We are walking through the worldbuilding process together. I am starting at the top level to make some choices before I dip down to the very bottom level and create a starting area for our players. As stated in a previous post, this will take quite some time at the blog post level, but shouldn't take a DM very long to sit and plan out some ideas before their first session.
Let’s look at these idealized goals I laid out for my setting in the last document:
I’m not going to tackle these one at a time. But I am going to keep these in mind while I start laying the groundwork for my new setting. You can tell from the name of this blog that I have made some of these decisions already, but I want to walk through them and lay them out so I can see them clearly and refer to them as needed.
Also, this is a living document, so I don’t need to keep anything that stops working or is holding me back or is supplanted by a better idea. Besides, part of keeping open space in the setting for players to use (see point 2) means that each campaign in the same setting probably will have a different version of these ideas. I want the game to dynamically twist around the characters that are made so they feel like integral and important players in the world.
Art by Ryan Richmond
BASICS
I'll start by working through some basic thematic elements I will keep in mind throughout all the rest of the worldbuilding I do for this setting.
I want to encourage players to interact with the setting and the magic and gods if they are interested. There are many ways to do that. But I want to keep the number of gods small. This means the gods will encompass many aspects of life and perhaps overlap with each other and conflict in interesting ways. By keeping the pantheon very small, it will mean the characters will develop feelings and ideas about the gods and their followers in ways that would not happen in a setting with 20 or 30 gods.
I’m also thinking of how I want the world itself to make the players feel their characters are an important part of it, central to the whole business. Wouldn’t it be cool if some of the themes of the setting reflected the party? A normal party of characters is five people. I like the number 5. And there are many groups of five things to riff off of. And 10, which is just two 5’s after all. And then, of course, you run into 4 +1, 5 +1 and 10 -1. I think starting from an item as basic as 5 is something I can build on.
If you go back to the creation story I posted earlier, you will see how 10 and 5+1 play out in that story. There are 5 main gods in my setting, who are called Wardens, leftover from an original 10. And one off-god or bad apple. I think the inhabitants of the setting should consider the number 5 to be numinous in and of itself. They will also consider 10 to be a holy number. This means they will have strong feelings about 4, 6, 9, 11 & multiples of 5 like 15, 50, etc.
Thinking of things that come in groups of fives reminds me of the Wu Xing, the 5 phases of matter from ancient Chinese philosophy. These are Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water. I like this, it’s already giving me ideas I can spin out from here. But I don’t want to just copy the Wu Xing either. Also, even though I lived in China for over six years, I am western enough to think that Metal and Earth are covering a lot of the same ground (pun intended). Also, D&D specifically does not have a lot of things like damage types or spells that resonate a lot with Metal. Let's have our 5 phases be Air, Water, Fire, Earth, and Wood. We don’t want to associate our gods TOO closely with a phase or element, but let's say they will have an affinity for the element that will inform their presentation and preferred environment.
Something I liked from the edition that shall not be named was the Feywild and the Shadowfell. I ran a 1st through 30th level campaign in that edition and frequently made use of these two planes that overlaid and were somewhat coterminous with the main setting. I’m thinking I should have 5 planes that interact in a similar way, and one will be our main setting. The other planes will be there if I need to do plane hopping or introduce strange villains, but I could run a whole campaign without going to them as well.
This brings me around to the final basic idea I want to explore. A lot of D&D settings have a feature with bothered me for a long time, but I could never put my finger on it. These are fantastical realms of magic and might. Yet they all seem a lot like the real world and a lot like each other. Let’s break out of this bind and do something really different. I have five gods, called Wardens. I have five elements or basic states of matter. From the creation story, I have the idea that they each are lord of one of the worlds but all the worlds have some strength taken from each of the wardens.
I will make Wood the Feywild (but I will come up with another name for it) and… the Shadowfell will be Water (and will need another name too). Fire will be like a big desert (kind of Athas-adjacent). Earth is dangerous because I will be tempted to make it just like the real world of most other D&D settings... so let's flip it and I will say that it is actually a kind of metaphysical bedrock in a way…. Earth will be the Ethereal plane which always lies beneath and connects all the others, and Air will be where I have my main setting.
Looking in the thesaurus for some synonyms for sky or heaven and I found Welkin --an old word that means the sky or the vault of heaven. Welkin will be a world with a lot of earth motes and a lot of sky to fly around in. This will add our high adventure (literally). Of course, kingdoms need land, but we can do interesting things at the edges of the kingdoms if they are floating in the sky… and at the bottoms of dungeons if the floor opens out into the sky beneath.
I think I have made some progress here. Everything will need to be polished but I'm happy I have a good direction to hang some more work on.
I think the next thing I need to do at the Meta level is name the gods and their worlds as well as decide on their portfolios. It's too simplistic and modern to just have them attached to an element. Also, because there will only be five gods, I want to open up a lot of space for characters and NPCs to have a lot of opinions, stories, and theories about them. To do that they need to be multi-faceted and ambiguous. We need to imagine that any one or two of them may be the antagonist in any particular campaign, or for a character or NPC to have good reasons to not follow one of them.
Between now and next time I am going to do some research.
-Ellery
Let’s look at these idealized goals I laid out for my setting in the last document:
- Elements of the setting tie together thematically
- Tons of hooks without constraining player choice
- Make it easy for the game to be exciting
- Diversity baked in
- Build with Dungeons and Dragons 5e play in mind
- If it is in D&D it should have a place in the setting
- We want the setting to seem fresh without being overwhelming
- Rule of cool: if it's cool, it may have a place
- Subvert and lean into various tropes
- Encourage players to engage with the setting
I’m not going to tackle these one at a time. But I am going to keep these in mind while I start laying the groundwork for my new setting. You can tell from the name of this blog that I have made some of these decisions already, but I want to walk through them and lay them out so I can see them clearly and refer to them as needed.
Also, this is a living document, so I don’t need to keep anything that stops working or is holding me back or is supplanted by a better idea. Besides, part of keeping open space in the setting for players to use (see point 2) means that each campaign in the same setting probably will have a different version of these ideas. I want the game to dynamically twist around the characters that are made so they feel like integral and important players in the world.
Art by Ryan Richmond
BASICS
I'll start by working through some basic thematic elements I will keep in mind throughout all the rest of the worldbuilding I do for this setting.
I want to encourage players to interact with the setting and the magic and gods if they are interested. There are many ways to do that. But I want to keep the number of gods small. This means the gods will encompass many aspects of life and perhaps overlap with each other and conflict in interesting ways. By keeping the pantheon very small, it will mean the characters will develop feelings and ideas about the gods and their followers in ways that would not happen in a setting with 20 or 30 gods.
I’m also thinking of how I want the world itself to make the players feel their characters are an important part of it, central to the whole business. Wouldn’t it be cool if some of the themes of the setting reflected the party? A normal party of characters is five people. I like the number 5. And there are many groups of five things to riff off of. And 10, which is just two 5’s after all. And then, of course, you run into 4 +1, 5 +1 and 10 -1. I think starting from an item as basic as 5 is something I can build on.
If you go back to the creation story I posted earlier, you will see how 10 and 5+1 play out in that story. There are 5 main gods in my setting, who are called Wardens, leftover from an original 10. And one off-god or bad apple. I think the inhabitants of the setting should consider the number 5 to be numinous in and of itself. They will also consider 10 to be a holy number. This means they will have strong feelings about 4, 6, 9, 11 & multiples of 5 like 15, 50, etc.
Thinking of things that come in groups of fives reminds me of the Wu Xing, the 5 phases of matter from ancient Chinese philosophy. These are Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water. I like this, it’s already giving me ideas I can spin out from here. But I don’t want to just copy the Wu Xing either. Also, even though I lived in China for over six years, I am western enough to think that Metal and Earth are covering a lot of the same ground (pun intended). Also, D&D specifically does not have a lot of things like damage types or spells that resonate a lot with Metal. Let's have our 5 phases be Air, Water, Fire, Earth, and Wood. We don’t want to associate our gods TOO closely with a phase or element, but let's say they will have an affinity for the element that will inform their presentation and preferred environment.
Something I liked from the edition that shall not be named was the Feywild and the Shadowfell. I ran a 1st through 30th level campaign in that edition and frequently made use of these two planes that overlaid and were somewhat coterminous with the main setting. I’m thinking I should have 5 planes that interact in a similar way, and one will be our main setting. The other planes will be there if I need to do plane hopping or introduce strange villains, but I could run a whole campaign without going to them as well.
This brings me around to the final basic idea I want to explore. A lot of D&D settings have a feature with bothered me for a long time, but I could never put my finger on it. These are fantastical realms of magic and might. Yet they all seem a lot like the real world and a lot like each other. Let’s break out of this bind and do something really different. I have five gods, called Wardens. I have five elements or basic states of matter. From the creation story, I have the idea that they each are lord of one of the worlds but all the worlds have some strength taken from each of the wardens.
I will make Wood the Feywild (but I will come up with another name for it) and… the Shadowfell will be Water (and will need another name too). Fire will be like a big desert (kind of Athas-adjacent). Earth is dangerous because I will be tempted to make it just like the real world of most other D&D settings... so let's flip it and I will say that it is actually a kind of metaphysical bedrock in a way…. Earth will be the Ethereal plane which always lies beneath and connects all the others, and Air will be where I have my main setting.
Looking in the thesaurus for some synonyms for sky or heaven and I found Welkin --an old word that means the sky or the vault of heaven. Welkin will be a world with a lot of earth motes and a lot of sky to fly around in. This will add our high adventure (literally). Of course, kingdoms need land, but we can do interesting things at the edges of the kingdoms if they are floating in the sky… and at the bottoms of dungeons if the floor opens out into the sky beneath.
I think I have made some progress here. Everything will need to be polished but I'm happy I have a good direction to hang some more work on.
I think the next thing I need to do at the Meta level is name the gods and their worlds as well as decide on their portfolios. It's too simplistic and modern to just have them attached to an element. Also, because there will only be five gods, I want to open up a lot of space for characters and NPCs to have a lot of opinions, stories, and theories about them. To do that they need to be multi-faceted and ambiguous. We need to imagine that any one or two of them may be the antagonist in any particular campaign, or for a character or NPC to have good reasons to not follow one of them.
Between now and next time I am going to do some research.
-Ellery
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