Outline:
The players build their world together. It’s generally agreed that all elves are a**holes.
This was done in the same session as the Part4a recap, and took just over two hours.
Set Up
The idea was this: We were going to build the world map and lore starting with the player’s characters (Aki, Vanya, Jackal) and backgrounds and build out from there. Since Domovik’s player wasn’t able to make it, we left a space on the map for him to fill in later. Each player started with 3 hexes to build their area of origin around.
The only details I had about the world so far were:
- There had been a recent attempted rebellion/claim to the crown that had been brutally crushed by Queen Highbright.
- The use of skyships is common and the technology is 17th to 18th century, a steampunk vibe (often with gnomes acting as the tinkerers that create new mechanical contraptions, with the aid of cantrips to fuel them.)
So far, the players had been exploring the wintry northern fiefdom of Krvistania, where they were dealing with a vampire threat. The map I’d created was the following:
For the world building game, however, we dramatically zoomed out and started with this:
Krvistania was now just 1 hex at the very top, with an area roughly the size of (mainland) United Kingdom completely blank.
From this point, using questions and answers about the realm and the character’s backgrounds, as well as a few dice rolls to decide on things like mountains, coast lines and so forth, we built the map and some general lore notes together. By the end of the two hour session, we’d decided:
The realm is called Isilmë by the elves (“Moonlight” according to Tolkien) or Gyron by the orcs.
- The land of Isilmë/Gyron used to be an orc land, until the elves and humans invaded 500 years ago, massacring the orcs that lived there. The remaining orcs were forced into the desert to the south.
- Humans are the dominant species.
- The (declining) elves are the power behind the humans, arranging royal marriages and the realm with an elaborate, Kafkaesque bureaucratic machine.
- Queen Highbright is half elf, half human.
- The rebellion was an attempted human uprising against elvish rule.
- Mythological creatures such as gorgons, dragons, phoenixs (phoenixi?), basilisks and so forth have all been hunted to extinction or near extinction/exploitation.
- There is one minotaur that forms the centrepiece of the yearly arena tournaments in the capital city, but otherwise lives in a labyrinth there.
- Beastlings – human/animal hybrids – are common, but looked down on generally. They’re not hunted, exactly, just considered a lower class.
- The central mountain range is known as “The spine of the world”
20-30 years ago, the region that Aki grew up in to the south (a kind of orphanages where beastlings are sent) was destroyed by cultists (? details pending). The list of names Aki has been carrying is him trying to reconnect with other beastlings that he grew up with – but he keeps finding that they’re dead.
Vanya, meanwhile, grew up in a castle ruled by elvish matriarchs
Jackal grew up in the south, near to the desert where the surviving orcs had been forced to retreat 500 years earlier.
There was also an area of outstanding natural beauty, a Lake District called The Jewel of Isilmë – an area which somehow Vanya, Jackal and Aki had all managed to independently get themselves banned from. (GM’s note: I forget now why I was being so petty that I decided the players were all banned from this area – but I’m sure I had a very good reason for it. I’d never be petty just for the sake of it, after all. Honest. Anyway it made me laugh, and I’m now curious as to what story each player will come up with for the shenanigans that explain how they got themselves banned from the area)
Players got to work with scissors and prittstick, first designing their 3 hexagons which were then added to the overall map.
The world map looked like this by the end of the session (okay, I added a few extra bits)
And with the magic of scanning and colouring, currently looks like this:
There was a lot more detail in the lore that the player’s created, so hopefully at some point we’ll be able to write it all up.
For now, though, have to say I was very pleased with the way the mini world building game worked and with a few tweaks it’s on my “to publish” list.
Hi!
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