What does a world need?

#1

Well I firmly believe that a world needs the people in it. A book or a rpg is nothing without just those minor characters. Where would your knight get his sword if it wasn't for the blacksmith or the merchant. Any ideas that you can spare would be appreciated. I plan on writing a novel and getting it published so help. You can also email me at knightsceam@gmail.com with some of the ideas.

Thanks.
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What does a world need?

#2

What does a world need? The answer is simple.

Everything.

That is not a smart ass answer. Writing a novel or running a game, you need to know approximately everything about your setting. It may not be important to your story or your game, but you never know will become important until you are in the middle of it all.

Example: SW Episode 4... Leia's player... "So what else goes out of the Detention center. Hmmm, so where does the trash go? You better know about the trash compactors and chute so your game can continue at a fun pace.

Ninety percent of the development that you as a writer or GM should do, if you are serious about this, will not be seen by the readers/ players. However, knowing things in the background will impact your descriptions and scenes. (Cities with sewers don't smell like other places.... for example).

The Premire, the penultimate, the best, write up for world building....
World Building 102 or Environment building the MoonHunter way
http://www.rpgcitadel.com/guild/index.php?topic=1606.0

Dip Happens
http://www.rpgcitadel.com/guild/index.php?topic=687.0

2) Now to organize and write up your world. The worksheet does a good job. You can expand upon that by pulling the information from World packs and game suppliments. Again these are not for your reader's consumption, but you can use this format for organiztional purposes. And if the book is successful or tanks, you could always sell the setting as a game suppliment as well.

World Packs
http://www.rpgcitadel.com/guild/index.php?topic=378.0

Writing a Campaign Setting Sourcebook
http://www.rpgcitadel.com/guild/index.php?topic=2444.0

3) If you want more information on writing... I want you to read the following posts:
http://www.strolen.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=36621#36621
http://www.strolen.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=36715#36715

4) A small bit that is handy. You can't know how to get there, if you don't know where you are going.
What constitutes a good campaign climax?
http://www.rpgcitadel.com/guild/index.php?topic=1296.0

What does a world need?

#3

Thanks Moonhunter. That helps. But I was wondering do you have anything on creating a race(I have already taken a look at Captain Penguins thread on races).

What does a world need?

#4

I don't have a "create a race" article, but much of race creating is similar to setting creation.

The first step is to think about the race: What is it like?, How did it get that way?, How does it fit in the world?, Where did it come from? Does it have its own "culture" or does it adopt the local one?

After thinking about it a while you have to answer two important questions:
1) What does this race add to your setting? (Why this race instead of something else?)
2) What it is role in your setting? (What does this race do?)

If the answer to either question is "nothing special" or "its just cool" or the answer is pretty trivial, then you don't need that race.

Now work out the race:
*) What is it like Physically and Mentally? What are its capabilities in comparison to Humans (the base line for most people).

*) Can it do things other races can not? If it has great powers without drawbacks, why hasn't it taken over the world?

*) What is the race's culture, its society like? How is that culture/ society impacted by other races and history. Remember, that unless the race is mentally limited in some way, they may have more than one culture/ society... just like Humans.

*) Where did the race come from? Was it always here? Have other races pushed it aside?

*) You need to start applying the existance of the race to the history of your world. Remember nothing exists in a vacumn, so if the race exists it must of effected other races and things in some way or another.

Don't fill out the entire sections then move on, as parts of one question will impact other questions.

Keep in mind the 7Cs when filling these out. You can actually fill out a worksheet for the race (as a group). It is just another part of your world.

What does a world need?

#5

I can tell you from a friend of mine who is writing a novel based off of a lot of our adventure campaigns for the past decade.

It is hard work. He has pages and pages of information that will never see the light of day, only to have a paragraph explanation in a book about a certain cultures holiday, or about religion. Something you don't get into to deep when reading a book but must be detailed out 100% to understand what your writing about. He literally has I would say 30 legal sized note pads full of information of stuff. Myths, folklores, different cutlures. Everything.

He literally has everything written down to have a 200 page book describing the world, which doesn't even come close to giving any detailed information about the characters.

His characters get a minimum of one full page of detail. These are for minor characters, someone who may have a comment in the book. Full characters, that the books are based off of have a lot. The fewest pages I have seen for one of his detailed characters was ten pages.

He does this so everything has an air of realism. How can you write about a kingdom that you know nothing about? Do they have holidays? If so when, how many, how often, detailing what? Its a lot of hard work.

There is more I could ramble on Im sure but Moon is far more adept at answering these questions.