Building A World From The Ground Up

The other day I had an idea for a world for a potential future campaign. It was focused on my semi-fascination with sunken cities, ships, castles, etc as a location for adventures in movies, comics, videogames, RPGs, and everything else. The idea became persistent to the point it wouldn't let me think about other stuff. And so last night I set out to make the world. Only I had one problem: I know basically nothing about geology, and most of my friends know - especially by comparison - quite a bit. It happens a lot where aspects of maps irk them just because it goes against expectations.

Now I'm a big fan of fantasy being able to break rules from how the real world works. After all, in a Fantasy universe gods, magic, and monsters are all provably real. But it is also nice to have a grounding in at least the basic aspects of our world. If nothing else it pre-emptively solves problems. You don't need to figure out where is dry - and why it is dry - when you know how the winds generally travel in your world. And so working with my friends over the course of about two hours we made the following world, and I figure I will present it step by step so you can see how it went.

A Merry Magical Holiday Special

This Friday, as a place holder for my group between ending a story arc in our Halo game and me taking over again to conitnue our L5R game, I'm running a one shot. The one shot will, hopefully, get us through the session where we'll be down two players - enabling us to start the 4th generation of my L5R game on the first session of the new year.

What did we decide to do for that one shot? Well, we're taking a break from the doom, gloom, darkness, and despair for something a little more merry and a lot more magical. In short, we're doing a Magical Girls one shot, and toay I want to talk about how we're doing that.

The Trick To Epic Fantasy

Epic Fantasy is a big part of role playing games, and of the Science Fiction and Fantasy works that inspire them. It doesn't matter if you're talking about the grim-dark far future of Warhammer 40k, the classic high fantasy of Tolkien and Middle Earth, or a fusion of both dark and the fantastical like we see in George R.R. Martin's Song of Fire and Ice. Worlds and stories that fit the Epic Fantasy title are all around us. So how do you bring that feeling to the table?

Building A World - Small Hiatus

Just a heads up, I'm putting the building a world on a small hiatus. I want to take some time to get the map done better and for the islands. We'll come back then and get going on doing some kingdoms with the terrain and such already set. Thanks to everyone who has participated thus far, and hopefully you'll come back for the return.

Building A World - We Need Rivers

Just a small update for today. With one vote I started adding some details to the super continent, but I suck at this part of mapping (I suck at mapping in general actually :P ) and figured that for today I'd show what we have so far, and ask for where we should have rivers, if any, on the super continent. Perhaps even some small lakes or other water sources?

Then, Saturday, we'll get in to starting the first Kingdoms. So here we go:

So where to river on the main continent?

Building A World - Part 3 - Details of the Land Mass

I apologize for the lack of visual aids for this. I tried, but had some issues with the scanner to picture thing that I'll hopefully have worked out for the update to come on Thursday. Today is mostly a recap of what we have so far, but there are some questions to go forward with. On Thursday we're going to actually come into some of the civilization and country lines, so definitely hopefully we'll have some form of visual map.

Building a World - Part 2, Continents & Oceans

The first big steps of building our world have been complete. So what do we know?

• It is a low-magic Fantasy world
• The world is actually the moon of a gas giant
• Said gas giant is the primary source of light for the planet
• Beyond the world itself the gas giant has 12 other moons, one of which is constantly visible the others rotate into view during the year
• On occasion a different source of light is seen...the "sun" of the system
• The gas giant has its own ecology including some creatures that are visible from the world.
• The sky is filled with stars, constellations, and other celestial phenomenon

This is all interesting and unique. I like the Gas Giant idea with its own animals that can be seen. A literal "here there be dragons" but maybe they're something else.

So where do we go from here? Well, with the space around the planet done we now move into the planet. This brings us to our next set of questions:

1) How much (percentage wise) of the world is water?

2) How many continents are on the world?

For a point of example, the Earth is about 70% water with most of it broken up across the two major oceans (Atlantic and Pacific.) The Earth also has 7 continents.

Does our world have one super continent? Two or three giant continents? Is it full of small islands?

With the number of continents made we'll be able to talk about placement and climates.

Finally, remember when answering how much water that this is a world that will be populated with humans (low fantasy and all that) so the lower the water...the more the resource wars over water. At the same time, our own oceans prove that just because you have water doesn't mean it's drinkable. 

Answer by noon on Saturday. With luck I'll have a (bad) map or three drawn for us to choose from on Monday.

Building A World - Part 1 - A Place In Space

We're building a world! With each of these posts there will be one or more questions for you to answer in the comments, and those comments will be used in shaping parts of the world. Any information regarding stuff not currently under discussion will be discarded in order to keep the focus on the topic at hand.

Now, in the announcement post we already made the first decision: this is a low fantasy world. By low fantasy we mean that while magic may be present it is very rare and generally not seen by the common populace. Think "Game of Thrones" more than "Lord of the Rings" and you've got Low Fantasy. Low Fantasy tends to also have an extreme minimum of non-human/non-monster races, but that won't be relevant for a few more posts.

Sound like fun? Then come on in. The hopeful idea here is to both build an interesting world, and to go through one of several approaches to building a world to play in.

Let's Build A World

At some point in time as a GM you're going to want to make a custom world. Perhaps you want to set a campaign in it, or perhaps you just need a world for an adventure or two in some science fiction or space fantasy game. Thing is, it can be hard to do.

With that in mind, I thought it could be a fun project to build a world on the blog. Not going too indepth in any one area so people have room to make it there own, but going through and hitting all the broad strokes and some of the finer points along the way. To do this, each day will focus on a different aspect of the world and develop it, and - where possible - I'll leave the post off with some questions to poll you guys and gals about what you'd like to see in it.

Now, for easiness sake - and to cover magic - I'm going to do a Fantasy world, but that is the only thing I'm going to define right off the bat.

For you, we'll start with the following question: What type of fantasy do we want?

Low Fantasy - Swords and warriors but magic isn't very common and tends to stick to the type of thing that people don't believe in if it exists at all. Game of Thrones is a great example of  a Low Magic Fantasy world.

Sword & Sorcery - Magic exists, but it isn't easily accessible and sticks to rituals or the random wizard/sorceror with intense power. Think Conan the Barbarian and Red Sonja for this type of fantasy world.

High Fantasy - Classic Tolkien type fantasy with multiple races, magic is common, magical weapons exist and in some places is a major aspect of the world. The Lord of the Rings, and most fantasy RPGs fill this mold.

So which do you want? Majority vote gets it. If no votes exist I'll choose one at random. If only one vote exists, that person gets sole power.

Voting will close Tuesday at noon.

STAR WARS! - What It's Taught Me

Alright, look, I'm going to level with you: I'm pretty much obsessed with Star Wars. I love it. I love the universe. I love the stories that are told in the universe. I love the characters. I love all of it. Well, I don't love the prequel trilogy stuff but I don't hate it like a lot of other people do. I am not sure what it is, but there is just something magical about the Star Wars universe that makes everything feel epic and awesome and fun. Today I wanted to look into what some of those reasons could be, and maybe flag a few pointers for those of us who are doing our own world building on the side.

World Building

World Building is one of those things that we all have to do for our games and can be a key difference between a well thought out, thriving, and living setting and a setting that is just 'that place where stuff happens.' Even when we are working with a pre-made setting such as the Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, the world of Shadowrun, or the war torn 41st millenium of 40k we end up with world building to do. It's a topic I've touched on here before, but with it back in my mind as I start up some new projects I figured it would be worth touching on again. Shall we?

World Building - Leave Room To Grow

As I am getting things ready for my Shadowrun game to launch I am getting to indulge in one of my favorite past times. Namely, world building. Now, there are a lot of jokes about world building being masturbatory - after all, while you're world building you are effectively just playing with yourself - but I've always found it to be an enjoyable and important exercise. That said though, and especially when prepping for a campaign, there is such a thing as too much world building. Today, I want to talk about why you want to leave room to grow.

Fireworks, Celebrations, and Festivals

I said I might have something for today, and I do - though it is small. In honor of the 4th of July, when world building how many of you take into consideration holidays and festivals? We may scoff at them now a days (yay day off, what do you mean it's not just national "sleep in until 10" day?) but the meaning, and relevance, behind festivals is much larger in older societies, and especially in feudal ones.

Festivals, and other celebrations, were a great time for peasants and workers because they got to take time off and just enjoy the sites and sounds of what was going on. Often there would be gatherings at specific locations and you'd get to see people you didn't often see. Religious ceremonies were common, and with those also came more political machinations. Weddings could happen, or were often announced.

The point is, they were things to really look forward to, and they also showed a lot by how a culture worked. How? Because festivals were often days when the rules were broken for many things - which just means that the rules left unbroken are even more important. They can also be used to show how one group feels/acts towards their peasants as opposed to the other. For example, in Legend of the Five Rings the Scorpion clan are not particularly good to their peasants. In fact, they can be very harsh and demanding. However, the Scorpion also have more festivals and holidays for their peasants as well. This, in turn, keeps the morale of the peasants up and keeps things working smoothly. The Unicorn clan on the other hand treat their peasants very well, but have significantly less holidays and festivals for time off.

So, how do the cultures in your game world handle this?

Stealing Names is A-OK

Today's post is a quick one, but I want to take a moment to talk to you about names in your world design. What I want to tell you is that it is ok to steal names from works of fiction along with works of myth. After all, a lot of the fiction we have now is basically modern mythology. Now, by this I don't mean you should have an NPC named "Luke Skywalker" in your D&D game, but something called 'the force' is totally appropriate. Let's take a look at why.

Co-ed Showers

I re-watched the first Starship Troopers movie over the weekend, and parts of it got me to thinking. Now, you can say what you want about the movie in general. It definitely isn't up to snuff with the book, but it is still a fun - and in my opinion decent - movie. A lot of the 'world' for the movie is explained to you in conversation. The difference between a citizen and a civilian, how you become a citizen, how that system came to be, but the movie also does a lot of world building with the little touches. One scene, referenced in the title of this post, involves a group shower with men and women alike showering together. This is very telling of the world. It says that the perceived gender gap is gone, and all things that goes with that gap, are no longer present - or at least as present - in that world. Think about that for a second, and how the scene shows you that. Alright, got that thought? Now, let's look at your campaign world.

Discussion: Building a Setting

So, time for this week's discussion (potentially one of two). Today I want to talk about setting building. How do you do it? How much work do you put into the setting before the first game? Do you go nuts, defining everything and anything about the world? Building things for your players to play with and explore, or to be running behind the scenes if the players don't go for it? Or do you just get yourself a general idea for things, and then build as your players involve themselves with things?

Personally, I tend to do a bit of both. I'll give the players a decent over view of the world, the major places and hot spots (countries if that is relevant), and perhaps go even more in depth with things that players show an initial interest in. This is what I did with Greymoore, I built an overview for the world, and then gave each player a more indepth packet of information for the area their character was from, and their race. After that, the information became available as the party went near it. When they went to a different country, I made the more in depth write up, and went with that. It worked out fairly well, leaving me room to modify things to the current needs for the game, while still having guide posts in place.

For the new game I am preparing though, I am thinking of going a bit more all out. Making things that can grow, even without player involvement, so that they can be there and ready later if a player wants to join in. I am thinking of doing something like this as well with M.A|C.C's boxed setting, building a lot of stuff for GMs to use, but leaving room for GMs to add their own things as well and make it there own.

This means that I will likely be putting in a lot of work that could potentially never see the light of day in game, which can suck, but at the same time having it there will make things run more smoothly. You can usually tell when a GM is winging something, as opposed to having had machinations in place all along for just such an occasion. Besides, having all that stuff ready can make you feel like the Batman of GMs, and sure it takes work. But just imagine the look on your players' faces when they go off the reservation and you just grin and pull out the contingency plans?

So tell me, how do you go about doing it? Do you go into all the nitty gritty details? More a wing-it type? Or somewhere in between? I'm willing to bet most are in between, but you never know. Any advice, tips, or things you are just particularly proud of that you built?

The Perils of Magic

Chances are if you're making a fantasy world, or writing a fantasy story, you are probably going to want magic to be a part of it. Afterall, isn't that the whole point of fantasy? A world where the impossible can be possible with the only explanation needed being that hey, it's magic! However, when you're putting magic into your world, you need to be careful with it or large parts of your world will stop making sense, not just in the real world sense, but in the internal consistency sense as well.

So, with this let's take at a few things involving magic that you'll want to consider for your world, and the ramifications it can have.

How Prevalent Is It?
How prevalent is magic in your world? Does everyone know it exists? Or are the stories and legends about it considered just that, the wild fantasies of the over imaginative. If it is prevalent, how likely is someone to meet a magic user? Are they all over the place, or for most people is it just stories, only these stories are known to be real, or at least founded on truth.

If it isn't prevalent, why is it not so? What has been done to keep knowledge of its existence from the world at large? Do people just not know? Or do they think that it is a part of the world that has long since ceased to exist? If it isn't prevalent, who does know that it actually exists? Just the mages? or do the upper strata of society also know of it? How are those claiming magic is real treated? Are they believed? Or are they viewed as charlatans and con men trying to mislead the ignorant and get themselves a small power base of fame and wealth to live comfortably. What happens when they actually do real magic? Will the response be awe? Or will it be fear?

If it is prevalent, once again how much so? How common and wide spread are mages and others who can manipulate magic? How often will people in the larger cities see them? What about out in the country? How many mages are there? Just a few serving as grand advisors? Or are their schools that people from all around go to learn magic or at least more about the world from the magi? Is someone doing magic on the street a crime? Or is it acceptable provided they don't harm anyone? Are the magi even liked for that matter, or are they feared as boogeymen who come to take children away?

Who Can Do It?
Is magic something that anyone can do, provided they study enough and in the right way for it? Or is it something only some people are born with? If you have to be born with it, do you still need training? Or is it like walking and running where you can more or less figure it out on your own? Even if it doesn't require training, are there still schools set up to teach people? If so are those who do not accept the teaching left alone or hunted? Feared as monsters or just the same as any other mage?

If anyone can do it, just how much study is required? Where is the training available? Is this considered a respectable thing to do with your life? Or will people be looking at you like you are willingly becoming an abomination?

This is heavily linked to how prevalent, but the ease of learning magic, and just who can do it will determine your prevalence at least partially. If magic is easy to learn, but anyone can do it, you'll need to figure out another reason for why the prevalence is low if you want it that, perhaps the teachers are just very selective, or there are laws in place to limit who can learn. Just keep it all in mind.

How Powerful Is It?
It seems kind of a silly question, but you need to consider it. Just how powerful is magic in this world? Is it just a few conjurers tricks? Or can a fully experienced mage level an entire army with his wrath? Both are actually more common than you might think, though High Fantasy leans towards the 1 mage vs 1 army = fair contest in a best case scenario. The power level of magic, and the average magic users is important for the world for a number of reasons. The more powerful, the more likely those without the ability to do magic will resent those that can do it, or fear what they are capable of doing. . On the other hand, the lower powered magic is, the less likely it is to be respected by those who feel they have 'true' power.

How powerful magic is will have other impacts in your world, such as covered by the next topic.

How does it affect war?
If magic is in your world, at some point or another it's going to have had an impact on combat, especially if it is powerful. This is important, because if you want your world to be focused more on the epic fights of warriors, than you need a reason for why powerful mages don't just over-run every combat. This can be answered in a number of ways, low prevalency, low power, slow working, any number of ways. Even if it's just the mages hide their power from the rest of the world.

The more active in the world mages are though, the more you need to make considerations for the impact they're going to have on the battlefield. At the very least you want to have a few reasons handy for why they're not just dominating the battlefield every time, especially when you are making mention of all the highly lethal spells that they have in their repetoire.

Final Notes
In all honestly, your magic will probably take a little from each of the things pointed out here, and ultimately all this is is a very specialized re-stating of the rule I gave earlier in world building. When you set a rule or decide something for the world, think it out to it's logical conclusion, do not stop thinking about it when you get to the end of what you want it there fore. Think about it beyond that. If magic users are all pacifists, why do they even have those terrible mass-murdering spells? If they have those spells, and they are all over the place, why do they not just completely control the battlefield everytime they're on it? Does a swordsman even have a chance against a mage in a one-on-one? Think it through all the way, worlds are never as compartmentalized as we wish they'd be.

Logic Has No Place Within These Walls!

Stop me if you've heard this one before.

You're sitting around the table playing in your weekly (bi-weekly, monthly, whatever) game, and you've just watched as an 80 year old skin and bones man, using only one hand, lifts a fully loaded wagon out of the mud and then casually holds it upright while the wheel is quickly replaced. Then, not five seconds later you're told something can't happen because "it's just not realistic", or using real world logic your idea is explained to not work.

It happens all the time in gaming, and it goes back to what I was talking about in the world design entry about internal consistency. That being said, what seems logical for you, might not be for others, so I figured I'd bring up a few things to talk about on the subject.

Again, Keep it Consistent
So, once again just to go over things, it is ok for your world to not make sense by real world standards, as long as it makes sense within its own framework. What this means though, is that explanations for how things work needs to remain consistent. Let's look at Legend of the Five Ring's world of Rokugan for a second.

In Rokugan, the world is made up of 5 magical, sentient, elements represented by various spirits called 'kami' (yes, lower case k is important here). A mixture of all the 5 elements (earth, air, fire, water, void) makes up everything. Including people. This is a known fact of the world, Shugenja can speak to these kami, and that is how magic happens and works. Lots of things in the world are explained using this system, the awakening of metals, how some people can take significantly stronger hits than others, why fire consumes whatever it can, even why steel acts like steel is explained by this.

However, in taking this system into account, you throw out a lot of real world restrictions in things. Rokugan doesn't work like our world, we have 118 elements in our world (that we know about right now or have made) Rokugan has 5. If anything, reactions between elements would work closer to how Aristotle thought the 5 elements functioned to make the world work than our own real experiences and what we know can happen in the real world. Especially when you get to more technical things, like the fact that in the real world you can make a stone canoe float, I doubt this can be done in Rokugan since the earth element's place is not floating atop water and stone is raw earth.

What I am essentially saying here is that you need to expand on ideas you have in the world beyond just what you are trying to explain with it. If magic works because the world is based on 5 elements and not 118, that's fine. However, you need to understand you have just given a fundamental fact about your world, it functions on 5 interwoven elements, which means it is incredibly different from the real world. Expanding and extrapolating on this to its logical conclusion will effect everything around it, including what is possible and what is not, and brings your world a sense of consistency that makes it seem like a living and breathing place.

Listen to Others
This one is a bit harder to do, especially if you're like me and don't work too well with other people on creative projects, but listen to other people. If you show a friend some of your design and he has impressions on things, listen to them. Everyone thinks differently, and a lot of times it's the ideas a friend gives you, or sparks with their own thoughts, that really helps bring the world together while maintaining its consistency. It may feel a little dorky to be discussing your fantasy world like a real thing, but treating it with that respect is really only going to help it to grow and develop further as a world.

This is especially important when running a game, as your players with a feel for the world will help you bring it more to life than you can on your own. Their interpretations can help you if you don't mind working with it. The end result? A significantly better game, provided you keep things consistent while listening.

Is it really so bad?
Finally, this comes more to the game master themself, when a player wants to do something that doesn't agree with your view of the world, but they seem to think is logical for it, is what they want to do really so bad as to deserve a 'no' or "that can't happen"? This goes back to what some view the primary rule of GMing is (never say no to a character, a player maybe, but not a character) but really is a bit more than that, or perhaps an adaptation of it.

Look at the idea given to you, and ask yourself why you are rejecting it? Is it fundamentally wrong against something in your world? Does it open the door for something that is mechanically broken? Is it some technical piece of information (from the real world) that is making you deny it? Or do you just not want to deal with it? If it's the real world reason, and you aren't in the real world, you have pretty much shot yourself int he foot sadly. We've already established that your world isn't the real world, so the real world rules don't apply. If it is mechanically broken, talk to the player about it, and maybe find a compromise or a way to restrict it to not make the game unbalanced for everyone.

For the other reasons though, as yourself 'is it really so bad?' if the player wants it, others don't mind, and seems like it could be fun or cool. Why not allow it? If it violates fundamentals of the world, then maybe those need to be clearer cut, but if it is only a small infraction things could possibly be changed around it to make it happen couldn't they? I mean, you built this world, surely you can adapt for something small like this to be possible right? Especially when it brings in fun, and probably is a cool idea.

Now, if you're still against it, that's fine and you should talk to the player, explain why the idea won't work. But make it make sense to the player in the confines of the world. "Horses can't speak ebonics because their mouth doesn't work that way in the real world" doesn't make sense if you've already established that horses can speak in your world, even if it is only in their own language. A bad example perhaps, but something to think on.

So I guess the conclusion is, keep things internally consistent, but don't forget to allow fun, especially if it can still remain internally consistent. Doing the two of them together helps bring your world to life, and you never know where a compromise you make may spark an idea that brings the next extremely cool thing into your world.

Happy Gaming.

World Building - Part 1

 No matter for what medium, if you're planning on telling a story you're going to have to do at least some world design. There are tons of different theories on how to go about making a world all over the place, and in time I may even go more in depth into the intricacies of it, or at least the intricacies of how I do it. For now however, I think I'm just going to go over some of the basics, as well as three questions you want to keep in mind whenever you are world building. So let's get started then.

Things To Keep In Mind
Whenever you are designing a world there are three questions that you want to be asking yourself with every decision you make. Keeping these in mind will make the whole process go just that much smoother, as well as help to keep you on task for whatever purpose you are making the world.

Question 1: Why Is This Interesting?
This is the actual design question you want to be asking yourself with everything you put into the world. "Why is it interesting?", or with different wording "Why does it matter?". This question should be easy to answer in the beginning stages of world design, when you are placing the larger pieces that will work as your foundation. As you go through and get closer to settling on finer details however it may become harder and harder to answer. Keep in mind, in some cases an answer of "it's not interesting, nor does it matter" is perfectly acceptable. However, if you are honestly saying that about something, then why are you putting it in the world in the first place?

Interesting however can have a number of answers. Something can be interesting because of the impact it has on the world's history, it could be interesting because of some plot relevant event that will happen in the story, something can be interesting for any number of reasons, but knowing why this particular thing is interesting when you place it in the world will help you with fully fleshing it out.

Question 2: Does This Make Sense?
We're not looking at real world sense when we ask ourselves this. If we were interested in the real world, our story would take place in it. However, our story doesn't take place in the real world, it takes place in this fictional world that we're building, and as such we only care if it makes sense in this world. A better way of wording this question might be "is this consistent?", however something can make sense for the world and be totally inconsistent with the rest of it. For example, somewhere in your world may be a super high-tech bunker full of alien script and weaponry, this is inconsistent with the rest of your world, but knowing the full story for the setting (as you do) it can make perfect sense to be there.

This is probably the most important question to be asking yourself as you're building your world. You especially want to ask it after you have answered question #1, as the reason you made something interesting might not make sense for the world. At which point you either need to re-examine the item you made, or the world itself to see which should change (or change more if both do) to make the item fit inside it.

Question 3: How Does This Affect My Story?
Almost everything you put into the world can have some impact on the story you are trying to tell. While it may be minimal, it is still something you need to keep in mind. This is more likely to happen when you are designing the areas that key parts of the story are going to happen in, however it is something you want to keep in mind. Take that bunker we used in our example for Question #2. Where that bunker is is going to impact your story, do the people who live nearby know of it? Do they have some of the weapons? If it gets revealed to them, aren't they going to want what is in it?

Another example would come from a choice of government you put into a country. Now if it's a monarchy, when the protagonists show up, they need only to ask a favor of the king to get what they need from him. If the country is ruled by a council, they may need to prove to the council that what they want is fair and right.

Whatever the case, whenever you put something into your world, ask how it may affect the story you are trying to tell. If it doesn't, great! If it does, well, make a mental note and keep that in mind when you actually get to telling the tale.


With those three questions alone, you already have the big part of how to make a world. Why is it interesting? Does it make sense? How will it impact the story? Keeping those three things in mind will make everything run smoother and go faster. However, I did in fact promise you more, so let's move on shall we?

Two Things To Keep In Mind
Before you start world building there are two things you need to keep in mind. One of them is fairly obvious, the other is a little less so. If you don't keep these in mind though in the beginning, you may be overwhelmed by the mountain of work before you, or upset later on. 

The first thing is that world building is a LOT of work. Worlds are large things, and they're complex by nature. Even something as simple as the world for a shooter game could have hundreds of pages of information on it. More if you include concept art as part of the design journal. If you want to truly make a living breathing world, you need to be prepared for this. For example, my game Greymoore, in it I'm stealing ideas from all over, and as of right now I have roughly 30 pages of single spaced work on it. Some of you are saying that's not very much, others are thinking it's more than you'd ever need for an RPG where you need to adapt to players on the fly. Fact is, that 30 pages consists of a brief over view of Greymoore, and then a quick write up going a bit more in depth into the various races. Even with that, that 30 pages is still missing the over view that goes more in depth into the four human kingdoms that are on the land. It also says nothing  of various myths and legends, there is no write up for history. Even with how brief I am trying to keep things as I work along on it, there is at least another 20-30 pages that needs to be written for it, and Greymoore is just one continent on the world. Is it really any surprise that most Role Playing Game companies have 200-300 page books of setting material for various places?

However, that world building is a lot of work is the obvious part of world design. The harder, and less well known, part of it is that world design is very much an iceberg enterprise. What I mean by this is that the people who read or play through your story are likely only going to see 10% of it, if even that much. The other 90%+ will remain beneath the surface of the water, unknown and unseen. Don't let that discourage you however, because that other 90%+ will still show through. It will show in how the 10% that people see all makes sense, it will show in how quickly you'll be able to answer questions about things. That 90% or so keeps everything afloat, and while it may not be seen, it is still needed right where it is. Look carefully at some games you've played recently, you can generally tell which ones had serious world design put into them, there are less things that don't make sense, more things just feel right. You can definitely tell when what you see is just the tip of the ice berg, and when it represents all the work that has been done.

That out of the way, lets actually get into some world design.

The Setting
I know what you're thinking, "I'm building a world to have a setting! Why the hell do I need to start by thinking about the setting?". The answer is because setting is a lot more than place. It is also the when. In this case, it is basically answered by asking yourself "What kind of story are you going to tell in this world?" Are you going to tell a High Fantasy tale of adventurers fighting to save the world against an awakening evil? Perhaps a more Dark tale of men working to bring their Emperor's favor to them, and his disfavor on their enemies. A more modern day espionage type thriller like Jason Bourne and James Bond? Perhaps you want to tell a sci-fi or space fantasy story where countries are actually planets and aliens exist. This is the most important question to answer when you are world building, because if you don't know the answer, how the heck do you expect to make a world for it?

The rules are different for making a world for a High Fantasy and a more mundane historical setting. If magic is going to by flying willy nilly wherever it wants, it is going to show in your world. If space travel is an every day occurrence for even the poor, then you are looking more at building a universe than a planet. Not that that is a different seminar, it's still world building, but it is an important difference. You need to know the "when" for your story, and by that I don't necessarily mean year, but other things we generally associate with 'when', things such as the Tech Level for the world/universe, how populous it is, the status of magic or magic like things (for example, the Force in Star Wars), races aside from humans.

What Is The Story?
This is tied heavily to setting, but where as for setting we were looking at the "when" and "type" of world we needed to build depending on the story. Here we are more seriously looking at the kind of story we want to tell. This is more as a focus place for our work, at least in the early stages. No matter what you do, some things are just going to end up more fleshed out and detailed than others. With this, we're looking to make sure we know what needs to be more laid out, and where we can be a bit more lax with specifying, and more just know the gist of how thing should work.

For example, is politics going to play a large role in your story? If so, you need the government structure, and the specifics of the various governing bodies well fleshed out. After all, their interplay and machinations are going to be featured in your story, and so you need to know more about it. Who hates who on the council? Who likes who? Who is in it for the bribes? Who is still earnestly trying to do their job? By comparison, a war story with little political involvement doesn't need all these details. Most of the council can pretty much remain nameless. However, in the war story you need to have the borders and bordering lands between the countries more well defined, and other little things become more important as well, such as just how self sufficient for food is each country? and how much do they depend on trade for keeping everyone well fed?

All of this shapes your world, and in truth everything is important, however you could spend years working on all the little details of a world and never be ready to do anything with it. Not that there is anything wrong with this, but if you want to use the world, you need to focus on what is truly important to you and get that done. The rest can be worked with as it comes up in the crafting of the story, but the further you get from your focus the more ok it becomes to just have a general idea and not specifics ready to go.

One Race? More?
This was touched on very briefly in the earlier part about setting, though that was more in the vein of "are there multiple races", this is the more serious question of "if there are multiple races, what are they?". Knowing you have multiple races is all well and good, but before any real world building can be done you need to know who all needs a home first. So, what races appear in your story? Where do those races live? What do those races look like? How do they interact with each other and the other races? Are they friendly?

In High Fantasy, it is traditional (since Tolkien) to put the Dwarves in the mountains, and the elves in the forest. This is actually fairly commonly held to, the Elves sticking to the trees and the dwarves to elevated ground. Do you want that? It's ok to follow tradition, just as it is ok to try and buck the mold. It was in direct response to a critique on BioWare's Dragon Age: Origins that for Greymoore I moved the Elves and the Dwarves around, I wanted to try and make a world without it.

What's great about setting this question down and planning it out, is even with something as simple as "Elves live in the forests, Dwarves in the mountains, and Humans on the plains" you've actually done a fairly large chunk of world design. You've set at least three kinds of environments, Forests, Mountains, and Plains, and you've established who lives on each of them. From there you just need to visit the races, giving them some culture and breathing life into them as a species will help designing their areas of the world, and from there you work your way down into the finer detail of things.

Final Notes
There are many finer details to go into on world design, but from here you have a fairly good starting point, and as I said in the beginning, everyone does it differently. That being said, I want to leave you with two thoughts to keep in mind.

1) Everything is cliche - this is true for story telling in every genre. When was the last time you read a truly original story? If you tried, could you simplify the plot down to a different story? I bet you could. The fact is that human beings have been telling stories for hundreds upon thousands of years. Even if you've never read a story like yours, odds are someone out there has thought of something like it, or told it. This isn't something to be discouraged by, it's just something to keep in mind. If everything is cliche, you don't need to worry about your plot or world being cliche now do you? This frees you up to focus on other things, your own little twist on the cliche that makes it yours. Something to makes your version of it stand out from the crowd. Trust me, you'll be able to do it, probably without even realizing it.

2) This is an example given to me by a teacher years ago. Picture an empty jar. Now fill the jar with large rocks, is the jar full? Are you sure? What if we try getting small rocks in there. Those will fit right? Alright, now it's full right? Not at all, we can add sand. That's small enough to fill in the small gaps and fill the jar even more isn't it? After the sand, we can pour in water. There, now the jar is full. This is a lot like how world building works. You want to start with the big things, and work your way down. If you start with the details, you won't have room or time for anything else. So start big, and when you've crammed in all the big things you can, add something a bit smaller, and smaller, and smaller until you are forced to pour water in to get anything else in there. In the end you have a world, a jar filled up with large objects that support, and in turn are supported, by all the finer details that make up the world.