How to build your own fantasy world
Middle-earth. Faerûn. Arrakis. Westeros. Azeroth. Hyboria. These are all fantasy worlds created to the finest details by creative world builders. But what makes a world immersive and feel full of life? How does one start with the daunting task of creating their own world?
Define the scope of your world
To create a world filled with wondrous items, interesting people, a rich history and compelling lore, you need to be prepared to spend a lot of time. Rome wasn’t built in one day, but the same goes for Middle-earth. Forgotten Realms for example, the primary setting for the roleplaying game Dungeons and Dragons, was first released in 1987. Ever since then multiple design teams have been expanding the setting with additional content. This means that the deep and richt continent of Faerûn has been accumulating for over 30 years with tons of people contributing to it. How can your world ever compete with the same level of detail? The harsh answer is, it probably won’t. Ever. But that doesn’t mean you should forgo the act of worldbuilding altogether. It does however provide a certain perspective of having realistic expectations of your new fantasy world.
Now that we realised we have to make some priorities, it’s time to think about the scope of our world. How far do we want to go with the initial worldbuilding. Sometimes it’s enough to just design a city. People in different cities have different customs, interesting locations, underground criminal activities, a local government. Worldbuilding is not only about crafting brave new worlds… it’s all about providing just enough details to immerse players or readings into your creation.
So, if we start worldbuilding, we need to think about what we want to accomplish with our world. Do we want to write about an intergalactic epos? Planets and solar systems will need to be crafted into detail, how would interstellar travel be like? How will time be perceived and shared by the different civilizations? Do you like to think about a kingdom? Which cities are important? How is it governed? You won’t have to think about interstellar travel if you are restricting your world to a single kingdom.
Organising your world
During my years of a world builder, I developed an organising system that works for me. I use a combination of notebooks for quick scribbles and highly detailed information for the separate adventures I am running in my setting together with a document based, folder structured google drive. But that doesn’t mean this will also work for you. I like to be independent from tools like World Anvil, I’d recommend it for everyone starting out trying to build their own world. It all comes down to how fast and easy you are able to find the resources you need, when you need them. There is no single right solution for this problem, take my advice and do whatever feels right to you. But never ever underestimate how important it is to organise your notes and resources.
Research history
It might be tedious and boring at times if you aren’t a big fan of history, but studying history will make your world believable and thus more immersive. Reading about ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, or medieval kingdoms, will give you not only inspiration, but also insights of societies. Building a believable society with own rules and customs, is what gives your world more depth. This ranges from art to science and religion, governments, punishments, taboes, etc… To have a fair understanding of how these topics influenced our history, will help you build a history for your world as well. Most important it will help when you are posing the most important question of all when working on a world, character or storyline. Why?
Ask why!
With everything you create in your world ask why. Why is this city walled? Maybe because it is a central point in trade and has thus been beleaguered more than once. By whom? A nearby kingdom. Why? Because they experienced a recent rise in population and had to expand to have access to more trade goods. Everything in worldbuilding starts with the question why something happened. It won’t only help you with explaining why your society works the way it does, it will also expose the weak parts in your building. Try not to answer these why questions with obvious answers and clichés.
Getting started
Don’t be intimidated by the work that is necessary to build your own world. Start with a small scope to exercise and kickstart your creative process and work your way up from there. Know that there will be times that you just want to quit and abandon your work, but keep hanging in there. Before you know it, people will be exploring your very own fantasy world.
