Worldconjuring #01 - Getting Started with Starting Out

Wanna worldbuild?

Greetings fellow wizards,
Today we are getting started with “Worldconjuring”, a series of articles tackling worldbuilding for games, under a less conventional lens.
Let’s attempt to make this building of worlds much more approachable, my fellow bathroom-reading warlocks.
Today, since we’re just starting out, we will be taking a look at… well, Starting Out.

Fear of starting out

I like to think that the main reason me and my friends always have fun playing Tabletop RPGs is because we are very passionate about collaborative narration, and worldbuilding.
However, many of them told me that they find starting writing a new world very difficult.
After all, you are forging an entire new world or setting from scratch, it is no wonder one may feel overwhelmed.
But once you start making a structured path to worldbuilding, that fear of starting out will gradually fade. Let’s set a course of action for our worldbuilding process!

1) Nail down the Flavor

Most of the time, when you think of getting an ice cream, you immediately imagine a certain flavor of ice cream.
That flavor is what generally is referred to as “concept” in worldbuilding. 

Don’t worry, the concept of a world is not its history, or its details about magic, nor the names of all its planets. The concept is, the cool idea you want to run a story in.

Think about what excites you in the idea of running a story in this world, write it down if necessary.
A few examples? We could certainly say that in Warhammer 40.000 the cool concept idea was “Big marines from space are struggling to save their empire from aliens, and their traitorous brothers”. In Mork Borg it was probably “A black metal ultra-grimdark fantasy world where staying alive for more than 5 (consecutive) years is a victory”.

Once you have a somewhat clear idea of what is the flavor of your world, it’s time to set up your “fundamentals”.

2) Setting up fundamentals

You have your world’s concept, and now you have to decide at least five fundamental points. These are things you definitely want in your world. This may seem trivial now, but trust me, this will help immensely later on when we are stuck in choice paralysis. 

These five fundamentals can be anything you are really fond of and you would like to explore.

For example, let’s say I’m making a vampire setting.

I know I want vampires to be a species in competition like humans, two predators that wanna dominate the world.
I know I want a medieval/renaissance europe type of setting.
I know I want firearms to be a thing.
I know I want very different types of vampires.
I know I want humanity to be almost overwhelmed at the start of our campaign.

These five fundamentals will shape our story setting, and whenever we feel lost, that’s where we gotta get back to.
Speaking of getting lost…

3) Don’t get lost in details…yet

If you are just starting out your world, finding an explanation to why vampires wear yellow buttons is not a priority in worldbuilding, trust me.

The urge to design every single aspect of a world is strong, but the secret to resist such temptation is referring to your “fundamentals”.

Whenever you write something about your world or setting, you can ask yourself if it serves storytelling or one of the “fundamentals”. If it seems very loosely tied to what you selected as your “fundamentals”, then it’s probably not worth writing right now.
That doesn’t mean you can’t add more flavor to your setting via various details, but be sure to be consistent with your “fundamentals”.

Some Prompts

You should now have some of the tools needed to start writing your world’s concept.

Here are some prompts to kickstart the worldbuilding engine in your brain:
1) How would you describe your setting under 500 characters?
2) What’s the thing you’re most excited about in your setting?
3) What are your major inspirations for this setting?