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Ecology and biology are areas that I often overlook. This is a shame; they can lead to some very interesting worlds, such as Roshar's crabs-are-everywhere approach in Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archives series. The field of speculative evolution/biology is concerned with how things might realistically look in other environments, and every worldbuilder can benefit from studying... Continue Reading →
A common trope in both fantasy and science fiction is the autocrat with unlimited power. It should be obvious that in real life, no one wields that kind of authority. One source of inspiration for these despots is the legacy of European monarchs. The proper term for the philosophy that kings and queens should have... Continue Reading →
A trade route is simply a passage traversed by merchants and caravans from settlement to settlement for economic purposes. A trade route can pass over land or sea and link multiple locations over great distances. While many goods can flow along each route, some can become famous for certain materials eg the Silk Road and... Continue Reading →
Many people argue that due to magic, fantasy combat should have more in common with early modern warfare than premodern war. To be honest, I haven't fully considered this idea. To get started, let's look at what war looked like in the gunpowder era before the Industrial Revolution. This will focus on European warfare at... Continue Reading →
This week, I'd like to take a brief look at something different. I recently read through the amazing webcomic, Stand Still, Stay Silent (here's page one), set in a unique post-apocalyptic Scandinavian setting. There are a billion good things about SSSS---fascinating usage of Nordic folklore, detailed worldbuilding, delightful character interactions, and an engaging storyline among... Continue Reading →
Now that the first article discussing the basics of the early modern era, is out of the way, we can get started dissecting the elements that can be used by worldbuilders. One of the features that defined the early modern period was globalization. The world went from being a collection of regional powers that only... Continue Reading →
Well, here we are. As far as I can tell, this is the last topic I can helpfully cover about premodern life. Everything else is too varied or too complex to discuss in an article of reasonable length. But, that leads into two new upcoming series! For Your Enchantment will revisit the topics covered in... Continue Reading →
Assuming your world will feature a variety of fascinating places, your characters will probably spend a lot of time travelling between them. Today we'll look at all the factors affecting transportation in the premodern world. The usual conditions apply. Magic changes a lot, so we'll address that in a different article. You could argue that... Continue Reading →
Another week, another ramble about the intersection between history and worldbuilding! This week, it's the commonalities between the upper classes of premodern cultures. I should note that while I use the word "nobility," I just mean an upper class that is given special rights and/or responsibilities by the government. In general, the concepts used in... Continue Reading →
I'm running low on topics that can effectively be addressed in these "focus on cross-cultural trends" articles. I've got this one, then nobility, then travel, then I'm out. I'm open to moving on to For Your Enchantment, which will revisit these topics with magic and monsters added in, but I'd be fine with returning to... Continue Reading →
This is my first post directly on this fantastic blog. Hello, world! Also, I'd like to announce a new series I'd like to start: For Your Enchantment. At the start of every post, I mention that these are only to address real-world characteristics. Fantastic elements like magic and monsters can change things dramatically, and I... Continue Reading →
After general society, warfare, and economy, people have been asking for religion. So here we go! Right at the start, I'd like to recommend Bret Devereaux's "Practical Polytheism" series on his blog, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry. That series inspired a lot of this, though I've added some insights and resources as well. Alrighty, the... Continue Reading →
I had a great time writing about premodern society and warfare, and people had some great suggestions on what to do next. One good one I saw was economics, so I'll try to tackle that here. For those who might be nervous: I'm not going to be getting into stuff like interest rates and fiscal... Continue Reading →
I made a post the other day about using premodern society to inspire worldbuilding, and it got way more popular than I expected. I decided to make a sequel on warfare. Let me know if there's anything else you'd like me to write on! Like the last one, I'm going to try to focus on... Continue Reading →
It can be hard to make interesting people and places. Things kind of blur together, forming a mush of fantasy tropes. One source of inspiration is actual history: so many of our fantasy settings are based on misconceptions that a world closer to reality can be novel and fascinating. (And if you're like me, realism... Continue Reading →
In this post I will be talking about all the different climates you might want to include in your world and how they all fit together, some info on each and the kinds of animals and challenges faced to live there. Many people are happy to place climates as they like, but you might want... Continue Reading →
Credited to u/darkblade273. The most common map guides I've found glance over coastlines as just "use a fractal generator" or "just make it really jagged and never use straight/curved lines", which are only really suitable for some regions of the world. Coastlines are affected by elevation, underlying tectonic plates, and climate, which are never really... Continue Reading →
Today I'm going to be talking about a technique you can use to inject your world with conflicts, situations and drama, by drawing a new overlay for your map. This technique is inspired by the Paradox Games such as Crusader Kings 2 and Europa Universalis 4. (I imagine many worldbuilders have already played these games,... Continue Reading →
Now it’s time for us to bring our little naming language together, ironing out some details, making some revisions, and writing up a little mini-grammar on the language. We’ll also be putting it to practice to see how well it functions. First of all will be the changes to the phonology. The original list of... Continue Reading →
Intro The section is going to be about creating some basic morphology for your naming language. Morphology deals with the morphemes that exist in your language and how your words are built up. Morphemes are the smallest units in a language that have any sort of grammatical meaning. These are things like roots (book, man,... Continue Reading →
Intro Now it’s time to start thinking about basic syntax, or word order. Because we’re only making a naming language, sentence level word order isn’t all that necessary unless you have a few phrases or bits of text from your culture, such as a spell, prayer, or greeting. Word Order There are six main types... Continue Reading →
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