Designing the World
From grand castle to deep cave, your quests will take you far and wide. Your adventurers are likely to explore many settled areas, from a tiny village or farming commune to a sprawling megacity.
While you don’t need to meticulously map out every inch of your campaign world, it’s a good idea to at least have a world map with a few regions, cities, and points of interest. While you can design your campaign world using whatever process works best for you, the following steps are usually a good frame of reference.
Continents and Islands
Start by outlining one or more continents in your campaign world. If you plan on focusing your campaign on a specific continent, you don’t necessarily need to flesh out the other continents in more than rudimentary detail.
Islands usually form due to volcanic activity or, barring that, when two tectonic plates push together and form a mountain range that eventually juts out of the water. Consider how your islands formed, and whether it was due to natural or magical activity.
Coastlines are typically smooth in areas with mild weather. Where thunderstorms, typhoons, and similar intense weather phenomena are more common, erosion usually shapes coastlines into jagged cliffs and fjords.
Mountain Ranges
Sketch out a few mountain ranges on your continents and large islands. In the real world, mountain ranges form when two tectonic plates push against one another. Your world may have a mix of this natural phenomenon and mountains formed by magical means.
Rivers and Freshwater
Without the aid of magic, rivers always flow to the lowest possible point. Often, they flow to the sea, while other times they might flow into a lake. Rivers usually start high in a mountain, fueled by melting snow or some kind of freshwater spring. In some areas of high magic, rivers might miraculously flow uphill.
Vegetation
Areas of heavy rainfall , along with those bordering a river or lake, will naturally have more vegetation. These areas typically grow into jungles near the equator and forests the farther away from the equator that you get. When air currents that carry heavy precipitation hit mountains, they will dump most of their rain before making it over the mountains. This means that you can easily chart out jungles, forests, grasslands, and deserts based on both where rivers and lakes have formed and where mountains will naturally funnel most precipitation.
Major Cities
Towns only develop into major cities when they have some significant resource that they can levy into economic prosperity. This might be a natural resource, such as a quarry or timber or pastures to grow food and livestock. It might be a strategic resource, such as being located on a key trade route, on a defensible hill, or on a prosperous port.
The most notable cities will have multiple resources that contribute to their success. With this in mind, pencil in a few major cities on your world map.
Nations
Consider where your major cities are located and think about the natural landmarks that might shape national borders. Mountain ranges, rivers, and barren deserts often serve as natural borders for nations looking to leverage the natural world into defensive assets. Borders do not have to run up directly against one another; there might be unclaimed space between nations, where bandits and mercenary groups might stake their claim on stretches of road.
What is the relationship between national leaders and their peoples? Given the natural and strategic resources that any nation can produce, how does this shape its negotiations with its neighbors?
Worldbuilding Questions
Having developed large swathes of your world, consider the following questions.
- How advanced is technology?
- How prevalent is magic?
- How does magic affect technology?
- How dangerous is the natural world?
- How aggressive and how common are monstrous creatures?
- What methods of long-distance transportation are most common?
- How does long-distance transportation affect international or intercity trade?
- What do people eat and where does it come from?
- Where and how do people get fresh water?
- Where do basic materials like stone, ore, lumber, and cloth come from?
- Does ambient magic shape the world in any way?
- Are there points of power where magic is especially strong? If so, how has the magic affected that area?
- Does interplanar travel happen with any regularity? Are there specific points in the world where this is more common?
- What are some points of interest - magical, natural, or artificial - that might pique your players’ interest?