The Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding is out, and we have a special discount code for the ProFantasy community: go to the Kobold Store and use the code CC1PFWB0 at checkout to get 25% off any of the following titles:
Below is an excerpt from the Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding: Wolfgang Baur’s essay “How Real is Your World? History and Fantasy as a Spectrum of Design Options.”
Real Worldbuilding
There are at least two clear traditions in fantasy worldbuilding: the real worlds and the pure fantasies. Fans of the two approaches are usually split and sometimes react violently to the wrong flavor. As with all matters of art and creative endeavor, this is a matter of subjective judgments and personal preferences. The quality of the execution carries a great deal of weight as well.
To put it simply, the competing traditions are these: some fantasy worlds are built more closely on real European legends (such as Conan’s Hyborea, or an Arthurian variant, or Golarion’s many Earthlike cultures), while others are built more clearly on a premise or a conceit (Barsoom or Dark Sun or Spelljammer). A few fall somewhere in between, but let’s pretend for a moment that these are entirely different schools of thought with respect to worldbuilding.
Hard Historical Fantasy
For the historical fantasy settings, I’m thinking of things like Jonathan Tweet’s Ars Magica, Clark Ashton Smith’s Averoigne, Chad Bowser’s Cthulhu Invictus, Sandy Peterson’s Pendragon, Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos and the related RPG, White Wolf ’s World of Darkness, and Scott Bennie’s Testament. These are excellent fantasy worlds, with a specific character, a specific time period, and are built on the firmest ground of realism you can imagine for something that is still clearly a fantasy setting.
This approach is a powerful shortcut to familiarity. It makes these worlds easy to explain to players, and Hollywood uses this formula often as well (“It’s the Wild West—but with UFOs!”). This makes it easy to get buy-in from players or readers, and it simplifies your workload and enriches your storehouse of reference material.
But the style also creates its own limits. Once you are committed to King Arthur and the Round Table, it’s tough to work in Cthulhu (though hardly impossible—Mordred and Morgan Le Fey were clearly cultists!). Once you are discussing wizards and medieval Europe, it’s hard to suddenly bring in wuxia martial arts. A known setting can be bent pretty far, but must never violate the mysterious line where disbelief creeps in. The approach often taken for this sort of design is to declare that the history of the world is well known—but that there is also a secret history, known only to vampires, or Templars, or wizards.
Because this clarity of focus makes the game easy to explain to others (“It’s
the Crusades with magic” or “It’s the Chinese Three Kingdoms with secret Lotus monks”), know in advance that your audience may be small but intensely loyal and likely includes many experts in the period in question.
“Real Fantasy”
Which brings us to the world that is clearly full of the echoes of history and reality, but divorced from it to a greater or lesser degree by its fantasy conceits. It’s one step more fantastical, if you will; its magic is bigger and brighter and its history and sense of earnestness about itself is one step less, while still respecting the roots and traditions of fantasy. There’s more Cthulhu, more fireballs, more giant robots, bigger bets on dragons and monsters and the fantastical coming into the open, rather than the Secret History approach.
To quote particular examples, I’m thinking of settings like Robert E. Howard’s Hyborea, Jeff Grubb’s Al-Qadim, Suleiman, Kenson, and Marmell’s Hamunapta, my own Midgard campaign setting, Bruce Heard’s Mystara, David “Zeb” Cook’s Kara Tur/Oriental Adventures, Tracy Hickman’s Ravenloft, John Wick’s 7th Sea, Games Workshop’s Warhammer RPG, and Greg Gorden’s TORG. Some of these lean more heavily on the real and some more on the fantasy, but in each case, the designer clearly has a shelf full of real-world reference books. Others, like Roger Zelazny’s Chronicles of Amber, Richard Baker’s Birthright, and Paizo’s Golarion, all lean fairly heavily on Earth and its cultures, so they seem to belong here as well.
Each of these owes a great or lesser debt to the real world’s cultures and societies, and the usual points of departure include the world’s great mythologies and legends, such as the Egyptian mythos, the Norse sagas, the 1001 Arabian Nights, the tales of Stoker and the stories of Atlantis and the Song of Roland, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, pirate tales, the tales of Baron Munchhausen, and the Holy Roman Empire. They’re all built on the assumption that the real world is worth embellishing, and that fantasy is a matter of making real places or real legends more exciting. If dragons were real . . . life would be more exciting.
In each case above, it’s impossible to imagine that fantasy setting without the body of lore that undergirds it. As the designer of such a setting, you must understand what makes that mythology tick, and why it appeals to a modern audience. Once you understand it, your work is to make it both accessible and playable by lifting the best parts of it and making them irresistible to gamers. The more of the obscure points you know, the better off you are.
At the same time, it’s very easy to get trapped in excessive research that players won’t care about, and your prose and descriptive detail can become dry and academic. In a historical fantasy, that’s more acceptable than in a real fantasy, where the goal is not so much “simulation plus a little fantasy” as it is “experience an improved version of the tales.”
That’s right: your goal is to do a better job on the Arabian Nights, to improve on the Brothers Grimm, and to swipe the best bits of ancient Egyptian lore from 5,000 years ago, and make it compelling reading for teenagers, college kids, adults of all ages in the 21st century.
No one said it was easy.
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Here’s an update with three more videos in the series.
Overall these first 5 parts cover creating your own symbols and catalog for old-school mapping, which of course is helpful for any project where you need your own custom symbols.
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Mark Fulford and I formed ProFantasy Software back in 1993. At that time, Mark sold CAD systems (computers with pre-installed software) and I had just finished university. We are both keen gamers, and the idea of combining Mark’s knowledge of CAD with roleplaying to create campaign maps was attractive. The difficulty was finding a CAD program which was even vaguely close in price was the main problem. Enter Mike Riddle, creator of AutoCAD and later FastCAD and EasyCAD. He was willing to take a risk on us, allowing us to have a license to FastCAD at a price which enabled us to resell it to gamers, and only 200 or so licenses all told. We simply removed dimensioning, an essential feature for CAD designers, but not so important for gamers.
Over the years Mike has rewritten the software for his customers, but also taking into account our customers and ideas, improving the interface and functionality for both standard CAD users and cartographers. Next week, for the first time, Mark and I will be visiting Mike in person out in Phoenix, partly to come with new ideas for the next version, but mainly because we’ve never met despite long conversations and creative endeavours over nearly 20 years. One other person who worked with FastCAD is Peter Olsson, who then created most of the code for our add-ons and added buckets of functionality to the core program. Peter has worked in the ProFantasy offices and also with Mike in person, and he’ll be joining us.
It’s a long-delayed meeting, and I’m looking forward to it.
[STOP PRESS: Mike Schley, who has created a new overland style for CC3+ lives in Phoenix, and we’ll be meeting him to discuss future cartography projects.]
Related Sites
The history of CAD and Mike’s company Evolution Computing
[Ed: This is a map created by Rigtje Schootstra, Leviathus on the forum]
Hello everyone!
It’s world map time! These maps are from my project Lion Head. The world is called Eterna.
Below the first map, made with Campaign Cartographer 3 (using the Mercator Style), which is based on my hand drawn map (see below this map). The position of the continents is a bit different than my original drawing, but I had to fit them in the two spheres without shrinking the map too much. Most of the place names and political borders are still placeholders.
The map I drew in Photoshop. Here you can see the names of the continents more clearly.
One of the things I like most with making maps is when you have to decide where your different countries and cities will be placed. But how can you do this in a convincing way? Where shall you put your cities? As always we have to look at our own history and learn.
If you look back in our history nearly all early cities started out close to water. Before we had good roads waterways were the highways for travel and transportation. To be able to start up a city you needed a surplus of goods and food, so not everyone needed to work. So that some people in the community could start doing the administrative tasks to keep it all together. Living close to water made those things easier to happen.
When that happens a smaller tribal village can evolve into something larger, a city, and in the end a great kingdom or empire. Of course this description is very simplified, but still you can say that this is the foundation behind the growth of a society. Maybe you have to add in things like learning to write, minting coins and technological advancements in building techniques. But without a surplus in production those other things will never kick off.
So how can you use this knowledge in your mapping?. Well when I make my maps I usually wait to plot out borders for countries and their cities until all the terrain is done. When the terrain is done I try to locate places in the map where larger cities might lie. If you look at the example map below I’ve marked out some locations with red circles. Those places are where I probably would put the larger cities in the map.
But not all cities are located close to water, so where should you put the rest of the cities?. To find out this the next thing to do is to draw roads between the large cities. When you’re done have a look at the map for crossroads, crossroads are typical places for a city or town. A place where people travelling to and from different locations meet, and goods can be sold. In the example map below I’ve added some roads and cities at the crossroads.
We now have a good base for our kingdom with some logically planned cities and towns. Next step is to continue adding in more towns, but this time towns that might not feel logically placed in the beginning. When a kingdom continue to evolve other more rare resources gets more and more important, like gold, silver, iron etc. Try to add towns in places close to where they can acquire resources for the kingdom. Also think of how the goods will be transported to the main towns. If you place a small town in the mountains where they mine silver and you have a river close by they would probably found another town next to the river so they easily can transport the silver, instead of transporting it all by the road. In the example map below I’ve added in some towns where they can collect resources.
You can continue this way and add in more and more towns. After adding the towns you add in more roads, more roads means more crossroads that leads to more towns. If you try to build up your map this way the placing of your towns will feel logical which will give you a better and more believing map. And while mapping you might even come up with an idea or two for an adventure.
[This map was created and this article written by forum user anomiecoalition.]
Mapping has become one of my favorite escapes from the drudgery that is graduate school. Whether it’s developing a mystical environment from scratch or recreating a classic adventure, I look forward to spending a few hours playing around with CC3. Lately it’s been the latter, and I’ve found quite a few gems mining my mini-library of TSR adventures.
This particular map is a reproduction of a “Buried Temple” encounter in the “Master of the Desert Nomads” module (X4). Our adventures leave the comforts of a desert oasis to investigate a recently unearthed buried temple – Once inside they’ll discover all manner of nefarious creatures, but should they survive, the rewards will be well worth the effort.
The most challenging aspect was trying to find a way to depict areas that are both above and below ground on the same map. I spent a great deal of time (and got lots of great suggestions from others on the Profantasy Forums) messing with my underground section. After creating my underground walls, I multipolied the area outside the walls and placed that shape on my Background sheet (which sat below my wall sheet on the list). From there I applied a subtle edge fade inner effect so that the sand was slightly covering the wall. I then multipolied the area inside my underground wall, applied my sand fill to that shape, and then added a transparency effect to that sheet. My hope was that these two techniques would give the view the impression that this area was underground.
After that, it was just a matter of dressing my dungeon utilizing various symbols from the CSUAC and textures from CGTextures.com. I also created a bunch of sand dune sheets (edge fade inner and glow effects) to muddy up the background. I’d be lying if I said that I was completely satisfied with the final product, but I think its human nature to demand more of yourself. I made a lot of mistakes with this map, but I learned even more. ..And I can’t wait for my next opportunity to start the cycle all over again.
If you’re not tired of my Desert Maps, you can see more in full resolution on my blog: http://drunkennerdery.wordpress.com/
Mark Wolnik, a fresh member of the ProFantasy community offered to write a few sentences about his initial experience with the Campaign Cartographer 3 and we gladly accepted. Here are his words. Thanks, Mark!
Since my youth, one of my favorite parts of reading fantasy books and playing fantasy games over the decades, has been poring over the maps that add that extra amazing amount of immersion. I would marvel at the skills needed to draw something in a manner that looked like a gifted and patient elven hand was at work here.
On Xmas Eve I treated myself with buying CC3, the SS1 Overland Fantasy Symbol set, and the Tome of Ultimate Knowledge. With my rudimentary skills, I set out to create a map for my guild.
By watching the tutorial videos, and following selected parts of the manual, CC3’s powerful mapmaking system features became easily understandable and useable. Within 3 days I had my first finished map, that although was far from perfect, I felt was reasonably presentable – I was hooked!
The next day (Dec 28th), wanting to improve my map making abilities, I decided to buy the Annuals package. There was a glitch from my end with Paypal, and accidentally 2 orders were placed – I was a little aghast since it being between Xmas and New Years, and my prior experiences with online merchants and financial transactions have been dubious at best, I thought it would be several weeks at least, before I could hope to see a return of the additional $249.00 accidentally billed.
Much to my surprise, and delight, my email to Ralf was answered that day (it was around 8pm his local time) with reassurances that all will be made good – and indeed the additional transaction was credited back immediately.
My experience with ProFantasy has been nothing short of excellent on every level – be it the high quality of CC3 itself, the explicit and helpful manner in which the tutorials are created, and the commitment and service in looking after their customers.
Thank you so much!
Mark Wolnik
And as a special treat, here is the very first map that Mark created with CC3:
Downloads from ProFantasy make great gifts. As the buyer, you don’t have to do the actual download yourself. Instead, you can give the recipient some simple download details that are included in your online receipt. These details allow the one receiving the gift to download the software and documentation themselves, at anytime and anywhere.
The download details are available to you as soon as you complete your order, with no waiting around or having to be in for deliveries. They don’t include pricing and you can send them by email or print them out for a card or to put in a gift box. You can make a wrapped present out of a download!
Download delivery has no media to worry about losing or damaging and we keep orders safe on our systems so that you can retrieve them whenever you need. We use Amazon’s Web Services infrastructure to make sure our software downloads are very reliably available worldwide at high speed.
Step by step, this is how you can give downloads as a gift
Choose your items and place your order.
We offer some great starter bundles for users new to our software. At the checkout, choose delivery by either download or download + shipped media.
As you complete your order, our website sends you a confirmation email and a link to your online payment receipt.
Looking at the receipt, next to Serial Numbers, click Send to email.
Moments later you’ll receive a second email that includes the download details for your purchase. These are the details your recipient needs. You can forward the email, print it out or simply copy the key details into a card.
In the payment receipt there’s a very tempting Register button. Don’t click it! As this is a gift, leave registration for your recipient.
Real Worldbuilding
Downloads from ProFantasy make great gifts. As the buyer, you don’t have to do the actual download yourself. Instead, you can give the recipient some simple download details that are included in your online receipt. These details allow the one receiving the gift to download the software and documentation themselves, at anytime and anywhere.
