Hail Adventurers! Has anyone ever had the problem of creating the overworld (or underworld) of ther world(s)? I've come across a very scary snag, and I can't seem to get around it! The more room I make on my map, the more cities, villages, hamlets, and thorps I am forced to make! Although I love the idea of creating such a large world, how do I come across creating the general overview of the world? Any ideas?????
Hail Adventurers! Has anyone ever had the problem of creating the overworld (or underworld) of ther world(s)? I've come across a very scary snag, and I can't seem to get around it! The more room I make on my map, the more cities, villages, hamlets, and thorps I am forced to make! Although I love the idea of creating such a large world, how do I come across creating the general overview of the world? Any ideas?????
I found this myself with my homebrew. You essentially have two options I would think - well three but the third is not much of an option.
The third, not so good, option is to just deal with it and outline a bazillion thorps, hamlets etc. if you have the time to make a campaign on the complexity level of the Forgotten Realms - well good for you but for the rest of us mortals this is just not a real option. It takes way to long and its hard to have a good idea for each town or city when there are thousands.
Another option is to take a page from classic fantasy. Almost any classic fantasy world really only includes a handful of cities, towns etc. in each nation. Each of these could be lovingly detailed. The downside of course is you end up with a world that seems kind of empty. Lots of terrain that apparently has nothing of real interest in it. Eberon does this to a significant extent. If you look at the map there really are only a fairly small handful of cities, thorps etc. considering the size of the area being detailed.
The final option that I can think of is to do your world in broad strokes. Lovingly detail the places the PCs are likely to visit soon and the other really important locals but have nothing but rough ideas for most of the towns, city's, thorps etc.
This is what I do so I'll comment on what I have found using this method. If your PCs head for one of the places not really fleshed out or it starts to become important fill it out at that time. For this you'll have to be able to DM your world on the fly in many cases so make sure to take notes if your PCs visit somewhere that you have not fleshed out. Another good idea here is to have backup rough towns for each major culture just in case your PCs do the unexpected.
Dungeon often has towns and cities that can provide a base. For example if your not playing Age of Worms use Diamond Lake. In fact you can set up Diamond Lake and then maybe during a later campaign set in your homebrew you can have the Age of Worms occur there (make sure to have a major city not to far away). The DMG II has the City of Saltmarsh which is an example of a town that I've used in this fashion. If you have lots of 2nd edition material lying around steal liberally from any campaign supplements or just use them as a base - so if you have an Oriental flavored region you could, say, use the Irendi Gaziteer but reinterpret it as a kind of Oriental Irendi.
This method has time benefits - not a lot of work is needed on places that are of no consequence to the immediate story but you still have to outline what the cultures are like and the really important cities need to be fleshed out.
Another good idea is to come up with naming conventions for the various cultures in your world. Examples from my homebrew - I have an Oriental themed section of the continent made up of arriving Oriental immigrants that showed up on the continents shores in a massive fleet from some distant land many centuries ago. They acquired lots of land and in some cases took over cities, hamlets etc. from the inhabitants that where there before them. So I came up with a naming convention in which the prefix any town they took over an the original inhabitants left as 'Cha-', Any town they took over but the original inhabitants stayed has the prefix 'Chi' and any city they founded themselves has the prefix 'Chin-'. This makes it easier to name many cities towns etc.
In other lands I use an amazon culture and they name their cities after previous political leaders - their naming conventions always start with a vowel and end with a soft consonant sound (like 'sh' or 'th').
Another culture names their cities after military victories and my most prominent culture tends to use local features (Blue Swamp, Tower Peak etc.) Another good trick is to ue the system where things are named after local features but come up with an alternate language and invent words for hill, swamp, forest, beach, town, city plus all the main colors etc. Then string them together to make unique names.
Some cultures might value objects and name their cities after these. So all my gnome cities are named after various real world (or even fantasy world) gems. For something like this Google is invaluable as you can find lists of all sorts of gem names - often with pictures that might help with detailing the city or town of a particular gems namesake.
Note also that the naming conventions give you a quick leg up for building a city on the fly if your PCs show up there unexpectedly. If a town is called 'Blue Beach' then you use that to quickly generate an idea of why the inhabitants called the place that ... probably because there is a blue beach nearby - maybe the beach is made up of white sand with lots of beautiful freshwater ponds draining into the ocean ... and crabs - say violet colored crabs could live in the ponds and the locals might catch them and eat them as well as exporting them ... crabs ... Hmmm ... theres a monster in one of the books thats based on Crabmen ... maybe Crabmen live nearby or originally inhabited the area - there could be a strange monument to Crabmen in the town square etc. The above being a stream of consciousness example of using the name to quickly generate memorable aspects about this previously unknown town.
Just remember to detail this information soon after the session ends. You'll need to include this towns features in your notes in case the PCs ever go back - they'll be unhappy if you forgot about the weird crabman statue and you'll give away the fact that the statue did not have some strange deeper meaning for your world or its people.
Excellent reply, Jeremy!
I began developing my homebrew (continent of Saern, world of Orbyon) in the 7th grade, when I read Dragonlance for the first time. I never actually planned on playing D&D then; I didn't even know what it was for sure. But, when I did start several years later, I had already done quite a bit of qork on this world, just for fun.
I like to start with the big picture. I drew up the whole continent first. Then I labelled areas of cultures and environmental factors: Warm, Temperate, Cold, Mountains, Swamp, Forest, etc.; Western European themed, Eastern Europe, Russian, Oriental, Egyption, Classical Magocracy, Magical Wasteland, etc.
Then, I come up with a little bit about the history of each are; I think about the typical alingments found there (like in the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting), government styles, customs and prejudices, government styles, etc. Nothing too complex actually, just enough to give me a concept of what this place is "about."
Now, I took the areas of greatest interest to me and drew maps, following only the most basic geological guidelines (mountains follow coasts most of the time, and should run for long stretches relatively unbroken, etc.) Use things like mountains, swamps, forests, and other natural obstacles to define political boundaries, as suggested in the DMG. Then come up with thoughts about, "What makes this forest different from every other one, or is it just the typical forest?" "What's so special about this mountain range?"
Then generate names based on that, such as the Dragontail Mountains or such. Or, just come up with nonsense words. If it's hard or low sounding, say it's dwarvish (examples from my world: Barrens of Golan, Mohr Khalsad). If it's soft and flowing, it's elvish. Now you also know who lives there, or used to. Used to? Why did they go? There's another bit of detail.
On to towns. Don't draw every thorp or hamlet. This takes a huge amount of time. I have a detailed map of the Kingdom of Merethil, but I only included the settlements of large town size and bigger, and only included those large towns if they were important in some way. Now, if you want to drop a little village or thorp somewhere, do so freely. Come up with a name in the same way that Jeremy described.
Use a random distance generator to know how far the nearest town is. Roll something like 1d4 or d6 or even a d8 to determine number of town, roll a d8 to determine direction, then roll something like 1d10+5 for the miles it is from the current town. Come up with some names, and you're good to go! You don't even have to do that last step until the party wants to go somewhere.
Don't worry about the far-flung corners of the world, whether your world is a country, continent, or multiple planets. Get and overview, then detail what's actually going to be used by the party. Fill out the rest as the ideas come to you or the party goes there. Just make sure you keep good notes!
In my last play session, I was using the prescribed method to detail the towns that the party was going through on a piece of road I'd only recently decided even existed. I was using the random inn generation system in the DMG II, and at an inn called the Black Dragon Roost (coincidentally, they had just faught a juvenile black dragon not an hour before in game time, thus making it even more memorable), I rolled up that there was a historian there.
The party was in a swamp cursed ages ago by a lich who had lived there, so I decided that the man they met was a scholar. Since I had a broad overlay of the world done, I know that the best scholars come from the magocratic city of Delosaine, former seat of the Malorgon Empire. He would be there researching the folklore and magical anomalies of the swamp. So, with just a hint of background information on my part, I creatd a detailed social encounter from random charts, and it's not hard to do.
I'm sorry for the length of this post, but I find world building to be one of the most rewarding aspects of being a DM. I hope that my ramblings have been of help to you.
I agree completely with Jeremy...there's really no need to flesh out anything except where the PCs adventure and margionally the areas that they MIGHT consider adventuring. The focus of the campaign itself should dictate the breadth of what needs detail and what can be glossed over as far as campaign mapping.
as ever,
ACE
Use a map of the earth - then tweak it.
It has city names, sizes, economies, cultures, populations, everything you could want.
You can use historical maps if that gives a better feel for you.
New York - NejYoryn, a massive city, with it primary urban center on a central island. A city of learning and commerce and art. The city is divided in to five burroughs connect by bridges and tunnels, populated by every race in the knowworld, each of which is commanded by lord who manages his own court.
Rivers, trade routes relationships. Just change a few names. You can even use photos of areas (especially wilderness areas -art and weapons - to set the tone and.
If you want to work fast - this could be a good tactic for you.
I began developing my homebrew (continent of Saern, world of Orbyon) in the 7th grade, when I read Dragonlance for the first time. I never actually planned on playing D&D then; I didn't even know what it was for sure. But, when I did start several years later, I had already done quite a bit of qork on this world, just for fun.
My homebrew probably started around the same time and was also pretty heavily influenced by Dragon Lance. One thing I have found is that I really have to do a major overhaul of the campaign world about every seven to ten years when utilizing a world whose fundementals came into being at the age of 13 or 14.
I certianly found that when I got reaquanted with my campaign world in my early 20's I felt that I had been outragously corny with my world when I made it as 14 or whatever. So lots of redesign at that point - also had to rationalize physics which I did by eliminating continents like crazy thus creating a reasonable sized world and not soming as big a Jupiter. To many continents tended to dilute the story line anyway.
I found the same thing when I got reaquanted with my world at 30. This time though I realized that my world was black and white - neither the good nor the bad guys had enough deeper meaning. So it was off to design motivations and justifications for the cultures.
It really makes me wonder what I will do with it when I'm 40.
Excellent answers, adventurers! Now, this leads onto the ever ongoing question: "Where did that town/village/city pop up from? How did we pass it and not notice it?!?"
What should I do should a city/village/town "appear out of nowhere"? I know sooner or later my mind will force me to create settlements in between areas, regardless of whether they are important or not. The way I see it, everyone and everything in my world (if not all) is very important, but I wonder...how would I organize these ideas should my party come across such settlements? Hm....
I usually make my own maps & stuff, because my players have access to all published realms. So when I start a new campaign, I start with a single village and it's immediate area. I'll probable steal an already existing map for the village and decide on what probable adventures could be found around there.
I keep a list of all adventures (by level) that I find in the Dungeon Magazines I recieve each month. Say my players start with 1st level characters, I'll choose three 1st level, two second level and one third level adventure. So if i've chosen an adventure with a swamp, two with a forest, one with a cave and one with some ruins, I'll make my map accordingly... The village will be situated in a forest, where they can find a cave. Beyond the forest will be a swamp which contains some old ruins. I also use my ultimate collection of old modules for when the players go somewhere I didn't expect. This can start a story arc on it's own.
Now I have a small map with a few adventures in it that will occupy the group long enough for me to make another map and add new adventures of higher level farther away. I also try to add a comon story arc (like an event or a nemesis) that I will intergate here and there as the adventures progress.
With this method, even I have no clue where the group will take me, or how the story will end.
Ultradan
My homebrew probably started around the same time and was also pretty heavily influenced by Dragon Lance. One thing I have found is that I really have to do a major overhaul of the campaign world about every seven to ten years when utilizing a world whose fundementals came into being at the age of 13 or 14.
I certianly found that when I got reaquanted with my campaign world in my early 20's I felt that I had been outragously corny with my world when I made it as 14 or whatever. So lots of redesign at that point - also had to rationalize physics which I did by eliminating continents like crazy thus creating a reasonable sized world and not soming as big a Jupiter. To many continents tended to dilute the story line anyway.
I found the same thing when I got reaquanted with my world at 30. This time though I realized that my world was black and white - neither the good nor the bad guys had enough deeper meaning. So it was off to design motivations and justifications for the cultures.
It really makes me wonder what I will do with it when I'm 40.
Yes, I've been doing same thing. It started out looking like a cross-shaped continent, and despite being scaled to be around the size of North America, only had about 10 countries, all of which were 300 to 700 miles across... not very realistic for a setting based on Medieval-Renassaince Europe. There were virtually no dioffernt cultures. Everything was Western European, just in Temperate, Cold, or Hot conditions, or Mountains/Swamps, etc. I had trouble realizing that the continent I had just drawn was an overlay, that there should be much more detail in it.
Since then, I've completely re-designed the physical layout, to accomidate all the different lands I want to put in it (it now looks something like a mutilated version of Eurasia, come to think of it). I've focused on making different cultures, more complex, smaller maps of individual regions, city-states and smaller countries. Even. now, I have "set" areas, where the party has adventured and that I'm satisfied with, that I leave along. But everything around them has a way of shifting and flowing.
They know that I'm doing this, but don't actually see it in game. I try to avoid, "That city is now 300 miles to the north, as opposed to the previous 150 miles east." Tends to throw off play and make the players care less about the world. Ah, it's a work in process that will probably never be done, but it's still fun.
Drake, as far as explaining the towns popping up out of no where: In my experience, the party has rarely paid that much attention to the little details going on around them. They note that there are towns, and they appreciate the detail, my giving them the choice to break off and do something there if they want, but if they don't, it rarely fixes in their memory. It's ok to just pop a town up somewhere.
If the party hasn't lived in a region, it's completely understandable that they wouldn't have heard of it before. I know it's not exactly the same as going across a country on foot or horseback, but when you go on a trip, do you note every little town along the way? Or even know how many towns are around you at any given point on the road? I don't.
Even if they live in an area, there's a chance that they don't know every town. I've lived in a very small rural area all my life, and even now, I still occasionally here the name of a town, ask "Where's that?", and learn it's only a few minutes' drive away, yet I'd never heard of it before.
Not to mention, the world shouldn't be static. New towns are established in a stretch of fertile ground, by refugees, around a new mine, for a new business opportunity, or around a new baron's recently established castle. Towns are also abandoned, becasue of disease, raids from enemies, failed economies, etc.
Don't worry about it so much. The mere fact that you're asking these questions already shows that you probably have a good enough head for detail that everything will work out fine. Happy world-building!
Read the World Creation articles at GiantITP.com - they're very very useful. RoleplayingTips.com. Another useful site. The Map-A-Week series from Wizards of the Coast is also useful for coming up with a locale in a hurry. And of Course, Dungeon and Dragon magazines.
As far as a whole world, most of your options have been covered by other folk 'ere. What I've done in the past is taken an English-Foreign Language of your Choice dictionary and renamed places accord to the translation. Examples:
BLACKROCK
German - Schwarzer Felsen
Italian - Roccia Nera
Dutch - Zwarte Rots
Spanish - Roca Negra
Portuguese - Rocha Preta
French - Roche Noir
and so on. Latin is by far my favorite for arcane texts or arcane locations. German and other "heavy" languages, like Russian and Dutch, I like to use for dwarven locales and other hard-working earthy types. Romance languages I tend to favor for cultures that I view being more trade-oriented. If you want to switch things up, use Arabic-sounding languages in arctic regions, or Hindi and similar languages in temperate forests.