How Many Moons?
THE ABSOLUTE BASICS OF WORLD CREATION
“A beginning is the time for taking the most delicate care that the balances are correct.”
Princess Irulan, from Dune, by Frank Herbert
You’ve picked your game system, but the standard setting just isn’t doing it for you. Or maybe you had this killer idea for a world setting and now you’re sitting down to flesh it out properly.
What do you do?
Sometimes, you sit there and stare at the page or the blinking cursor and think... nothing. Um. What was I doing again?
As creators, all of us face the blank wall of writer’s block every now and again, and never is it more frustrating than when you sit down to start working out an awesome idea for a new world. I’m gonna go over three cornerstones of world building from an RPG perspective in a way that will, hopefully, get those creative juices flowing for you as you read on.
THEME
This may sound pretentious if you’re not used to thinking in these terms, but every fictional world has themes that underpin its core assumptions. It’s these sensibilities, whether they’re consciously chosen or not, that give the world that certain flavor that makes it distinctive from other fictional worlds in the same genre.
In Ravenloft, an underlying theme might be “Evil Is Stronger than Good”. It gives the world that peculiar underdog feeling that makes it so compelling to play. In Forgotten Realms, one underlying theme might be “Magic Is a Powerful Force”, and almost every story in Faerun is flavored by the magic that pervades it. Conan’s world of Hyborea embodies the idea “The World is Savage”, where barbarian kings rule through strength and wile and it’s the cunning warrior that carries the day instead of the noble one. The world of The Blue Rose is based on the principle “Acceptance and Respect Make a Better World”, and most people react strongly to that--in one way or another. In Shadowrun, a major theme is “Magic Has Returned”, and you can see the effects of that theme in the game’s exploration of metanormie discrimination, cybernetics and Essence loss, and the rise of magical creatures and empires. Cyberpunk 2020 is not subtle about one of its primary themes: “The Future is Dark”. It’s all about uncaring corporations, the poor proles they crush under their heels, and the punks that try to slip out from under their thumbs. That’s what makes playing in its world so iconic.
Whenever you hear someone complaining about a bland setting that feels just like all the rest, take a look at its themes. If they’re poorly conceived or poorly expressed in the world’s development, it leads to an unsatisfying setting that ultimately feels incomplete and pointless. If the themes that found a world are firmly built and strongly expressed, though, even if they’re simple, it leads to a setting that will make people respond.
A theme isn’t necessarily some high-browed conceit like “Good triumphs over evil” or “The world goes to the ambitious, not the nice”, although you can certainly inject those if they strike a chord with you. A theme is just a recognition of what’s going to be important in your world: the features that you want to emphasize, that are invariably going to play a big role when someone tells a story here. If you want magic to be central to life in your world, one of the themes might be “Magic surrounds us and binds us together”; whereas, if you’d rather have magic as a fickle, corrupting influence worked only by twisted men in dark towers, you’d go with “Magic is unknowable and dangerous”. If you want a world populated with fantastic creatures, you might have the theme “Strange and wonderful magical beasts roam the countryside”; or, if you want a world where peasants are afraid to leave the safety of their villages, you could say “Ravenous monsters prowl the wilderness”. Either way, the theme sets the direction for your world and flavors many of the the challenges and hardships its inhabitants will face.
To be clear, the theme of a world is never something you need to spell out; announcing the themes of your setting as such is usually crass and comes off as hubris. But if you know your themes before you start building, it will help to inform the directions you take and the decisions you make and, ultimately, will lead to a consistently realized world that comes together as a strong vision that’s easy for other people to grasp and get behind.
COSMOLOGY
Cosmology is a fancy way of saying the world’s origin: its place in the universe. You don’t have to write a Silmarillion to spell out the genesis of every world you create, but you do need some idea of where the world came from and what else is out there, even if it’s as basic as the concept of an angelic realm above the physical plane and a demonic realm below it.
Unless you’re planning a world-hopping (or plane-hopping) campaign for your setting, the most this feature is ever likely to provide for your players is back story. What makes it important is how it will set up the gods in your world and, just as important, their temples. If your world was made by a single Creator and all the other celestial entities are lesser beings like angels or demons, the temples in your world will tend to be arranged in a certain way. If your world has a Creator and a lot of lesser gods that tend or hold sway over different aspects of it, the temples will look different. And if your world has a pantheon of basically equal gods that all worked on a different part of creation and that sometimes get into conflicts with each other, your world’s temples are going to look and act much differently than in either of the other two settings. (And if your planet was seeded by mad aliens bent on galactic godhood, well. That’s gonna be a whole other beast.)
This is also a good time to determine the entities that show up in the night (or daytime) sky in your world: the planets around your world, the moon(s), the sun(s). Major constellations. Planetary rings. These are the features that will set the days, the months, the years of your setting. They’ll give you hints to the festivals and holy days the people will keep. They’ll determine the astrological systems and many of the celestial omens of your world. For constellations in particular, they’ll give you strong hints as to the myths and legends that shape the collective zeitgeist of the people.
Morrowind and Final Fantasy: Tactics went so far as to include these features in their rules mechanics, but you don’t have to do that. Just knowing that there’s a constellation named “The World Eater” and that it’s a bad omen when the Red Sister falls into its house can give you ideas for NPCs, for prophecies, for festivals and holy days, for organizations and religious orders and belief systems, for entire plotlines.
And keep in mind that you don’t have to come up with all the constellations in your world. You don’t need to make a star chart spelling out their ascension nor declination. There’s no need to decide which constellation shows up at which time of year in which hemisphere. You can do all that stuff if you’re into that sort of thing, but it probably won’t help your game enough to make much difference. (I’ve found that, outside of Traveller or Spacemaster, my players don’t like it when I stop the game to consult my star charts.) Just jot down a few things that come into your head. If you ever do need to fluff out more details, you can use your initial ideas as a guideline for the rest.
Besides, it’s vital to the curse words in your setting to know whether there are five levels of Hell or twelve, and whether they’re arranged in circles or triangles. (Triangles would be way more uncomfortable for the people in the corners, but it is easier to say ‘the third circle of Hell’ than ‘the third polygon’.) Inquiring minds need to know!
GEOGRAPHY
Even if you’re only making the city in which your players are going to start the game and spend the first few levels of their careers, there are a few things you absolutely need to know about your world’s geography.
In what country will your players be starting? What’s its name? Its government? Is it big or small? Which races are present in this country? Is there only one language, or do people speak multiple languages?
What’s the defining terrain of this country? Does it have a lot of farms? A lot of cities? What is its primary export or resource? How are the roads in this country? Is it easy to get around? Is there a lot of water? Rivers? Lakes? Coastline? Are there any mountains?
How powerful is this country? Does it have a large standing army, and who holds the army? Does it belong to the central government; to the towns; to the nobles? Do they keep the people of the country safe, or is it dangerous to travel between places?
How rich is this country? How populous? What social classes does it use to divide its people? Does it have slaves? Is there a noble or aristocratic class? Do the poor people have enough food to eat, or are they struggling to get by? Can they read?
What is religion like in this country? Is there a strong central religion, or are the people broken up into a number of different faiths? How much influence do temples have on the government? How wealthy are they? Do they care about the people, or are they too invested in power, wealth, or conflict with other faiths to get involved in secular matters? Are there monasteries?
What level of technology do the people in this country enjoy? Is it iron age; is it bronze age; do they have steel? What kinds of weapons and armor can they craft? What kinds of material do they use to construct buildings? Do they have indoor plumbing? Do they have guns? Do they have universities? Do they ride animals? Do they own pets?
What are the neighboring countries like? Are they large or powerful or rich? Is this country on friendly or hostile terms with each of its neighbors? If friendly, what are the primary trade goods between the countries? If hostile, are they at war?
Finally, what’s the continent or landmass in which this country is located? Is it an island? A continent? A megacontinent? A spaceship? Is it in the northern hemisphere or the southern? Do the people here know about other continents, or do they think their continent makes up the whole world? Does it make up the whole world?
After you’ve considered a few questions like these, you should have a pretty good idea of what the players’ country looks like, at least in a broad sense. Now jot down a few popular cities and prominent terrain features, like you might find in a gazetteer or a guide book, so you’ll have an answer when your players ask about such things. (“Uh. Oh, yeah. That road goes to Benblavenbar, over next to the Highland Woods. There’s a major temple to The Rat King and they sell llamas there.”)
END GOAL
You know the central themes that form the assumptions that rule your world. You’ve written a brief history of time and placed the sun and the stars in their courses. You’ve come up with an alternate religion that’ll divide your world’s bars and battlefields until the end of its 26-hour days. You’ve created the countryside in which your starting city will thrive, set up its rival towns and its enemy states, near and far, in as much detail as you desired. Since you’re planning on running a game rich in local intrigue, you’ve even mapped out the power structure of the nobles and organizations in all the nearby towns and villages and their relationships with each other.
So what does all this give you?
A beginning. With this information under your belt, you will better (read: more quickly) be able to create cities, organizations, and NPCs that are deeply rooted in your world and more consistent with its flavor and character. You’ll have more threads on hand to draw into the weave of your stories and your NPCs’ backstories. When you create new threads, you’ll have a framework in which to set them to make them more fully and integrally realized.
All this is designed to make it easier for you to create good, deep, robust plotlines that will stand up to the punishment your players will inflict on them. (“What about that nobleman we saved last session? Can’t he just get us a copy of the key to the servant’s wing of the palace?” “Kor Filagar is from Guthlin, not here. They are allies with the king, though, so he might be able to swing something. It would take a few days. And he might want something in return...”)
What features are the first ones you work out when you start creating a game setting? Which features or decisions wind up being the most helpful later on in the process? I’m interested to hear your thoughts—let me know in the comments below!
Until the next time, game well, my friends.
Jonathan
P.S. — Here’s an example of the method I describe in the article, followed by a couple of templates I use. The example was a nation I used for the one-shot game for the Final Fantasy RPG I ran at Anime Austin, 2019. Initial work took me two or three hours, and I spent maybe another hour polishing and standardizing it for presentation.
If you use Scrivener like I do, you can just download the templates and drop them into a binder. Otherwise, you should be able to open them with the text editor or word processing app of your choice.
