World Building

Introduction

If you run a campaign on a regular basis, you will build your own world. Even if you only use "official" adventures and accessories, you will still play the NPCs in your own special way. And as time passes in the campaign, you will divert from the original product. Perhaps only in minor ways, but still. Why not take command? Why not shape the world to your liking?
I will discuss the process of world-building and illustrate it with details of the making of my own world, Bandagora.

Getting started

If you like to be the DM, you like to control things. It's like behavioral science, "free will" is just an illusion. We all know that the DM decides what going to happen, at least the big picture. In the long run, no party will ignore the adventure bait. They don't have a real alternative. Perhaps if you're a fantastic DM, you'll have several different adventures ready that the players may choose among, but that's about as far as "free will" goes. So basically, you call the shots (and the players roll to see if they hit).
So why not create a setting that you enjoy? I remember reading Frank Herbert's Dune. The thing I liked the most was that there were not just two parties vying for control, but several: the Atreides family, the Fremen, the emperor, Harkonnen, Bene Gesserit, and more. I wanted that for my campaign, several factions that could fight each other, sending out agents to influence the events of the world. And I remember reading Stephen Donaldson's Thomas Covenant series. The bloodguard, the monk-like household guards who were invincible as long as they kept the faith. I wanted some of that, too. My point is that you should keep a list of things you want for your campaign, a floating city? a country ruled by demons? steamships and trains driven by elementals? court intrigue? an oracle that answers any question with a riddle? It's no problem if the thing you want is already described in some detail, such as the city of Greyhawk. Put it on your list.

Cause or effect?

Now you have to decide on a level of realism. Is it high fantasy, where things are as they are as a part of a story. Or does the world have its own life, where things look as they do because of underlying reasons. Let me give you an example: The Knights of Solamnia can be found in the world of Dragonlance. The order was founded when "Vinas Solamnus [...] set forth to squash a rebellion [...]. However, Solamnus, a true and honorable man, found that the rebellion was well justified." So Solamnus made those who would support this "just" rebellion knights. These Solamnic knights are like the knight of the Round Table, if they do good deeds, they do well, if they do evil deeds, they do badly. There's not a hint of underlying economic or social structure here. Furthermore, knights of Solamnia must, like paladins, pay a share of their income to the order. What income? They don't have any jobs. Why treasure, off course. So, like Arthurian knights, they constantly roam the countryside, killing ogres and collecting treasure. Okay, so where does all the treasure come from? If the ogres stole it, surely true and honorable men would return it to their rightful owners. These knights are a kind of police force, after all. Hmm, the line of thought stops here. Period. That monsters somehow gather treasure is an underlying game convention. That's just how it is. My point is not that there is something wrong with this, but that you should be aware of it. If you are a knight of the Round Table and do good deeds, God will provide. Similarly, you as a DM should ensure that a paladin can be lawful good and still prosper.
In "real" life, by this I mean in medieval history, the Knights of Solamnia could not have come into existence. Being a knight was very expensive, as a knight usually had a retinue of four or five men. A medieval knight was a professional horse soldier, the modern equivalent would be that of a soldier driving and maintaining his own Sherman tank, and paying the rest of the crew. So if a knight had refused to obey an order to squash a rebellion, he would cease to be a knight, for he could no longer pay his men as he himself would stop getting paid. The gentlemanly behavior we associate with knights, such as not attacking an unarmed opponent, are the relic of the "Geneva Convention" of the middle ages. The main reason you did not kill an enemy knight who had yielded was that you could ransom him.
My point? For each sphere of the world you have to choose whether you want a certain effect, such as knight of a certain order to be immune to fire magic, or whether you will set down the basic rules for a phenomenon and see where it takes you. If you want knights to be chosen by God, fine, then they will be noble. If you want to simulate the "real" middle ages, fine, then knights will simply be privileged.
I think any world-builder should ask him- or herself the following questions:
What are the gods?
What does alignment mean?
How does magic-use influence society?
Are those who rule high level?
What does high level really mean?

With Bandagora, I wanted a traditional "pseudo-medieval" setting, simply because I like that the most. But I could see a problem with high levels. It stands to reason that high-level characters would dominate the low-level ones. I like to read about battles between thousands of men, but I know that a high-level wizard could wipe out an entire army relatively easy. So what's keeping the wizard from doing this? My answer is the gods. High level is a gift of the gods, and so it cannot be used in certain ways. The thousand men pray a thousand times, but the wizard only prays once, if he bothers to do it at all. So the gods protect the army, more or less, restricting the wizard's ability to do battle. This is an example of choosing an effect, rather than a cause. The alternative would be saying, magic is powerful, where does that lead me? It could be a world where you are nothing if you're not a mage. Or a world without armies, just powerful heroes. What do I know?
Getting back to my world, the gods of Bandagora have suddenly become an extension of me as a world-builder. The world appears as it does because the gods want it so, and they want it so because I want it so. The gods are a powerful DM tool, as they need not justify their actions.

World creating

What are your needs? Put simply, there are three basic ways to create your own world.
1. Create a full-fledged world from scratch.
2. Expand your setting from a core location.
3. Embed other settings into your world.
Actually, I used all three when I created my world. To be more exact: I use all three, as I still create my world. It is a living thing, not just because time passes in my campaign, but also because I add new details, names, maps, stories and other little things to it all the time.
The advantage of creating your world from scratch is that you know it when play starts. You know where one buys a fine suit of armor, or who is king of the neighboring country. This is great for all those minor NPCs who play the supporting cast. But before you start, you may want to consider the time invested in such a project.
I'll be frank. I started playing D&D when there was no AD&D, more than twenty years ago. In the first half of that time, I never thought I would get to have regular campaign. I'd been a player in one long-lasting campaign (we were a DM and two players), but I never thought I would get my own campaign, as all the campaigns I've started myself tended to be short-lived. Yet I spent hours upon hours creating Bandagora, a project that seemed to have no future. Why? Because I liked it. It was a kind of playing AD&D solitaire, if that makes any sense.
If you are about to create your own world from scratch, be sure that you like this kind of activity. It is akin to writing a novel, only here you can be almost certain it will never be read. Perhaps a better metaphor is building a house. When it is done, you don't see how it was built, you only see the surface. As a DM I long to tell my players a lot of exciting details about things that are secret, in the past or simply without relevance to their present situation. But as a DM, I just have to keep my mouth shut. As a player, I've listened to the details of how another country was run and how many soldiers the army had. Later I was told about some magic item of the DM's invention. My character was a druid, and had never heard of the country or the magic item. Well I didn't last long as a player in that campaign. But to get back on track. If you choose to create your own world, be prepared to make a great effort that no one else will appreciate. At least not at first.
Another thing you must realize is that unless you will accept "generic" terms in role-playing, such as "You travel to the neighboring kingdom accompanied by a priest of good alignment", you will not be able to play in your world for a while.

Starting from scratch

There is something exciting about taking a blank sheet of paper and begin drawing the shape of the world. Before you do so, get a vague idea of how the world will look like. Should it be a great inland area, like Athas (Dark Sun), or an archipelago (like Le Guin's Earthsea), or should it be the traditional continent (like Bandagora, I guess). To start with, one continent should be enough, unless you intend traffic between the continents to be common. I personally find this world-drawing exhilarating, but you only get to do it once, so savor it. If you don't think your coastlines look realistic, then use a computer atlas and a graphics program to copy bits of coastline, mirror, enlarge, reduce, cut and paste your way to a realistic one. If you're have a map-making program such as Campaign Cartographer 2, get it into the computer before you add any details. Or better yet, start drawing the world on your computer. It will get harder to enter your world map into the map-drawing program for each detail you add.
If you're making a world where the laws of nature are very different from those of Earth, I can't give you any rules. Just think about what would be natural in that world, then add it. But to those who stick to the traditional, I will continue: When you've drawn the coastline, it's time to add mountains. Look at an Atlas. Mountains are usually chained together in ranges, and sometimes all squeezed up in a massif. If a mountain range is cut short by a coast line, there's sometimes a string of islands continuing the range into the sea. Remember that you can do what you want if you have a reason. A large island walled by mountains would not occur naturally, but it could be a special place in your world, created by magic or the gods. If you don't know what to do with it right away, it doesn't have to be a problem.
When you're done with mountains, you can add rivers. They always run from the mountains into the sea, perhaps passing through one or more lakes on the way. Look at a map to see how a river twists and turns. They don't always fall into the closest sea.
Now is the time to pause and think about the next step. Think about how much time you have to finish the job before play begins. If you have plenty of time, just continue. But if not, you may consider developing one part of the world only. Let's begin with going all the way. Let's add hills. They can be found almost anywhere, but are usually foothills, that is a sort of border on the mountains. The next important terrain feature is forest. Remember that trees can be felled, and that men usually don't live there in large numbers, but elves do. Forests can be placed on top of hills, but not mountains. Typically, northern forests are conifer, whereas southern "forests" are replaced by jungle. Other terrain types include desert, grassland, swamp, badlands, and volcanoes. Put them on the map now if you want to, but they can easily be added later. I suggest you put on roads and mountain passes after you've put cities and countries on the map.
Once again, it's time to choose. Do you have an idea of how the world should look, then go ahead. But I've seen a few "Empire of XXX"-settings, where there's just one nation, perhaps two. The DM had a great concept for one country, but just didn't have any other ideas. Well my advice is this, do not waste an entire continent on one nation only. Use your great idea in one part of the world and develop that. Leave the rest blank for now. If you want to fill the world right away, here's an idea: Download the Names.doc from GoblinWerks, then look through the list of names. "Taste" the names, exchange one of the letters with a new or give them a different ending. Invent your own names, roll them off your tongue and try to imagine what they are: Monrovia, Lamtern, Vineous, Yugga, Hooldoon, GasToya, Nis Toh Var, Elundee, Ferloe, Il'Dau. Are they proud kingdoms, fair cities or dangerous straits? Stick with the names you like. Hopefully the names will produce mental images that you can work with. Put the names on the map. You don't have to draw borders, and then you can fill out the blanks whenever you feel inspired. Remember that names are for keeps. I know I've cursed myself for not coming up with something a little more striking than Bandagora. But now it is Bandagora, it can't be changed, it would be like renaming Africa.
But if you have the time (all the time in the world, so to speak), you can do what I did. I did not have a lot of ideas about countries or locations. My previous somewhat successful but short-lived campaign world was called Estonia (not very original considering there's a country by that name), and featured Estonia and its neighboring countries (Cathos (name stolen), Skurl, Warkand, Duchy of Gladivarius, Broding, Besokey (berserker!), Vlov (another real name), Gak (have pity) and the cincher: Doomaland). Well, it was fun for a while, but perhaps a little hard to role-play seriously. But his time I wanted a "real" world. I had bought Richard Snider's Powers & Perils game, and its supplement Perilous Lands. And I was very impressed, so impressed, in fact, that I wanted my world to be a Powers and Perils campaign world. That was not to be.
So I started developing my world from the dawn of time. I began writing a timeline. It started "-85,000 creation of Man". At the time, I had no names. I then took the drawing of my world and photocopied it twenty times or so. I then used colored pencils to draw a historical map. I then slowly wrote the history in short sentences. Names like the First, the Second and the Third Empire are hardly original, but they were brackets later to be filled (not that I really did). Slowly I began coming up with names. Slowly cultures were beginning to emerge. Because mankind in my world did not master magic do any greater degree in the beginning, I could use my knowledge of real world history (adjusting for monsters, obviously). I drew more historical map, now of the years -20,000 and 0 (I wanted to begin play in 1101, a good medieval number, and, I'll admit, one used by Snider in the P&P game). I now began including the things I wanted from my list. I wanted a Moria-like vast underground dwarven city now occupied by orcs, that was Thraskund. I wanted the ruins of a glorious civilization waiting to be searched by adventurers, that was Suada. Once I got started, it had its own momentum. Three cultures had emerged, and began fighting for control of the entrance to the Inner Sea. Barbarian nations emerged and swept over the map like their real-world counterparts. Some of the entries contradicted each other, and sometimes Kartria would conquer the same islands several times over. It didn't really matter, as long as the march of time continued. I would clean that up later. Then when I was getting close to 1100, I stopped. From 1032 and onward, I changed my technique. I created a historical events table, in which each nation was rolled for each season, modified by the rulers' capabilities and the stability of the nations. In the beginning, it worked just fine. Certain rolls demanded that I draw a tarot card and interpret it vis-a-vis the nation in question. But the table was unbalanced, and slowly the countries began sliding into unrest and civil war. So in the last third of the 11th century, most of the Bandagoran nations experienced civil war. Though it was a failure for me as a table-builder, I decided to stick with it, since a ravaged nation is a good field of adventure. My world was almost done.

Expanding from the core

What if you left blank spots on the map? How and when should you fill them? First I'd like to mention that Bandagora still has blank spots the size of the moon. They just don't show on the maps. But open any real-world map, every little square inch is crammed with names. So no matter how much work you put into your world, it will never be anywhere near finished (unless the world's population is about 100,000, as in one world I've seen). You should fill the blank spots for two reasons: If the campaign demands it, or you get inspired. For the most part, my adventures are built around modules. And if the module features a small locale, I simply put it in the map. Perhaps spelled a little different, but more or less the same. I may have to adjust some of the details, but in general, I look for a spot on the map where the place in question could fit in, then place it. In other circumstances, I may want to describe the ambassadors at court, or the players get an idea that they could import some commodity from another country. In those cases, you will have to do some work.
If you get a good idea, then fine. Go ahead!

Cut and paste

If you see something good, why not grab it. As mentioned above, I simply put a new name on the map if I use an adventure. But sometimes it's a nation, or a capital city, then you may have some qualms. Well in my case, I started out believing I would run a P&P campaign. And as I didn't have much experience with that system, I wanted to use the material I had bought. In the P&P set, there was a small adventure taking place in Donara, a large nation in the Perilous Lands. So I grabbed the name of Donara, but I didn't want to change too much about my world, so I made the country a small one, sort of out the way. The details of the nation I fleshed out later, letting myself inspire by the P&P original. Another adventure was the "Tower of the Dead", a high-level adventure which would have to wait a long while, but featuring a port city ruled by gangs and a jewel of a lich's tower. The tower I simply put on the map, it was a gift to any campaign world. I didn't like the lich's name, so I changed it to Ogonjok (I think it is Russian meaning "newsweek"), a name that none of my player characters (or their players, for that matter) dare to mention. The lich was to be the most powerful sorcerer of my world. The port city was originally called Porta, but the original reason it was ruled by gangsters was that it served as a port to a theocracy who used the city as a place to keep foreigners who could not be tolerated in the country proper. It didn't really make sense to me, so I had another idea. In Bandagora, the Duchy of Hardnit had been occupied for very long periods by Salakand (as a result of my history table and the atrocious military ratings of the dukes), so I envisioned a very weak duke who had to make a deal with pirates and other scoundrels (such as the Black Eagle from Basic D&D, whom I also would place in Hardnit) in order to have a duchy to his name at all. So Porta changed its name to Servan, the capital of Hardnit. And the duke moved his residence to the town of Zormaras, calling it his summer palace.

Building around fixtures

Sometimes you can be inspired by the rules. Once I had given up on the idea of playing P&P, I was back to my first love, AD&D. In my world, most of the known magical knowledge had been discovered on Kartria, the island of wizards. In the 1st Ed., illusionists were a subclass with their own spell table. I wanted to explain that in terms of world history. I had already decided that there should be a missing artifact, the Book of Enchantment, a super-powerful spell book. But at first it was merely intended an adventure hook, told in the traditional style of glory days now long gone. But now I could tie the disappearance of the Book with the establishment of eight magical schools. I then invented a super-gnome, the Master Illusionist Kril Shandor, who had come to Kartria to lead the study of illusionist magic. But he had an enemy, one who knew that though he, Kristeyn Ort, was the better mage presently, the long life of the gnome would ensure that the gnome would live to see more secrets than Kristeyn would ever. So he did two things, he used his skill of intrigue to make Kril flee Kartria taking most secrets of illusionist magic with him, and he found a way of extending his own life by becoming a lich, later to be known as Ogonjok. Now the emergence of Ogonjok and the separation of illusions had been explained (Later, of course, the 2nd Ed. reunited illusionist with the rest, so I've allowed one elf character to play 2nd Ed. magic as the elves do magic as they ever did).
Another feature of the 1st Ed. was that most of the spells had functional names, such as magic missile, fly, light, and so on, but a few of them were named by their inventor. Now Rary, Serten, Otiluke and Tenser were too infrequent to bother me, but Mordenkainen had a lot of spells, especially with the advent of Unearthed Arcana. So in Bandagora, Mordenkainen was a gifted wizard who came to Kartria relatively late in his career wanting to exchange knowledge on equal terms. The Kartrians would not hear off it, and demanded he work through the ranks like any other initiate, as they saw his non-Kartrian education as worse than nothing. Naturally Mordenkainen, a genius in the making, was furious, he walked away in anger from that day on making sure that all the spells of his invention would bear his name, as opposed to the generic names of spells developed on Kartria, where scholarly tradition demanded anonymity. But I didn't really like to cramp the style of the Master (Mordenkainen is the character of Gary Gygax), so I let Mordenkainen own a mysterious tower where no one could get in, and I let Mordenkainen himself disappear from the outside world.

The gods

What will your pantheon be like? It's something you should consider at length. I mean you should consider what their nature is, and what their role is. In the first supplements, the gods were given stats, later it was not the gods themselves, but their avatars. I consider this a complete waste of time. They're supposed to be gods. They may have a favorite way to appear but apart from that, they can do what they want. Now if you can come up with a reason they should use the same avatar every time, be my guest. I would rather that you consider the following options: Are the gods super-powerful beings that can shape the world in the same fashion as a wizard but on much larger scale? (sort of like Farmer's Behind the Walls of Terra) Or are they essential divine principles given faces so that men may understand them? Or are they the collective minds of their worshipers? The answer you choose should shape the way the gods appear in your world. My favorite image of the gods is that Terry Pratchett's Discworld, where the gods are the players of a kind of world-size board game with heroes as the game-pieces. I like it because it partly describes the gods as being immensely powerful compared to a man, but still restricts their behavior in ways not to be understood by men.
In Bandagora, I cheated. I took the easy way out. I grabbed a lot of gods, mostly from human creeds, such as Greek, Norse, Egyptian and Indian gods. In my defense I will say that it made perfect role-playing sense. When I said Thor, my players immediately picture a thunder god. If I had said Velaahr, my players would have taken notes. "Velour? And what are his spheres of influence? What is his alignment?" - scribbling pause - "I didn't get the first part about his spheres" - another pause - "Alright, let's hear what his priest has to say." So I sort of jump-started my pantheon. I did intend to change the names eventually, but I never felt the need to. I've tried to detail the creeds associated with the gods, so that I know how a priest of a particular gods views things. It gives me a good role-playing handle when the party deals with priests.
I allow my players to pray to their gods, that is wish for something to happen. They usually sacrifice something to aid the prayer, but I warn them that the gods may answer their prayer and decide for themselves that the appropriate sacrifice is that most important to the character (and players), their experience level. The reason I do this is to tell the players that the gods can hear everything, especially if their name is mentioned.

Special sites

I remember having a poster of Middle Earth hanging on the wall. Around the map small circles showed pictures of special places: "Minas Tirith, Mount Orodruin, Lothlorien, Rivendell, Helm's Deep, The Gates of Mordor...", the stuff that dreams are made of. So when I created a world, I wanted that, too. I already had the ruins of Suada, Thraskund and the Tower of the Dead. To this I added some more (see Wonders of the Whole Wide World). It's one of the things I like the best about my world. I still cherish the way my players gawked at the Adventurers' Guild World Map, when they saw the small symbols on the map signifying these special sites.

Finishing touches

Hey, it's your world. Here you can flaunt your idiosyncracies. Enjoy!

Remember those Arabian rulers who levy taxes by having the population pay their weight in gold. Well in the 1st Ed rules, where a gold piece weights a tenth of a pound, a 250 pound monarch could levy 2500 gps in taxes, just enough to buy him a gatehouse with a portcullis - what a palace! Once you've played AD&D for a short while, you begin to think of silver as worthless, and copper you seldom bother to pick up. I think this is very disruptive of my suspension of disbelief. Gold is valuable, and should not be handled in day-to-day transactions. In Bandagora, I "upgraded" gold, so that one gold ducats equals 100 gp. And I simplified the other metals so that 1 gold ducat = 10 silver dollars = 100 copper coins = 1000 brass bits. (See monetary system).

In my world, I've disallowed the charm person spell. At least in the way it's interpreted by some players. My players will have to make do with domination, a fifth level spell.

I don't like all those non-human races. I mean, where do they live. Dwarves and elves, alright. Halflings I concede as a homage to Tolkien. But gnomes? They're in the rules, and you may have noticed that Kril Shandor is a gnome. But I simply didn't have the imagination to create gnome countries. So in my world, gnomes are half-dwarves, that is the child of a man and a dwarf.

Finally, I wanted my players to have a source of information, so that I could pour out my more or less useless knowledge of Bandagora. Now they could have a sage friend, but sages tend to stay at home or go on research, not to tag along an adventuring party all over the world. Instead, I decided that there would exist a relatively powerful worldwide Adventurers' Guild. It has become a dominant feature of the game, especially since the players have learned to trust it without question. Making the Guild a safe haven allows me to make the rest of Bandagora less trustworthy (realistic, I would call it).

Quick start

So you want to make a world, eh? Well, my guess is that if you're experienced, you don't really need my advice. You know what to do, so go ahead. But if you are not, I suggest starting small. If you want to get going right away, I suggest you start with an adventure, either of your own making or a module. It's okay if it's a big one, like "Night Below". You only create what you need, such as one kingdom. If you're using a module, change the things as you go along. Slowly expand the setting with each successive adventure or whenever you feel you get a good idea, and remember to keep a list of the end results you want to achieve. Consider the world you're developing the training ground for your "real" world. At some point, you may decide that you are ready to complete your world. Then look at it. Is it worth completing, or should you start all over? In both cases, I suggest you look "Starting from scratch" through once more. If you've kept your "shopping list", you should have a good supply of ideas to implement. Perhaps you did try to implement an idea, but it didn't work out, Try to figure out why and give it another shot. So the Order of the Purple Worm was a flop, but perhaps the secret society of Hoolabar in another country will achieve the desired effect. You may decide to use the Forgotten Realms trick. That is, postulate a major cataclysm (preferably deceiving the players into believing they caused it), then make the new world and incorporate the successful parts from the previous world into the next.

I rest my case.

Jesper Udsen/Tarqin

P.S. If you don't like building a world, why don't you start your campaign in one of the best settings in the net. Let me see if I can remember the name...