World Building, Kingdoms and Empires

Without a doubt this is my weakest area of development. For some reason the kingdom scale eludes me. So I recruited some assistance from Rob Conley. He is going to write a more extensive blog about this in the future, but I will tell you what little tidbit helped me the most. Take your map that has all the major terrain marked. Copy it ten times or however many times it works for you. Draw the boundaries of your initial kingdoms, date the map. Then date the next map 50 or 100 years ahead then redraw the boundaries. While you are doing this you can come up with why there are conflicts, where the barbarians are raiding in from or some horrible mass of creatures has devastated the countryside. If you have a war going on just roll a die to determine which side wins. Redraw the lines. Continue to do this until you have a visual history of you current kingdoms.

Now this is a very simplified version of what Rob does. He adds in religious influences, immigration patterns and how many brown cows have spots. But I like the idea of the different versions of the map telling a story.

In most of my campaigns the regions the players tromp through are small in scale. I had a three year game where the players never left the kingdom and mostly stayed in one barony. But this new world mixed in with the old places I've run will be combined. I think having an overview of your world can be great but not essential depending on how you play. I've seen some worlds where it is so expansive that there is little in between the places of interest. Or as Rob calls them the "Howling Vastness of Emptiness".

Next stop on my World Building tour will be Baronies or small principalities which I am much better at creating. Thank you Rob for you advice for this one.