Welcome to today's #WorldbuildingWednesday post! For those of you new to this series, I'm @oblivioncubed. In this series of posts, I break down what Worldbuilding means to me, how I build a setting, why I choose to build what I do, and hopefully provide you some inspiration to use in your Worldbuilding.
My world - Trothguard - is a setting I've created as a catch-all location for any tabletop RPG games I run, so everything I build is filtered through a lens of 'how will this improve the game for myself and my players?'.
Today we're going to look at Worldbuilding in action! An exercise in using the things I've talked about previously to help flesh out a map and give this area some personality!
I thought it might be fun today to put into action some of the things we've talked about in past topics. As part of my practice for mapmaking, I've been following a prompt on Instagram called June's Journey 2020 where you create a new part of a map every day. This has for me been an exercise purely in practicing mapping and settling on how I want to display various icons and such.
So, I've got a map with a bunch of names and icons on it, but that has absolutely no worldbuilding done. Since it is a blank canvas as far as content goes, I thought I'd use this as an opportunity to show off my thought process when I'm creating an adventure or setting. This is just going to be a stream-of-consciousness worldbuilding session where I talk about the day's prompt, look at my entry for it on the map, and spur of the moment come up with some form of worldbuilding for that area.
The names I came up with for the various spots on the map are purely random, and I may end up changing them - but we'll see how it goes! This is currently a very rough draft and I'm trying out some new things, so please don't judge the map itself too harshly!
The map-making/worldbuilding prompt I found is:
Source: June's Journey 2020
Which is provided by Mapshark on Instagram.
My take on these first 10 days is:
Pencil + Scanner = Low Quality Image!
So, after drafting this quickly when I sat back to view the resulting map, I immediately decided that this area is a temperate island kingdom and that it's not a terribly important destination for the greater world, so it isn't densely populated. It was probably settled as part of an exploration and/or colonization attempt, and has remained a footnote in some greater kingdom/empire's history since it's founding. That said - it does have it's own unique features that could be a ton of fun for an adventuring party!
Day 1: Peaceful valley hamlet
This prompt inspired the uninspired hamlet named Peaceful Vale on my map. It's a sleepy little hamlet nestled at the bottom of a valley, about a day's ride from the island's capital city. The sawyer who runs the Riversong Mill lives here with his family, and acts as the hamlet's unofficial mayor.
Day 2: Abandoned mine
Day 2 added the Decklan's Point Mine, a project that was abandoned when miners breached into a series of tunnels that were home to huge vicious insectoid monsters (D&D 5e Ankheg) that they were woefully unprepared for. Rich veins of precious metal still exist unclaimed in the mines, but to date the cost of clearing the huge insects has stopped any of the locals from reopening the abandoned mine.
Day 3: Legendary Fortress
The Broken-Tusk Tower is a monument to a time before this island was properly settled. The tower itself is a ruin now, but everyone on the island knows about it. Rumors tell of a sprawling tunnel complex under the tower itself, though fear of what else might live in the ancient ruins keeps away most people.
Day 4: Gloomy swamp village
Deep in the island's only swamp sits the near-forgotten backwater of Insmouth. Most of the inhabitants are fishers or gather peat and bog iron from the swamp, which they take to the capital at regular intervals. The swamp has many dangers for the unwary, so the folks who live here are a hardy and tightly-knit group who look out for each other and are suspicious of strangers.
Day 5: Great mud wastes
The Great Mud Wastes span a daunting area. They weren't always a wasteland - when the island was first settled, the cartographers who mapped the western side of the island showed this area as being covered in rolling hills with lush grassland. At some point during the initial colonization, a reclusive researcher moved into the area to practice his magic or alchemy, and when the next survey was conducted, the area had been turned into the perpetually muddy wasteland inhabitants avoid today.
Day 6: Haunted countryside mansion
Deep within the Great Mud Wastes sits the sprawling mansion known as the Montauk Mansion. Once this decrepit house was inhabited by Waverly Montauk, a strange and reclusive - but obscenely rich - researcher... but he hasn't been seen in nearly twenty years, and the waste's make visiting the mansion a daunting task. Those few who've made the trek say that the mansion is entirely empty, but that at night lights can be seen moving behind the abandoned mansion's windows.
Day 7: Bustling grand capital
Zeca is the capital city of this island kingdom, and the only real city that the island contains. The island is largely self-sufficient, though the odd ship stops to trade goods two or three times a year and bring news of the outside world. Zeca is a walled city, though the walls were largely put in place when the land was originally settled and haven't had much upkeep in many years. The monsters that inhabit the island rarely amass in such number as to make the walls worth maintaining, and the local military (more of a militia, really), does well enough at keeping the countryside and the roads safe enough.
Day 8: Sprawling orchards
The Grand Orchard is actually three separate orchards that have over the years become something of a cooperative venture. They sprawl across nearly 18 miles of land all total, and provide the island's inhabitants with a variety of local fruits that are rarely seen elsewhere in the world - and are one of the few reasons traders have to visit the island's capital city.
Day 9: Cave of mysteries
Within the mountains along the northern coast of the island is a cave simply known as Harold's Hole, named after the explorer who was last seen entering it. When a search team went to locate the lost explorer, what they found was a sprawling cave system full of huge multi-hued crystals. Within two hours, the search team was almost hopelessly lost and only managed to find their way back to the entrance by complete accident. Having nearly died themselves, they determined that poor Harold was a lost cause. Subsequent attempts to map and explore the cave system have met with disaster and failure. Even when cartographers successfully map an area and make it back to the city, the layout of the caves seem to have changed when they next visit - with huge crystals inexplicably blocking passages that used to be free only months earlier, and new passageways being opened.
Day 10: Riverside lumbermill
The Riversong Mill provides the only source of professionally cut lumber for the island, and the planks it produces are used in any and all new construction on the island - which makes them an important business with a lot of local sway, even if the sawyer and his family try to keep out of the day-to-day goings-on. Due largely to their success, the Riversong Mill has recently expanded it's operation and now has three full sawmills in operation every day.
And... that brings us totally up to date! This isn't in-depth worldbuilding by ANY means, but it's a step towards a setting, and is enough details that I could probably use my time in-game with a group of players to further flesh out the world as I need it.
I left some things fairly generic in this pass because I don't need to know what kind of fruit the Grand Orchard produces - which lets me pick real-world fruits if I want, or create totally unique fruits. I don't specify the local wildlife really, or even what kind of herbs, grasses, and trees are here.
Once I get to the end of the month, we'll see where we're at and maybe flesh out more in-depth worldbuilding for this. For now though, this is a great start I think! Please feel free to leave a comment if you thought of anything fun with any of these prompts or locations on my map! If you aren't a Hive user and you're reading this from my Discord links or Twitter links, feel free to message me on those platforms as well! (SanguineHaze on Twitter, and SanguineHaze#7826 on Discord).
Thank you for reading today's #WorldbuildingWednesday! I hope this has provided you with some inspiration!
If there's something else you'd like to ask me about, please do so! I will make every effort to answer it next Wednesday.
| WorldbuildingWednesdays - Prior Posts: | |
|---|---|
| 0: Introduction to WorldbuildingWednesday | 10: Economy & Currency |
| 1: Starting the World | 11: Creating Governments |
| 2: Kingdoms, Factions, and Notable People | 12: Shops & Markets |
| 3: Creation Facts and Creation Myths | |
| 4: Shaping History | |
| 5: Myths & Legends | |
| 5.a: Player Visions (Supplemental) | |
| 6: Gods & Lesser Deities | |
| 7: Creating Cultures | |
| 8: Making Religions | |
| 9: Building Cults |
