How do you build a world?

[Sociotard]

I wanted to make a world to play my fantasy steampunk rules in. Does anyone have any advice as to what should be included?

[Killer Shrike]

Re: How do you build a world?

 

Originally posted by Sociotard

I wanted to make a world to play my fantasy steampunk rules in. Does anyone have any advice as to what should be included?

There are several books floating around with notes on world building, but the first thing I would recommend is sitting down and listing out the things you want to incorporate into your setting, both past and present, and if you are forward thinking in the future.

 

Review them and then consider how they interact together. Arrange some key things on a timeline. Add diversity -- there should be multiple progressions among peoples and nations (otherwise you wind up with monotonal settings). Entwine and intertwine your elements, adding conflict and opportunities for intrigue.

 

Then sit down and map it.

 

Theres a lot more that goes into it of course, but this will get you started. Also, when detailing elements of your campaign, ask the journalistic 5 Ws and 1 H: Who What When Where Why and How. Why and How in particular are important if you want to inject versimilitude into your setting.

[BobGreenwade]

And don't forget the duct tape.... lots of duct tape.

[Sociotard]

And don't forget the duct tape.... lots of duct tape.

 

"Okay your characters enter the wizards chamber. There is a desk in one corner of the room with a lamp left on it, already lit. The walls are silvery, and waterproof. In some places pieces are flaking off in sticky strips."

[tkdguy]

You could try to find Masque of the Red Death by TSR, before it was bought out by WOTC. Or try Castle Falkenstein from R. Talsorian. Keep in mind that these are out of print (I think RTS is gone, but I'm not certain).

 

GURPS has both Castle Falkenstein and Steampunk books in print. There's also a d20 book called Sorcery and Steam, I think. White Wolf does have a Victorian-age Vampire, as well as Werewolf, the Wild West. Deadlands and Call of Cthulu may also have ideas for you.

 

Personally, I recommend Castle Falkenstein. Even if you remove magic, there are lots of examples of strange inventions you can use. There's also a setting already (New Europa) for you to use.

[Carmen]

Talsorian

 

Since R. Talsorian's website mentions Gencon LA, I think it's safe to say they're still around, if a bit lethargic.

 

It looks like you can still get the supplements. I'd suggest getting SJG's GURPS Castle Falkenstein for the basic setting info, and then Talsorian's Comme Il Faut for extra details, should you want them.

 

There's also a Fuzion-based game called Victoriana out now. I don't know much about it, since I haven't downloaded any of the previews on the website, but I'd guess that a conversion to HERO wouldn't be too hard.

[Sociotard]

Thank you all for the steampunk information. The Gurps book looks particularly interesting.

 

What I'm mainly looking for is generic advice about how to build a good setting. There just seem to be so many things that could be done that it's hard to nail down just what's important.

 

For example, I could pull a Tolkein and generate languages for different nations. or I could just do what I do now and have elves speak spanish and dwarves speak german, while ancient texts are all in japanese (the three languages possesed by different members of my gaming group). Which would you do?

 

I could concentrate on assorted political spheres. I would form in detail the heirarchy of each nation and important city, complete with secret organizations manipulating matters behind the scenes.

 

Then there's geology/ecology. I could generate a realistic model of where deserts and wetlands would lie in relation to topography and wind patterns, as well as a detail of mineral deposit locations. (Actually, in a steampunk setting, Iron and coal mines could be important locations indeed. I may have to think about that one) That would give me interesting environments to challenge my players. I would also need to generate habitation zones for different classes of fauna in my world, as well as food webs. Just how would Wyverns and balrogs fit into the ecosystem? Would killing them off like wolves (done in the victorian era, at least in the U.S.) have reprecussions?

 

How about religion? Or economics? Artistic movements? Fashion in clothing and architecture? roadmaps for internation travel? or city maps? Historical background for the last hundred years? the last thousand?

 

What I'm getting at is, where does detail stop being fun and start feeling like an english history final?

[Nightshade]

My first suggestion would be Fantasy HERO. It has a lot of information on world building.

 

For very detailed world-building, if you can find ARIA Worlds (blue book, not the roleplaying book), it is excellent.

 

Hope that helps.

 

Nightshade

[shinrin]

What I'm getting at is, where does detail stop being fun and start feeling like an english history final?

 

That is completely up to you. If you have the time and energy to do it, you could go into all sorts of endless detail. But from my experience, alot of detail can be wasted on a group of players who could care less on what their clothing style looks like and just want to know how much that sword costs.

 

I would say start small and work your way outwards as the campaign broadens it's scope. Maybe just detail the major city and/or country the PCs start play in and just have rough notes for the areas outside.

 

If time is a factor, just keep the adventures set in the city that the PCs live in and flesh out the details of other areas outside when time permits.

[dugfromthearth]

the recommended method of world building is this:

 

draw out a very rough map of a continent or part of a continent (like Europe).

 

place the major countries and name them.

 

place the major cities and name them.

 

decide which country the adventure will start in. Come up with a ruler of the country and a few other details.

 

come up with the name of the town that the adventure will start in.

 

come up with the name of the tavern that the adventure will start in.

 

make up the rest as you go along.

[Rick]

You can go the route of my GM and get a degree in Anthropolgy....hehe

 

Seriously though, get an over view of your world in some form of thumb nail sketch: a timeline of important events, a basic political map of the regions of your world your interested in, a list and short abstract about the peoples (of all races) in your world and then some work on the ecologicial, geographic and weather patterns of your world. All of this should be an over view kind of vague.

 

Then pick the spot where the game will take place. In that area focus in and do some really deep detailed work on all of the above things, but only as the refer to this one place and it's close sorroundings.

 

Then as your game expands, you start doing the same for the new territories your characters will be exploring. Also, don't be affraid of allowing little details and idea's your PC come up W/inform your world creating endevors.

 

For instance in my GM's Steampunk world one of the players wanted to be a woodsman who blazed trails and found natural resource for kookie Dr. Brown type of scientist. So the Deviner profression was created in my Gm's world and the pc has a rivalry/hunted W/Balshoi's (think of a steampunk type of a 3A mega corp) Diviner corp.

[tkdguy]

There are lots of sites that talk about world building. You may want to check them out.

 

Alternatively, use whatever resources you already have and make whatever changes you think are necessary. There's no reason not to mix and match if you want to. I'm going to be doing that in my campaign.

[CourtFool]

Originally posted by Sociotard

What I'm getting at is, where does detail stop being fun and start feeling like an english history final?

 

I have tried to create a fantasy world a couple of times now and I always get bogged down in the details. I have also tried only creating the town the PCs started in and make it up as I go along approach. Unfortunately the campaign expanded much quicker than I anticipated and I received a lot of pressure from the group to fill in more details. The campaign ceased to be fun.

 

I suggest you find some happy middle ground. Fill in the details locally and have some outlines for the rest of the world. Adding all the detail and flavor can be fun, but the players will not care about the detail you have provided. Only the detail you forgot.

[tkdguy]

Here's a list of things you may wish to have before you start running the game:

1. A map of the relevant area. How much of the world you need is up to you. Be sure to include terrain and major cities.

2. A general timeline of world events. You can make more details afterwards.

3. Laws and cultures of countries/cities. Again, get a rough guide, and add details later.

4. The movers and shakers of the world, as well as the NPCs the players will interact with.

5. Lots of inventions, since you're running a steampunk game.

6. Several plot hooks and alternative adventures (if the players decide to do something you hadn't thought they'd do).

7. Resources you can fall back upon if you need to. Example: It's not very likely a player will play a stargazer (I would, but I was an astronomy major), but if someone does, you can have a book or know of a website where you can flesh out that information.

[tkdguy]

Oh yeah... If you need pics, go to the WOTC webpage and go to PC Portraits. There's a section on Steampunk heroes.

[Killer Shrike]

http://www.wizards.com/dnd/article.asp?x=dnd/pc/pc20010529x

[Sociotard]

Wow! Thank you, Killer! Those pics are awesome, especially the man with mechanical arms. These could well become NPC's in my world.

 

heh heh, I wonder what it would be like to be attended to by a dwarf dentist.

[PhilFleischmann]

I always wanted to try role-playing in the world of Iron Dragon. It's a fairly standard fantasy world, but with railroads (dragon-powered!). There is some neat detail in the rulebook, but more would be needed to base an actual RPG on. Best of all, there's already a complete map! With major cities, minor cities, exports, racial areas, national boundaries, terrain, etc. One non-standard element they added was the Catmen that live in the jungles of the south. This game was designed by Tom Wham, the same guy who gave us Snit's Revenge and The Awful Green Things from Outer Space and a number of other great games originally published in Dragon magazine.

 

For those of you not familiar with it, Iron Dragon is a railroading board game in Mayfair's Empire Builder Series. The series is mostly about RW railroads: Empire Builder (U.S. and southern Canada, with more recent editions adding Mexico), Eurorails (most of Europe), British Rails, Australian Rails, Nippon Rails, and India Rails. I hear they're going to make Russian Rails eventually, and I've seen playtest versions of Africa Rails and Canada Rails. I also saw someone's home made version of Antarctic Rails, which though silly and improbable, fits with the two non-realistic rail games they've made: Iron Dragon, and the recently released Lunar Rails (set in the future where the moon has been extensively colonized).

[Wolf]

Check out some of the first few Final Fantasies (I don't really know the numbers). I had played with the idea of messing around with a FF Hero game a while back (originally trying it with Rolemaster) and stoped after my group lost interest. However I found that there are quit a few Steam age tech's in that world.

-Wolf

[Rick]

http://www.ikwarmachine.com/minis.php

 

This should take you to the site that showcases the mini's we'll be using for our gm's Steampunk world.

[Farkling]

The computer game Arcanum has some nice set dressing stuff, and you can usually find it cheap at the used software shops.

 

There is a downloadable demo of a the computer based Iron Dragon - it uses the same map. I don't remember the website, but there is a link from Mayfair.

 

The GURPS Steampunk book has a good amount of source material. Gregory Keyes "Land of Unreason" series has a different view on the steampunk style, but is worh skimming if you find them.

 

The Difference Engine (Gibson and Sterling) has good backgrounding without magic.

[Pattern Ghost]

Speaking of world building, here's an article by Patricia C. Wrede with a boat-load of woldbuilding questions. Might not need quite that many for your game, but it might be worth a perusal anyway:

 

http://www.sfwa.org/writing/worldbuilding1.htm