In the interest of better scalability and data sharing, I’ve decided to consolidate the individual B/X Tools into a single interface I’m calling the Sandbox Construction Kit (SCK). The idea is to create a single, master framework that lets me add new tools seamlessly – the benefit to users is having everything in a single application.

The updated wireframe for the Settlement Generator is shown above and in addition to the more consolidated display, you’ll see some functional improvements as well:

• Left-hand sidebar contains all tools in their respective categories – consider this a roadmap of sorts.

• Each tool has 3 main parts: Configure, which lets you set parameters for whatever you’re generating; Current Result, which is the current output of the random generator; and Session History, which lets you save and export results for future use.

• Users can add or delete results in the Session History and save it locally, so you could create a number of settlements, for example, and save them all to a single history file to pull out when you need them.

I’m also moving output towards JSON, which has two advantages: (1) It’s a common and relatively compact file format you can reuse, and (2) it allows me to create custom source data for the generators. For example, the SCK ships with the seven canonical classes from B/X. However, I could create a JSON file to include the new classes in OSE Advanced Fantasy or BX Options Class Builder, all without “hard-coding” the data into the application. As a user, you could then create your own custom “classes” JSON by pasting in only the classes used in your setting. Same model applies to monsters, spells, magic items, encounter areas, treasure, etc.

In practical news, the SCK will launch on itch.io as a PWYW tool, but essentially free. Patreon supporters fund this for the benefit of the OSR community, while those on the Builder tier also get beta access, custom tables, and exclusive Patreon-only releases. Paid members at any level will receive periodic polls to vote on what tools are developed next.

The existing Settlement Generator and Foes & Fortunes tools will still be available, but any updates or feature enhancements will be applied to the Sandbox Construction Kit.

This coming week, I’m refactoring the application’s file structure and dependencies to support the wireframes. From there, I’ll migrate the Treasure Generator, NPC Generator, Settlement Generator, and Monster Database from Foes & Fortunes in that order. Keep an eye on this space for progress updates.

As always, let me know if you have any questions, comments, or concerns. Thanks again for your support!

Quick note to let you know that I’ve broken out a free version of the Treasure Generator, which you can access here: https://welshpiper.com/tools/treasure-generator/

The tool lets you pick a treasure type, generate a hoard, and spit out the hoard’s gold piece (i.e. XP) and encumbrance values. The free version lets you copy results to your system’s clipboard.

Full version of the Treasure Generator is found in our Foes & Fortunes tool, available free to our Worldbuilder tier members.

As always, thanks for your support!

-Erin

The Settlement Generator is a web-based tool for B/X-style games that lets you create villages, towns, and cities for your setting.

What it does:

Create new villages, towns, and cities on the fly

Edit settlement data, including probabilities for services and infrastructure

Create detailed NPCs by class and level or generate random results

Export data in multiple formats

Saves in browser — no internet connection or account needed

Built with OSR philosophy: fast, flexible, faithful to B/X mechanics. Perfect for quick settlements at the table, random NPCs on the fly, and building campaign-specific locations.

What it does:

Import/export monster databases (CSV format)

Search for monsters by HD, terrain, type, abilities

Create new monsters and auto-calculate THAC0, saves, XP, HP

Generate random B/X treasure (types A-V)

Export stat blocks in multiple formats

Add custom monsters and notes

Saves in browser — no internet connection or account needed

Built with OSR philosophy: fast, flexible, faithful to B/X mechanics. Perfect for quick lookups, custom encounters, treasure generation, and building campaign-specific monster variants.

Includes CSV database of B/X monsters + Open Game Content monsters from Old-School Essentials Advanced Fantasy.

Welcome to the conclusion of our Patreon’s first month of activity! Here’s what we’ve produced for our supporters:

All Patreon Members

Each month, we’ll provide free worldbuilding tools and content to Patreon members of any tier:

• The Implied Setting: Thoughts on how the B/X rules guide worldbuilding for B/X games
• NPC Generator: Generate random NPCs for your B/X game
• Trid Gazetteer – Introduction: Overview of the World of Trid, our B/X setting
• Trid Gazetteer – Geography: Global map and cartography conventions for the World of Trid

Paid Patreon Tiers

This month, we focused on developing the World of Trid Rules Tome, which is an addendum of to the classic rules specifically for use with Trid. The following content is available to all paid Patreon members:

• Trid Rules Tome – Introduction: Overview of the World of Trid Rules Tome
• Trid Rules Tome – Anti-magic: Introducing anti-magic to the B/X ruleset
• Trid Rules Tome – Weapons & Armour: Arms unique to Trid
• Trid Rules Tome – Cavern Stirge: A subterranean cousin of the common stirge

Next month, I’ll post updates as soon as they are published (though there will always be an end-of-month roundup). For March, expect further work on the World of Trid Gazetteer and Rules Tome, as well as feature updates to our browser-based Settlement Generator tool.

In the meantime, let me know if you have questions or content requests. Thank you again for your support!

This isn’t to say that such rules must be complicated, and this tends to hold up for most OSR games, which favour “rulings over rules” (i.e., players and Referees are encouraged to follow the spirit of the law rather than the letter). We’ll start digging into the OSR implied setting through the lens of the Principia Apocrypha, perhaps the best summary of what Old-School Renaissance play is all about. Of particular interest to our goals are these OSR tenets:

• Open World: The setting contains varied environments and challenges through which characters freely pursue their goals, which can be altruistic or self-serving; players have free agency over their character’s actions, which ultimately serve to guide the setting’s development as Referees create encounters to facilitate the players’ priorities.
• Exploration-centred: Characters are encouraged to advance in level, usually through the accumulation of experience, which is very often quantified by treasure value; acquiring gold is how a character becomes more powerful in the setting.
• Random: Referees are encouraged to build the setting using random tables, which has the immediate advantage of saving time and the auxiliary benefit of driving innovation through the integration of unexpected results.

In its most basic form, the implied OSR setting needs to accommodate searching for treasure, wherever and however the players want their characters to do so. To make it fun, the Referee must set engaging challenges before the players. The more powerful the players’ characters, the better their chances of navigating and overcoming these challenges.

Truth told, this describes a lot of TTRPG settings. In the World of Greyhawk, characters search for treasure so they can become powerful enough to search for greater treasure. The Forgotten Realms are similar, though with arguably more world lore cohesion. Dark Sun had a rich history that created present-day challenges, but under the hood it was about searching for treasure in a post-apocalyptic desert world. Same with Spelljammer (searching for treasure in space), Eberron (searching for treasure in a magitech world), Mystara (searching for treasure in a high-magic world), etc.

But while these examples all support the core goal of character advancement through challenge, the nature of those challenges revolve around a world-spanning theme (post-apocalypse, space, magitech, high-fantasy, et al.). These settings actively spell out the conditions for play—there is little, if anything, implied at all.

The B/X Implied Setting

The Cook, Marsh, Moldvay version of B/X D&D, published by TSR in 1981, suffers no such limitation, possibly because it had no official setting until the publication of the adventure module X1: Isle of Dread. And even then, that setting was only sparsely introduced.

Isle of Dread included a brief overview of the Known World, and many of the places described came from author Tom Moldvay’s own campaign, co-created with Lawrence Schick. These entries are great examples of the OSR mindset at work: brief, conceptual, and thematic, they provided enough information for the reader to imagine—correctly—who lived there and what went on, but they were so happily lacking in detail that the reader could simultaneously imagine—with equal clarity—their own how’s and why’s.

This approach suits the OSR Implied Setting model perfectly: Instead of starting with world hooks (like in Greyhawk or Dark Sun, for example), the implied setting starts with the rules. Think of it as reverse-engineering: The rules describe such-and-such a condition and we, as Referees, are tasked with creating an environment whose history justifies that condition.

And, when you read carefully, the B/X rules establish a great many conditions. For example, character race is synonymous with character class, so we must consider what it means for humans to have their choice of four classes while demi-humans have only one. The rules tell us that 1st-level clerics cannot cast spells, though the efficacy of divine magic “proves” the gods are real. We know that characters are meant to explore ruins for treasure, suggesting past civilisations who were not only prolific builders, but also wealthy. The standardised coinage and existence of a “common” tongue implies a level of social cohesion. The 3-point alignment axis packages the struggle between Law and Chaos as borderline existential.

Then, upon these foundations are scattered wonderfully specific assertions, gathered from descriptions of classes, spells, monsters, and magic items. High-level fighters can become Barons or Baronesses, implying an established peerage. Neanderthals attack ogres on sight, though we don’t know why. Unguarded treasure always contains silver—not sure about that one, either. Elves are immune to ghoul paralysis. Your guess is as good as mine.

The Power of Suggestion

This is how the implied OSR setting works: The rules describe effects, you determine their causes. The beauty of the implied setting is that you already know the outcomes, but you have complete creative license to explain them.

Why are elves immune to ghoul paralysis? Here are three possible explanations:

• Ghoul paralysis has no impact on Fey creatures, so elves are immune, as are sprites, pixies, nixies, and dryads.
• Ghoul paralysis is a mental reaction to fear, and elves are able to suppress the fear response.
• Elves made an ancient pact with an immortal patron of the undead/underworld/death; immunity to ghoul paralysis is their end of the bargain.

Regardless of which option you choose (or invent), you’ve just converted a game rule into setting lore. In my World of Trid, I created a fourth option—ghouls are undead elves—and this helps me build other parts of the setting. By implication, elven ruins are bound to shelter ghouls, elves may actively search out and destroy ghouls, ghouls probably occupy “bogeyman” status in elven lore, and maybe there’s an elven ritual to put ghouls to rest.

Note that I’m not terribly interested in those detail right now. My goal is more foundational. By assigning a cause to a rule condition, I’ve created lore to engage my players with the setting, all without changing mechanics or inventing anything new that would imbalance play.

Final Thoughts

Ideally, a cover-to-cover read of the B/X rules (all 128 pages) reveals everything the implied setting needs to support, and you can go into as much or as little effort into incorporating them into your world’s lore. Fortunately, you don’t need to create an exhaustive catalogue of these implications—they’re already built into the rules, so they’re essentially “represented” whether you highlight them or not. However, figuring out reasons why these implications exist is a great way to start developing your world hooks or, at least, setting your B/X world apart from any other.

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Most referees are familiar with the concept of hooks – they’re ideas that “hook” the players’ interest and engagement, and they serve on multiple levels. There are story hooks that introduce plot and conflict, typically motivating the characters into action – either to get something they want or keep something they have. There are character hooks that distinguish NPCs, monsters, allies, and foes, always relative to the players’ interests. And there are world hooks, which inspire indirect action by representing unique or unusual aspects of the setting itself.

Fittingly, world hooks permeate the entire milieu. In this context, a world hook is a concept that sets the world apart from others, making it a unique and distinctive place to play. To work well, world hooks must trickle down into all aspects of the setting: culture, history, religion, magic, class availability, etc. The hook also plays a dual role, which is to provide a catalyst for conflict (read: adventuring opportunities).

Creating Hooks

At their core, world hooks are nothing more than creative concepts that you think would be interesting, either as ways to set your world apart from others or to justify unique challenges for the players. At this early stage, it’s helpful to use a somewhat formulaic approach to flesh out not only what the hooks are, but how they impact the setting. I suggest this format:

Hook: Describe the condition you want to see in the world. This can be a natural, social, cultural, or divine event or state that has a direct or indirect impact on people, especially characters.

• Manifestation: How does the hook show itself in the setting?
• Cause: At a high-level, describe the events or circumstances that created the hook. At this early stage, you may not know all the details, but it’s important to take a stab at how the hook came to exist because the causes may be things that the PCs can still interact with (should they want to alter the hook’s impact).
• Impact: Describe how the hook affects the setting, especially characters. Because world hooks permeate the entire setting, it’s impossible to outline all the outcomes created by the hook, but you can paint in broad strokes here for a start – you’ll have an opportunity to refine as you continue the world meta effort.
• Story seeds: Jot down any notes about the hook, its cause, or its impact that you can draw upon when creating adventures or background plots.

As you continue developing the world meta, you’ll find that hook impact has a very long reach and becomes paramount as a result. For example, if you decide that magic works differently than described in your rule system, the hook can impact magic-using classes, their choice of spells, how spells are cast, magic item frequency and use, encounters, and combat tactics. These are all fine – your hook can be as broad or deep as you want – as long as you account for how the hook affects character abilities and player choices.

As a result, don’t be afraid to reshape your hooks as you continue your world meta. If the impact is too great, create some limiting conditions (magic is affected, but only at certain times or under certain circumstances). Alternatively, change the cause – a battle can lead to the fall of an empire or the rise of a new one, or it can be reduced to a skirmish with different actors.

One thing you don’t want to do is burden your hooks with detail. As always, avoid detail and keep things simple; creating details paints you into corners that aren’t helpful and will actually constrain your creativity at this early stage. For now, it’s important to know that the hook exists, and here’s how the world lives with it. Start with what the hook is, then work outward from there – again, you’ll have plenty of time to refine your hooks as you go (trust me, this will happen), and keeping your hooks relatively high-level now will make that exercise easier.

Examples

To illustrate the format above, here’s a roster of the hooks for my own World of Trid setting:

While dominated today by humans, Trid has seen the passage of previous empires.

• Manifestation: Before human civilisation, there was the Elven Republic, and before that was the Saurian Empire, and before that lived the ancient Builders. There are other ruins, of course – abandoned dwarf halls, strongholds ravaged by time and warfare, and even whole towns left behind as their inhabitants sought safety from hostile raiders or harsh elements.
• Cause: Ruins litter the Continent. They’re roughly dated by the ages of their respective civilisations: The Builders dwelt in the Before Times, the Saurian Empire is a hallmark of the Dim Ages that followed, and the elven ruins date from the Age of Fable. .
• Impact: Humans in the current Age of History explore and plunder these ruins for treasure, magic, and secrets. Power brokers across the Continent commission adventurers for such missions, and of course, this feeds the advancement machine that characters of all classes operate.
• Story seeds: Ruins of any sort can spawn just about any dungeon adventure. In addition to plundering ruins, adventurers might figure out the secrets of the ancient Builders, recover fabled artefacts, or even encounter living dwarfs deep within their mountain fastnesses.

Arcane magic is tainted and unreliable.

• Manifestation: When Trid’s second moon appears, arcane magic has unpredictable results or may not work at all.
• Cause: When the elves first contacted Trid’s deities, they made a pact to eschew arcane magic in exchange for divine spells. Sometime during the Age of Fable, the elves broke this pact and the gods punished them by withholding divine magic and sending the asteroid moon Opho, which disrupts Trid’s natural magical field.
• Impact: Casting arcane magic while Opho is visible requires rolling on a table to check results. Depending on the roll, arcane magic may work as expected, may work with diminished effect, or may cause the caster to permanently “forget” the spell they were trying to cast. Arcane magic is thus viewed with suspicion – few trust it and fewer risk learning to wield it. By contrast, divine magic is considered the “proper” kind of magic to use; Trid’s inhabitants tend to take their religious views seriously.
• Story seeds: Naturally, all manner of effort is expended to remove Opho’s unpredictable effect on arcane magic. Some scholars focus on ridding Trid of the asteroid moon while others investigate ways to minimise its impact on Trid’s magical field. Until they succeed, the results of mis-cast arcane magic, the approach to arcane magical effects, and the plots of “fizzled out” casters can complicate any adventure.

The continent is overlaid by a network of non-functional teleportation portals.

• Manifestation: Ancient stone ziggurats dot the landscape in remote places. Assumed to have been constructed by the Builders during the Before Times, these ruins shelter portals that, if properly operated, enable teleportation across vast Continental distances. However, these portals are inoperable, either because knowledge of their use is lost or because they’ve suffered some damage.
• Cause: No one understands why the Builders created the portals, though it’s assumed their need was to travel quickly. Historians note they were used to great effect by the Saurians as they expanded their empire in the Dim Ages.
• Impact: The ziggurats are ripe for exploration, not only to discover more about the Builders, but also to study the portals in aid of repairing them.
• Story seeds: There is no shortage of power brokers, researchers, entrepreneurs, and opportunists who would see the portals operate again.

Final Thoughts

One thing to note with the examples above is that they leave all sorts of loose ends. For example, who where the Saurians, what was their empire like, what happened to them, and what treasures did they leave behind? Same for the elves and dwarfs. What are the exact effects of Opho on arcane magic, and will the the teleportation portals ever function again?

All good questions, and my advice is to jot them down and move onto the next part of the world meta – as you define the world themes, cultures, etc., you’ll make connections that build off of the hooks and alter their scope. This is normal – worldbuilding is an iterative process, and this is part of the exercise.

As a final note, remember that world hooks by themselves won’t engage players. It’s a hook’s effect on player decisions that make it engaging. For this reason, limit yourself to 2-4 world hooks – anything more than that becomes distracting to the players and difficult for the Referee to manage.

Perhaps not. Running B/X out of the box is good enough for a one-shot, or a string of loosely connected one-shots, but as the characters advance, you’ll introduce new challenges, new monsters, more powerful magic items, and higher-level spells. There’s a risk that the power creep can significantly alter the setting’s foundation. And – to be sure – while the characters’ rise to glory will have an impact on the setting, it should not drastically alter the world meta.¹ Ultimately, the campaign setting should “feel” like the same place that the characters began to explore at 1st-level.

Think of it this way: The player characters will face increasingly tougher challenges as they advance in level. As kobolds and giant rats give way to ogres and dragons, the characters gain access to more powerful abilities necessary to overcome these more powerful challenges. From a worldbuilding perspective, the setting’s framework (i.e., the World Meta) must accommodates great challenges alongside weaker ones as well as powerful abilities alongside the mundane. In other words, the player characters should expect the setting to be consistent as they expand their horizons within it. As a worldbuilder, you must account for this range in both the genre you play and the rules that support it.

N.B. This article contains affiliate links.

Genre

Past articles have covered campaign genres, meaning (in this context), a particular style of play characterised by consistent themes and trappings. Basic/Expert rules are custom-made for fantasy environments, though it’s worth thinking about what flavour of fantasy you want to serve up:

High-fantasy: Magic and wonder rule the day. Spells and magic items aren’t just for adventuring – they’re used as a proxy for technology, so magic will power transport (airships, teleportation), provide amenities (the old “fire-elemental-in-the-furnace” trick), and dominate offensive and defensive capabilities at all levels. As a commodity, magic is likely more available to the affluent, and people on the whole are better off with food, water, shelter, and healing. The Forgotten Realms is a good example, but BECMI Mystara probably sets the best tone.

Low-fantasy: Life is gritty and magic is rare enough to be viewed with suspicion or fear. Problems are solved through muscle, economies are based on hard goods, and spells or magic items are significant game changers. Even magical monsters are rare, and when encountered represent a significant challenge. A good example is Martin’s Westeros, where Valyrian steel, obsidian, zombies, and dragons are enough to shift the course of events in an otherwise mundane (non-magical) world.

Implied Setting: My personal favourite, somewhere between Low- and High-fantasy, the implied setting is an environment whose tone and trappings are dictated by the conventions set in the rules. For example, in B/X, adventurers explore dungeons and gain levels by amassing treasure, so the setting’s past requires rich empires that have fallen to ruin. Clerics get spells from deities, so to some extent, the gods are real. Neanderthals attack ogres on sight – not sure why, but the something in the setting has to justify it. Implied settings vary by ruleset and are probably the closest to an “out-of-the-box” experience (read: least amount of tweaking) the Referee can achieve.

There are other sub-genres, of course: horror, apocalyptic, so-called grimdark, etc. But these tend to be specific and may be better suited to areas of your world instead of the entire world.

Rule System

Again, we’re focusing on Basic/Expert D&D, so for purposes of this series, rule system is somewhat of a foregone conclusion. That said, there are subtle variations. First is whether to use B/X, a B/X clone, or a B/X-adjacent system. While I’ll default to Basic/Expert proper, here are other options to consider:

Basic Fantasy RPG: A B/X clone with minor changes (ascending AC and cleric tweaks), plus separation of race and class. Basic Fantasy provides a great many add-ons and modular bits to customise your ruleset, though such additions must be chosen carefully to ensure setting cohesion.

Labyrinth Lord: A B/X clone with some noticeable tweaks, Labyrinth Lord smooths out cleric spell progression and allows some classes rise to levels above their B/X counterparts. Has an “advanced” companion volume to add more class options, spells, and magic items.

Old School Essentials: A B/X clone, the OSE Classic Fantasy tome is essentially identical to original rules. Offers some optional tweaks like ascending AC, THAC0, and minor updates to clarify ambiguities in the original. Also has an “advanced” companion volume with more classes, how to separate race from class, spells, and magic items.

BECMI: The 1983 reboot of B/X. The first two volumes (Basic + Expert) are largely in line with B/X. However, the Companioin, Master, and Immortals volumes greatly extend the B/X canon with general skills, weapon mastery, dominion rules, siege warfare, and a great many more spells, monsters, and magic items. The Rules Cyclopedia is a single volume that consolidates most of the BECMI material (excluding much of the Immortals set). Of particular note is that, while B/X characters max out at 14th-level, BECMI goes to 36, which brings massive implications to the world meta.

Shadowdark: A recent OSR system very much compatible with B/X but with some helpful 5e inclusions (e.g., ascending AC, rolling with advantage, et al.). Relies a lot on attribute checks, and spells are cast with a roll. While I have not played Shadowdark, it’s been favourably described as having an OSR feel with 5e accessibility, and the kids seem to like it.

Select the rule system that best emulates the “feel” for the world and the pacing you want for your games. There’s a temptation to assume that a “fantasy” rule set can run any “fantasy” setting, but consider how the system handles combat, character advancement, spell casting, the use of skills, race-as-class vs. race-and-class, spell selection and even terrain types, as they all have an impact your world meta.

The last consideration here is about house rules. Not that you need a full and complete list of your setting’s house rules now, but you will need to figure out how the house rules you choose impact the genre. For example, if you plan to use a critical hit system that allows characters to dispatch foes with a single lucky strike, consider how it will impact character survivability, challenge level, weapon selection, etc. All of these have subtle influence on your world meta.

Final Thoughts

Your world meta starts with the genre you’re playing and the rules you’re using to support it. If you have a lot of experience running games, you’re probably already familiar with how the system impacts the setting, and our best advice is to stick with what’s familiar so you can frame your world concepts in the most accessible way possible.

The world meta contains the core narrative elements that permeate all (most) aspects of campaigns within it: what makes the world interesting or unique, what overarching conflicts exist and how they might motivate adventurers, the role of alignment, the cultures within the world and what they get up to, magic, religion, monsters, and character roles. Think of this as a precis for your planet.

As such, the world meta is sparse and skeletal (as suggested by our last installment about Worldbuilding Laws). Because they apply to the entire world (and not just one region), you want to stick with broad statements, bullet points, and very little detail. Creating this document serves two purposes:

1. It helps you organise your thoughts so that you cover all the necessary bases and connect your ideas into a coherent whole, and
2. The finished result serves as a reference to ground your creativity when you start drilling down into specific areas later.

Like much of the top-down worldbuilding exercises, creating a world meta is an iterative process. Even though you’re painting in broad brush strokes, you’ll conjure up new ideas as you write, which will prompt you to update sections you’ve already completed. This is normal, expected, and even encouraged – you’re creating the touchstone for everything you create later, so include the concepts you want to play out on the table.

Disclaimer: My original intent was to provide a high-level overview of each aspect of the world meta in a one article, but as I progressed, it became clear that there was too much information for a single piece. As a result, I’ll devote a post to each concept in the weeks to come. For now, I’m providing the outline and overview of each section to set expectations and to give you an idea of what to start thinking about as you tackle this effort.

Genre & Rule System

Clarify the genre or sub-genre for your world. This series assumes some flavour of “fantasy,” but that could include high-fantasy, low-fantasy, grimdark, etc. The choice affects the tone of your world meta, but also your players’ expectations. Rule system often goes hand-in-hand with genre, and again, we’re assuming B/X (or a B/X-like solution). In addition to the system, list any supplements that will be used to run games in your world (you can also start a list of house rules, but add to it only as they come to mind, otherwise, you’ll get bogged down).

Deep Dive: World Meta – Genre & Rule System

World Hooks

Figure out what sets your world apart – what makes it unique – and how does that impact player characters? Hooks provide some environmental condition that affects how characters plan an execute; they can be subtle (e.g., arcane magic is capped at 5th level spells), readily apparent (e.g., casting arcane spells damages the environment), or somewhere in between. It’s useful to identify 1-3 high-level hooks and add detail as you complete the rest of the meta. As a side note, the “World hook is that there is no hook” won’t pass muster – it sounds like it could work, but it has the same effect as running a campaign of one-shots and gets boring for both you and your players.

Deep Dive: World Meta – World Hooks

Themes

Your hooks’ ripple effects impact your setting’s history, its cultures, and the social motivations of those within them. These themes create a “feel” for what living in the world is like. If, for example, arcane magic is destructive, people will fear it, and every culture will have its own view on the threat it poses (to their way of life). You want 4-6 thematic undercurrents in your world, and it’s best to think about them from the player character’s perspective: How do the themes affect class choice? How do they inspire character motivations and player engagement? Do the themes have a role in what Lawful, Chaotic, or Neutral alignments mean?

Deep Dive: World Meta – Themes

Geography & Terrain

It’s assumed that your world will support all Earthly terrain types (unless a hook says otherwise, like the entire planet is a desert). However, it’s likely that your hooks and themes have evoked some specific locales in your mind. You’re not making a map at this stage – instead, you’re making a list of special areas you want to include so that when you do create your map, you can accommodate them. For example, you want a vast wasteland ravaged by arcane magic and dotted with ancient ruins, a pristine archipelago of islands, and a jungle with dinosaurs – bonus points if you can add a reason why characters would go there.

Deep Dive: World Meta – Geography & Terrain

Cultures

Make a list of your world’s social races. Cultures are less differentiated by their species than by their beliefs, values, and the customs that attend them. In this step, you’ll make a list of your world’s prominent cultures. Again, details are scant, and the high-level view will include only the culture’s name, their in-game race (human, elf, dwarf, etc.), their preferred terrain or environment, an Earth analogue (if applicable, e.g., “Sasanian Empire, c. 5th century AD”), a constructed language basis, and one thing they’re known for (e.g., shipbuilding, the quality of their steel, innovative technology, cannibalism, whatever). These scant details will form the basis for how fill in your world map later in the process.

Deep Dive: World Meta – Cultures

Religion

More accurately, deities and other focal points of worship. This is a fascinating area of worldbuilding because, as in our own world, it is often the source for what becomes the codified rendering of intuitive social values. But it is also a minefield – you will be tempted (and yea also shall you succumb) to adding “just one more” detail as you devise gods, devils, their servants, their ways of worship and propitiation, their portfolios and their rules, their clerics, and their holy days. We’ll get to all that in time, but for now, you’ll take each culture and assign them to mono-, poly-, or pantheism, identify what that culture values, what their clerics are called, and whether they can cast spells. This is also a good time to brush up on the difference between Cultural vs. World gods.

Deep Dive: World Meta – Religion

Magic

Even when it doesn’t play a part in a world hook (as it often does), magic can be challenging aspect of worldbuilding because it offers us the Paradox of Choice. To reduce the pull of detail, the world meta needs only a few inputs here: What magic-wielding classes are available, what is the source of their magic, , how do they acquire and release their powers, and what – based on the world’s hooks and themes – is their cultural role? Frequently, the best source to start with is your ruleset – make sure you understand how your game system handles magic, then decide how your world supports it.

Deep Dive: World Meta – Magic

Monsters

Create a list of monsters that live in your world so you know what your player characters will be up against. This is a little bit of detail, but it’s easy to populate the world meta. Start with the monsters included your rule system, excluding any that don’t support your world’s themes or geography. From there, you can add monsters from other sources or of your own devising.

Deep Dive: World Meta – Monsters

Characters

This is a simple list of what classes players can choose from. The list should include the classes from the rule system that you as Referee will allow, as well as any new, setting-specific classes you’ll add to the mix. For each class, note its name and where in the world it’s popular – could be everywhere, or, for new classes you introduce, more geographically limited. Finally, include the class’ social role – it’s “mission” in the society around it – to help define its functional niche in future campaigns as well as why a player would choose it.

Deep Dive: World Meta – Characters

Tag and Crawl

The final step is a crucial culmination of all the previous work. Assuming you haven’t already done so, you’ll give your world a name. Next is a quick tag line – a punchy phrase or statement that encapsulates the entire world for new players. Finally, you’ll create one of my favourite elements, the opening crawl that fully engages the player in three short paragraphs. I’ve touched on the tag and the crawl previously, but seven years on, I have a bit more to offer.

Deep Dive: World Meta – Tag & Crawl

Final Thoughts

I foolishly thought I could give the world meta a quick treatment, but I want to give this important world artefact the attention is deserves – crafted thoughtfully, it will serve as the common ground for every campaign you run. Next week, we’ll start our deep dives. Until then, I hope the above is enough to get you thinking about all the pieces of your top-down world.

Before we get into what to create and how to create it, I’m asking your indulgence to I can lay the groundwork for why we’re taking the approach I’ll be shortly guiding you through. There is a method to my madness, and I’m strongly suggesting you adopt that madness, too.

Less Is More

I’ve talked about the Less is More approach before, but it bears repeating here in the context of worldbuilding.

In practice, “Less is More” is a cobbled mixture of:

• John Maeda’s Ten Laws of Simplicity, which state that Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful,
• The Law of Triviality that says People within an organization commonly give disproportionate weight to trivial issues, and
• Parkinson’s Law, which asserts that Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.¹

Combining these three laws into a singular guide suggests that the important work should be simple and timeboxed.

For worldbuilders, these shake out to core practices:

Simplicity: The top-down world exists in a particular state, which is the backdrop for the campaigns and adventures in which the players’ characters will participate. Defining the current state is the primary goal of this entire exercise, and the more complex the causes contributing to the current state, the more detail you have to provide. This makes the current state harder for players (and you) to understand and engage with, and it also requires more work from you, which is a good segue to…

Triviality: The top-down approach focuses on the macro view of the world, and while small details at the micro level will be important later, they can wait until they’re relevant to a campaign. This isn’t to say that any detail you dream up should be discarded. Instead, put those ideas in a “parking lot” of things you can flesh out later. For now, direct your efforts to building the skeleton.

Time: The top-down approach can take as long as you allow it to, but pressure to start campaigning quickly will prevent you taking months and years. Plan and execute in terms of weeks by timeboxing your efforts. Give yourself enough time to create each bone in the skeleton, then move onto the next. Again, feel free to jot down details as notes, but don’t fall into the trap of finalising them before you have the whole macro view (trust me – they will change dramatically as you work through the process).

In practice: In my world, I wanted a divide between elves and humans, and I needed an historical event that put these two races at odds. At a high-level, I decided that the elves once governed a republic that included human territories. Initially, the republic prospered, but the humans eventually rebelled, ultimately shattering the republic and severing their cooperative union. The reasons humans rebelled are not clear to me yet, nor do I know how the humans managed to overthrow their elven rulers, or what happened in the immediate aftermath. I have some ideas that I’ve put in a notebook to flesh out later, as I continue developing the macro view. But for now, I know that the elves used to rule a large portion of the setting, the humans rebelled, and neither race trusts the other. There are implications for sure: what does human self-rule look like, are there new human territories, what is the impact of once-settled land converting to wilderness, are there elven ruins, and where are the elves now? But these can wait – thematically, this is all about describing the setting’s current state, it’s light on detail, and it took minutes to devise.

von Moltke’s Wargame

A riff on the old saw, the RPG version says: No campaign survives contact with the players.

Put another way, the Referee should assume that whatever they’ve planned for an encounter, an adventure, or a setting will not unfold as expected once it’s put before the players. While it’s helpful to have a loose plan in mind, relying on an assumed player response or outcome is probably a waste of time. In the context of top-down worldbuilding, this law suggests that your role as Referee is to set the stage for the players but not write the script – given them challenges and opportunities, but be prepared to adapt if player decisions or a random die roll push the situation in a different direction.

In most cases, this benefits you. First, you can save a lot of development time by teeing up challenges without bothering with solutions. Second, players will come up with better ideas than you, and you can use their approaches, theories, and assumptions as input to take the campaign in directions you haven’t considered. Third, this flexible approach is more engaging for players, since you pay off their hunches instead of your plan.

In practice: I once introduced an NPC who was an informant with intimate knowledge of the local thieves’ guild. My plan was that the informant got their info from a sibling in the guild who they wanted to protect. The players were convinced that the informant was a former member. That idea hadn’t occurred to me, but it opened up new opportunities as it gave the NPC better in-game knowledge of the guild’s operations. They players (who didn’t know of my original plan) benefitted from those opportunities, and allowed me to reuse the NPC for other guild-related hooks later in the campaign.

Spice Law

Worldbuilding Referees rightly differentiate races, cultures, and characters with flavour – call it trappings, setting dress, local colour, whatever. However, Flavour is the first casualty of mechanics.

Put another way, mechanics often impact player decisions; if flavour has no such impact, it’s likely to be ignored, forgotten, or discarded during play. It’s not that flavour is bad, but if you’re going to take the time to create these particulars, you want to make sure they affect player decisions in the setting.

In practice: Consider these examples of making flavour “real” by attaching minor mechanics:

• Flavour: A culture inters their dead so as to prevent them rising as undead.
  Mechanic: Clerics from this culture cannot turn undead, hence their special funeral preparations.
• Flavour: Humans harbour animosity towards elves.
  Mechanic: Elves suffer a -4 modifier to reaction rolls with humans.
• Flavour: Jungle cannibals file their teeth to sharp points.
  Mechanic: During an encounter, groups of six or more of these bloodthirsty cannibals create the equivalent of a fear spell if they gain surprise. Alternatively, these cannibals gain a bite attack. You might also decide that they coat their teeth with a sedative toxin by chewing the leaves of some jungle plant; this suggests they’re immune to that poison.
• Flavour: The Druids can heal wounds naturally with herbs and poultices.
  Mechanic: Given time to find the necessary plants and prepare a remedy, Druids can cast the equivalent of a cure light wounds spell; a Druid of 1st-3rd level needs three turns; two turns for Druids of 4th-8th level, and 1 turn for Druids of 9th level or higher.

Derp’s Law

Simply put, What you think is simple, players will make complex.

Referees love to create tricks and surprises that challenge the players’ understanding of the setting. These challenges are meant to be overcome, because player agency is important, so Referees are themselves tasked to make them solvable. In my experience, that becomes an exercise in assessing difficulty: you want to make the challenge, well, challenging, but not so difficult that players get discouraged or (worse) find they can’t continue their mission.

Happily, this turns out to be a needless effort. What you think is dead simple is often just hard enough to stymie your players. Riddles, puzzles, clues to an NPC’s real identity, and X marks the spot may seem like easy solves to the Referee, but remember that you’re biased – you created the trick – and that the players lack that context. Add to that the players’ natural paranoia, and even a “simple” puzzle is likely to give the players just the right amount of challenge.

Players drive complexity – all you need to do is set the stage and let the players do the rest.

In practice: A dungeon I created included a false tomb. The players expected to find treasure inside a sarcophagus, but it contained only a scroll referencing “A starry deep in places north.” A section of the tomb’s north wall – 20 feet away from the sarcophagus – depicted a set of 8-pointed stars, hiding a secret door leading to the real tomb. I figured this would be an easy solve. Instead, the players assumed (then steadfastly convinced themselves) that the clue referenced an overlook in the hills north of the dungeon. Away they went, fruitlessly searching for a tomb that didn’t exist. (Softie that I am, I provided an encounter that helped redirect them, but the point is that something I thought was an easy win was terrifically complexified by the players all by themselves.)

Final Thoughts

These laws are guidelines culled from my own experience, but they coalesce around the central theme of saving yourself time by focusing only on the macro view of your world. The key to a playable world setting is flexibility, and providing detail at this early stage is counter-productive. Your goal is to build a foundation or stitch together a skeleton to which you can attach more detail later, when and where you need it.