World Building 1: A Whole New World
We'll, it's actually just a peninsula.
It's time for a new fantasy world. I've been playing my world of Amaryn since started with 5e. I was watching lots of worldbuilding YT videos and building a GM binder.
All sorts of things I don't do anymore.
My play style and approach to GMing and even my taste in games have changed Amaryn is high fantasy world that has a huge range of detailed lore and events happening. All this planning did not translate into a fun game play experience.
This was partly because I didn't know what I was playing really. I didn't realise that I was playing power fantasy. I liked Humans and dwarves and elves and folks would rock up with Noble Monk Aaracokra or a Street Urchin Thief Fire Genasi. And then my rundown moody little sliver of adventure would be torn to pieces by the time they were level four and were basically the X-Men (Which, is actually cool premise for a campaign now I've written it down.)
What I am getting at is that I wanted a low-fantasy open world of exploration and dirty little scumbags and what I got was god complexes.
So, while I still like Amaryn (I write short fiction set there), It's time to make something new.
This a documentation of process. It's not a guide, though you might follow this, it's not The Best World Building Guide sort of thing. If I knowingly use a world building guide or tool i'll link it. I will most likely writing things that someone else has written. That's just my brain synthesizing. Don't at me.
Starting small
I don't care about the creation myth. I do think there are probably gods. This place will be polytheistic.
First Decision Made: There is more than one god.
The party should be contained a little. So, this will be sandbox. I like the idea of grabbing a bunch of adventures I'm interested in and populating the map with easter eggs for them to find. There adventure site should be big enough for them to be able to have meaningful travel, but not so big I need to multi regional development. I'm going with a peninsula.
Second Decision Made: They will explore a peninsula.
Adventures are more engaging when every day life of the world is mundane. Fishermen rise early and bring home their hauls, farmers labour under the sun, and bakers kneed bread with their hands. The player characters come from a place that lives and breathes, and for the most part, are boring. Humans will be the most prevalent peoples in this part of the world. Magic exists, sure, but it's rare, powerful and sort after and it's definitely not found i their home town. Home is boring and dull and the further one travels from home the stranger things become.
Third Decision Made: The PC's will be human, for now.
Fourth Decision Made: Magic is rare but sort after.
And I'm gonna play this with Cairn 2e.
Fifth Decision Made: We'll use Cairn 2e.
From here, I'm going to do two things. Read a bunch of adventures and then make a map. I will report back once those two things are done.