World Building 101: Having An Actual Plan

So, I have been meaning to write another world building article for a while now.  It has to have been months since the last one.  Looking back on those, there is a lot of advice there about how to go about building and running your own world in a game like D&D.  However, there isn't a lot of direction.  To be fair, my point was to make sure you were doing what you wanted,  thinking about the process.  It was a build up to having your own campaign world.  Ask yourself what you need or don't need.  Shave down what your trying to do and make sure you aren't going over board.  Ask questions about the world and whats within it.

But now, after helping Untamed Scribe work on her world, reading more articles, and recording the third episode of D&Donuts, I want to give you guys some direction.  So where do you start?  For me the concept it THE most important part of developing your own world and campaign.  What is making it unique from other worlds?  Even if you answer is that you want it to be standard D&D but in a world of your own making, take that concept and use it as your foundation.  Take a look at my 27 Realms.  That is what I have been doing there.  Brave New Worlds is 12 episodes in almost entirely in Luxarrah and I don't have a twentieth of information about Luxarrah as I do Atlazan.  But I have the concept I had and the basics I thought of from there.  No matter what you're doing it should work into the concept.

Once you know what concept you're working with, you need to decide on how you want to work out the details of your world.  This breaks down into two main approaches, phrased in a number of ways.  Basically it comes to starting big and working down or starting small and working up.  The first way involves really getting into your world.  Building up a history for the world, kingdoms and their relations, races, monsters, artifacts.  Its all the big picture stuff about your world.  Essentially you create an essential encyclopedia like you would buy for your favorite franchise.  The second way to do it is to start with a town and the region directly around it.  You know some of the big information, but it is left a bit vague.

Personally I go for a hybrid method.  You see having a rough notebook or folder full of information about your world is very beneficial.  But there is no need to go too crazy.  Though, if you look at Atlazan, I have gone all out.  But even that is only to a point.  That history of Atlazan is the entirety of what I developed in the regard.  There is a lot that isn't there.  It's six pages, but its six pages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years worth of history.  A drop in the bucket.  But I have gods, races, classes, and basic kingdoms.  I even have the continent map.  But that's were it stops from big picture down.

Nearly everything beyond that set dropping is open for development.  For Atlazan, I have also developed small.  it isn't up but I have a rough region map of the area around Asylum, capital of the Feathered Serpent Unification.  Where what beast men live, environments, and dangers.  As you can see I have developed out the basics of the city and who is there, as well as the major NPCs that are important.  This gives me the foundation I need for the campaign itself.

By using the hybrid method of world building you can create a deep set and backdrop along with a strong foundation.  There is a ton of space in between for things to be created and explored.  With the small picture developed you can be ready for most of what will happen in the immediate game.  With the big picture you can drop names of people, places, and events to make things meaningful.  As play happens and ideas pop up, you can link the two out and flesh out the world / universe.

What is the next step from there?  Begin to flesh out information.  This is where you should focus more on small to big.  The closer in space to what you need for the game, the more fleshed out you should make it.  The farther away it is, make it more vague.  Eventually you should just have far off city names and maybe that's it about the city.  Beyond that there may be more cities not even named yet.  Same with environments and other such things.

Let's talk about time too.  Maybe you want the group to visit something far away.  Then flesh that out.  Exchange some of the focus of "nearby" stuff for focus on another point on the world.  Don't just look at campaign timeline though.  Also take a look at in game time.  Do not predict the way things are going to go in "kingdom-next-door" while your characters level to 10 and the kingdom hears rumors.  For all you know the PCs could convince a dragon to destroy that entire kingdom for no reason.  Weird things happen.  Be careful how detailed your plans are.

So to wrap up, let's just break it down into steps.  Keep in mind this are the steps you go to building a world with the intent to play in it.  This, itself, is a big picture methodology that I hope is a better backbone to this series that we can now move forward to specific ideas or topics.

1. Nail down your concept!
2. Get a rough big picture to create a backdrop
3. Flesh out a small picture to have a foundation for your campaign
4. Work out from the small picture detailing pieces to your world
5. Become more and more vague as you move from small picture towards big picture
6. Plan your campaign out while being loose with things farther into the future
7. LEAVE ROOM FOR DEVELOPMENT EVERYWHERE