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Well, if you read last month's column, you'll know that I told you to tune in this month to find out if I had actually taken my own advice on how to stop procrastinating and start working on worlds. The good news is that I did. The bad news is that I didn't get very far!
For a bit of back story, at the end of our Epic-Level D&D game which ended in February, the characters became the gods of a new world. The GM handed everyone a sheet of graph paper and told us to design a continent as our gods. The sky was the limit. The more detail the better. Oh yes, and give our characters 20 extra PC levels and 21 deific ranks. We'll be playing in this world the next time this GM runs D&D.
As you can imagine, the group was excited by this. Everyone was talking about what deific abilities their character was going to have, what special domains they were going to make, and what their continent was going to be like. Throughout all of this excitement I was the one saying "Yeah, that's nice, I'll work on my character next week..." while focusing on my character for the Mage game that started at the end of the D&D campaign. My Mage's background story took on a life of its own, and my sheet of graph paper got shuffled from one spot to the next. I had some hazy ideas of what Tanataria, bardic goddess, wanted to do with her little section of the world, but I didn't bother working out the details.
Then the GM announced that his next game wasn't going to be D&D, but Rifts. Well, as excited as everyone was about making their deific characters, they were even more excited. Talk turned to what everyone was going to play in Rifts. Once again I was the one saying "Yeah, that's nice..." and working on my Mage character (yes, I started on her background in February and I'm still writing it in May). I wasn't even going to play Rifts until someone said "...and AJ can be a Burster" and my pyromania flared up.
For some reason, instead of thinking about my Rifts character background, I started getting inspiration for my D&D goddess's continent. I'd think about it while I was working around the house and get little flashes of inspiration about cool sites in the capitol city, or about Tanataria's personal plane, or about celestial beings who would serve the goddess of bards. Still, I did nothing about it. I had a Mage background to write, guests to entertain, and a Rifts character to work on.
Finally, one night a friend was over borrowing my computer. I couldn't play Horizons, and I couldn't work on my Mage story... what was I going to do? I opened up my RP notebook, and there was my little sheet of graph paper (really cool graph paper, too. Graph on one side, lines on the other). It was time to get cracking on some world development!
The best thing to do when you only have a hazy idea of what a given country or continent is going to be like is to sit down with a sheet of paper (graph or otherwise. I usually draw maps on plain paper, myself) and just start drawing. Start with the basic shape of the continent, then start adding landmarks. A river here, a mountain range there. Add what you're sure you want first, then fill in the blank space. Then start peppering it with towns. I find that as I work, I start to get ideas about the specifics of each place and how it fits in with the rest of the country. I even got ideas for a couple of new races who call the continent of Kol-Numara home. Best of all, I was able to use the lined side of the graph paper to make notes on these inspirations so I'll still remember them when it's time to write down the details.
Another thing you can do when you're not quite sure on the specifics of an area is to ask yourself some simple questions about it, and hope that jump-starts the creativity. A few good questions are:
Does the country live in peace, or is it surrounded by war-like neighbors? Maybe it IS the war-like neighbor. This will determine how well-fortified the cities are.
Where does all the food come from? It has to come from someplace, so don't forget the fishing villages and farm communities.
Does the country have any valuable exports? Does it have to import almost everything? Either way, it's going to have to have at least one major port city, or border-town trading posts.
What sort of really cool people live there? The order of martial-arts monks need a monastery, the elves need a tree city, and the mermaids of course have their underwater metropolis.
What is the country famous for? Its fantastic palace? The royal zoo? The Desert of a Hundred Colors?
Who rules the country and where do they rule from?
The rest is entirely up to your imagination. Don't forget to show your country out-line to someone else, who may be able to point out something that you left out.
That's it for this month. Tune in next column for... uhm... something. I try not to think that far in advance!
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