell. As much as we love games and such in the end our wallet needs a check at the end of the month and we need to sell boxes. Therefore, is the material cool?

I had to redo all of our marines and armor for one race because they just weren't cool. They didn't make me feel cool and when I asked the other guys they flat out told me it was dull, boring, and just not cool. If it wasn't cool to us chances were people probably weren't going to play as that race, that meant lots of spent time, money, and resources on something people were rarely going to play.

Not only for art and media, it also goes for your societies, and cultures. Particularly the ones taking center stage (character races, villain races and so on). Cool sells, and if you can get it Cool and Fun you get a win win. I know that it might affect your setting a bit. In my experience I was upset at some of the changes I ended up making, but in the end I'm glad I made them because honestly what I had on some material just wasn't cool and wasn't fun.

In my original setting I started with 11 playable races, now I'm down to 6 with a possible 2 in an expansion or later down the line. But those 6 have a lot of work done on them; those 6 are my best work. 6 will also be easier to balance against each other and would allow me to flesh out their societies as best as possible. I decided I would rather have 6 well made races and leave the other 5 as background and later bring new races in little by little based on feedback.

Are there any resources that you find valuable when you are working on world building?

History. Read about famous wars, read about medieval times. The feudal system, you can't imagine how many writers and such I've talked to that honestly didn't even have a basic grasp of a feudal system yet they were designing medieval kingdoms for their settings. I've talked to some folks that can't answer the question: "What makes someone a leader?”

Those are very important things to know when writing a setting in my opinion. How did that character become the King? What makes him King? Was it through divine right? Was he a hero? Why should I listen to him? What makes him a leader and can he be overthrown? Conversely; what made that villain the villain we all fear?

This all goes back to that issue of Strife I talked about earlier. Even reading up on Modern times and modern conflicts further helps in writing a setting. I used the whole war in Iraq extensively to mirror some of the clans and tribes in my aerial setting. The whole Sunni or Shiite Muslim conflicts; perfect material to use on my own races, cultures, etc. Changed a few names around, changed customs and so on and viola, instant race and culture with perfect reasons to hate others, hate each other, and go to war with each other. Perfect strife creation engines for my setting, perfect stuff for a player to go out and adventure in.

Almost every single setting out there is a direct modified copy of real world historical events;
Lord of Rings - World War I
Star Wars - World War II
Star Trek - multiple
WoW - multiple
Warhammer - 100 years wars, multiple medieval sources, English civil war.
Warhammer 40K - World War I, the crusades, and multiple sources including WWII and so on.

And several up there as we all know, even copy each other!

Now to answer some of the other questions; yes setting is very important to me. I play games more for the setting then for what numbers I get on a color coded card.

It also depends on where your strengths lie. If you have strong game play, then do what you do best. Think Unreal, Quake or Doom. I mean the stories were atrocious, but game play was where it was. Those developers did really well in that department. But then you have a game like Half Life with an engaging story and solid game play and you have a winner. The Half Life guys did much better in the story department.
What story and background does for MMOs is give you a lot more meat and potatoes to draw from. It gives “meaning” to that sword you got or that armor you have or that race you chose.

I think that is why many MMOs just haven’t done so well, particularly the free to play Asian ones that have very superficial story lines if any at all. Ever play FlyFF and figured out what the hell it’s all about?

Remember this; your average player isn’t going to read all the fluff and back story and what not. Your hardcore players and roleplayers will, and they are the vessel that will enthuse the non hardcore, non roleplayers, and casuals about your game or setting.

In a way, think of the majority of your customers being the people sitting around the D&D table who are mostly there to kill things and gain loot. The players that actually read the storyline and follow it are kind of like your DM who makes the world and setting interesting for those players sitting around the table.

My apologies for the grammar mistakes and if I don’t make sense sometimes, I wrote this at like 2 in the morning.