Rules Index | GM Screen

Detailing Your World

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 142
Game designers work for months on setting sourcebooks, novelists agonize for years over how their world might work, and screenplay writers have production designers and art directors helping them present a movie’s backdrop to the audience. You, on the other hand, may not have much time to create the world your players will adventure in, and you definitely won’t have a huge production staff to help you.

Luckily, you won’t need it. With just an hour or two of considering the following questions, you should have all the answers you need to kick things off with a bang. What follow are 30 of the most important questions in setting design to help you formulate a quick world-building cheat sheet.

The Heroic Details

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 142
First things first: What do the heroes do in this new world of yours? The first thing players do when you start a new campaign is create characters, so it’s a good idea to think first about what the heroes of your world need to know.

Look over the character generation rules of the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook and see what jumps out at you. What do fighters fight? What principles do paladins champion? Who do clerics pray to? Where do rogues do their sneaking around? It may seem strange to think of these things first, but consider this—your players are probably going to start thinking about what characters they want to play long before they ask you about the coins in the Empire of Fulbar, or even if there is an Empire of Fulbar.

The questions don’t stop at character generation, either. What sorts of adventures are the new heroes going to go on? What are they going to run into? What can they do with all that loot? Even in an established campaign setting, looking ahead to the middle and higher levels of play can help iron out potential wrinkles before they start.

The following list covers 10 questions every hero is likely to wonder.

What’s my base of operations?

A pastoral shepherd village with farms and nearby wilderness is going to inform entirely different character concepts than a cosmopolitan city. While the characters might be outsiders or new arrivals, they’re still going to want to know where their base of operations is, if only in terms of size, profile, or geography. Is it high in the mountains? Is it on a trade route? Is it a mile beneath the waves? Pick a likely spot and be ready to give the players a sentence or two describing it. The details can be fleshed out later.

Do I look different from everybody else?

Adventurers are often just homegrown heroes, raised in unremarkable communities with ordinary backgrounds. Yet they’re just as often members of strange and mysterious races or outcasts from far-off places. You should consider what races and backgrounds your players might choose when the game begins, and how these will affect their interactions with the NPCs in the starting location. Allowing offbeat or colorful races that aren’t standard also means you need to understand those races and how they work in your society.

How do I make a living?

This question isn’t just asking for the list of allowed character classes, which you should decide in advance. Rather, it asks how the heroes keep themselves in room and board (or ale and companionship). Are heroes in your world paid to do what they do? Are they mercenary dungeon delvers, or is this a part-time gig for a group of city guards and scholars? The answer might differ from character to character, but once you settle on what the heroes are actually doing to put bread on the table, you have formed a clearer picture of the role of heroes in your new world.

Have I been doing this long?

A great many campaigns assume the heroes start off as 1st-level adventurers, but that’s not the only option. Consider whether you’re building a world for low-level heroes or higher-level veterans, because this choice affects the presence of wise mentors, young sidekicks, wealthy patrons, and ruthless villains.

Are we at war or at peace?

This is the basic level of political information the heroes need. Is some awful nation sitting at the border ready to invade, or does the world enjoy relative peace? You don’t need to tell them who the duke is, or if his dastardly brother is the wicked leader of that awful nation. Your answer could be as simple as, “There was a war hundreds of years ago, but everything’s been fine lately,” or “The country is constantly being raided by barbarians.” Players can then make the classic choice of playing dangerous foreigners, or if there’s peace at the start of the campaign, they can play up their characters’ backgrounds as innocents heedless of the threats that lurk on the horizon.

What am I doing with these other guys?

Do the player characters already know each other from their days in the Citizen’s Guard? Are they old friends from the College of Delvers? Perhaps they’re all related: brothers, sisters, or cousins. Or, as is often the case, maybe they’re complete strangers who meet in the bar in the first session and get thrown together by common circumstances. As a worldbuilding detail, these connections suggest organizations, guilds, mysterious patrons, or significant families, and can also determine a player’s choice of character. As hard as it might be to explain a dwarf PC in a family of elves, even that choice spawns plenty of setting conceits.

How are lives affected by magic?

Most fantasy game worlds have magic of the arcane kind as a staple. Players who are looking to play wizards or sorcerers need to know what it means to be a wizard or sorcerer, even if they don’t initially have to know the source or origin of magic itself. This is also true of the other heroes, who should have a fairly good understanding of what society thinks of people casting fireballs and summoning demons. You’re also going to have to tell the players whether they should expect to have access to healing magic, or if the world is more gritty and dangerous.

How are lives affected by religion?

You don’t need to go into much detail about the gods for the benefit of the players, but you should decide the basics and what this means for clerics, paladins, and other characters bestowed with divine power. Essentially, decide what divine patrons they can choose for their characters, even if the answer is just “There’s the goddess of cities, and the gods of the four seasons, and the god of thieves.”

Who or what is going to try to kill me?

It’s always good to know what the major threats are, but you don’t have to go into much detail for the players on this score. Primarily, you need to be able to tell the ranger player that choosing evil outsiders as his favored enemy is a good idea, or if he should instead go for something like goblinoids. In answering this question, you’re also making some decisions about mood and theme: if most of the bad guys are human or half-human, this suggests a different kind of world than one in which the villains are all Lovecraftian horrors and their unfortunate minions.

Where can I sell this loot?

Assuming your world is one in which piles of gems await the heroes in subterranean mazes, what do the heroes do with them when they get back to town? Is there a Crazy Yorick’s Magick Shoppe in every large city, or do the heroes have to craft their own magical wands, potions, and gear? Can they invest their winnings in stock or property? Is there some kind of fence or underground black market to move goods?

The Mundane Details

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 143
Once you have the key heroic details figured out, you have a rough sketch of an adventuring world. Now you’re going to have to think about the run-of-the-mill folk who populate it. Some NPCs may be just a funny accent and a handful of stats, but they still exist independently of the heroes. Think about the sorts of things the player characters might ask the innkeeper or the town guard.

These details are often the things people think of first when they start building new worlds. It’s not a bad idea to have them in the back of your mind, but it’s also a lot easier to fill these in once you have the broad strokes already settled. None of this information is hidden or secret; as characters within the world, the PCs might know it, too.

Who’s in charge?

Who holds the reins of power? Consider what difference it makes to have a single monarch as opposed to a council of mages or a monolithic church. What do the citizens think about their government? How do neighboring nations or societies get along with this authority? Has it always been this way, or is the ruling power only newly ascended?

Who has the biggest army?

As a follow-up to the last question, who controls the military? Is there a standing army, or does the government send out calls to militias (or bands of brave adventurers)? Is there a legendary troupe of knights that leads the army into battle, or is the army made up entirely of clockwork soldiers? Deciding what the military looks like and who controls it not only gives your players somebody to fear, hate, or respect, but also seeds your campaign with hooks for higher-level play—as the heroes get sufficiently experienced, they might acquire armies of their own.

Who has the most money and power?

This is often connected to the first two questions, but it doesn’t have to be; indeed, it often makes things more interesting when nobility and wealth are not synonymous. Does your world have a merchant class? Are high-level adventurers the wealthiest members of society, or are they paid to do what they do out of the deep pockets of aristocrats? While you’re thinking about money, you should also decide whether to go with the gold piece standard or experiment with different economic systems.

Who maintains law and order?

What laws and regulations are in place in your world, and who enforces them? Some settings, such as wild and untamed lands of mystery and danger, might leave this task in the hands of rangers; others, especially those that feature high magic, should provide some explanation of how laws are applied to wizards and sorcerers.

How hard do poor people have it?

Nothing produces a cunning and ruthless population of scum and villainy—or heroic rogues and swashbucklers— like an impoverished background. How do the lower classes live? Is there any oppressed or subjugated minority or group that the average townsfolk look down on? The presence of multiple races, for instance, or a division of magical haves and have-nots, often suggests tiers of wealth or poverty. What if the elves were poor and orcs were their cruel masters? What about the other way around?

As in our own world, wealth is the chief producer of societal friction, and the way it moves through your society can inform everything from social norms and values to crime and military engagements, as well as provide unlimited seeds for adventure.

How do people travel, and how easy is it?

In some worlds, the open space between civilized areas is wild and untamed, making travel highly dangerous. Others feature enormous urban sprawls or patchwork villages and farms. The availability of magic also affects the manner of travel. Think about how travel works in your world as a result of these choices. Are horses and wagons common? Do people walk to their destinations, or fly on griffon-back?

What are the best-known landmarks?

You can bring a world alive through the use of extraordinary and fantastic locations, but they don’t have to be limited to the places the heroes explore. What’s noteworthy back in town? What can the average citizen of the world see out of his or her back window? Could your starting location be named after such a landmark? Consider what major institutions, legends, or heroes may have some connection to a geographical feature or ancient ruin nearby.

Why is everybody celebrating?

Holy days, feast days, and anniversaries are all essential world-building elements that you should consider sketching out when you’re working on your new setting. For more information on designing holidays, see page 162.

What do people do for a good time?

Give some thought to how the average person cools her heels at night when the day’s work is done. What form does entertainment take? Are there traveling minstrels, or bards appointed by the Emperor to mock his family? Do taverns and bars stay open all night, or do people spend their time reading books?

How weird does it get around here?

Memorable worlds aren’t made up solely of ordinary people living ordinary lives in ordinary towns. Does another plane intersect with the area somewhere close by? Do ghosts walk around carrying on their daily business? At times, your players should be equally surprised by the strange things locals have grown used to and no longer think about, or by the apparent lack of weirdness.

The Scholarly Details

Source GameMastery Guide pg. 144
Now we come to the information that perhaps only a sage would need to know, but which forms the underpinning of your world’s physics—and metaphysics. Such details include how the world was formed, how magic works, and where dead heroes go when they fall in battle; many are fleshed out further starting on page 160.

Like the other considerations, these aren’t necessarily outside the comprehension of the player characters. Most people have a basic understanding of them, albeit colored by their backgrounds. It’s been said that sometimes the most exciting and rich worlds are those that don’t answer all the questions, but you’re the final arbiter on that score.

How did the world come to be?

The answer to this question is your world’s creation myth. You can have more than one answer to this, especially if you have multiple races and they don’t all share the same worldview. You can choose one of them as the “real” story, or you might suggest that they are all aspects of the truth. This question leads in turn to questions such as how old the world is, what role the gods played in creation, and possibly even when the world is going to end. There’s a lot of room for mythology.

What is the nature of the gods?

This is the question that your clerics are going to want to know more about eventually. Are the gods omnipotent and omniscient beings far above the world? Are they capricious superhuman beings, like the gods of Greek myth? Is there a pantheon, or a single creator figure? There are many options here, but you should at the very least know for yourself what level of detail you want to maintain for divinity.

What is the source of magic?

The easiest answer to this question is to simply have magic be a part of your world’s physics, a natural force that wizards and sorcerers somehow draw upon to work their spells. But you might also consider having arcane magic stem from the gods or be left over from a deific war. Are there multiple sources of magic? How does this affect the magic of creatures like dragons, fey, and outsiders?

What happens when you die?

Think about whether your world has an afterlife, a place of eternal reward or suffering. Do souls travel the planes, becoming servants of the gods, or do they reincarnate, with the legacy of heroes extending back to the earliest days? Do people even have souls at all? Among the many reasons to consider this question is the existence of spells like resurrection and speak with dead, as well as the nature of undead. If you depart this world for your next life after death, what’s that ghost’s story? Why is it still around?

What cycles or events define the calendar?

One characteristic of a world is the cycle of seasons, the weather, and the passage of time. For more information on this subject, see Time on pages 162–163.

What do you see when you look at the sky?

What are the stars? What about the moon and planets? You can leave most such questions unanswered for a long time, but when the player characters achieve the kind of power or freedom to venture to other worlds, you’ll want to know what they find. For more on this topic, see pages 164–165.

What constitutes cutting-edge technology?

Setting a world’s tech level can be an excellent defining characteristic. Where does alchemy fit in? Does the printing press exist? What about rudimentary steam power? For more on this subject, see pages 160–161.

Where do monsters come from?

While it’s easy to assume the presence of monsters, questions like this one open doors to adventure hooks and new monsters. Was there some event in the history of the world that spawned monsters like chimeras, hydras, and dragons? Are monsters an accident of nature or an integral part of the ecosystem? Thinking about these things can also suggest the origins of PC races like elves, dwarves, and gnomes.

Which is strongest: magic, gods, or nature?

Fantasy worlds often hang in the balance between opposing forces. Is your world all a grand design, woven by cosmic beings? Is arcane magic in opposition to the power of the gods and their clerics? Does nature battle magic’s transforming nature, or do the forces of order and chaos battle for domination? It’s possible that a nonstandard answer to this question can form the heart of a world or campaign.

If I drop this off the balcony, what happens?

This question is actually about verisimilitude, and the answer is usually, “It falls and hits the person standing beneath it on the head.” So the real question is, other than “accepted” weirdness like magic and demons, is there anything you want to change or alter about the physical world? If so, how can you do it without losing the players’ suspension of disbelief? Your world needs to make its own kind of sense to bind the strange and fantastic in a way that feels natural—at least to the world’s residents— thus creating a stage for the PCs’ wondrous adventures.

Archives of Nethys