How to Not Get Weighed Down by Worldbuilding

Worldbuilding is fun, valuable, and rewarding. Plain and simple, time we spend worldbuilding is time we spend enriching our worlds and making them more real for our players. However, like most all things, this is a spectrum. There are diminishing returns to worldbuilding. To avoid the pitfalls of pushing worldbuilding too much, let's explore the ways it can let us down. 

Let's think about this logically. Worldbuilding is a spectrum with a shapeless void on one end and a perfectly detailed world on the other. Obviously, we want something closer to the detailed world. But do we want the most perfectly detailed world possible? Practically speaking, it would take years of intensive work to come anywhere close to that, and there does come a point where knowing each NPC's favorite food lacks much of a point. So where is the line? How do we get the perfect balance of worldbuilding to narrative freedom so that we're neither too rigid nor too flexible? 

I've done a lot of worldbuilding. As of the writing of this article, there are 59 articles on homebrew setting details from big picture (homebrew rules for magic, gods, and dragons) to very small details (pet culture, home décor, and tattoo art). Were all of these necessary? Absolutely not. I did not need to, for instance, design city flags for all of the major cities in my homebrew setting. These have yet to enter or enrich gameplay, and so they were just an academic experiment, a creative act meant to connect with my world. And that's really the trick--worldbuilding is a way to connect to the world and better understand it, not something that's meant to define the players' experience. 

A while back, I played in a campaign that I overall enjoyed. There was this one thing that got in the way of full enjoyment, though, and that was that I always felt like we were on a tour (often guided) of my GM's worldbuilding. His favorite characters, NPCs he'd written stories about for years, were additional party members or vital allies and foes. Our adventures took us across the land, checking out all manner of homebrew locations. It was all very memorable, but I didn't feel like our party was the star of the show. I felt like we were witnesses to a story being told by forces bigger than us. It was not what I would describe as completely fulfilling. 

I think that GM let worldbuilding get in the way. I think he spent, as I did, dozens of hours worldbuilding and creating characters and preparing stories, and he got swept up and forgot that we--the party--were supposed to decide the story, that we were the stars of the show. In reality, his NPCs should have been interesting supporting characters. His locations should have been scenes for us to define. But everything was already written when we got there, so it was hard to feel empowered as characters. 

The thing is, this is a good GM. His characters, player character and NPC, are interesting and real. His settings are classic fantasy with a brutal twist that's always fun. His storylines put complex questions of good and evil at the feet of the players. It's just this one thing that got in the way for me, and I think the mindset that gripped my GM is a common thing. 

The truth is, our job as GMs is not to paint a perfect picture. We could, if we really wanted to, spend five minutes lovingly describing a stretch of hallway every time a party passes through one. We could paint a novel-style portrait of the merchant who will never be interacted with again. These obviously don't help us, though, and they don't help the player. 

I have a simple rule: if a bit of worldbuilding naturally comes up, I'll go into it. I've written about burial methods before, and when someone was to be buried in one of the epilogues of my most recent campaign, I referred to that information and had the burial proceed appropriately. In the same campaign, the player characters hopped across different cities and cultures, and I was able to describe changing geography and architecture styles. In epilogues of a recent campaign, each player bought street food in the city they'd chosen as their home base, and I could give them distinctive experiences. 

But the thing is, I didn't provide burial methods information at every turn. The geography and architecture of each location was provided as it was relevant (in small bursts as the location is explored), not in one long, nonstop lecture about the appearance of a city. I explained what street food was available when players sought out lunch while exploring their cities, not the second the entered the city. I offered worldbuilding details as necessary, and never more. The star of the show is my players, not my worldbuilding. 

And it's not like I'm not proud of my worldbuilding! My guides to clan groups and other organizations revolutionized how I think about my homebrew groups. My guide to clothing forever changed how I imagine my world looking. My guide to parenting style informed how individual people think about family, about authority, and about themselves. My guide to the solar system looked beyond Evanoch and even Izar, the planet it is on, to situation all of this in a larger context. My guide to lasting feelings about a continent-wide war fought over freedom of magic use is full of interesting and useful information that also invites new stories being told. But I cannot start out a campaign by having an NPC run up to the party and shout, "There's some interesting organizations to look into, and clothing styles can tell you a lot about a person, and everybody raises their kids differently here, and the solar system is vast and plentiful, and there was a recent war that people are still pretty upset about. Welcome to Evanoch!" That would be bad for a number of reasons. But if over the course of an entire campaign, they met a few interesting groups and got some interesting examples of fashion and had some conversations about parenting and learned about a distant planet and spoke with a veteran of that war, that gives the impression of a full, rich, living world. 

It's almost counter-intuitive. To give the impression of a rich world, you don't want to lead with all of your worldbuilding. You could, but then there would be no story, no combat, no time to characterize the player characters, and no room to relax or be silly. It would be all worldbuilding, all the time. So obviously, we need more of a balance. Some room for story and combat and characterization and silliness. But how much? The answer is also counter-intuitive: it's response, not action. 

Tabletop games are built on improvisation: I say one thing to establish a scene/story, and you say something that validates it and adds to it, and I do the same until we've told a little tale or made people laugh or whatever or goal was. In tabletop games, the players say one thing (an action, for instance), and the GM responds (a consequence, an NPC action, etc). Worldbuilding falls under this umbrella. Anything you do or say as the GM constitutes your time adding to the game. If you spend ten minutes describing worldbuilding, you need a balance of time to do other things, or you risk loredumping, the exhausting experience of having your GM give you loads of worldbuilding information with little actual gameplay. (It happens to the best of us, but never stop trying to keep that balance.)

So treat your worldbuilding details as improvisation additions. If a party adds that they are going to a market area, offer some street food as an option. If a party is in a room with a telescope and an eager astronomer, offer them a glimpse of the stars. If a player character opens up about their parents, let the NPC with complicated feelings commiserate with them. But these are responses. The street food vendor being unavoidable is unnecessary, as is the astronomy lesson. The "parents raised me wrong" speech is only something you should do if the player is into it. 

Think of worldbuilding this way: the point is not to put a bunch of interesting things out there to show the players. The point is to have interesting things ready for when (or if) the players go looking for them. To be honest, there are worldbuilding details I developed over a decade ago that have never come up. There are worldbuilding details I should have developed over a decade ago that I only got to recently. It's an imprecise science, truly more of an art. What will be useful to you will vary. If your world is more narrow, you will have an easier time covering every base. If, like me, you have a very broad world in order to capture more possibilities, worldbuilding will be about breadth too (hence my worldbuilding articles here picking a broad topic and exploring it across every group--the best organized way to cover all bases). But the point isn't to describe every detail. The point is to have something interesting ready to go. 

I'll go back to the example of the burial. It was in the epilogue of a character named Brokk, and it was very striking to Brokk and his player. In this moment in the game, Brokk had just become a Cleric of Nerull, a knight of the balance of life and death, and he had chanced upon the dead body of a woman in a halfling burial ground. Brokk struggled to know what to do next--he was new to being a champion of death and had no instructions, and he hesitated to do anything drastic in the middle of a major city. Before he could decide on an action, a few people came in and set to preparing the woman's body for traditional halfling burial: burning. Brokk knew that he couldn't heal this woman, who he sensed had died before her time, if she was burned, so he acted quickly and raised her from the dead. Spooked, the man preparing the burning ritual left in a hurry, and Brokk gently sent the now-conscious woman on her way. 

Readers, I am a good improviser, but I am not a good enough improviser to come up with "burning" as the most distressing thing that could be waiting around the corner for this woman. Brokk and his player were dismayed. It was a powerful moment, and because I had to pause to confirm halflings burn corpses, it felt official and more objective, so the obstacle it imposed was valid like the rules are. And think about it this way: if the goal is to create memorable worldbuilding details, in what other way would the knowledge that halflings burn their dead be more memorable for this player?

The knowledge of halfling burial was imparted at a time that it mattered--when the player cared about it--and that made it a good worldbuilding detail for what we needed. You could have tomes of details about every town in a massive world, and if you read them off, your gamers would be bored to tears. We're not here to hear a dramatic reading of the Silmarillion. We want to be a part of a story and have fun together. Some worldbuilding helps that. Too much chokes it. If you want to not get weighed down by worldbuilding, you have to chose to offer it more sparingly and trust that a detail at the right time does more than twenty details offered freely. 

That's all for now. Coming soon: reflections on the campaign of a lifetime, an argument for open-ended stories, and what perfect GMing looks like. Until next time, happy gaming!

The Core Values of Each Cultural Group in My Homebrew Setting

I recently did a series of guides to clans in my homebrew setting. It began as an effort to emulate the interesting details and complicated dynamics of a campaign I got to play in--my clans would have ideological perspectives and traditions, like my DM's groups. But as I wrote, I realized that in order to pick groups of people who would stand out amongst many in a rich culture, I needed to pick based on what the most central values of those groups were. By the end of that series, it turned out that the halfling guide was actually just a list of social movements (since halflings don't do formal organization), and that was basically just an expression of cultural values. I've spent years writing dozens of profiles on my homebrew societies, always driving at showing their core values, but never just directly saying it. It's time to rectify that. I honestly think that any DM should try to avoid my mistake--get to defining the cultural values of your homebrew groups early in your design so that you can use it as a framework to build on, and if you're a veteran DM who hasn't explicitly named at least a few values for each group, now is the time to start. With that spirit in mind, let's address the five most intently-held values of each culture in my homebrew setting, from most important to less important. 

Homebrew Setting Clans: Halflings

This is the final guide in a series on the most notable groups of people in each culture in my homebrew setting, Evanoch. These guides are perhaps the most important writing I have done here on this site, not for my reader, but for myself. I learned that my Daltoners were not a monolithic evil group. Until I wrote about the Faninites, I didn't understand how their society functioned over time rather than as a snapshot. My dwarves weren't distinct from the classic dwarf in fantasy until I explored how my dwarves could be different. The orcs live based on tradition, and their clan guide allowed me to see different ways of interpreting that tradition. My elves have always mixed progressivism with staunch traditionalism, and their clan guide helped me decide to elevate that tension to a real crisis of public faith in government. My half-elves, true assimilators, didn't have a defined set of cultural values to draw on, so I developed them into a true Chaotic Good group characterized by individuality. And writing about my gnomes helped me to build lore for a society I knew well but hadn't entirely built backstory for yet. I don't know what will come of writing about my halflings, my favorite of my homebrew groups. Here's a little about why: 

Elves, orcs, dwarves, gnomes, halflings, and half-elves have established cultures in D&D canon, at least in fragmentary form. For all but the halflings, I took inspiration from the original classic and added various amounts of my own imagination. My elves are more artistically inclined that classic elves but are pretty similar. My dwarves didn't depart from traditional dwarves until their article. My gnomes are industrious inventors with a strange sense of humor like D&D canon dictates. My half-elves are facilitators and trailblazers like the tradition suggests. My orcs are tribal like the classic depiction says, even if their culture is actually quite distinct from other depictions. My humans are quite homebrew, dividing humans ideologically and making neither native to the setting. But my halflings are entirely mine. I kept the detail of underground homes as a nod to Tolkien's hobbits, the inspiration for halflings, but have changed everything else. They live in lush rainforests, mastered alchemy, are anarchists and have no formal government, have bizarre parenting traditions, and are generally the most surprising for players to encounter for these reasons. Getting to explore the halflings is something I saved for last so I could enjoy it as a culmination of this series.

One last thing: halflings unconditionally refuse to be formally organized, and family structures don't really exist as known elsewhere, so clans do not truly exist among the halflings like they do elsewhere. Instead, this guide will describe social movements, which represent a similar function for us as DMs--just as the other groups' clans reveal what people care about and what power may lie with particular people, these social movements and some of the people involved in them will serve the same function even though an organization doesn't exist in the same sense. After all, social movements are the closest halflings get to organizing, so it's the next best thing. That said, here are the five most important social movements amongst halflings:

Homebrew Setting Clans: Gnomes

I'm nearing the end of this clan series, which has consistently helped me to understand my cultural groups better. This guide features my gnomes, classically a favorite culture of mine to write about. But going in, I'm going to learn from the earlier guides in this series: there's a lot I don't realize I don't know about my homebrew groups, and I expect that to be true here too. My gnomes are an eccentric variation on the D&D presentation--trickstery inventors like the archetype says who have elaborate social customs and a unique take on social issues and governance according to my homebrew. But that's a narrowly-defined gnomish people, and these clan guides are about broadening our understanding of these groups, and so the gnomish clans below will get at the things about gnomish culture that truly bring people together. And as an added bonus, I'm going to be adapting my best friend's take on the gnomes' philsophies in his world--the player of Carric in the Eastweald, Beor in the mystery campaign, Brokk in of Gods and Dragons, and the DM for Daisy in my experiences as a player has created a really fun and interesting way for gnomes to process problems, and I'm going to pay homage to that with a clan here. Remember: adapting is not stealing, so borrow ideas and change the details to your heart's content. Now, the gnomish clans: 

Homebrew Setting Clans: Half-Elves

I remember many years ago sitting down with the 3.5 Players Handbook to study more of the world I was trying to exist in. My favorite thing to go back and forth about was not what class I was or what backstory my character had--I liked to think about the races. I remember one time, I was reading about half-elves, and there was some stray, fragmentary mention of half-elves being treated as outsiders to both elves and humans, not quite enough of either to be one of a group. That struck me hard. I was a teenager battling mental illness and autism without realizing it, and I felt like those half-elves. I read that they were diplomatic and understood others well. This too felt like me. I didn't play a half-elf then, and I still haven't nearly 20 years later (I just haven't had that many characters). But when I was developing my world and characterizing my cultural groups years later, those half-elven identities were still with me. I made my half-elves outsiders to everyone, the only hybrid race on Evanoch. But their outsider status made them free--with guaranteed judgment, there's no reason to do anything but what you really want. And I kept the spirit of the diplomatic notion; in my world, halflings are most renowned for diplomacy, and I felt it more intriguing to have my half-elves be expert artists, reflecting how the see the world in more creative means. All of that is to say that as I approach my half-elves, I can't help but wonder what groups will characterize them in this guide. Let's see how we can diversify the half-elves of Evanoch. 

Homebrew Setting Clans: Elves

This is the fifth of eight entries in a series on clans in my homebrew setting, featuring the elves of Evanoch. In the first half of this series, I covered my humans, the Daltoners and Faninites, as well as my dwarves and orcs. I noted in the orc article that my favorite groups to work with are generally not the humans or dwarves--I'm very satisfied with my homebrew versions of them, but we always have favorites, and my favorite groups in my homebrew setting are simply not humans or dwarves. I enjoy my orcs a lot, but I feel like much of my efforts to characterize my orcs is based on making them not the stereotype. The second half of this series, then, are the groups that I identify with more, the groups who have bold visions of the future with fairness and integrity and innovation in mind. Daltoners, Faninites, dwarves, and orcs, look to tradition, while elves, half-elves, gnomes, and halflings look to the future. And so I'm very excited to get started with my elves, whose culture has always been very enjoyable for me to write about. So let's get started taking a closer look at the elves of Evanoch. 

Homebrew Setting Clans: Orcs

This guide to important groups of orcs is part of a larger group of articles on clans in my homebrew setting, Evanoch. In this series, I have filled in a large gap that has existed the whole nearly two decades I've been DMing in my world--who are the important people? I'd decided who was in political leadership long ago, but there are more forms of power than political power. And in really thinking about who the important people in Evanoch are, I've learned more about the cultural groups in my world--what values does a group hold that allow a certain person or people to be famous or successful? This has been monumental in changing my homebrew versions of D&D groups into multidimensional populaces instead of monolithic caricatures. With the orcs, I'll be looking to add depth and variation to a group that is much closer to my heart than the humans and dwarves I've already written about. So let's get started. 

Homebrew Setting Clans: Dwarves

This guide is part of a larger series on clans in my homebrew setting, Evanoch. This series, which I'm working on nearly ten years after beginning this site, does a lot of things that are so useful that I'm shocked I'm only just now getting to this. Not only does a detailed list of important groups in a society give me a variety of names and backgrounds to go to for important NPCs, but also, I'm able to diversify how I think of my cultures. My Daltoners were always evil imperialists; my guide to their clans showed a much more complex face. And similarly, my Faninites were always humble hippies; my guide to their clans showed them as a far more complicated people. So this guide to the dwarves' clans will help me to expand how I think of and present dwarves whenever I DM. 

Homebrew Setting Clans: Faninites

This guide is part of a larger series in which I delve into the clan identities of the groups in my homebrew setting. This accomplishes a couple of important things--partially, it allows me to have a number of important families and organizations in my world to refer to; it also gives me the opportunity to think more in detail about the way my cultural groups work; and third, as I saw in the entry for the Daltoners, my setting's other group of humans, it lets me add some variation to the group. Before I created my entry for the Daltoners, I treated them as a uniformly evil and colonial group of people who embrace racism and misogyny, so every time a Daltoner appeared in a campaign, they adhered to this group of unsavory traits. But as I wrote the guide to their clans, I started to recognize that the group is not homogeneous and created a few clans that departed from the evil stereotype I'd had in my head. Think about that--an entire eighth of my homebrew setting was a vague archetype that kept all encounters with them very similar, but writing about their clans allowed me to vary and differentiate them in ways that will enrich my DMing. Similarly, I'm setting out to find out the depths of my other groups of humans, the Faninites, who I've always treated as natural-loving, peaceful folks akin to Vikings, but more calm and gentle. So let's see what groups are the foremost among the Faninites. 

Homebrew Setting Clans: Daltoners

I've recently begun writing a novel based on a D&D campaign I was lucky enough to take part in over the last few years, and doing so has involved revisiting the worldbuilding of the DM who ran the campaign. One very rich element of his setting is that most civilizations, particularly the elves and orcs who were featured in the campaign, are very detailed in terms of leadership and clans. In the process of writing the (as of this article's writing) most recent chapter, I got to really dig into the orcish clans, their leaders, and how they are all specialized. It inspired me--I realized that despite the years of development I've put into my world, I've never really gotten into the specifics of how people organize themselves into factions. That seems like a sad oversight now, and so this will be the first in an eight-part series of guides to the major clans of each cultural group. Let us begin with one of my human groups: the Daltoners, sun-worshiping extremists who have always aimed to colonize Evanoch and spread their way of life. 

In this series of guides, the general organization will explain the overall role of the clans in the profile as well as the clans themselves--who runs them, their history, and how they function in the world. These will be partially constructed in order to give more life and detail to my world, but as always, the more important aim is to provide the world with jumping-off points. What I mean is this: should a group of Daltoners appear in a game I'm running, I'll have a reference point to do something detailed in the moment without having to improvise entire structures on the spot. Let's imagine that I'm DMing, and a group of Daltoners becomes a part of the story. Before this clan guide, I would be forced to generalize about the worldviews of Daltoners at large. But with this clan guide, I'll have a more rich and varied take on what makes Daltoners a broader but also diverse group, and I'll have this more detailed information to improvise based on in the moment, freeing me up to make stronger and more specific stories based on a foundation. This is, to me, the point of worldbuilding--to provide a framework for improvisation with details that can inspire further details as they impact the story. So without further ado, let's get started. 

A Profile on the Underdark in My Homebrew Setting

One of the most interesting parts of the traditional Dungeons & Dragons lore in terms of setting has been the Underdark. Introduced in an original Gary Gygax module that began in 1978, the Underdark was an immediate sensation, and it became one of the legendary pieces of D&D worldbuilding that remains to this day. [You can read my analysis of that module--Queen of the Spiders--which I wrote while pursuing my Bachelor's degree in English.] But now that the Underdark has been around for so long--45 years at the time of this writing--it has been reinterpreted and reinvented many times. I have my own version of the Underdark, most of which was developed in response to a player to chose to play a Drow, the dark elven residents of the Underdark. I hadn't thought much about the Underdark since the Drow had never really been a part of any of my campaigns up to that point, so I decided to develop something that my player could use as backstory and characterization. The result was a sprawling world underneath the continent I've done so much work to develop. I incorporated the traditional Drow as residents of my Underdark as well as their dwarven counterparts, the Duergar. But I felt that the Underdark would be more interesting with more groups involved, so I also developed Underdark versions of halflings and orcs, both of which stray much farther from their inspirations than the Drow and Duergar do. So, below is a guide to the most important details of life in my homebrew Underdark. 

[Note: Classically speaking, the Underdark has been depicted as having pretty widespread slavery. I have not changed this detail. I've written before about why you might change something like that; in this case, I chose to keep this upsetting detail because I think it serves the identity of the Underdark. If a discussion of fictionalized slavery would not be healthy for you right now, please check out the homepage for hundreds of safer articles.]

Overall:

This map shows the Underdark. If one were to lay a map of Evanoch over this map, they would be able to see that not only is this territory roughly the size and shape of the continent above, but also that the territories of the Underdark are roughly analogous to the territories of the corresponding species above. For example, the dwarven homeland is located in the southeast, at the base of the Kallett Mountains, and the Duergar territory is also in the southeast, directly under the mountains. This generally holds true of all Underdark territory, though the Drow have notably taken territory for their merchant houses beyond the reach of elven lands--this is in part because that territory corresponds to the gnomes above ground, but there are no Underdark counterparts to the gnomes, and so the territory had been contested before Drow control. The highways signified by the map are large, wide paths capable of allowing multiple large wagons to pass through--they only exist between friendly territories. The tunnels are more of military channels; these paths have been dug in order to reach enemy territories and launch assaults, but once one has been constructed, it makes both ends vulnerable to the other. You may notice on the map that all tunnels run from Drow territory to the other lands--this represents the fact that the Drow are generally the most powerful group in the Underdark and are openly hostile to all groups, while the three other groups have uneasy peace with one another, united by a common enemy. No concerted effort to fight the Drow has been able to hold together. Each of the seven territories shown above on the map have at least one passage to the surface of Evanoch, but these doors are closely guarded and rarely used. Because growing traditional crops is impossible in the Underdark, lichens and mushrooms form the bulk of the diets of humanoids and livestock alike--popular livestock includes snakes and bears. Slavery is a common practice among the mostly evil residents of the Underdark, though each culture has its own practices.

The Drow:

The Drow, or dark elves, are from the same stock as elves, and they appear almost identical apart from their nearly black skin and their pale white eyes. The Drow have very light to white hair and have generally stooped stature, which reduces the necessary height of Drow tunnels and homes. They generally wear black clothes and avoid metal accessories to avoid any reflected light.

Drowish society is matriarchal and militaristic; its leaders are the generals who command their various armies. Drow divide themselves by clan or "house," and each individual house sustains an army of its own to contribute to the Drowish society's goal of conquering the Underdark, as well as to fight against rival houses. Conflict is constant in Drowish culture, and war is not only accepted but hoped for as a way of life. The Drow are mostly devoted to the spider goddess Lolth, who is said to lead the generals of the armies. Deviation from Drowish customs is forbidden and results in severe punishment or death.

The values that motivate the Drow are wealth and the obtaining of it no matter the tactic, power and a similar focus on obtaining it despite complications, and service to one's house, though this is complicated by a focus on the individual as an important part of Drowish society. As a result, most Drow pursue their own societal advancement via money and power, and they seek to honor their house through their individual accomplishments. Although the Drow are militaristic, they do prize skill in negotiation--conflict can be costly, and being clever enough to save that money is respected. Intelligence and ambition are valued, both because they are paths to the money and power that matters so much in Drowish society. And aesthetics and hedonism also matter a great deal in Drowish society--most Drow aspire to be surrounded by beauty, especially ornate beauty, and able to enjoy life's pleasures.

Aside from perfect vision in complete darkness, the Drow have a few innate magical abilities which have both factored into their cultural lives. Firstly, Drow can create magical darkness, which greatly aids their abilities in stealth and planning ambushes. They are also able to enter a dream state--many Drow have learned to lucid dream--even while conscious. This practice is utilized in religious ceremonies, and dream interpretation is a major market in Drowish cities. Drow claim that these powers are gifts from Lolth that allow them to serve their goddess better.

Drow keep slaves for a variety of purposes: construction and personal assistance are common occupations for Drowish slaves. Drow have no reservations about taking other Drow as slaves, but the majority of slaves in Drowish territories are of the other species in the Underdark. The Drow are known to be the cruelest keepers of their slaves, commonly branding them whenever they change hands and punishing them with brutality. Between Drow of high status, slaves are traded as currency.

The Duergar: 

The Duergar, or grey dwarves, share ancestry with the dwarves, and they look very much like Evanine dwarves, but they have dark grey skin, white hair, and iris-less eyes. Duergar are generally a bit shorter than dwarves but also stouter; Duergar tunnels tend to be very square, like their bodies. They wear dark colors, especially reds, blues, and greens, and pendants of precious metals and stones are common among those who can afford them. 

Duergar society is very economically-minded and driven by hierarchy. The leaders of Duergar society are the wealthiest, and there is an unspoken but universally understood social hierarchy which Duergar observe. At the top are the rich, followed by religious leaders, followed by community leaders, followed by the common Duergar, followed by slaves. Acting without deference to someone higher in status results in severe punishment, or depending on the trespass, execution. 

The values that motivate the Duergar begin with practicality and tradition. The Duergar believe that their ancestors found the ideal solution to every problem, so the best strategy is to follow proven methods. Most Duergar accept this--those who don't are frequently horrified by what they realize about their society and turn to lives of solitude (a great social sin to Duergar, as working together to serve is another important value. Duergar are also merciless combatants; they admire other Duergar who are especially committed to their bloodlust, and just as respected is an unwillingness to forgive or otherwise show mercy. A cultural value that has tended to unite Duergar over time is an emphasis on enduring despite difficulty--the Duergar have historically been second in prominence to the Drow, who have a stronger hold on key areas of the Underdark. The Duergar prize simple, utilitarian craftsmanship over ornate designs, and even religious tokens are created to appear without much adornment. 

Duergar have abilities that have both allowed them to better protect themselves and also factored into their religious beliefs. The Duergar deity, Nordaim, was killed in a battle with Lolth many millenia ago--the Duergar consequently have something of a martyr complex, part of which gives rise to the enduring through tragedy value. It is said that Duergar obtained their innate powers when Nordaim died, a final gift to his children. Duergar are completely immune to both poison (granting them safety from the poison-toting Drow) and mind control effects (protecting them from the mental abilities of the Deeplings and Gant). They also have basic psionic abilities which allow them to manifest and control some elemental energies to create effects like moving lights, echolocation-like sounds, and vibrations in the surrounding stone, all of which are highly helpful in navigation the treacherous Underdark. 

Duergar are the most notorious slavekeepers of the Underdark, and legend say that they are the originators of the practice. Duergar slaves are kept for labor purposes and for trade, but unlike other groups, the Duergar place people into slavery as a punishment. Sometimes, dissident Duergar are placed in slavery for a set time period, usually a few years, as enforcement of social order, but more serious offenses lead to life sentences. Rather than branding their slaves as the Drow do, the Duergar tattoo identification, which many claim is more humane, but the slaves argue that an unkind tattooer is not that much of an improvement. 

Deeplings:

Deeplings, or rockfolk, are related to Evanoch's halflings. These small creatures stand on four legs and have thick, natural armor plating covering their bodies. They are hairless creatures with eyes which are not readily visible. Deeplings tend to dig erratically, and their tunnels curve and bend without perfectly flat surfaces, though this is no impediment to the agile Deeplings. They do not wear clothing of any sort, but some etch geometric patterns into the surfaces of their dark brown armor plating. 

Deepling society is very abstract--they each have a clearly-defined role in society which is assigned at adulthood, and basically all Deeplings dutifully follow this role without question. At the bottom, though this is observed without any dishonor (since serving the whole of Deepling society is highly prized), are service people, followed by common soldiers, and military leaders at the top of society. Though unknown to Underdark citizens, the leaders of Deepling armies are actually religious leaders--clerics and priests--whose religious paraphernalia has always been mistaken for military regalia. These military leaders use their magic to heal wounded soldiers and lead with empowering spells behind them. 

The values that motivate Deeplings are generally those which make them better organized; teamwork and being able to cooperate with one another to accomplish a goal is a major point of pride in Deepling society. In particular, using one's physical body in pursuit of a goal along with other Deeplings is considered highly valued--Deeplings often combine into larger forms in combination with other Deeplings. The value of destruction makes Deeplings deeply invested in destroying existing structure where it exists, especially through fighting the other denizens of the Underdark. Notably, if a Deepling is able to destroy themselves in an act that benefits other Deeplings, this is considered an especially noble act. Dominance over others is prized in Deepling culture, as is physical size--despite the smallness of Deeplings compared to other races, size among other Deeplings is part of the social hierarchy. Interestingly to most who live in the Underdark is that the Deeplings value cleanliness; Deeplings who neglect obsessive hygiene routines are viewed as degenerate. 

Deeplings as a species are quite distinct from the other denizens of the Underdark. As far as outside observers are concerned, Deeplings are essentially feral. The reality is that Deeplings have a complex system of communication that involves telepathy, and the content and nuance of Deepling communication is lost on outside observers. Nevertheless, the destructive Deepling with their undying ferocity and armor plating have great potential for doing damage, and even one Deepling can stymy a small group of Underdark troops. Deeplings reside in the deepest and darkest of caverns in the Underdark, and they have complete and perfect darkvision, allowing them comfortable movement in even the most treacherous reaches of the subterranean world. They are, however, not able to comfortably exist during daylight on the surface because of the brightness of the light. 

Slavery does exist in Deepling culture, but they do not keep slaves themselves; rather, they exclusively use slaves as part of trade with other groups in the Underdark. Deeplings have little interest in working with non-Deeplings in any meaningful capacity, but the trade of slaves captured in combat and raw materials pulled from Deepling territory allows them to obtain substantial food reserves and other necessities. For the Deeplings, slavery is a result of war, and neither a punishment nor an appropriate use of life; they only engage in trade in order to profit. 

The Gant: 

The Gant, or High Orcs, are related to Evanoch's orcs. These tall, thick-limbed creatures have pale skin and dark, curly hair which covers their entire bodies. One of the first things that people observe on sighting a Gant is its long neck, which is articulated throughout its length; in conversation, the Gant tend to move their necks rather constantly, which is disconcerting at first. The Gant build tunnels with are taller than they are wide, very much like the dimensions of a standard human door. These tunnels are notable for their perfect smoothness and levelness. The Gant wear robes, and most Gant choose fabrics which are slightly reflective--the more light that one's garments casts in the low light of the Gant's caverns, the more social standing that individual is likely to have. Especially prized are mid- to dark-colored fabrics, especially blue-green and dark green. 

Gant society is very open and free for the most part. Like most of the societies on the surface of Evanoch, the Gant have a market economy and a system of employment that allows for choice of profession. Culturally, the Gant's values lead them to prize inventors highly, as inventors' advances are what allow the Gant to live comfortably in the dangerous world of the Underdark. There is little sense of a social hierarchy beyond the elevation of inventors, but where hierarchy does exist, it places intellectual pursuits over physical ones, even if it claims complete equality when a purpose is served. 

The Gant value a variety of intellectual traits above all else--namely, these traits are ingenuity, forethought, and creativity. Each of these traits highlights an important aspect of Gant society. Ingenuity is prized as a way to improve life for all living beings as well as something that has allowed the mostly peaceful Gant to survive alongside their warlike neighbors. Forethought is vital in the treacherous world in which the Gant live, and it has allowed them to make due with very little support. Creativity has been the key to reacting to threats from the outside world, and everyday imagination allows for constant improvement of the technology the Gant use so much. They also value certain political goals: social equality, non-violent consolidated power, and isolationism mark Gant society, and all of these values lead to a society which has a high standard of living with relative stability. Despite these values, the Gant look on their neighbors in the Underdark as violent menaces which are little more than threats. The Gant prize competition in the social realm (but not impinging on equality), and Gant creations tend to value function over form. 

Distinguished from other Underdark species by their unique bodies already, the Gant are further made unique by their inborn ability to control basic telekinetic powers. This ability exists in the Gant even as babies, and though there is a small range of strength that these powers can exist in, most every Gant has fairly comparable powers. This aids the Gant in a variety of tasks as well as making them very difficult to take prisoner, as they can control their environment even while bound and gagged. The Gant also have a remarkably high pain threshold. In Gant society, this is viewed as both a blessing and a curse--it does make day-to-day pains much more bearable, but it also means that other Underdark soldiers feel the need to test the Gant threshold of pain in brutal ways. The Gant live mostly in domed communities which protect them from attack and cave-ins; these domes are constructed of transparent but strong panels of fortified glass-alloy. 

The Gant refuse to interface with slavery in any way. They believe that it violates every standard of decency, and it runs completely counter to their value of social equality. When the Gant are gifted slaves or capture opposing soldiers, they either free the slaves or give the soldiers trials. When the Gant are taken as slaves by other societies, they are known as dangerous, as they often use their telepathic abilities to free themselves and other slaves. 

Cetin and The Casting Out:

Nearly three thousand years ago, the species of the Underdark had lived underground on an island continent on the opposite side of the planet. This island continent was called Cetin, and the species of the Underdark there faced a problem. The species that lived above them on the continent were always trying to destroy them. They defended themselves and dreamed of somewhere else they could make a new life of their own. They could not expand any further under Cetin--the surface was too treacherous, and there was nowhere else to go. 

A Gant scientist discovered that, according to her calculations, there had to be a smaller mass of land on the opposite side of the planet. Given her measurements of the celestial bodies, the movement of the planet could only be explained by a modest mass on the other side. And so the Gant began to dig. Before long, the secret of their project got out. Within a century, the Gant's tunnel system was rivaled by those of the Drow, the Duergar, and the Deeplings. It took almost one thousand years of sustained construction, but the tunnels of Cetin's Underdark reached Evanoch. A series of natural caves and caverns was discovered, and soon, each species had its own territory claimed. The map above indicates the positions of the Underdark beneath Evanoch since--it has been a bloody standstill ever since then. 

As time passed, curious residents of the Underdark ventured from the subterranean world to Evanoch's surface. They discovered that the land was plentiful and beautiful, though of course massively different than the world they had come from. Most returned to the Underdark, discontent with the bright and happy life they found there. But some stayed. The Drow took up the darkened forests of the Lathien Islands; the Duergar burrowed into the side of the Kallett Mountains; the Deeplings took refuge in the dense and dim rainforest of the south-central plains; and the Gant, who prized isolation, set up on the rocky island of Grob. They made new homes and began again here on the surface. 

The species began to adapt up to the surface. The Drow became pale and grew to revere the mind-boggling natural world around them. Their superiority grew into a more reserved haughtiness. They began to record their new history in place of the old one, and the long-lived elves' story became the most trusted version of events. The Duergar had a rift: its more progressively-minded went north to the forests, using their inventiveness to forge a brand-new way of life. They organized and built the megacity of Vestry, the home of the gnomes. Meanwhile, the more traditional Duergar moved south and mined into the base of the Kalletts. Their time-honored techniques were forged, and the dwarves were soon seen as always a part of the mountains. The Deeplings found that life in the rainforest was more an individual's game than a team game, and the Deepling penchant for organized began to erode. Before long, independent-minded halflings had learned to coexist with the environment rather than trying to dominate it. And the Gant's love of competition spiked so that infighting between clans became more important than innovation; before long, the Gant had become combat-oriented with fearsome bodies to match. The days of the Gant remained underground--the orcs of Evanoch had come to stay. 

By the time recorded history began in Evanoch's remembered history, any mention of the beginnings in the Underdark had either been censored or forgotten. Most cultures had stories about evolving from monstrous beasts--these are the only real echoes of the Underdark progenitors. From the earliest written texts in Evanoch's history, there is belief that the five species of Evanoch had simply always been as they are. A resurgence of tales of the Underdark came in the early 400s, and the historical record reconciles this by inventing a tale about the Underdark known as "The Casting Out." 

The story goes that the five species of Evanoch (elves, dwarves, gnomes, halflings, and orcs) always lived on the continent, but they did so alongside the species of the Underdark. The creatures of the Underdark were so wicked and ghastly that the species of Evanoch were practically overwhelmed. In a move of solidarity, the species of Evanoch banded together and, in a war that lasted for one hundred years, fought every one of the Underdark species into submission. The species of the Underdark, then, were forced there as a punishment for threatening the surface. 

The reality is of course the opposite in every conceivable way. But even underground, this history has been largely lost or obscured. The species of the Underdark are mostly unaware of these facts; only the most academic types have encountered meaningful discussion of the topic. Interestingly, though, those living in the Underdark of Cetin have records of all of this and even remain in close observation of the Underdark of Evanoch's situation. Most who live in Cetin's Underdark believe that leadership under Cetin has fairly advanced plans for a new journey to Evanoch's Underdark when the time is right for a renewed war effort. 

So there you have it: a fairly detailed guide to the history and reality of the Underdark in my homebrew setting. Obviously, I incorporated the Underdark history into the overall backstory of my setting in a pretty big way with the ancestry idea--that's something you can do with your work. I recently played out a brief text adventure with a friend who I've gamed with for years that covered part of this history, and it got me excited to expand it here. I'm eager now that I've written this for a chance to put the Underdark war angle to use; that would be a pretty sweeping campaign. In any case, it's always good to expand your homebrew setting--you never know what exciting possibilities will pop up. 

That's all for now. Coming soon: how I connect with my characters, clothing by culture in my homebrew setting, and how to figure out your style as a GM. Until next time, happy gaming!

Common Misperceptions About History in My Homebrew Setting

In my never-ending quest to make my homebrew setting more detailed and realistic, I often set out to describe cultural phenomena. What are politics like? What are senses of humor like? What are superstitions and stereotypes like? Along these darker lines, what conspiracy theories are out there? As you can tell, I'm interested in why people are the way they are. In many ways, tabletop games are how I make sense of the real world, trying to construct something that evokes reality despite being unreal. And so, as a trained historian, I'm interested also in the ideas that people believe which are ahistorical. This happens all the time in real life--people refer back to people and ideas that do not match their beliefs. And so this is a guide to historical misconceptions in my gameworld. 

1. Ancestral Homelands

Historians don't agree much about prehistory, but it is generally held that contemporary societies exist precisely where their ancestral homelands lie. The argument goes that each race has held its own territory for the duration of time. However, this is not true, with the exception of the human groups to arrive on Evanoch's shores; Faninites are largely clustered around their arrival point on the northwest coast, and Daltoners are most plentiful in their capital of New Dalton on the eastern coast. In reality, homelands have changed, sometimes multiple times. 

These shifts can be grouped into three general categories. The first is migration. Migration was the main cause for the current state of the easternmost parts of Evanoch. The dwarves began at the center of the Kallett Mountains, not at the tip as believed today. Rather, on the plains surrounding the believed dwarven homeland were gnomes. Further up the coast were halflings near the forests, which were uninhabited by people. However, due to climatological changes, certain crops became ungrowable in their former homes. This led to massive migrations along the eastern coast, where these changes were most severe. First, the halflings moved west across the Kalletts and into central Evanoch, where their home in the Heronal Forest remains today. As this movement ended, the gnomes sought to move north and try to tame the northern forests, carving out what would become their capital of Vestry today. The dwarves, seeking a warmer climate, and knowing that the gnomes had vacated the area, moved south and recreated their previous lives where Underhar is today. 

The second category of territory shift is from war. Elves are popularly believed to have come originally from the northern volcanic islands called Lathien, and orcs are believe to have originated on the southern rocky island of Grob. The reality is switched: elves' original homeland was the rocky island to the south, while the orcs came from the volcanic islands to the north. The switch came just before recorded history, and the effect was that all evidence was destroyed, leaving little indication of the truth. After centuries of warring, both orcish and elven leadership decided to launch all-out assaults on each others' capitals. A new leader for the enemy capital, a small delegation of advisors and leaders, and almost the entire military force of each nation was sent along a circuitous route to the enemy capital. The elven and orcish capitals fell within days of each other. Most of both cities were razed. Each had to learn to live in the other's treacherous environments, and both found that in some ways, they were better-suited to life in their new homes. 

The third category is more conceptual: genetics. A few researchers have put forth the surprising but true fact that all of the races of Evanoch are actually descended from the same common ancestor. Unknown even to those researchers is the origin of this common ancestor. In fact, it was descended from a nearly feral creature that lived on the opposite side of the planet. Increasingly intelligent ancestors burrowed deep under the sea to arrive at Evanoch, some staying beneath the surface and evolving into distinct subterranean races first splitting into a smaller, nimbler ancestor and a larger, more powerful ancestor. These two ancestors further divided and evolved. The smaller ancestor became a taller version called the Drow and a smaller version called the Deepling (psychically-linked and armored beings); the larger ancestor became a stouter form called the Duergar and a stranger long-necked form called the Gant (magical and intelligent creatures). When those groups adjusted and evolved to life on the surface, there was one further notable change. Widely, these new races were less prone to violence and less naturally deadly, though they used their striking intelligence to counteract this deficiency. The Drow became the elves; the Deeplings became halflings; Duergar divided once more, now into smaller gnomes and hardy dwarves; the Gant became stronger and lost their long necks to become orcs. So, from a more distant perspective, all Evanines' true homeland is a terrifying place that the earliest people rallied together to escape. 

2. The Formation of the Continent

It was long held in folklore that the shape of Evanoch was the product of a wrestling match between the gods--its mountain peaks were said to stirred up by a bout between Kord and Gruumsh, for instance, and its valleys mined away by the greedy likes of Vecna, searching for hidden treasure. Over time, this folk belief has disappeared in most places, replaced by faith that shifting earth and erosion can explain why the continent looks the way it does. In fact, the myth is closer to the truth. The shape of Evanoch comes from fortifications for the battle between the gods that never occurred--something of a cold war between deities. In the time before humanoids lived on Evanoch, it was a stomping ground for a gods, a kind of paradise for only them. Their actions to protect it changed it forever. 

The preparations for battle happened generally in three phases. In the first phase, actions to secure the island continent were made carefully and under cover so as to be able to make movements without alerting the other gods. Initially, Erythnul began to create camps near some of the less martially-inclined deities; Hextor mimicked this strategy in opposing his twin brother Heironeous's headquarters; and not long after, Vecna established control of various libraries that contained information needed to oppose him. This set the stage of the conflict, which was only further fed by Vecna's discovery that the continent itself had magical energy. Vecna tried to keep this information secret, but Olidammara discovered the secret and spread it to everyone. With each god in full awareness that the fate of massive magical energy was up for grabs, the cold war properly began. 

The second stage of the diverted conflict involved almost unanimous fortifications from the gods. The evil gods who established footholds early as described above furthered their strongholds (Erythnul building more bases around the weaker gods, Hextor creating a massive fort around Heironeous, and Vecna attempting to broker a deal with Boccob). Many of the good-aligned deities forged an alliance to combat the presence of the evil deities. With some difficulty, the good deities established a base at the center of the continent, and they were soon surrounded by evil forces. The good deities created an emergency team--Yondalla, Pelor, and Heironeous agreed to act as healers in case battle came. Evil forces dug in around them, especially on the east side of the continent and in the ocean to the south. The gods pressed in on each other, magically and physically. From this, the center of the continent gained its mountain ranges on the eastern and southern edges. 

The third stage of the preparations for battle was the execution of a few strikes launched by both sides which caused permanent consequences, but did not result in a full-blown war. Once it was clear that the good deities and their defenses in the center of the continent were not vulnerable, Erythnul suggested appealing to the more neutral deities. This action was further polarizing to the neutral deities, who increasingly chose sides (Fharlanghn, Kord, and Obad-Hai leaning importantly to the good, while Gruumsh, Nerull, and Wee Jas tended to side with the evil gods). Under cover of darkness, Hextor killed an incarnation of Fharlanghn, and this caused a group led by Heironeous to drag Hextor to the same spot and kill him. This site is now the Kraal Desert, and little to nothing grows there. The racial deities tended to help the good gods, but only Yondalla explicitly chose a side. Olidammara helped both sides, and this nearly prevented her from being able to broker a peace. After the deaths, Olidammara (at Boccob's urging, their knowing that only Olidammara could be trusted by both sides, ironically) brought together the gods and agreed that they would leave without further action and allow the island continent to persist without their interference. The heavens were far more spacious than the island, after all. The gods agreed, and they left the continent looking as it does today. 

3. The Magic War

I've written previously about The Magic War, a massive and contemporary struggle fought over the regulation and use of magic. Today, only a generation after the war, there are already considerable misconceptions about it. The most common modern conception of the magic war is that it was a struggle fought by volunteers to end the use of magic which ended with unregulated magic. The reality is that there are three fundamental mistakes in the previous sentence. 

The first mistake is that the war was not a struggle fought by volunteers. It is true that a great many Evanines put their lives on hold and went to fight in an idealistic war. But it is also true to say that a great many of the soldiers who fought in The Magic War were not volunteers. It is estimated by informed historians that over 80% of soldiers were enlisted by either a provincial military or a group of mercenaries, meaning that more than four fifths of the people who served in the war were professional soldiers, paid for their service. Further investigation by historians reveals that the common complaint that ideological organizations were the most frequent to appear on battlefields is unfounded--in fact, the most common organizations represented on any given battlefield were city and town militaries. Contrary to the belief that individuals fought the war independently, the truth is that official local organizations dominated the war effort. 

The second mistake is that the war's central question was not just to end the use of magic. At the outset of the war, the central question of the debate that led to tensions was basically, "Should magic use be free, regulated, or abolished?" And it is true that for the first few months, this was the basis of the struggle. But quickly forgotten or covered up were the changing demands by some of the sides. While it is unequivocally true that the pro-magic side never changed their demands or terms, their opponents did not hold to the same. The regulation cause shifted from public oversight of magic use to private oversight of magic users relatively early in the war, making the regulation cause more in line with the anti-magic cause, and thereby less open to compromise with the pro-magic cause. Later in the war, the regulation camp would shift further, adopting a stance that all magic would need to be cast in the company of an official--many historians believe this to be retributive for the often bloody victories of the pro-magic camp. The anti-magic cause was even more prone to changing positions, getting so progressively aggressive that even moderate members of the army clamored for the execution of all magic users. By the war's end, the anti-magic position called for the immediate imprisonment all of known spellcasters and the execution of anyone casting a spell in the future. So it was not precisely an end to magic, but also the punishment and/or surveillance of magic users. 

The third mistake is that the war ended with unregulated magic. It is officially true that the war ended with pro-magic accepting surrender from the opposing sides, consenting to the terms that magic would be freely available as before without additional terms. However, as many spellcasters in Evanoch can tell you, it is not the actual law of the land. Because the war was ended by representatives of ideas rather than governments with standing armies, the enforcement of the freedom of magic is uneven. In major cities, it is observed, but in smaller towns and less progressive places, magic users are still moved to practice in secret, or at least out of sight. So without a governing body to execute the pro-magic victory, there is little in place to practically protect some magic users from repressive governments. 

One of the things that's most fun to me about the development of information like this is that it's unlikely to be known even by people in the gameworld. That means that I could potentially use this for something. I might build a campaign around being a historical researcher who discovers truths like these, which can be really valuable to a player. I just ran a one-person campaign with a friend and fellow DM in which he personally uncovered evidence that gnomes and dwarves come from the same ancestor, and he said it really struck him to be such a part of the world that way. I think a campaign structured around this information could be really fun. 

Or I could use it to create some real characterization and worldbuilding in-game. I might have characters talking about the world, and have a character who shares one of these ideas and gets called a conspiracy theorist. It would leave an open place for the players to jump in and ask questions and learn more and decide for themselves. Even if they just shrug off the person who shares the information, that's still a far more interesting detail to add than most things that would typically take place. 

Or I could just keep it as out-of-game lore that hold onto. You never know when it might come in handy down the line. Or perhaps just share it out-of-game with your players when the time is right, like after a campaign (players love DMing secrets most of the time). Or use this to build further lore--I could easily write another five pages about the cold war between gods or about the fateful switching of capitals between elves and orcs. I'll say it forever: worldbuilding helps you every time, whether you see the payoff now or later. 

That's all for now. Coming soon: why you don't have to recreate the real world's problems, how to make an in-game newspaper, and why I use a combination of 3.5e and 5e. Until next time, happy gaming!

The Languages in My Homebrew Setting

I have always been fascinated by language. It's a large part of why I'm an English teacher today--I just enjoy passing on a love of language. And so I have wanted for years to develop full languages for each of my homebrew world's groups. It's a daunting task, though, generating enough words to really get a feel for entire languages. I couldn't really find a free site that would take my custom words and create more like them, so I just took a sample list of words that would be used to create a language and created words as a representation. I used Roll for Fantasy's Language Generator to come up with words and phrases to translate with because they're a good broad representation of common language. That means each language will have 67 words and phrases as reference points. I'm going to share the input I gave the generator to develop a baseline for the world's languages. Read on for the results. 

Humans (Daltoners and Faninites): 

Humans speak common, the fantasy equivalent of English for English-speaking players. The phonemes and words are the same as the ones we use, and common is functionally just the language that the game happens in. It's worth noting that a variety of the words in common are derived from other languages: some of the words in common are borrowed from the other tongues, just as English is a mashup of the many languages it's interacted with. Many have speculated on the strange odds that both Daltoners and Faninites would speak a common language despite the distance between them; the foremost theory on this matter is that the two human groups are likely to have developed their language family together and then split into two geographically distinct peoples. 

One notable distinction of common is that it greatly simplifies the system of verb conjugations that every other language uses. Also worth noting is the fact that the other races settled on common as a shared language after the introduction of humans to the continent for a few reasons, most importantly the ease of learning common and cultural feelings about language--most races regard a racial language as a tool for privacy, but the human races have a more difficult time contending with new languages and assert their own instead.

Elves:

The elven language is very distinct in terms of sound: the letters L, S, and W are major components, and vowel sounds tend to be softer. Most of these words are relatively short, and few of them seem to have linguistic relationships to each other--every word is derived not by linguistic structure, but from ancient speech patterns kept alive by the elves' long lifespans. As a result of this, elven sounds very much older and more proper than other languages, which have changed more over time. Notable details are common's use of "bliss" for happiness and the similar meaning of "young" and "liddle" (little), suggesting that the word "little" comes from this elven word. 

Half-Elves: 

Half-elves tend to stick with common when they can, but around elves and half-elves, they often slip elven words and phrases into their communication. This is most especially true when speaking of elven cultural ideas and when communicating via adages and common sayings; the elven language is rich in figurative language and wisdom for most situations. It is considered to be a faux pas to use elven phrases with non-elves without at least translating them. 

Orcs:

The orcish language is dominated by short, sharp sounds, particularly using the letters R, G, and T. Most all of these words are monosyllabic and have diphthongs (multiple sounds combined to create more complex sounds). Orcish speakers are known for speaking relatively quickly and having dense conversations with relatively few spoken syllables. Of note are a few words which reveal cultural ideas: the common word for "elf" is taken from the orcish word for "hate," a reminder of the animosity between those groups; the same word is used for both "happy" and "courage," revealing the orcish value of courage; similarly, the same word is used for both "fear" and "shame," again underscoring the cultural value; and finally, the word for "beauty" is the word used for "platinum," the prized natural resource of the orcs.

Dwarves:

The dwarven language is characterized by a high incidence of consonants, especially D, T, and R, and most every word has at least two syllables. This means that dwarven speech takes longer and tends to sound harsher to non-dwarven listeners. There are essentially no linguistic relationships between words, suggesting that dwarven developed as a language which uniquely named ideas rather than building on previously existing words. Notable words include the close relation of all words related to exchanging things (sell/buy/trade/steal are kron/krin/kran/takrin); the adaptation of dwarven words "harminy" (from "friend") becoming "harmony" and "trayter" (from "enemy) becoming "traitor"; and the combination of "morad" (good) with "erebin" (strong) to create the dwarven god Moradin.

Gnomes:

The gnomish language is fairly irregular, having little in the way of favored letters or sounds, and the words range from single syllables to longer words. Gnomes are known for constantly creating words to name new inventions and ideas, so the breadth of linguistic profile contributes to the gnomish language's unique characteristics. Of particular note in this language is the way that pronouns and verbs conjugate, with very clear patterns of pluralizing subjects and a generalized tense for all third-person and second-person plural subjects; the fact that there are no gender distinctions in gnomish (he/she are the same, mother/father are the same, brother/sister and son/daughter are the same); and the adoption in common of gnomish words ("speak" from "speke" for "say," "moral"/"immoral" for "good"/"bad").

Halflings: 

I made the halfling language somewhat similar to common, with words that are either very phonetically similar (is/no for yes/no) or synonyms (pilfer for steal), suggesting that these words were the basis for common and were adopted early on in the language's development. There are also many compound words, such as no (no) + ret (see) = noret (goodbye), and further, silb (have) makes noretsilb (take, but literally "goodbye have"). Halfling speech is characterized by quick speech, a variety of word lengths, and similar structure for words with similar meanings.

Draconic: 

I've traditionally run a gameworld based on a 3.5 setting, but I have been lately trying to incorporate dragonborn and tieflings into my world more. To that end, I am including draconic here and developing it more for my setting. This D&D lore site shows some words used in the list I'm using, so I've borrowed or adapted from there. The rest, I have extrapolated from the patterns already established for draconic there. 

*In the above image, my entry for "he/she is" was too long to appear in the box; it reads "grenyz/kynin dyhon." 

Draconic is a language of difficult sounds and unique diphthongs paired with multisyllabic words, which are challenging to unfamiliar ears. It is marked by by Xs, Ys, and Zs and relatively frequent vowel pairs. Because of the density of complex sounds, draconic is typically spoken slowly. To most people in my homebrew setting, draconic is either the language that a spellcaster uses in invocations or the language that the very rare dragonborn. This language is notable for its differentiation of the why "why" from other question words in terms of structure; the lack of borrowed words in common due to the more obscure nature of the language, and the out-of-game knowledge that several of the words I filled in came from inspiration--Arthax is the name of a character that my friend and current DM (also the player who created Beor in the mystery campaign and Carric in the Eastweald campaign) created for the campaign I'm in, and he is described as especially wise and knowledgeable, so I made him name mean "clever"; this kind of inspiration makes things easier and more fun while also giving deeper significance to parts of the world. I also recognized that many of the draconic names kind of sound like prescription names and hid a few real prescription names spelled like draconic would do it. 

Infernal:

Because tieflings have largely not been a part of my gameworld, I decided to use a sampling of an established infernal language. I ran the first two blocks of the words and phrases in my list (yes / no -> no problem and how -> when) through this translator, and then, because I did want to have some hand in developing the language, I created the rest from there using it as inspiration. It's important that I be very familiar with how these words are generally formed so that I can improvise the language later.

Like draconic, infernal is full of letters and sounds which are rare in common, notably Q, Y, and Z. Also like draconic, its words are mostly multisyllabic, even for simple words. To those who haven't spent a lot of time with tielflings, this language is likely to strike fear into most people, as it sounds very exotic and would only otherwise be encountered with full demons. And also like draconic, there are no words which have been borrowed by common due to its lack of public speech in Evanoch's history. But the two languages do have distinct sounds and usages; where draconic is spoken slowly and deliberately, infernal speakers tend to speak quickly and allow their words to blend together, requiring the listener to be familiar with the language to be able to separate individual words. And infernal's grammar is also quite distinct from the other languages of the region, all of which adopt a subject - predicate structure; infernal places the verb first and then follows with the subject. A notable feature of infernal from this list is the fact that the word for hatred (wyjiqar) is the basis for the word for happy (wyjiqarry), a reminder that infernal's system of linguistic meanings is based on the culture of demons. 

There you have it: a guide to seven unique languages and how they are spoken in my homebrew setting. This is quite a deep detail to decide to develop for my world, but I can now use these languages in my games. When an NPC speaks another language, I don't have to say, "They say 'good morning' in elven"--I can instead have my NPC simply say, "Plintan," and then translate the short message to my players whose characters speak elven. If I were feeling really adventurous, I might even improvise a whole sentence or two using the general sounds to make something that could be one of these languages, following it with a translation. I could be a huge step for immersion, and it certainly makes me feel more in touch with the world I play in and continue to build. 

That's all for now. Coming soon: the diplomatic situations of the cities in my homebrew setting,  alternate rewards to traditional loot, and how to find and stick with the right group. Until next time, happy gaming!

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How to Develop a Random Idea into Worldbuilding and Storylines

Worldbuilding is one of the best parts of tabletop games for many GMs, and there are many benefits to digging into the details and elaborating on your world. But sometimes, trying to figure out where to start is an issue. You've got a whole world in front of you, so what needs your attention first? 

In my experience, you don't have to have everything figured out from the start. I've been GMing for over 15 years and only recently bothered to explain the major historical movements and natural world of my setting. It hadn't been a major issue, but developing those things helped me to better understand my world and run a more interesting and immersive game. If you're interested in worldbuilding from a conceptual approach in terms of things like that, check out the main page under the category "My Homebrew Setting" a little over halfway down the page. The many articles and guides there may inspire you to create a similar profile for your world. 

But many of us think not in the conceptual reality of our game, and more in terms of the practical realities of the gameworld. The standard of this kind of worldbuilding is in creating settlements and dungeons--making the physical world accessible to players. The same problem exists, though: where do you start? With a huge map as your canvas, what part gets the first worldbuilding paint? 

My solution is simple. If you have a campaign in mind, designing a campaign setting is your best strategy. But if you're just trying to expand your world, trust your gut: what would be the most interesting for you to build? It's supposed to be fun, after all. If you're still stuck, then I have good news. This article is about the simple solution to this problem: pick a random place on the map and go to town. 

I'm not joking. In order to illustrate my sincerity, I'm going to start with a random mid-sized settlement from my homebrew world; I'll pick it by using a random number generator compared to a list of 40 mid-sized settlements. Then, I will begin to write up details about what that settlement is like, and along the way, we'll discover all sorts of unique and interesting details I only found through doing this work. Let's get started. 

I got an 11, which is the town of Pliat. Here it is on my political map of my main continent on my homebrew world:

Your own worldbuilding should follow whatever your instincts tell you, and mine tell me that there's some information I've developed before that will influence what Pliat is like. The first thing I know is that Pliat is between the elven lands and the halfling lands, so the population there will reflect that. It's also near the heart of half-elven country and would bear evidence of that. And since I know a lot of the cultural and social details of my world, I can begin to piece together ideas like what foods are eaten here and what shapes buildings are in a general way. These details can help to characterize a settlement and make it distinct from the others the players encounter. In Pliat's case, most restaurants serve fish from nearby rivers and Lake Playbor as well as lots of grains and fruits and vegetables; most homes and businesses are L-shaped buildings, longhouses, or dugout underground homes. 

But that's basically all I know, and that's not much. My next instinct tells me that it would be good to develop the government, which will tell me a lot about the town and give me some ideas for possible quests. If Pliat's government is like its architecture and cuisine, then it would likely be some manner of loosely-defined council; the half-elven preference for committee and the halfling tendency towards loose government might combine that way. But to spice things up, I want to make Pliat different. I'm going to make up a form of government that I haven't heard of before to make Pliat an interesting place for players. Pliat is led by a Mayor, but the mayoral position is mandatory and changes on a weekly basis--that is to say, every citizen serves as the Mayor at some point for a week. This is intended to keep government representative and be open to new ideas, as well as inspiring civic duty. 

I could now go in two different directions: I might further develop the psychological implications of this policy, or I might write some of the history of how the policy has worked out. In my opinion, the public sentiment about it is likely to follow the historical results, so I'll start with the history of it. For narrative reasons, I want the system to be working well when the players get to Pliat. Let's say that in the earliest days of the mayoral policy, there were some bumps in the road--people unfit to lead with no example of how to do so, people acting on old grudges while in charge, occasional bribes accepted--but in the last few generations, Pliat has become a place that is more collectively run by the whole community with changing official titles, but wherein everyone generally behaves in the community's best interest. 

I mentioned narrative reasons for making Pliat pretty functional and almost idyllic. I think that one of the great tropes of tabletop games, particularly D&D, is depicting the oppressive government which demoralizes its people. It's not a bad trope, and it's certainly fun to be the hero who overthrows the unjust leader. But I think that some people also play tabletop games to be chaotic and wild in a safe space, and giving them a wonderful place where everything is okay is both a big change of pace (more memorable and unique) and an invitation to the players to interfere (a potential storyline). I have a party currently who just like making crazy things happen, and I am certain that they would destroy Pliat in tops two sessions if they went there. As I have said, breadth is important in worldbuilding, so Pliat will be something that helps me create more distinct locations in my world. 

This was general history. Let's consider a few of the temporary leaders who were notable. I need one that covers the old failures, so meet Carson Wettersley, the corrupt lumberjack who tried to sell the town to Finiel to the north and was run out of town, beginning a new era in which Mayors knew they had to fear public retribution. Then I need an early formative expert, so meet Juliet Sweep, the apothecary who introduced the idea of keeping policies of earlier Mayors and herself introduced the notion of holding town hall meetings at the beginning of each new Mayor's term to suggest new ideas for the week. I also want a colorful example that really lends some rich detail to the town, so meet Grynn Garryg, the orcish tinker who was appointed Mayor just hours after arriving in town and personally helped every member of the town in need before leaving at the end of the week. This gives me a good brief history to be able to convey to players who come to Pliat. 

I should also know about the current moment. Let's say that Georgia Illesin, a farmer, has been Mayor for two days, and she has been generally doing a good job, but some people are of the opinion that she's favoring farming projects over other industries in her decisions. If the players end up here long enough to see the next Mayor, it will be Henry Borchester, a tailor who will worry so much about pleasing everyone that he won't take much action at all. At the current moment, people are generally content with the system of government, but feel that they have been on a run of mediocre Mayors. This gives me enough information to have players show up and feel like there's a complete little community here with something interesting going on. 

I play with a wide variety of players; I have some who could indefinitely guide themselves through a sandbox world, and I have some who need some direction to get even small tasks done. As a result, I might have different needs for how much preparation for quests and storylines I need relative the group. But even with self-guiding players, it's a good idea to have at least the beginning of a few storylines so that the world seems to have its own living, breathing components. So given what I know so far, here are a few potential storylines: 

• I want a politically-related quest, so nearby town Terron is struggling to keep up diplomatic relations with Pliat due to the constantly changing leadership. Terron's governor, Yarro Nillenor, is willing to pay the party handsomely if they can convince the people of Pliat to appoint a more permanent diplomatic leader to make things easier for everyone. 
• I want a sort of culture-clash quest--something that plays with the multicultural dimension of the town, so let's say that some halflings, who chafe under the rule of changing leaders, have begun to organize along community lines, causing a rift between them and the rest of the town. One halfling elder, Darwin Rope, is offering a magical item (perhaps a Bag of Holding or a similar item which is prized by players) to anyone who can negotiate a compromise between the Mayoral position and the community organizations--Rope has already tried and failed. 
• I'll add one more, something that is also relevant to the setting; since Pliat is not directly near a water source, they depend on trade for fish (a staple for elves and half-elves), and they need occasional extra water for crops in dry seasons. Gnomish engineer Worki Serpon has proposed a large project wherein the Playbor River to the north would be split and routed south to a manufactured lake, which the city could depend on. Completing the project would require gaining public support, raising funds for the materials and labor, and protecting labor crews from bandits and monsters during construction. 

This gives me a pretty broad base to pull from--whatever my players are most interested in can become the main focus of their time in Pliat, and these quests are really only possible here in this specific settlement. That's something that matters to me a lot as a GM because I like to play multiple campaigns with my players, and I want them to get a sense of how diverse the world is. And just as importantly, I get to have a broad and varied experience too--my time in my homebrew setting has been different every time because I have been sure to give myself different settings every time. 

If I were to use Pliat as a major hub of a campaign as opposed to a stop between other locations, I would want to make a map of the city. A short stop doesn't really require a detailed map, but we should generally know what's in town. Let's say for my own reference in-game and if I do decide to make a map that Pliat is divided roughly into four quarters. The northwest and southwest quarters are primarily agricultural and are home to most Pliatian farmers, food service workers, and loggers. The southeast quarter is a trade section, mostly characterized by a large marketplace and several major thoroughfares of businesses. The northeast corner is home to public buildings like town hall and its various temples, but is also the biggest residential area in town, the site of various neighborhoods generally divided along cultural lines. Notable buildings would include the Pliat Lumber Depot, a huge lumberyard and processing facility; a large public worship house with private spaces for each faith; and the legendary High Horse Brewery, a tavern known far and wide for its generous portions and wide range of drinks. This tells me enough about the place to have a sense of what's here and what the players might encounter in their time in the city. 

There's other preparation that I might do here in Pliat to be ready to game, but I have already developed a number of resources to cut down on that work. If I need a character, I can use this list of character names and personalities to drop a fairly fully-formed character into the game. If the characters want a tavern besides High Horse Brewery, then I can offer them a range of other unique taverns complete with bartenders. Those details will allow me to portray Pliat as the complex and dynamic place that I've developed it to be. 

So now we've developed Pliat into a game-ready place with a variety of good information to keep it going. But I promised you something else in addition to the worldbuilding process; I said that we would learn something about the world in the process. It's time to make good on that promise. So what have I learned? Well, for one thing, I've changed my mental picture of this region of the map, for starters. If you had pointed to Pliat on the map before I started this article and asked me what kind of people live there, I would have though, "half-elves are sort of centered on that part of the map, so maybe half-elves and their parent races, elves and Faninites live there." I would generally have said the same about the other towns in the area; nearby settlements Gamna, Hasphatal, Terron, and Atir are all in the same general region. But by sitting down with Pliat and setting out to make it distinct, I created a version of it which is more complex than being a half-elven city like many of its neighbors. It's true that a good number of the people of Pliat are half-elves or elves, but the inclusion of halflings makes the settlement more complex and interesting. 

I learned about the region's racial population, and I also learned about the relationship between some of the settlements in the region. If you look back at the map, you'll see two small settlements right next to each other in the northeast--Zunard and Dozain. These two settlements are bound to have a complicated relationship, and I know this just by looking at the map:

But Pliat didn't have that clear indication that it would have a particular relationship with the neighboring cities. Writing the storyline for Terron's complication diplomatic relationship opened a door for me--now I know that these two settlements have a regular relationship and that it's strained. This tells me more about the region, and it even suggests other possible strained relationships. If we follow the logical conclusion of the manufactured river and lake storyline, a strained relationship with Atir is likely, as the new river would partially deplete Atir's water supply (and Truscan's to the northwest as well). 

Beyond even the implications of all this, there is still more: I set out to include an interesting idea for the politics in the region, and the worldbuilding I have done around it has informed the storyline of Pliat's leadership. Now players can see the functioning community with rotating leadership from the internal perspective (community-building and representative) and the external perspective (the city is difficult to work with for other cities). This has given us a more realistically complex presentation of the idea, and now I have an idea what tone I want to adopt when presenting the details of the city. 

I learned one final thing from the worldbuilding process around Pliat: when I needed conflict for this region, I did not reach for physical danger. This is in part because I gravitate towards roleplaying when it comes to tabletop games, which demands more abstract challenges that can allow a player to really inhabit their character. I feel that you can achieve this with combat, but I find it easier through more social interactions. That's why each of the quests here are more about talking with people than fighting. But that also tells me about this area: this is not an area where people are afraid for their safety, and the quality of life is good enough that average people could meet the needs of the community. This means that Pliat or perhaps even the larger area around it is pretty peaceful and calm, which is a good thing to know about a region. 

So we've started with just a point on the map and ended up with enough information to make Pliat a viable location for a few sessions or even the beginning of a campaign. We've also learned important things about the context in which Pliat exists and some details about the towns around it. All of that came out of just asking ourselves basic questions about what life is like here. I may or may not ever use Pliat as a location, but I won't lose the worldbuilding that came out of writing about it. 

That's all for now. Coming soon: a guide to conspiracy theories in my gameworld, how to find and use inspiration, and a guide to the various languages in my gameworld. Until next time, happy gaming!

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