Tag Archives: world building

February Blog Carnival: Worldbuilding

This month’s blog carnival topic is worldbuilding. How do you get the worlds you use for your game? Do you create your own or use a published world? If you create your own, where did you start? What do you like best about building your own settings? What suggestions and resources do you have for teaching others how to build worlds of the their own? What are the pros and cons of building your own world? Where do you get the inspiration for your worlds.

It’s a broad topic, I know. I’d like to stick to the whys and wherefores of building worlds, rather than details of the worlds themselves. Instead of telling us about your world, tell us how you created it and why, as well as sharing any tips you may have for others who’d like to build their own game world, but don’t know where to start.

I’m looking forward to seeing your posts; just put the URL of your post in the comments section below and at the end of the month, I’ll do a wrap-up post listing everyone’s contributions.

Please Answer Survey

Over at the Guang Keshar website, I’ve created a survey. Okay, the survey’s really at SurveyMonkey, but there’s a link to it from rpgGM.com. Even if you don’t plan on using a new campaign setting anytime soon, please stop by and let me know what you look for in a game setting.

It’s short. Only these five questions. That’s all — and I promise it won’t hurt 😉

I’ll be posting the outcome of the survey on the Guang Keshar website.

What’s in a Name?: Alphabet

Here it is — the final post of our What’s in a Name? series. Today we’re talking about alphabets.

alphabet spiralWell, actually not about alphabets. While you can create a whole new alphabet for your language, it’s a lot of work to do just to create names. Especially since unless you’re writing out all of your game materials by hand, you’ve got to create either a true font or a set of dingbats to represent your new alphabet.

You can actually create something unique by using Roman letters. After all, most languages in Europe and the Americas all use some variation of Roman letters and they all manage to look different.

(Photo courtesy of: http://www.flickr.com/photos/fdecomite/ / CC BY 2.0)

Go Back to Your Sounds

Remember the list of sounds we made back on the Day 2? It’s time to pull that out. What you want to do is assign one letter or letter combination to every sound you have. What you’re creating here is actually called an orthography.

Now, you can mix up the letters and sounds — but I wouldn’t recommend it. What I mean by that is, you can assign the “sh” sound to the letter “a”. I wouldn’t recommend it because it’ll be a constant headache for you and your players. You’ll constantly have to look back and forth between your  names and your “alphabet” and I’d be very surprised if your players didn’t revolt by the second game session as they try to remember that “Shewsberry” is actually pronounced “thantcamms”.

What you do want to do though, is settle on one way of writing each phoneme you have. Even though in English (for example) “c” can make an “s” or a “k” sound and more than one letter in the alphabet can make the same sound, for simplicity’s sake, I’d recommend one sound, one letter combinations.  That way, you know that “Cebunclane” is always pronounced “ke-bunk-la-ne” and not “see-boon-clain”.

A Note About Diacritics

One obvious way to make your language look different is by using a lot of diacritics. But this can also create a huge headache as you have to remember how to type them or pause frequently while writing to use the “insert special character” (or equivalent) function of your computer. And if you ever want to post your names online, keep in mind that HTML has a very limited set of special characters it supports.

You can actually get a very different look to your names just by using combinations of letters not normally found in English and peppered with a few very common diacritics. Here’s some examples:

  • Nord-Pas-de-Calais (French)
  • Lübeck (German)
  • Zaragoza (Spanish)
  • Algyógy (Hungarian)
  • Bizusa-Bâi (Romanian)

Have fun with this. It can be some work, initially, but once you’ve created it, it really does help give your world a unique flavor. Then, if you decide you do want to create a full language for your world at a later date, you’ve already laid some of the foundation work.

This article series was inspired by Mark Rosenfelder’s Language Construction Kit and I’ve drawn on it heavily as a resource. If you’re interested in a creating a language of your own, his site is a great place to start.

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What’s in a Name? Stress is Good

Stress the right syllable
Image by quinn.anya via Flickr

It’s day 3 of our series on creating a naming language and today we’re talking about stress. Not that kind of stress — this is the emphasis we place on one syllable over the others within a word or name. Setting a set stress pattern for names can help keep your language from sounding like English with funny pronunciations.

In English, we learn which syllables to stress on a word-by-word basis. Indeed, different regions of the English speaking world can stress different syllables of the same word and names are no exception. Changing the stress pattern of word or name can change it’s pronunciation. For example, most non-natives will pronounce my home region of Oregon’s Willamette valley as WILL-a-met or-EE-gone, when it’s actuality pronounced will-A-met (to rhyme with “damn it”) OR-e-gun. Another example is the word “laboratory”. In American English, the stress is on the first syllable (LAB-or-a-tory) while in England, the stress is on the second syllable (lab-OR-a-tory).

Other languages are more regular. Hungarian stresses the first syllable, while Polish stresses the second-to-last syllable. Other languages can have more complex stress rules, depending on vowel placement within a syllable or length of syllable. My language slightly stresses the last syllable of a word.

You certainly don’t need to set a fixed stress pattern, but it can help make your language sound distinct

Next time: Pitch

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It’s a Brave New World — Guang Keshar

It’s been a long-time coming, but I’ve finally done it. After nearly thirty years of kicking the idea around (and thanks to the guys at the Gamer Lifestyle program), I’ve finally take the plunge and started my own small-press game company, rpgGM.com.

This is something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time now, but just never really was in a position to do before. At least for now, rpgGM.com will focus on publishing my own original game world, Guang Keshar. The world is going to be published for sale as PDFs in a modular format — that way you only have to buy what interests you. If you want something about the Great Houses and the ruling Council, you can buy that. If you’re interested only in the geography of the world itself, then that’ll be available too.Many of these smaller products will be gathered up and published as larger compilation products (with some new material thrown in for good measure 😉 ), which will give you a price break from buy each one separately.

Soon I’ll also have a newsletter going out dedicated to the development of this world. It’ll contain exclusive content, development news, sneak peeks at products, game world tips and much more. The first issue of this should come out the end of December or beginning of January. You can sign up for it now on the company website. The site will also have free information, company and product news and tips, as well providing a place for you to provide us with feedback.

I’m really excited about this and can’t wait to share my product with everyone. But don’t worry about loosing this blog — I’ll still be posting here at least once a week (I’m trying for twice, but we’ll have to see what time permits) with the same type of content I’ve been writing all along. The newsletter Beg, Borrow, and Steal will still be published, though I may have to go to once a month, rather than once a week.

[Sales pitch over, we now return you to our regularly scheduled ponderings 😉 ]

What’s in a Name? The Music of Language

Welcome to Day 2 of our series on creating a naming language."I love you" in several languages

Every language has its own particular sound. Japanese sounds different from Spanish and few people would mistake guttural German for tonal Chinese. Frequently, with just a little education, we can tell which language is being spoken, even if we don’t we don’t know a word of it. To me, each language has its own particular music and once I figure out the music, it’s easier for me to learn or create a new language.

Step to Your Music

Our naming language should also have it’s own music. What do you want your language to sound like, overall? Is it lilting and musical, straight-forward and down to earth, or harsh and demanding? What kind of people live in this area? Are they extremely poetic, which could lead to a fluid-sounding language. Or are they “salt of the Earth” farmers, who are more likely to create names that are practical and straight-forward?

The Beginning of Language

Your next step is to find out what letters give you that sound when spoken together. For example, Tolkein’s Elvish has a lot of l’s and vowel sounds, making it sound fluid and musical, while his Orcish is harsh and gutteral. Think about the languages you speak and find the phonemes1 that will give you the sounds you’re looking for.  If you’re still needing inspiration, check out some language learning sites on-line that have examples of spoken languages. I’d actually recommend listening to languages you don’t understand, so you can focus on the music of a language and not get bogged own in the words. What sounds do you hear that you’d like to use? Write them down phonetically in a way that makes sense to you.

The Sounds Take Care of Themselves

Every language has some phonemes or sounds (letters) that are more common than others. This is a large part of what gives each language its own sound. For English e, t, r, and a are among the most common letters used. In a language I’m currently creating, the most common sounds in the language are hard k, ts (like the Russian ‘tsar’), short a, long e, and m. Take your phonetic list and rank the phonemes in order of frequency. I usually go most frequent to least frequent, but you can use any method that works for you. Separate out the vowels and consonants into their own lists and rank them individually.

That’s it for today. Next time we’ll cover the importance of stress.

1pho.neme (n). any of the abstract units of the phonetic system of a language that correspond to a set of similar speech sounds (as the velar \k\ of cool and the palatal \k\ of keel) which are perceived to be a single distinctive sound in the language.
Meirram-Webster Online Dictionary

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What’s in a Name? Language!

Creating names can be one of the most challenging parts of creating a game setting. Sure, you can name things whatever happens to come to mind, but that can create names from all over the map (literally, if you’re borrowing names from the real world). You can end up with the Boxboggle river in the city of Sparrow Hill in the country of Wwoauntyz on Planet Q. While that kind of naming is common in the modern US, it doesn’t really help give players the feeling that your setting could be a real place.

street signs(Photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/philliecasablanca/ / CC BY 2.0)

Another option is to use words that describe something about the area. For example, Meadowbrook or Razorback Wallow. This is often a good choice. Because you’re using names from one language (usually the language your group speaks), these names often have a more unified field. They feel as if they come from the same culture and they can give your players an idea of the culture of an area.

There’s a third option, though. You can create a naming language.

What’s a naming language?

Unlike creating a full speaking language (which can be fun, but takes a lot of time and energy investment), naming languages have a few simple rules and can be created in an evening. Your goal here isn’t to create  an in-depth grammer and lexicon; it’s to create some rules about letter and sound patterns so that your names feel as if they all came from the same culture.

How to Create a Naming Language

Naming languages can be very simple to create. Creating full languages can involve creating new consonant and vowel sounds, as well as pronouns, grammar, sentence structure, standard word order … whew! Before you feel overwhelmed, remember that your sole purpose here is to create names. That’s it. You don’t need a complicated grammar or set of pronouns or whatnot. The names you’re creating don’t even have to mean anything (though they can, if you wish). You’re just looking for something that sounds internally consistent.

I’ve broken the process down into a series of steps, which I’ll cover next week over the course of several blog entries. These steps are:

  1. Decide what your language sounds like.
  2. Choose the most common sounds.
  3. Figure out the stress patterns of your names.
  4. Create tones.
  5. Determine sound constraints.
  6. Create an “alphabet” and pronunciation guide.

Other Sources

There are some excellent resources on line for creating languages, if you’d like more in-depth information. Here’s some of my favorites:

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“Where are we again?”: Creating Unique Fantasy Cities and Towns

Sometimes creating a believable city or town is one of the hardest parts of building an adventure or campaign. You don’t want all your towns to look the same and you definitely don’t want to get stuck in the generic “fantasy town”, consisting of a tavern/bar, inn or other lodgings, magic shoppe, etc.

Below I’ve gathered a list of web resources to help provide city building know-how and inspiration. Enjoy!

Here’s some listing of world-building sites who’s information can be adapted for city creation:

Related Posts:

City Creation: Kael Pathfinder Stoutpoppy, Swordsmith

Since the PCs aren’t likely to interact with Meadowbrook’s blacksmiths other than to have items repaired or commission new ones, I’m not going to spend much time detailing them.

Most Meadowbrook’s blacksmiths focus on creating practical items — horseshoes, plows and farming implements, iron nails and building tools, etc. Kael Pathfinder Stoutpoppy is the exception to the rule: he’s only swordsmith in Meadowbrook. While he can and does do other types of blacksmithing to pay the bills, his primary love is creating strong, beautiful blades.

Kael Pathfinder Stoutpoppy

Kael is a former ranger who settled down in Meadowbrook. While his home and shop are actually outside of the city proper, he and his wife, Janna, are frequent faces in town, especially at The Butter Churn tavern. While adventuring, Kael met and fell in love with Janna Stoutpoppy, a skilled fighter in the group he traveled with. When the two of them decided to retire and settle down, they chose Meadowbrook — Janna’s home town.

While Kael and Janna aren’t the only human-halfling couple Meadowbrook’s history, the match is unusual enough to raise eyebrows and start gossip tongues wagging. The Stoutpoppys had some difficulty accepting an human son-in-law, but Kael’s friendly, outgoing personality finally won over Janna’s parents. The rest of the Stoutpoppy clan, including Janna’s two sisters and her brother aren’t so generous of spirit and the divide has split appart the clan. Janna’s siblings have not spoken to her for the last three years. The couple are very much in love, but the situation has put a strain on their marriage; currently, the two of them are discussing plans to move to a larger city where they won’t stand out so much.

A skilled storyteller, Kael can frequently be found at The Butter Churn when not working. He’s frequently pressed to tell stories of his and Janna’s younger, wilder days.

Janna Stoutpoppy

Janna herself is much quieter than her husband. She’s friendly enough, but much more reserved and usually content to let her more outgoing half speak for both of them.

Her split with her family weighs heavily on her, though she does her best not to show it. She’s glad her parents have come around about Kael, but the fact that her siblings and most of her clan refuse to speak to her saddens her greatly. She also experiences some discrimination in the town; a few of the merchants, both human and halfling, refuse to serve her or Kael. She loves Kael deeply, but the situation is putting a lot of strain on her. She and Kael have begun to talk about moving to an area where there are more couples like them, something she’s not sure she wants to do. She feels torn by her love for Kael and her love for her family.

For her own part, Janna is an excellent fighter, extremely skilled at taking down opponents several times her size. She’s agile and intelligent, though very shy without a sword in her hand. Her shyness can come off as cold or haughty to those meeting her for the first time.

  • Kael Pathfinder Stoutpoppy, human ranger (AD&D terms: 10th level ranger).
  • Janna Stoutpoppy, halfling fighter/warrior (AD&D terms: 11th level fighter)

Note about halfling names in Meadowbrook’s world: Among halflings, property is passed down matriliniarly, from mother to daughter. Consequently, most husbands take their wife’s surname after marriage, adding it after their own. Kael and Janna followed this tradition, hoping that would help them gain more acceptence in Janna’s home town. Unfortunately, this hasn’t had the effect they’d desired.

City Creation: Hospitality

According to our demographics , Meadowbrook has two inns and ten restaurants/taverns/pubs and one of the innkeepers is a retired adventurer.

Let’s start with our inns.

The Inns

The most obvious choice would be to place one inn in Littletun and one in Bigtun. But since inns generally aren’t used by locals, and the river docks are in Bigtun, it makes sense that both inns would be located near the trade route. And rather than having one in cater to “littles” (halflings, gnomes, dwarves, etc.) and other to “bigs” (humans, elves, etc.), lets make both inns cater to both types of clientele equally.  Instead, we can have each of the inns cater to different income levels. So, our two inns are:

Marketstreet Inn

Catering to the working classes, Marketstreet Inn is run by Ellie Haymaker, a widow with two grown children — a son and a daughter — both of whom help run the inn. Marketstreet offers clean rooms for a fair price. The rooms are small and washrooms are limited to one per floor, but the beds are clean, if not the most comfortable. Ellie’s capable daughter, Maree, heads up the kitchen. The food choices are limited — stew, brown bread and cheese — but it’s warm, tasty, and there’s usually plenty of it. Ellie is the daughter of a traveling tinkerer, so she knows the kind of place working folk need when they’re away from home. She has an equal number of rooms for “bigs” and “littles”. Prices are by the bed, rather than the room, so frequently guests end up bunking with people they don’t know.

  • Ellie Haymaker — halfling innkeeper, proprietor.
  • Maree Haymaker — halfling head cook for Marketstreet Inn. Ellie’s daughter and her eldest child.
  • Norvin Haymaker — halfling stablemaster, handyman and bellhop. Basically, whatever odd jobs Ellie requires, Norvin does. Ellie’s son and her youngest child. Ellie still has a tendency to baby him even though he’s a grown man.

Ellie also employs a couple of housekeepers, a stableboy and a cook, all of them “bigs”.

The Golden Slipper

The Golden Slipper caters to more monied class of travelers than Marketstreet Inn. Run by an ex-paladin/knight named Piers Caldwell, The Golden Slipper offers quality service, rooms, meals — and charges accordingly. Much smaller than Marketstreet Inn, The Golden Slipper charges by the room and offers one washroom for every two sleeping rooms. Meals are cooked to order and often contain imported delicacies.

Piers is an honest, trustworthy and reliable man, who found the conduct code of a holy warrior too restrictive — wealth and the opposite sex proved to be too much temptation for him. After a highly lucrative career as a sword for hire (i.e., adventurer), he decided to retire to quieter surroundings. The Golden Slipper doesn’t bring in enough money to cover all of its expenses; Piers hopes this will change as Meadowbrook’s trade continues to expand. Meanwhile, he’s supporting the inn out of his own savings, which don’t look as if they’re going to run short anytime in the next couple of decades. He employs a large staff, including a “companion service” and a couple of low-level spellcasters; Piers uses magical cleaning methods to make sure the Slipper is spotless at all times.

Piers and Ellie’s mutual dislike of each other is well-known and frequently causes conflict within their guild.

  • Piers Caldwell, human fighter/warrior (AD&D 3.x: ex 10th-level paladin).

Pubs/Taverns/Restaurants

Meadowbrook’s ten eateries aren’t as differentiated as modern ones. They’re a cross between a pub/tavern and a modern restaurant. Six of the establishments are in Bigtun, with four (including The Butter Churn) in Littletun. Most cater to travelers and locals alike, but three remain local hot spots and two focus on the trader business. I’m only going to detail the most popular places.

The Butter Churn

The Butter Churn is the favorite spot for local residents. Located in Littletun, it’s run by Kari Tallfellow who inherited the business from her father. It’s been in her family for seven generations and she’s training her own son, Martin, to take over when she retires. It’s widely recognized as having the best food in all of Meadowbrook and the surrounding villages. It’s a family-friendly atmosphere and many of the locals gather here when they’re not working.  On Saturday nights, the Churn (as its known locally) hosts music and dancing.

  • Kari Tallfellow, halfling owner and proprietor
  • Martin Tallfellow, halfling, 14 years own. Kari’s son and assistant.

Wind on the Docks

In contrast to The Butter Churn, Wind on the Docks caters to an older, more transient crowd. Wind on the Docks is the front face for Madam Lillington’s brothel. Though it draws mostly from traders and other travelers just passing through, Madam Lillington’s is also a time-honored tradition for local adolescents seeking their first sexual experience. [I had originally stated that Meadowbrook didn’t have an actual brothel, just independent streetwalkers. I changed my mind because I wanted to set up the contrast between The Butter Churn’s wholesome, family focus and a more “adult” and less reputable establishment].

Madam Lillington employs both humans and halflings, though she does insist they be over the age of majority, which in this area is 14. Compared to some establishments in larger cities, the Docks (as the locals call it) is quite tame in the pleasures it offers. Most of her “staff” are out-of-towners escaping bad situations in their home ports, but some are locals. She employs both “bigs” and “littles”, mostly humans and halflings.

  • Madam Lillington, human proprietor and madam of Wind on the Docks.

Gorseberry Blue

Not all traders and travelers are lone adults who might seek companionship for a night. Sometimes whole families work the trade routes and there are always a few devoted clerics, paladins, and other travelers who really are just looking for a hot meal. The best location for that is Gorseberry Blue, which serves good food at reasonable prices. What it lacks in menu diversity, it makes up for in both quality and quantity. Of all the food places in Meadowbrook, Gorseberry offers the best combination good food, quiet atmosphere, and friendly staff and is the most popular spot for those just passing through Meadowbrook.

  • Samar Tanton, human proprietor and owner of Gorseberry Blue

Grapeleaf Inn (The Rats’ Nest)

Not actually an inn at all, the Grapeleaf Inn (known locally as the Rats’ Nest) has only one thing going for it — the food is cheap. Frequented by those at the bottom rung of the economic ladder, locals and out-of-towners alike, the Rats’s Nest definitely lives down to its very poor reputation. Still, if you’ve only go a few coppers to your name, you can get a hot meal here, as long as you’re not too picky about its contents.

  • Bear Strongarm, human owner and propriator.