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World-Building
Jul. 2nd, 2022 09:47 pmI’ve been running a D&D campaign for the last year (currently on hiatus, awaiting less player burnout). I wanted to talk about my thoughts in designing the world.
The genesis of this campaign came from two diverse sources. The first was a weird map someone made, in which the Mediterranean ocean was overlaid onto Australia.
This actually produces a nice fantasy world, where the inner sea is the home to commerce, and the outer sea is the home to monsters and exploration.
The second was this quote from fantasy author Scott Lynch:
And so I wanted a world that would have a lot of pirates, or at least adventurers that behaved pirate-ey. And I wanted that world to be a little bit woke. Because realistically (ha!) a fantasy world would be horrifically racist/sexist/etc., I mean, if humanity gets worked up over skin colour, imagine what they’d do if they had to deal with actually different intelligent species.
Don’t get me wrong, large tracts of the world I develop are exactly like that, but a significant portion is not.
Bear with me. In a world where some species go into heat, or have no secondary sexual characteristics, or don’t have romantic feelings at all; and they differ in significant physical ways, strength, size, toughness; then why would you care about the minor differences in your own race. If lizard folk lay eggs, why does it matter if some humans are gay? If both Hobbits and Ogres exist, why care if women are fighters?
And so I wanted a world that was largely egalitarian and accepting of differences, in the small sphere of professional adventurers. These folks are, almost by definition, hyper-competent weirdos, compared to their normal countrymen. So be anything you want in the adventuring world. Sure, you’ll get the stink eye from the rubes, but what do you care - you’re an adventurer! The other adventurers you encounter won’t mind, so long as you’re good company in the tavern or a fight.
In short, being an adventurer among adventures is a little like being LGBTQ in a big city gay enclave. Your own social group is accepting, but the outside world tolerates you if you’re useful.
On a personal note, I didn’t want to have to do a lot of work world building, but also didn’t want to use a pre-existing universe, lest the PCs research it better than me.
So I decided on a world that was one giant ocean, but had a ring of islands where all of the adventuring took place. To explain why there were multiple fantasy races and unrelated cultures, I took a page from GURPS Yrth, and opted for a banestorm explanation. Basically, every few centuries, a giant magical storm will appear that transports an island from another universe to this one. And those islands look a lot like familiar islands. So one island is obviously Great Britain, but with wizards. Another bunch of islands is obviously Japan, with wuxia. This way, the players can assume the sort of knowledge that the characters would actually have. If they spend a week in fantasy London, I don’t need to explain a lot to them, their expectations will be close enough.
Along the way, I decided I needed a map. I hate making maps. I’m no good at it, and that frustrates me. On the bright side, my friend Gareth fucking loves making maps. I sketched out the islands on a white board along with some names and a bit of background for each, and said “give me an awesome map”. And he really delivered.
I actually got two maps, this is the latter one:
 The first map was missing a key component for plot reasons. More on that later. The centre of the map is Tir na Holge, the land of the elves. The elves are ancient, aloof, and not available as PCs.
One of my players: “The elves sound like giant assholes.”
Me: “I think you’ve got it surrounded.”
Starting on the eastern most side, and going counter clockwise:
Albion/Ealga: Basically the Britain and Ireland. Populated my mostly Caucasian humans, plus Dwarves where the Scots would be and Hobbits where the Irish would be.
Pranam: Based off of Sri Lanka. Mostly South Asian humans, but with some fauns and centaurs in the mix. Until current events, this was the most recent banestorm addition, and they’ve spent the last two centuries being conquered/assimilated into the Albion culture. A lot of them are pretty sore about that, but the elites are mostly going along with it.
Zinjabar: Based off of Madagascar. Mostly populated by lizard folk, kobolds, and other minor serpentine races. They’re fairly ancient Egyptian in flavour.
Oyashima: Based off of Japan. East Asian humans, plus their own take on Dwarves.
Sanzhou: Largely not unified set of islands with multiple exotic races that don’t get along. Sort of pan-asian/Polynesian depending on where you are.
How do these people not all kill each other in an orgy of genocide? The Great Pact.
The Great Pact is an agreement between the races that defines a minimal standard of behaviour. And in return, those races aren’t subject to immediate killing. It doesn’t mean they get along, and wars still happen, but if a lizard man and a dwarve encounter each other, they’re not going to immediately attack each other because they’re both part of the Great Pact.
And what does the Great Pact say?
As an aside, the Elves invented a common tongue for inter-species communication. It’s sort of like Esperanto in that it’s no one’s mother tongue, and is easy to learn. It takes the place of “basic” in the game, though the farther inland you go, the less likely you’ll find people who speak it, since all the islands have their own languages.
The game began at the tail end of a war between Albion and Oyashima. There is a ceasefire, and the beginnings of a treaty. The PCs are part of that treaty being finalized. But on their way from Albion to Oyashima, something happens. A banestorm, that brings Zor Balgrin (the island at the north end of the map).
Zor Balgrin, in terms or geography is based off of New Guinea, but in terms of culture it’s a little closer to home.
I thought, what if the “bad guy” races got their act together and organized? What would that look like? I figure it would look a lot like the Confederacy, but with more cannibalism.
And so the PCs found themselves shipwrecked in a strange new world that shouldn’t be there (it was empty ocean when their journey began), but now they’re trapsing through the forest. And beyond those trees? A southern plantation, with goblins and gnomes as the slaves, orcs as the overseers, and it’s all run by ogre magi!
They enslave people! They eat people! They’re designated bad guys because they’re not part of the Great Pact!
But the goblins and the gnomes are all over this not-get-eaten-or-enslaved thing, especially if they just have to sign a few papers. But we still have to get there.
The genesis of this campaign came from two diverse sources. The first was a weird map someone made, in which the Mediterranean ocean was overlaid onto Australia.
This actually produces a nice fantasy world, where the inner sea is the home to commerce, and the outer sea is the home to monsters and exploration.
The second was this quote from fantasy author Scott Lynch:
You know what? Yeah, Zamira Drakasha, middle-aged pirate mother of two, is a wish-fulfillment fantasy. I realized this as she was evolving on the page, and you know what? I fucking embrace it.You can read the whole thing here
Why shouldn't middle-aged mothers get a wish-fulfillment character, you sad little bigot? Everyone else does. H.L. Mencken once wrote that "Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats." I can't think of anyone to whom that applies more than my own mom, and the mothers on my friends list, with the incredible demands on time and spirit they face in their efforts to raise their kids, preserve their families, and save their own identity/sanity into the bargain.
Shit yes, Zamira Drakasha, leaping across the gap between burning ships with twin sabers in hand to kick in some fucking heads and sail off into the sunset with her toddlers in her arms and a hold full of plundered goods, is a wish-fulfillment fantasy from hell. I offer her up on a silver platter with a fucking bow on top; I hope she amuses and delights. In my fictional world, opportunities for butt-kicking do not cease merely because one isn't a beautiful teenager or a muscle-wrapped font of testosterone. In my fictional universe, the main characters are a fat ugly guy and a skinny forgettable guy, with a supporting cast that includes "SBF, 41, nonsmoker, 2 children, buccaneer of no fixed abode, seeks unescorted merchant for light boarding, heavy plunder."
You don't like it? Don't buy my books. Get your own fictional universe. Your cabbage-water vision of worldbuilding bores me to tears.
And so I wanted a world that would have a lot of pirates, or at least adventurers that behaved pirate-ey. And I wanted that world to be a little bit woke. Because realistically (ha!) a fantasy world would be horrifically racist/sexist/etc., I mean, if humanity gets worked up over skin colour, imagine what they’d do if they had to deal with actually different intelligent species.
Don’t get me wrong, large tracts of the world I develop are exactly like that, but a significant portion is not.
Bear with me. In a world where some species go into heat, or have no secondary sexual characteristics, or don’t have romantic feelings at all; and they differ in significant physical ways, strength, size, toughness; then why would you care about the minor differences in your own race. If lizard folk lay eggs, why does it matter if some humans are gay? If both Hobbits and Ogres exist, why care if women are fighters?
And so I wanted a world that was largely egalitarian and accepting of differences, in the small sphere of professional adventurers. These folks are, almost by definition, hyper-competent weirdos, compared to their normal countrymen. So be anything you want in the adventuring world. Sure, you’ll get the stink eye from the rubes, but what do you care - you’re an adventurer! The other adventurers you encounter won’t mind, so long as you’re good company in the tavern or a fight.
In short, being an adventurer among adventures is a little like being LGBTQ in a big city gay enclave. Your own social group is accepting, but the outside world tolerates you if you’re useful.
On a personal note, I didn’t want to have to do a lot of work world building, but also didn’t want to use a pre-existing universe, lest the PCs research it better than me.
So I decided on a world that was one giant ocean, but had a ring of islands where all of the adventuring took place. To explain why there were multiple fantasy races and unrelated cultures, I took a page from GURPS Yrth, and opted for a banestorm explanation. Basically, every few centuries, a giant magical storm will appear that transports an island from another universe to this one. And those islands look a lot like familiar islands. So one island is obviously Great Britain, but with wizards. Another bunch of islands is obviously Japan, with wuxia. This way, the players can assume the sort of knowledge that the characters would actually have. If they spend a week in fantasy London, I don’t need to explain a lot to them, their expectations will be close enough.
Along the way, I decided I needed a map. I hate making maps. I’m no good at it, and that frustrates me. On the bright side, my friend Gareth fucking loves making maps. I sketched out the islands on a white board along with some names and a bit of background for each, and said “give me an awesome map”. And he really delivered.
I actually got two maps, this is the latter one:
 The first map was missing a key component for plot reasons. More on that later. The centre of the map is Tir na Holge, the land of the elves. The elves are ancient, aloof, and not available as PCs.
One of my players: “The elves sound like giant assholes.”
Me: “I think you’ve got it surrounded.”
Starting on the eastern most side, and going counter clockwise:
Albion/Ealga: Basically the Britain and Ireland. Populated my mostly Caucasian humans, plus Dwarves where the Scots would be and Hobbits where the Irish would be.
Pranam: Based off of Sri Lanka. Mostly South Asian humans, but with some fauns and centaurs in the mix. Until current events, this was the most recent banestorm addition, and they’ve spent the last two centuries being conquered/assimilated into the Albion culture. A lot of them are pretty sore about that, but the elites are mostly going along with it.
Zinjabar: Based off of Madagascar. Mostly populated by lizard folk, kobolds, and other minor serpentine races. They’re fairly ancient Egyptian in flavour.
Oyashima: Based off of Japan. East Asian humans, plus their own take on Dwarves.
Sanzhou: Largely not unified set of islands with multiple exotic races that don’t get along. Sort of pan-asian/Polynesian depending on where you are.
How do these people not all kill each other in an orgy of genocide? The Great Pact.
The Great Pact is an agreement between the races that defines a minimal standard of behaviour. And in return, those races aren’t subject to immediate killing. It doesn’t mean they get along, and wars still happen, but if a lizard man and a dwarve encounter each other, they’re not going to immediately attack each other because they’re both part of the Great Pact.
And what does the Great Pact say?
- You don’t eat other intelligent races.
- You don’t enslave other intelligent races.
As an aside, the Elves invented a common tongue for inter-species communication. It’s sort of like Esperanto in that it’s no one’s mother tongue, and is easy to learn. It takes the place of “basic” in the game, though the farther inland you go, the less likely you’ll find people who speak it, since all the islands have their own languages.
The game began at the tail end of a war between Albion and Oyashima. There is a ceasefire, and the beginnings of a treaty. The PCs are part of that treaty being finalized. But on their way from Albion to Oyashima, something happens. A banestorm, that brings Zor Balgrin (the island at the north end of the map).
Zor Balgrin, in terms or geography is based off of New Guinea, but in terms of culture it’s a little closer to home.
I thought, what if the “bad guy” races got their act together and organized? What would that look like? I figure it would look a lot like the Confederacy, but with more cannibalism.
And so the PCs found themselves shipwrecked in a strange new world that shouldn’t be there (it was empty ocean when their journey began), but now they’re trapsing through the forest. And beyond those trees? A southern plantation, with goblins and gnomes as the slaves, orcs as the overseers, and it’s all run by ogre magi!
They enslave people! They eat people! They’re designated bad guys because they’re not part of the Great Pact!
But the goblins and the gnomes are all over this not-get-eaten-or-enslaved thing, especially if they just have to sign a few papers. But we still have to get there.
