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[Julien Brightside]

So, I have come up with the idea of attempting to make a roleplaying world. Anyone wanna share ideas and such?

Political map:

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Geographical map:

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So far I have up with a few things:

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Marrachia is lead by a really religious cult who are really fanatically against the use of magic.

Thardevaal is lead by a king whos land is divided into various counties. Each county is lead by a count or baron or the female equivalent.

The Mermaid isles used to be a very rich kingdom which focused on hunting mermaids and selling them as slaves and /or products. Then something happened and its once rich kingdom was divided by civil war and its culture degenerated into savage tribes.


The Twisted Isles are mostly barren volcanic rocks. A citadel is built on the biggest of the isles and is situated around a dormant volcano. The king is said to rule from his citadel, though is never actually seen. The isles earns their living through trade of magical sulphur and other alchemy related compoments.

The Jawhanian empire is ruled by the emperor Jawhan, though the high king Dormius usually acts in his stead as the emperor himself rarely finds interest in common politics. The empire itself is very powerful when it comes to both army size and magic and thus a word from the emperor himself can afflict politics in other countries.

The forest kingdom is as the title suggest, mostly covered in forest. Rumours of fantastic creatures and a fairie queen is often heard about this place.

Unduara is a rather flat country. Not much is known as of now.

Barathia is a rather mountaineous country. Not much is known as of now.

Not sure what to do with Ceneria.

[Hubris Incalculable]

My biggest beef with any fantasy world (apart from Tolkien!) is that the people and places names have either no linguistic consistency, or no meaning. If you are going to give your places random syllable names, please, at least, retroactively give them meanings, decide on what parts of what name means what, and use those roots in other things that mean similar things. e.g.: say Metilago means "tree-home", or better "home-of-trees", use "Meti" for other things that have "home" in their names, and "Lago" for other things that have ""trees" in their names, and be consistent with order, at the very least. If you want to go over and above, make sure that they are conjugated for the right cases, so that whereas "Metilago" means "home-of-trees", "Metlago" means "home-trees", and "Metilagon" means "home-of-a-tree" (and i'm sure you can tell what "Metlagon" means by now*).

So, yeah. A bit of a rant, but it really helps to give your world colour and consistency to name it from a well-thought out linguistic standpoint.

Spoiler: * (click to show/hide)

If you couldn't figure it out it means "home-tree"

[Julien Brightside]

Good point.

Actually,  I had an idea that the names of the counties were given by powerful wizards who counquered them and in an attempt to please their own egoes decided to name the countries they conquered after themselves.

I am going to guess that Metlagon means "Tree-Home".

[Capntastic]

While the western continent's main border is clearly caused by the huge mountain range, the continent in the East is basically just lines drawn without any sense, even though there's plenty of likely physical attributes that could cause them.

There also seems to be very little elevation difference outside of "this is a mountain range" and "there are hills here", which makes it seem like the vast majority of the world, denoted in green, is your typical fantasy "default" of perfectly arable farmland.

I'd suggest using Google Maps to look up the features of the specific sorts of land you're tying to emulate, taking note that geography and geology dovetail in some strong ways.

Of course, the above is all argument from realism.

If you're going to do this for a roleplaying setting, I would suggest looking at historical maps and seeing how distorted they can be, both fanciful and empty.  Even Rome back then typically had little to work with beyond "after a few days of walking alongside this river there's a city here, and you can see mountains in the distance".

[Max White]

Hmm, I think as far as a campaign world goes, it is nice to have all the default locations to travel to, just because sometimes you want to go there for fun sake, and a few of your own unique twists to keep things interesting. You could still use a desert/badlands, swamps/marshes, maybe some sort of spooky deadlands where the red wizards of fey hang out...

Yea it is as generic and cliché as hell, but you are making if you are making environments to be used for a game, it is nice to start out with a large tool kit, then try to make each location interesting from there.

[Julien Brightside]

Hum, interesting points guys.

I`ll take them into consideration as I work further on this setting.

[klingon13524]

Where are the seven artifacts of power or whatever the balls plot devices are in this world located?

[Julien Brightside]

Dragonball reference?

No dragonballs, though there are some dead wizards around who are not as dead as they give the world impression of being.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Of course I support that you must make a long-winded history of the world, develop it over time and possibly write several snippets to really get the feel of a good world. World creation is key after all

[Biag]

If you still don't know what to do with Ceneria, it looks like a big ol' delta to me, like Louisiana and northern Egypt. I would suggest drawing a nice spiderweb of rivers, all flowing southwest, with one major river which has its mouth at that southwestern point. Then you've also got your marshy swampy wetlands for the PCs to get poisoned and generally unsettled in.

[Julien Brightside]

So I have tried to expand a little bit on the idea of Thardevaal.

Thardevaal

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Image.
[spoiler]

In my head it is a country divided into various counties whereas each county is ruled by some sort of nobility.

All the nobility is ruled by a king.

Image.

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The country is rather forestlike,  though some of the area is rather swamplike due to heavy logging in certain areas.

Each ruler of a county has their own small castle and a small amount of guards which they use to guard their villages and towns.

[/spoiler]


The image of the Almighty Bob.

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"The almighty Bob was one day rather bored (granted it wasn't a day considering there was no light, but anyway) and thus decided to create a world out from the dust in his eye. And before him a a chunk of rock appeared. A tickle in his nose annoyed him ever so slightly and when he sneezed upon the world wind and water covered the world. (It has been debated, even fought over, whether or not the almighty Bob deliberately breathed on the world, or whether he accidentaly sneezed)

Still the world looked awfully cold to him and he grinded his teeth. He did it so hard sparks appeared and lit a fire in the world.

The almighty Bob twirled his almighty moustache (because as High Priest Ted said an almighty being must also have an almighty moustache) and thought himself content with the world, though it seemed rather devoid any activity.

Thus he took a hair from his right nostril and a toenail clipping from his left foot and from those he created a glowing white being which he named "Life" and a dull black being which he called "Death". When these two mated with the elements gods were born.

The Great old one: The great Bob (probably need a better name than that), creator of the world. Considering true neutral as he created the world out of boredom and since lost interest in it. (Tend to be worshipped by procrastinators. The highpriest of the religion is called Ted. He rarely shows up for work.)"


A list of gods so far:
Almighty Bob - Came into existence because he could.

Death & Life and the elements - Made by the Almighty Bob

Death and Life mated with the elements and created the seasons:

Death+Water=Winter
Life+Earth=Spring
Death+Wind=Fall
Life+Fire=Summer

Death and Life mated with eachother and created Time. (Because the only thing between Life and Death is Time.)

I`ll probably fill in more here as time passes.

Stuff about the wizard wars.

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Garkah the unholy was a powerful wizard during the wizard wars. He focused on demon summoning and eventually built himself a citadel on the twisted isles. Unfortunately he was struck down and permanently fused to his throne during the end of the war.

The citadel still stands as the victor of the war entered a deal with the demons. As long as they paid taxes and did not go past the city borders, they could stay.
The citadel is built around a volcano on the isle of Nevermoore. It is a rather hostile environment and the city is situated in constant night. The citadel itself is called Twilight.


Midas was a king most known for his touch. Unlike legend, he was unable to create gold from anything he touched, yet he had a particular ability that was much more feared.
His right hand could turn any creature into a fully fledged monster. His left hand could turn any object into a weapon.
He was defeated, but not before using the power upon himself and turning himself into a great behemoth.
His kingdom was ravaged in the following battle and it is believed that upon his defeat his whole kingdom sank into the ocean whereas only parts of his body now remains above water, thus making the cliffs of Midas.


Cenera was the world’s most talented elementalist. Unfortunately she overdid her power in a battle and she succumbed beneath her own powers, thus blasting away an area the size of a small city. The place of the battle is now referred to as the Ceneran lake.


Unduar the undead was a very powerful necromancer. Despite his thousands of troops, he couldn’t swim and thus it was fatal when he fell into the water during the transportation of his troops across the sea. Most of his troops were left unguided and thus their ships became at sea.


Linara the druid was probably the most effective user of druid magic the world had ever seen. She got hurt pretty badly during the first battles and retreated into the deep woods. None has ever seen her since. The woods have however been quite difficult to pass through you ever since and some speak of the trees coming alive.


Barathir was perhaps the worlds greatest alchemist, creating potions that could forever change the properties of a person. With his potions he created anything from giants to little people, though his most famous creation was the golem, a living being made out of stone.
His laboratories in the mountains were ruined by an attack. The following destroyed area is now known as the crumpled mountains.


Jawhan the holy was a diviner who gathered his powers from the gods themselves. Though the gods may be forgotten he is still able to uphold his powers. His powers were able to bless whole armies and protect them from while they went into battle.
He effectively won the Wizard war and thus ended the age of strife. He is believed to be the only one of the old wizards still alive.
He built the capitol of the empire before he went to sleep. To act in his stead he appointed the high king. The current high king is Dormius.

[Maggarg - Eater of chicke]

Don't do what I do and end up retardedly over-ambitious, I'm currently cursed with a world I call Olusia, which is A: flat and B: obscenely large. I suppose it's one of the main outlets for my obsessiveness though. I've created calendars, an astronomical system that would be reasonably consistent with a flat world, all sorts of things. It's the details that you woldn't immediately think of that really make a campaign world immersive imho. I imagine that Olusia will remain perpetually unfinished and probably unplayed though, even I find it intimidating and since a few months ago I am now it's sole creator.

And on that note, never have a co-writer, especially one who has a completely different writing style and different ideas of what a fantasy campaign setting should and shouldn't be.

[Julien Brightside]

Well, it originally started as a small story between me and a friend. We began expanding upon it and the world grew as I added new things to explain the background.