What makes a world?

[Numinous]

I've been working on my setting today, and as usually happens when I do that, I've been thinking.  So, I bring to you, the community, a question that has arisen in my musings.  What makes a world?  Is it geography, people, knowledge of the resources and climate of an entirely fictional planet?  Maybe it's the stories you can tell through it that truly make a world.

I want to know your thoughts.  What does something need to be a world or a setting, and do those two words even mean the same thing?

Discuss.

[SDragon]

a worldbuilder!

seriously, though, i think it depends. i dont think i can give a solid answer (yet!) to what makes a world.

that said, i don't think a world is inherently a setting... setting, to me, is more subjective; a setting can be within a single building (the majority of clerks, as well as the majority of mallrats), or a setting can span several worlds (star wars).

[Kalos Mer]

To me, 'setting' and 'campaign' are closely related - the 'setting' is the particular locale (both geographically and 'metaphysically' as well as the ambiance you choose to use in your game.

A world, on the other hand, to me implies the whole shebang - geography, culture, myth, language, etc.

[Kalos Mer]

... Though if that's the case, why is this the "campaign builder's guild' and not the "world-builder's guild"?

[Numinous]

... Though if that's the case, why is this the "campaign builder's guild' and not the "world-builder's guild"?

Because the World-Builder's Guild already existed. ;)

[Darkxarth]

When I have worked on building worlds before, it's always been the history of the world that made it come alive for me.  Sure, you can say there's Such'n'such Mountain Range here, and King Jim the Dull rules the Kingdom of Ripov'uvtol-ken.  But what really gets me excited about it is when I'm explaining why the world is the way it is.  What great kings of the past did what heroic things, and what battles were fought between what armies, and so forth.  Maybe it's because writing up the history can be like going through an entire campaign, all at once.  That's what player campaigns do anyway, shape the history of your world, at least that's what they do if they ever get finished.

So I think it's the history, the backstory, the fact that you've put weeks of hard work into your world really brings it to life, at least for me.

[Polycarp]

My opinion on this is twofold.

Firstly, like Darkxarth said, a world is made by history.  I believe the height of achievement in a fantasy world is to be able to point to any artificial creation - a border, a city - and be able to explain why it came to be where it is, who built it, and what has become of it over the ages.  Historical weight gives meaning to people's actions, engages the players, and helps the DM to determine what people's logical course of actions are in the game.

Secondly, however, I think that a world is made by conflict.  It is not enough to have history; that history must still be in the process of being written, with conflicts and the potential for conflict scaling from the very small and local to the overarching and universal.

[~Kalin~]

what makes a world?

I would say its geography.

What makes a world come alive?

A deep history, complex cultures with varying beliefs and superstitions, it is the very people within the world itself and the stories they tell that makes the world come alive, atleast for me it is.

[Kalos Mer]

See, I think that the precise definition of what's most important to a world is gonna depend on the person.

To Tolkien the philologist, it was the languages.

To me the classicist, it's the ancient civilizations and the myths, with languages running a close second.

An anthropologist might say that a variety of cultures make a world 'come to life'.

The ones saying history is most important are likely historians or at the least history-buffs.  A geographer might well say that a lovingly described coastline and a carefully developed mountain range was the most important to him.

A well-made world should have a balance of all of these components and more, but there's plenty of room for variety in the level of detail.  Provided he was a decent storyteller too, I'd love to play in a geographer's gameworld.

[f_hayek]

I think Kalos Mer is right that different people will see different things as defining a world, but the purpose of settings or worlds on this site is for use in a role-playing game. In that vein, I think there are 2 defining characteristics of a world that make it a world. A good world doesn't need both, some DM's will be looking for the one and not the other.

1. History (especially the recent history of conflicts and relations between power groups) - developing the history for a world is like winding up the crank on a dancing toy. It won't go on its own if you don't crank it up first. Any story the characters go through will include NPC's with their own agendas they are trying to achieve, and the recent history (and sometimes even the ancient history) of a world provides a spring board for those motivations to evolve out of, and for the PCs to understand those motivations in context. The history is the seed for all the story lines the characters will be proceeding through.

2. Races/Rules/Spells, etc... The other possible defining component of a world is its offering of a new variation of the traditional rules. "Lets use this campaign world 'cause I want to play that crazy half-elf/half-bugbear race that gets the special natural ability of being able to brew potions with its own blood." Whether it's an interesting new race, new prestige class, or a bevy of new interesting spells, sometimes you'll want to use a campaign just to try out the goodies in it. Does it really matter whether the new polymorphing centaur knight prestige class traditionally hails from the plains of Khar'plek or the Forests of Lajeer? Let's just start rolling some dice!

I just don't see the other factors - geography, etc... as defining a world very much. As a DM, I can whip any old fantasy world up pretty quick, or just use a random world map generator, and get an interesting disbursement of terrain and countries as I need.

[Wensleydale]

I would say three things.

1. Cultures. You need culture to make an interesting world. Without cultures, you can end up with an essentially undiffering world, which is about as boring as it gets.

2. History. Why are the cultures like they are? Why do the Tajj-Marla have a similar faith and language to the Urd-Din, despite the fact they are hundreds of miles away? Of course, the reason is that the Tajj-Marla were recruited to form an army of faith in a crusade that would smash the lands around to dust, but were separated and lost along with all the army-followers. Slowly they deviated. A bad example, but you understand my meaning.

3. Myths, legends, and magic. Important, as Kalos Mer would tell you. They shape a world - they can change everything from economics to diplomatic relations.  

[Kalos Mer]

I think on the contrary geography is very important in defining a world.  Both versions of Tasothilos were heavily defined based on geography - first by the 'many islands' theme and then by the 'inner sea' theme.

Random world map generators will give you land and water, but they won't necessarily make SENSE. A script could pretty easily be generated that would give you an outline of the history of your world, too, but it wouldn't necessarily be sensible.

[So-Keher]

I would have to say that if i had to whittle everything down to one einy (spelling?) weeny tiny little word, then story would have to be it. I always love to form my worlds/campaigns through a story of the events, like i did for the history of the Faenaed (so long ago!) I think that stories provide the most depth and thought 'provokedness' combined with an element of personality and the ability to connect personally ,another very important element.

[BeefotronX]

History is what binds the geography, magic, technology, and culture together, but they're all important.

I do find that the most effective way of filling in blank spots and adding on to the material, is writing out the history of established places.   By itself, a blank spot could be absolutely anything. But when you consider the history of the nearby/surrounding areas, you can get some more specific ideas on what to put in.  In other words, don't look at the blank spaces to try to fill them in.  Look at what you've got and try to explain that, and odds are you'll end up needing something eventually that you can put in a blank spot.

Finding something to start with isn't as hard as some might think, because it doesn't even have to be good.  The nucleus of a beautiful snowflake is a tiny particle of dirt.

The seeds of my Illiarth world were planted several years ago in one adventure that I wrote back in the latter days of 2E AD&D: Stereotypical random dungeon full of random monsters, with the usual badly contrived explanations for how it got to be that way.  I started a game with it, but it fizzled out and in rewriting the adventure for 3E, I overhauled the whole thing, redid the interior of the castle and reduced the dungeon to one level, keeping basically only the general layout of the maps.  From there I plotted what might happen afterwards, giving rise to a couple towns, a major city, and three countries, and stuff just accumulated from there.

A world is not so much a setting as it is a packaging of settings.   Even if you run a thematic world that is predominantly one culture or one type of geography, you can still have different settings within that.  A setting is just the environment in which the adventure happens, which can be in a small or large area in the world.

[f_hayek]

I think BeefotronX hit the nail on the head with what I meant by history. Geography is most definitely important in defining how the history of a world will go. Culture, races, natural resources, magic, all will affect how the history of the world will play out. And you can certainly have a world without any decent history, but I guess I was really thinking of the difference between a good campaign setting and a bad one. Any joe blow can come up with a campaign world filled with stuff - "To the south is the great lizard kingdom of Totoland in the swamps of Pubar. To the east of the lizard kingdom live the strange magical people known as the Lillypads in the Plains of Uncquil". A setting really comes to life when someone does the legwork of thinking out how all that stuff interacts with each other. Has there ever been tension between the lizard people and the magical plains people. What affect would the endless arable plains have on the economy of the Lillypads - would they tend to a more agriculturally based society because of the plethera of good farmland. If not, why wouldn't they?

I guess in the end, you can ask the basic questions about a campaign world - who, what, when , where, why, and how? And they all need to be answered. But the most important questions that make or break the setting are not the details of who, what, when, and where, but the meaty questions of how does the world operate in the present day, and why does it operate that way?