To create a world - Phase 1: Ideation

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about my next Pathfinder campaign.

I know, I KNOW, I have four and that's way enough. BUT! At first, I was waiting for the Book of the Dead to raise my Geb campaign from the dead (see what I did there?) At the moment, three of my four campaigns are pre-written adventures. All four of them happen somewhere in Golarion. And don't get me wrong: Golarion is amazing! It is rich and deep and vibrant and I love it!

But I miss creating my own worlds. I miss having a backdrop that grows with my players, the product of our adventures.

So I decided that, instead of running a game in the Impossible Lands, I'd be creating my own world, full of mystery, tailored to my table, my needs, my players' ambitions ... yeah, it's gonna be super cool!

Another project on that never-ending pile.

I'm well-aware that this new world might get discarded or I might just forget about it as it crumbles under layer upon layer of dust and projects. That's a risk I'm willing to take. And as I have at it, why not try to do ye olde two birds, one stone, thing?

How 'bout I share the process I have for creating my ttrpg campaign worlds? I'm a little rusty, and I'm just you know, one voice in a sea of opinion, but maybe I'll even have one trick or two for you...

Yeah? Okay, let's do this!

Phase 1: Ideation

• Materials: Your head, some scrap paper (honestly I do most of this in the shower)
• Time: It never really ends lol

Image from Pixabay

Before I remotely start thinking about bottom-up or top-down approaches, before I setting any form of building blocks, I need to know just what the hell I'm building and why. When I decide "I'm gonna create a world for this campaign," a bunch of questions just start attacking me and revolve in my head over and over and over until I no longer can sleep I consider them.

These questions help me define my world and set my own expectations!

1. In one sentence, what's your world about?

Don't overthink -- the first ideas are usually the better ones. You can refine this description at any point. Every part of your world will be moving forever, and ever, and ... ever.

This sentence should explain what makes your world your world. Don't compare it to anything else and don't get into every little or vast characteristic, define what it is what it isn't.

Some of my worlds have the following one-liners:

• A cataclysm made waters rise, eradicating history, isolating communities ... the remnants of civilization survived for a long time, but they're now ready to thrive once more.
• In this mysterious world, isolated islands spawn from the depths of the black sea, denizens unaware of other nations, a timeless prison where culture is as brittle as history itself.
• Magic was once abundant and the core life in this world, but when the gods abandoned its inhabitants, they reclaimed their precious gifts, leaving truly wondrous locations intact but society broken.

I said one sentence but basically try to keep it as succinct as possible, hitting the most important elements so that you can refer to it easily while working. Once you know what your world is about, at least generally speaking, it's time to consider how it works. There are two components to this: the tough questions and the rules. Not gonna lie, you can't really have one without the other.

2. Some tough questions

No matter where you're at in the process of creating a world (or a city or a character), you should always be willing to second guess and explain (even just to yourself) the decisions you make.

I'm working on a world for tabletop role-playing games, here are some questions I might consider:

• How common is magic in this world? Do people have prejudices for or against it?
• Are there actual gods? Do they interact with the living? Are they entirely made up? Why?
• What are the seasons like? What about the general geography?
• What kind of cultures inhabit this land? Do I want to base this off real-life cultures in any way?
• What were the world-shattering events that led the world to be in the state it is in, if any?

I don't need to have all the answers: several things will become clearer as you work on your project. These answers help you establish the rules of your universe.

I've said it before, and will say it again: a believable universe need not be realistic, it needs to be coherent. For your universe to make sense and feel real, it absolutely does not need to be set on Earth at a time you have experienced yourself, or live already in the collective mind. It needs to make sense within itself.

3. Get those rules rolling

Rules help keep things coherent: you have to know what the rules are to be able to bend and twist them without breaking them.

Ok, you may intend your world to be chaotic and lawless, I guess? But even then, there are inherent, invisible threads that hold the universe together. Think of these rules as whatever glue holds your world together.

Sometimes they stem from these important questions, sometimes they come from what you expect the world to do, how you expect it to act, and how you want to use it. They can be as precise or general as you want.

Some rules may be implicit because of similarities to our own existence (the sky is blue, there's gravity, the dead decay, whatever ...) If you want, you can change those rules -- why not?! Do consider the ripple effects of changing something as simple as "The sky is blue." Let's say you decide that in your world, the sky is, in fact, yellow, then:

• Maybe the air has a different composition to create this effect
• The world "cerulean" would not be used for a blue color anymore
• Yellow may no longer signify danger: it might be a calm, soothing color
• Hell, just how weird it would be to read: "I swear, Georgie, my pee this morning was just like a warm summer morning's sky! I've never seen this!!!"

Image from Pixabay

But, pee aside, you get my drift. Each rule you set changes the tone for further writing and, because these rules are fundamentals, the earlier they're set, the more cohesive you can make your world.

Here are some examples of rules I've set for worlds I've created:

• All heroes have a mote of divine energy, channeling the remnants of long lost civilizations and divinity.
• Magic, when it works, may create unforeseen, wondrous or dangerous effects.
• There is no night, it's always the day on the surface.
• All the animals are sentient and sapient and one day discovered that they could speak.
• When people dream, they visit other, very real world, created by the deceased minds.

These are simple examples but they give a general sense of what I mean. This goes beyond "what makes your world unique" and really ventures into the much more complicated "how does your world work" territory.

Uniqueness and inspiration

I want to touch base on using other worlds, other materials, as inspiration. I can't speak on creating worlds for novels or games that would generate money, but what I can say is that no world need to be truly unique. Here's one exercise that helped me understand the ramifications of the decisions I made in the worldbuilding process:

Pick two universes you like and try to make one, cohesive universe out of it.

It can be anything: Madmax and Pokemon; Harry Potter and My Little Pony; the Carebears and the Darkness ... it doesn't matter. The point is to see where those universe can meet, distill what makes them unique, keep what you can, and bridge the gaps. More on that another time, I think, because we'd be off for another thousand words.

Just keep in mind that there's nothing wrong with getting inspiration from somewhere and don't fall into plagiarism because ... oof!

Alright that's all for now! Wanna take a guess as what the other phases are? Or when I'm actually gonna get around to them? I'm super curious to hear what you think!