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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