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 →
Trade Routes
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 →
For Your Enlightenment: Pre-industrial gunpowder warfare for compelling militaries
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 →
For Your Enlightenment: Early modern colonialism for fictional empires
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 →
For Your Enjoyment, Part 9: Premodern medicine for lifelike well-being
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 →
For Your Enjoyment, Part 8: Premodern travel for realistic journeys
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 →
For Your Enjoyment, Part 7: Premodern nobility for interesting aristocracy
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 →
For Your Enjoyment, Part 6: Law and order for justice systems
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 →
For Your Enjoyment, Part 5: Power and international relations for deeper politics
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 →
For Your Enjoyment, Part 4: Facts about premodern polytheism for more engaging religions
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 →
For Your Enjoyment, Part 3: Trade and commerce for deeper economies
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 →
For Your Enjoyment, Part 2: Facts about premodern warfare to make deeper armies and battles
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 →
Culture Maps
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 →
Economy & Barter Systems
Intro It can be easy to think that money and a free market exchange system is the main method of how an economy runs, but for most of history, this was not the case. And so it doesn't have to be in your world either. In  this post I will talk about different methods of... Continue Reading →
Placement of Settlements
So you've got your map, your environment. Now its time to place those villages and breathe some life into your world. Settlements can include anything from hamlets all the way up to massive cities, and there's usually a couple of factors in common. They can be temporary or permanent and the temporary ones can eventually... Continue Reading →
Resource Maps and Trade Goods
Knowing what resources your countries have access to can have vast implications for the way they develop, in culture, prosperity, trade routes, even targets for war as countries fight over important trade routes. Locations in the real world such as the Silk Road and Constantinople were fought over for the control of trade. This post... Continue Reading →
Worldbuilding Workshop 