PDA

View Full Version : DM Help What support do you use to create your world ?



Vodahim
2022-09-06, 05:33 PM
I'm starting to create my own world for D&D. (Only thing that I'm sure right now is that it would be fantasy).
It's not my first attempt so I already know some of my flaws and the first one is that I'm a complete mess when it comes to arrange my ideas.

I already get some advice but I wanted to know more about the different method that some people use, and also what are the Pros & Cons of such methods !

Also, I heard a lot about World Anvil, but I didn't find a video or article that I truly trusted.
Any feedback on it ?

Drakevarg
2022-09-06, 05:43 PM
Honestly? WordPad. Just open up a blank document, set the font to Comic Sans, and start writing.

I can definitely see how stuff like World Anvil can help formulate one's thoughts and move things in the right directions, but personally I've found formal systems put too much pressure to have a presentable product on hand right out of the gate. Worldbuilding is a messy, patchwork process that requires lots of drafts and springs off in unexpected directions as the ideas come to you. I find it easiest to get the ideas out, at least when laying down the groundwork, in as freeform a medium as possible.

Potentially even better than just a blank document, if you have people who will tolerate it, is to just infodump your ideas to an interested friend over a chat client that saves archives. That way you can parse out your ideas stream-of-thought, get live peer-review, and check back on those thoughts later to collate them into something a bit more formal. But the first step, before you make anything fancy or presentable, is to just get the thoughts out of your head and onto a reviewable medium.

PhoenixPhyre
2022-09-06, 06:05 PM
My world's gotten quite large and as it has, my toolchain has grown along side it.

Initially, it was just some notes on paper, sketched maps, and a plain-text document or 10 (I suck at organization).

Maps graduated to Hexographer (then Worldographer when it came out).

Then I created a blog-type website where I'd write articles about things and upload maps and other images. Mostly so I could find them later, because, as mentioned, I suck at organization.

Eventually, I migrated to a self-run wikimedia installation (I'm techy and like to have control) on a domain/hosting that I pay for. I've started to remake maps in Wonderdraft, because the old ones are ugly.

Various images are made in GIMP (photoshop-replacement), Inkscape (vector drawing), or various Microsoft Office products (for things like family trees). Non-public notes still go on paper or in Google Docs.

Currently I'm at over 800 wiki pages, with ~300 more that I know I need to make. And that first number has climbed...and the second hasn't dropped. And a lot need more work.

Yora
2022-09-07, 03:36 AM
Honestly? WordPad. Just open up a blank document, set the font to Comic Sans, and start writing.

Someone feeling really fancy here.

Pencil is good enough. :smallamused:

I generally start very simple: Making lists of all cultures, places, and creatures from fiction that I think are really cool and would be great to have in a campaign setting. Then I try to find some kind of common theme or general style in all of this that I want to pursue with the setting and agressively cross everything from the list that doesn't really fit with that style.
At that point you can already have a pretty good idea of where you can go with the setting.

Anonymouswizard
2022-09-07, 06:07 AM
Honestly? WordPad. Just open up a blank document, set the font to Comic Sans, and start writing.

Yep, basically this. I use MS word and generally don't bother changing the font, but basically this. Mostly because of regular pruning.

I also tend to start from the top down, work under the idea of 'less is more', and steal from everywhere. A limit of ten states and ten races. I know that people want to play their special snowflake half-modron race from their favourite sourcebook, but too many species makes everything too messy. Shadowrun got it right with ~7 (the core five, Ghouls, and Changelings).

Then I go through and prune as necessary. I have a setting that switched early on from D&D to Savage Worlds because I kept removing class sections that didn't fit the feel.

Martin Greywolf
2022-09-07, 07:00 AM
MS Excel or its derivatives work fairly well thanks to tabs, as do Google Sheets.

For a more complex worlds, use Notion (https://www.notion.so/). Its free subscription should be enough for you, and it allows you to create tables for such things as countries, NPCs, cities and such and give them custom data values. It's pretty much a WYSIWYG editor for databases.

Kurt Kurageous
2022-09-07, 08:46 AM
Start big. Create your big overarching conflict, something that may never be resolved short of level 16-20. Spin off lesser consequences of this conflict and how these consequences will manifest in the world.

Then...

Start small. One village/town where a simple, obvious, and small consequence has manifested.

Grow from there.

Saintheart
2022-09-07, 09:23 AM
Worlds Without Number has a pretty good procedure for creating a setting, and there's a free PDF which contains that procedure. Recommend.

Silly Name
2022-09-07, 09:45 AM
The way I usually create a setting is by drawing a map. Well, I usually start with a concept first such "a Swords and Sandals-style world" or "Arthurian Romance with fairies in a more central position", but the first actual, physical step is the map. I usually draw it by hand, then pretty it up by using Inkarnate or Worldographer.

It may be a world map. It may be a continent, or just one kingdom/nation. A few times I've started from a single city or fief.
From there, I start looking at what I've drawn: there's a river, here's some lakes, here are the mountains, and there's lots of forests... I start asking myself questions about every "big" geographic area: who or what lives here? What's intersting about this place? If my players where to have an adventure here, what would it look like?

I then name locales, trying to imitate believable naming patterns: if a town is named "Fiora", the river next to it shouldn't be named "Karkdrann", unless there's a damn good reason. I'll shamelessly steal from real languages and myths for names, although often altering the spellings a bit. behindthename.com and fantasynamegenerator.com are useful resources for this step.

Since I'm a nerd, I often draw coat of arms, flags and emblems for the organisations and polities of my world, usually using drawshield.net. This is also where I start asking myself the question of "who are the power players around here? What are the conflicts and alliances between them?"

At that point I usually move onto Recent History. I may pepper references to even older history here and there, but the main point of interest is, usually "why are things like they are now" and "what are recent impactful events" - i.e., a war between two kingdoms ten years ago is interesting because the people who fought that war are still around and its repercussions are obvious; the arrival of extraplanar fugitives seventy years ago is interesting because it's recent enough to not necessarily be the status quo, but also enough time for those fugitives to have had a sensible impact on the culture.

I tend to use Google Docs for writing things down, at least in their definitive form. Note-taking is usually done with pen and paper.

Drakevarg
2022-09-07, 11:05 AM
Someone feeling really fancy here.

Pencil is good enough. :smallamused:

Used to be. But everything changed when arthritis attacked.


Yep, basically this. I use MS word and generally don't bother changing the font, but basically this. Mostly because of regular pruning.

Comic Sans, for some reason, makes it easier to put thoughts to 'paper.' Probably because the informal vibes it has makes one less inclined to call upon their internal editor, which for me at least is historically a major problem when writing. On the first draft, taking thoughts out of your brain is the only priority, worrying about word choice and so on is only going to slow that down in the early stages. An idea that comes out ugly is better than one lost in the back rooms of your mind because you were too busy making the last idea look good.

Vodahim
2022-09-07, 02:50 PM
Thanks for your feebacks.
I feared that he wouldn't be as useful and easy to use as I was thinking.


I'm glad that the advise "Start big then Start small" is in order.
I discussed with a friend DM on this, he thought so too.

I actually use Google Sheet. Since I can share them like I want and that I can access them from anywhere.
But actually, I have a big folder with new "articles" that spawn in it every days (and I'm faaaar away from 300 articles right now !).

And when I try to "organize" (*Scream at the word in distress") I just lose time because I never put up something than suits me.

Pauly
2022-09-07, 04:18 PM
My starting point is the central concept of the world.

I’m currently building a world based on “steam trains powered by dragons”.

I then interrogate that concept with “How” and “Why” questions until I feel that there is a sufficient skeleton to start adding meat to the bones.
Why do the dragons agree to power the trains - for the gold and jewels.
Why do they want gold and jewels. Gold stores their magic aura and gems infused with dragon energy are used to make dragon eggs, with the jewel being the heart if the baby dragon.
How did humans and dragons come to work together. To end a war that had a high mortality rate for both sides and had been in stalemate for a long time.
And so on.

My next question is Where?
I build my maps based on real world locations. That saves a lot of time as it shows me where roads, towns, ports rivers, farmlands etc. are. I then manipulate the map, such as mirror imaging, rotating, stretching or shrinking until it is not immediately recognizable.
In my case I’m using a modified South America.

My final big question is What is the point of the campaign?
The party is running a train.
Then that leads to some further questions like.
Why aren’t the railways run by big companies? Dragons are jealous and no matter how many locomotives you own only one dragon will work with you at a time.
How do railways lunes exist/make money. They run like toll roads and users pay a fee per unit of distance traveled.

Once I have my high concepts fixed I then start filling out the details like political factions, history, playable races, religion, entertainment, commerce. However I only go into fine detail for areas that directly affect the campaign. For non-core elements I just give enough detail to be a plausible background, something I can build on if required.

Basically I work from high concept to detail

Quertus
2022-09-07, 06:21 PM
Wordpad? Pencil and paper? I used to just use grey matter, back before senility said “nope”.

It may not be helpful, but… I start big (like, beyond anything the players will likely ever interact with big), then go small, sure… but with an eye to, “is there a time and place in this world that would give the PCs plenty of room to Sandbox in numerous (and, hopefully, unexpected) ways?”. If not, I tend to scrap the idea in the cradle - but hopefully without throwing the bath water out with the baby. :smallamused:

gbaji
2022-09-07, 07:19 PM
So basically roleplaying in DragonRails? Sounds like fun!

Agree with the "start big; start small" model, but in three stages:

1. Draw/steal/modify a big map of the world. Where are the continents, oceans, etc. What is the shape/type of world? Disk sitting on a giant turtle maybe? Sphere floating in space (aka: a planet)? Maybe a ringworld? Orbital world? Whatever. Always good to set the broad strokes of the world and "other places" where "other things I haven't thought of yet" may exist, while maintaining some consistency across the board. This is also where you create the broad setting. Sword and sorcery? Gritty wild west? Post apocalyptic world? Future imperfect world? Are there laser beams and death rays? Computer AIs or powerful magical oracles? Figure this stuff out first.

2. Then focus on one part of that big world. Make that the starting point. Decide what kinds of people live there, what they do for a living, how they interact with each other. Basic stuff. Also draw a map of just the starting area, and place things on that map. Then fill in potential conflict points (assuming you're playing a game where the PCs are expected to encounter antagonists and deal with problems that occur in some fashion, of course). Which NPC groups like or dislike each other? How do they deal with this? What form do these conflicts take? You can probably start out with just a half dozen or so basic ideas of things that are going on that might provide interesting things for players to interact with off the bat and will do fine.

3. Finally, fill in specific details that your PCs will directly encounter. These will be their introduction to the active workings of your world, and serve as hooks for them to get into trouble/fun. Since you already have made note of the various factions/groups in the area, make up specific iterations of any conflicts that may logically arise. Then present these to the players. Some could be informational (you hear there are bandits/orcs/whatever raiding small farms and villages to the west), or propositional (someone offers you a job to do something for them), or situational (the PCs witness something directly, or get dragged into something by being in the wrong place at the right time, and may decide to pursue it).


These simple introduction adventures can whet the players appetites for a while, but don't be afraid to introduce some longer term plots in stage 2 (even retroactively). So maybe there's some big bad that's also operating in addition to the usual mix of stuff, and maybe the players gradually become aware that some of the things going on aren't just the usual things, but have a greater, dare we say it, diabolical, purpose. This can launch them off onto a larger adventure story arc that continues in the background even while they take on the odd jobs, local adventures, and whatnot and occasionally pops back to the foreground. You can and should focus on where the players choose to go though. Writing "ahead of them" as they go. If you have already covered the broad strokes in stage 1 and 2, it becomes much easier to just fill in stuff based on what the players choose to pursue.

Obviously, that last bit is very much dependent on the players at your table and what they want and enjoy. But I've found that if you maintain that indirect relationship between scale and detail, you can have a world that feels very large, with lots of places to go and things to do, while not requiring vast amounts of prep to manage.

As far as tools? Maps drawn on paper (can absolutely be scanned in or use a tool to draw them for printing). Use a word processing doc and just start writing. As far as organization goes, always reference any group/location at least twice (ie: in two or more different docs, for cross referencing). A location should have a doc talking about it, where it is in the larger scale, and what and who is in it at the smaller scale. Each doc down the scale should reference the larger scale it fits into and anything contained within it. So if Town X exists in Kingdom Y, then Town X should be mentioned in Kingdom Y's doc. Town X's doc should detail what's in Town X, including map, interesting locations, groups, politics, etc. Then, each doc detailing those locations, groups, political factions, etc should detail themselves and that they are in Town X.

This way, you're not fumbling around through docs trying to remember where on earth you wrote down the name of the second in command of the Trade Guild. If you first introduced it in Town X, and made the mistake of detailing it in that Town's doc, but then later had the players also deal with the Trade Guild in Towns A, B, and C, and maybe they spend more time in Town C now, and haven't been back to Town X in ages, are you going to remember where you wrote that detail? Nope. If instead, you stopped writing the details about the Guild in the doc for Town X at "there is a chapter of the Trade Guild in town located at this spot", and then wrote another doc called "Trade Guild", in which you detail the stuff about the Trade Guild, what it does, who its prominent members are, and where they have chapters, then you now have accurate record keeping. And if they travel to Town Z, you should have references both in Town Z's doc as to whether there's a chapter there (which you may very well just have decided and wrote) *and* a reference in the Trade Guild's doc (which again, you may just have decided when they chose to go to Town Z for the first time, and edited the doc to reflect it).

This may seem tedious at first, but trust me, it'll save you a massive amount of head scratching, mistake making, and having to retroactively correct stuff at the table because you made a mistake and forgot something that should have been where the players were but wasn't.

Duff
2022-09-07, 07:59 PM
Honestly? WordPad. Just open up a blank document, set the font to Comic Sans, and start writing.


Excellent advice. I use sets of documents, one set for history, one for each geographic areas I'm writing about. Others for religion, trade networks and other topics of interest
If you write about areas, make sure to use informative file names. To use real world, you might write about "El Rehab, Cairo, Egypt, Africa"
I also use folders as part of my organising. For example a folder of "
new monsters"
That and Paint. Sketch out some maps of how things fit together. They don't have to be pretty, or exact and you can already start using them, given PCs probably don't have detailed knowledge of the world either

Pauly
2022-09-07, 08:33 PM
So basically roleplaying in DragonRails? Sounds like fun!
.

A bit like that, but in my world the railways are for fast transport of high paying customers, kind of like airlines in the 1930s. No self respecting dragon will haul freight. I’m going for the 1930s art deco streamliner look for the trains,

The big item I forgot to include in my world building step is:-
Write down the question before providing the answer.
Sub point - give yourself sufficient space to provide multiple answers the question - your first idea is rarely the best answer to the question.

Grod_The_Giant
2022-09-07, 08:45 PM
For pretty much any creative task, I start with paper and pencil. My ADHD brain tends to jump around and go off on tangents when I brainstorm, and I've found that the process just works better with paper (though I will sometimes use a random map generator to get some inspiration). I won't switch to a computer until things have started to settle in my brain, usually after I've filled a few pages with deranged rantings written at random angles and connected by a tangled mess of lines and arrows.

If you're looking for a more specific technique, might I recommend the "fractal world-building" approach I lay out in STaRS?
Step 1: Premise
To start off, you've got to identify the area you’re filling in. What is it? What’s the gimmick? What makes it unique? “It” can be anything from a theocratic trade city to an abusive household, but you can’t come up with interesting details until you have a framework to attach them to and a central idea to give them unity.

Step 2: Plot
The next step of world-building is come up with overarching plot elements, things that will cause conflicts and provoke stories. Your plots might be physical threats, such as an impending alien invasion or a resurrected Dark Lord. Or they may be something more nebulous, such as "the King has no heir" or even "the city is sliding into corruption."

Plots should be scaled appropriately for whatever level of the world you're building—an alien invasion is a mighty big threat for a single city, but an unruly ghost is probably too small.
Not every plot will wind up as the focus of a campaign, or even a single session, but they should all have the potential to be. And even if the game goes a different direction, the plot should still be moving forwards, influencing the rest of the world.

You don't need to come up with too much detail. You should have some idea of what's going on and who's involved, but that's about it for now—nothing needs to be really fleshed out unless the Stars are actively interacting with it. For a good, dynamic setting, try to come up with at least three plots for each level of the world you flesh out.

Step 3: Place
For every plot, you'll want to come up with at least three places that are involved. These places may be critical to the plot's progression, or they may just exist to show its effects. If your plot is "invading orc tribes," your three places may be an orcish war camp, a human border fort, and a village that had recently been subject to a raid.

Again, you don't need too much information at this stage—a name, a rough idea of where it is in relation to other places, and perhaps a one-sentence description.

Step 4: People
Finally, for every place, try to populate it with at least three people. The leaders of that place—mayors, generals, merchant princes—are certainly good candidates to flesh out at this point, but they shouldn’t be the only people you come up with. The goal of this step is to have characters for the Stars to interact with, if and when they visit the place, not to figure out who's in charge of events. That means you should have characters ready at every level of importance. For example, at a military fort, you might note the commanding officer, a captain who deals with civilian mercenaries like the Stars, and a friendly trooper who always seems to know what's going on.

As with everything else in the process, you don't need more than a name and a one or two-sentence description of their role and personality—just enough that you can portray that character on short notice. You can always go back and flesh them out more if they look like they're going to become an important recurring character.

***

Zooming In
Whenever you're not satisfied with the level of detail in your world, pick a place and zoom in. Repeat the four steps, using the chosen place as your new premise. If you had a kingdom, pick one city and develop it further. If you had a city, flesh out a neighborhood. Keep the original plot in mind as you write new ones, but feel free to introduce new subplots and side-plots to go along with it.

False God
2022-09-10, 01:30 AM
Random map generator.

Print it off.

Detail it in from there, quests, politics, peoples, etc...

sktarq
2022-09-12, 01:56 PM
I usually start with a legal pad and just start letting out ideas. . . With a focus on themes, moods, conflict, images, ideas, etc at first. lots of mini lists in corners for things like nation ideas, little blurbs, whatnot. lists of optional rules/splats etc I tend not to like crossing out or erasing at this point as ideas get edited out of the working process but later the reason they got cut itself gets cut and I want to put them back in etc so I just keep it all. Basically work the idea, kneading it kinda, until I I have the vibe I want.

Generally once I have a few pages of this loose brain work I start to work in excel/excel clones. It is good at lists, I can add comments to various cells. Try to work out things like demographics or economics math when I come to that and can do things like devote a tab to an example town if it so hits my fancy. And I find things like demographics and economics very helpful in driving ideas of development. Can make lots of little boxes around a group of cells that contain an idea-boarders are your friend. It is also easy to grey out ideas if I think I need I will need to edit something out but am not sure. Overall it is easy to organize my thoughts well in excel et al IME. And if you want to get really pushy you can even (with google to help usually) form auto-generation on one tab from lists in another tab. So lists of hair colour, race, class for characters, or traits for towns,...then copy and paste the info to a more final doc if you are worried about stability. Excel is also good at keeping highly flavorful but not core stuff quickly at hand....What cultures use what kind of building materials, staple foods or flavors, domestic animal breeds, favored sports etc so that when when characters are there they can really get very immersed and be clear that they are in place X while place Y feels very different....which helps make the world feel big and distinct etc.

if I start getting a working idea and starting area for the PC's then I start looking to see if World Anvil will be helpful. World Anvil is great for detail work, polishing, keeping track of large amounts of data etc. But I find is better once you have a skeleton. That said I have been building worlds in a mix of notebooks, excel, and sketchpads since before World Anvil and the like were available so I may be a bit set in my ways.

For games like World of Darkness that are set in fictionalized versions of the real world Googledoc can make map overlays. Where clan/covenant/pack/court territories can be marked out, important locations pinned, and distances measured in ways I find very useful. And can even mark new additions if want to add things. It also has layers and multiple copies of maps so you can get LOTS of info down without it getting overloaded.

So Basically start with Paper and pen for idea development. Excel for refinement. And then a mix of totally new Notebooks, Sketchpads, Excel and WorldAnvil

TyGuy
2022-09-12, 11:03 PM
Onenote!
Onenote!
Onenote!

Free! Fast! User friendly!

Organize to your heart's content with a notebook that can contain several sections, each with a useful label. Then add note pages galore to each section.

Arrange & rearrange your sections and pages based on priority/ significance/ relevance. I often have a page at the top with notes on a prepared combat or dungeon for the day's session. Then when I'm done with it, I bring it down to the bottom so I can reference it if need be, but it's out of the way.

Create links to note pages or specific sections. A little time consuming for my tastes, but it's an option! So my lazy butt might have an idea buried somewhere and I can't recall where. And I didn't reference/ link it. Search function! That's right, it will search a specific range too, so you can do the whole notebook and see the various sections/ pages you mention that random NPC!

It's pretty good with cut, paste, copy. I often use it to fine tune magic item descriptions (with spell check). And then when I'm satisfied, cut/ paste right into my foundary vtt description. I also use copy note page generously after throwing down all my brainstorm ideas or stolen ideas. I then prune the excessive ideas in the copy, knowing if I go too far I have a backup. This is how I created my custom pantheon. First I grabbed all the pantheons (copy/paste) from forgotten realms, greyhawk, and individual races. I had several tables of pantheons, I copied the page so I wouldn't have to do that again if I didn't like the curated product I ended up with.

Images work beautifully. I once uploaded a map of the setting's continent with hexes of a good size for granulation. Then I created a list next to it with desired travel distance/times of common/important routes. This way I was able to reverse engineer the scale of the hexes.

Speaking of images, screen caps!! Easily one of the most amazing aspects of onenote is that I have it linked on my phone! My gosh this is so useful. I can screen cap phrases, inspirational character art, someone's homebrew and stick it into a new page or my brainstorming page. And that brainstorming page combined with mobile app is the most incredible thing. At work and get an amazing idea? 10 seconds later and it's in my brainstorming page. In the car? Throw down the key words while at a red light. Being able to jot while outside prep sessions has been invaluable.

I love how easy it is to create tables for organizing thoughts. I love how easy it is to rearrange. I can take a bullet point(s) or row(s) in a table and drag it(them) up and down in order. I can make different blocks of notes and rearrange those in different configurations. I can decide a note page is better suited for a different section and send it over.

It's the best organizational tool I've used, hands down!

LibraryOgre
2022-09-13, 11:29 AM
Google Docs, with separate documents for various things.

The full document for this (https://kenzerco.com/2022/02/28/travelers-companion-shadesh-west-book-2/) is 17 documents of races, classes, monsters, and setting info. It's backed by 3 working documents... one of outlines for the different sections, one recording every monster common to the area, and what regions within the area they're likely to appear, and a bunch of research notes (excerpt from books and websites that I need to reference often).

I'm working1 on another book, same publisher, same world, that's currently got Research Notes, an area map with MS paint markup, a clean area map, an outline, and two drafted sections.

Using Google Docs over a second word processor keeps me almost entirely in one program... I can have everything open in different tabs for quick reference, including PDF books that I'm using and website references. Bookmarks are in a single folder on my taskbar, so I can find them again if I need them ("How hot is my example city in Mustering?"). I've got some general documents for the world and system in their own folder, so they're available across projects.

And I can work on them on a number of computers, or even my phone, as I need.


1 Oh so slowly, but they've got 3 more from me, plus the rest of Shadesh West yet to publish

john toliver
2022-09-20, 06:42 AM
answering to your question:see i guess if you are really messed up so lets make it simple for you and dont go for MS word and or any website but take a start with a paper and pencil and firstly think of things that you want in your fictional world then make a list of major important things like it could be whatever thats upto you then try to arrange the things in a order when the major things are set then try to give a finish to your story
i hope it will help you out

Alcore
2022-09-20, 01:17 PM
For programs once upon a time i used Microsoft Word. My current computer has issues and is unwilling to use it. The main reason my ideal program is Microsoft Word is because it seperates the pages into pages (unlike wordpad's continuous white expanse).

First page is always devoted to a table of contents. It was not always up to date but I always marked the chapters/sections that have been edited so I know just how far I can go down before page numbers become faulty.

Second reason; it counts my words in the bottom right. When I could see the words I would track just how much I wrote and push myself to write more down.


For maps I use hexigraph mapper. Its free, user friendly and great when you actually want consistent distances. Is the PCs want a map I boot up MS paint and "hand draw" a likeness of my hex map.



As for support of the world itself... a theme.

My current world; a fairy-tale.
once upon a time there was a good king.

animorte
2022-09-20, 01:35 PM
Everything I read, everything I watch, and everything I experience somehow finds a way to inspire me.

I would like to incorporate that concept from that movie/book/show/etc. into this area of one of my adventures or characters.
Or the other side of that. I don't want this concept to shape anything about what I'm trying to create or accomplish.

Ashiel
2022-09-23, 04:53 PM
I'm starting to create my own world for D&D. (Only thing that I'm sure right now is that it would be fantasy).
It's not my first attempt so I already know some of my flaws and the first one is that I'm a complete mess when it comes to arrange my ideas.

I already get some advice but I wanted to know more about the different method that some people use, and also what are the Pros & Cons of such methods !

Also, I heard a lot about World Anvil, but I didn't find a video or article that I truly trusted.
Any feedback on it ?

I would actually go in the opposite direction from some of the other advice here and recommend starting small and working your way outward. This method is mentioned in some detail in the 3.x DMG on building campaigns. This video by Questing Beast on the "Gygax 75" (https://youtu.be/d3Vm7Hzp4e4) gives a really good overview for this method as well. It makes it a lot easier to build and flesh out something that's very good for running games often for a long time. As a bonus, you can do it multiple times for different campaigns and then link your micro-campaigns into a larger world (which is mostly how I have ended up with my homebrew campaign setting over the years).

Some of the benefits for doing it this way is...


It's easy to manage. You don't have to have everything figured out at once.
It's quick. You can actually homebrew some stuff and have a game up and running quickly. If you're comfortable with it and have some experience, this could be as little as minutes or even effectively instantly on the fly.
It's flexible. You can sculpt the campaign as you develop the lore and it's often easier to get the players involved and/or impacting the setting when everything isn't nailed down ahead of time.

GreenDragonPage
2022-09-23, 07:06 PM
I love OneNote. Just a huge blank canvas that you can fill up with whatever comes to mind, which is especially great during the early part of the world building process, before things have solidified fully. The way OneNote allows you to organize your notes is also really helpful once things have solidified.

I have heard Notion is also a really good tool, since you can make links really easily.

northernbard80
2022-09-25, 08:03 PM
Any word processing software will do but don't limit yourself to computers. Carry around a notebook or even an audio recorder of some kind (yeah, I'm old-fashioned). If an idea for a capital city, a dangerous stretch of land, a bandit kingdom or so on springs into your mind, record it quickly!

There's plenty of online generators that can give you the names of towns, NPCs, taverns, etc. Look at existing publishing settings too for inspiration like Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, Eberron and more.

Actual historical research can help. Put aside LOTR, Shannara, Discworld, Game of Thrones and all that - try reading up on the Dark Ages, the Middle Ages, feudal Japan and other eras for ideas to see what they were like. Wars, famous battles, rulers and more can give even more ideas.

Duff
2022-10-04, 05:46 PM
Re notes-on-the-run, I regularly email myself for this reason