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World Builder's Guidebook
1) An introduction to the art of world building 2) Guidelines and random tables for creating continents, kingdoms, societies, local areas, towns, cities, ecologies, pantheons, histories, and sites of interest
96 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 1996
44 people want to read
About the author
Richard Baker
84 books226 followersA best-selling author and award-winning game designer, Richard Baker is known for his novels in the Forgotten Realms setting and his work on the Dungeons & Dragons game. His Realms novels include Condemnation (book 3 of the War of the Spider Queen), the Last Mythal trilogy, and the Blades of the Moonsea trilogy. He is currently working on a new military-themed science fiction series centered on the character Sikander North; Valiant Dust, the first book in the new series, debuts in November 2017 from Tor Books.
A native of Ocean City, New Jersey, Rich graduated from Virginia Tech in 1988 and went on to serve as a surface warfare officer in the United States Navy. When he's not writing fantasy or science fiction, he works in game publishing. He's the founder of Sasquatch Game Studio, a small game company based in Auburn, Washington.
Rich currently resides in the Seattle area with his wife, Kim, and their daughters Alex and Hannah. His interests include gaming (naturally), history, hiking, racquetball, and the Philadelphia Phillies.
A native of Ocean City, New Jersey, Rich graduated from Virginia Tech in 1988 and went on to serve as a surface warfare officer in the United States Navy. When he's not writing fantasy or science fiction, he works in game publishing. He's the founder of Sasquatch Game Studio, a small game company based in Auburn, Washington.
Rich currently resides in the Seattle area with his wife, Kim, and their daughters Alex and Hannah. His interests include gaming (naturally), history, hiking, racquetball, and the Philadelphia Phillies.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 6, 2024
The World Builder’s Guidebook for Advanced Dungeons and Dragons was released in 1996. As far as I can tell it was the first ‘How To’ build your own fantasy world book.
I thought I’d take it for a spin and see if it works.
Interestingly it starts with the ‘hook’ for your world. It kind of gives the world a ‘theme’. I think this is a pretty cool idea. There’s a table for it to be determined randomly if desired.
World Shape and Form are next. Also with table, in case a ‘sphere’ (60% chance) wasn’t good enough for you. This also lets you know the ‘hex’ sizes of different scales of maps.
Hydrographic is next (how much water takes up on the planet). It also has a distribution of the water, islands and land mass.
The number of continents are next. Then it actually gets into plate tectonics which honestly seems like it’s more than necessary.
Worlds and Planetology add mountain size adjustments for the size of the world, and how much volcanic and earthquake activity there is.
Climatology is next giving climate bands across the words of temperatures and even allowing for super-tropical and super-arctic areas.
You even get tables for the Seasonal Variation, and are shown how to determine Prevailing Winds and Ocean Currents.
The Continents and Geography section have tables for land masses.
The Climate and Weather section has tables for Regional Climate and Prevailing Winds. These are of course broad areas.
Continents and Geography starts zooming in on large multi-hex areas with Predominant Terrain tables. You also start to add rivers, lakes and seas.
Honestly this is a little bit much for me because personally (though this was certainly not true when this book was first published) I think it would be easy to find a fantasy land map on the web that you wanted to use and start from there. There are plenty and they are beautiful. I don’t really think this map will lead to anything better than what’s out there.
Human Geography talks about where to plop the non-human races. It then gives tables of Dominant Races (53), Subterranean Races (17) and Marine Races (16). It also includes a Settlement Patterns table to determine where the race likes to live.
Kingdom and Sociology start with Cultural Archetype tables (Central Asian, Egyptian, Arabic, etc.) and Race Status and Position (how do the races get along) tables. It also has tables for the Kingdom Technology Level which goes from Stone Age to Renaissance.
Government comes next. It’s a character that covers 20 or so, such as Militocracy, Dictatorship, Hierarchy, etc. Again very broad strokes but it could be inspiring.
The Social Alignment table adds that uniquely D&D concept of Neutral evil, Chaotic evil and Lawful evil to your societies.
Physical Cartography takes it down to the size of the kingdoms in miles x miles, relating it of course to the diameter of your planet. It also covers Coasts, Seas and Lakes. Then it gets to Climate.
Kingdoms and Sociology drills down even further with Subsistence Systems tables that determine how your kingdom gets food depending on the terrain and climate you are in. This then determines the settlement parents and two and city distribution (how far away from each other they are).
Cities and Provinces deals with the Local Campaign Area, starting with the Seas and Rivers in the Local Area table. Followed by the Local Mountains, Hills and Tablelands table.
Next you determine the population levels which depends on both climate, terrain and the type of subsistence system you have.
Next the size and type of Towns, Cities and Villages are determined.
Cities and Provinces drills down even more. It includes a Seas and Rivers in the Local Area and Local Mountains, Hills, and Tablelands tables.
It has Village, Town and City Populations tables and for each and every City, Town and Village a Resource/Services Available table. It’s kind of annoying in the percentage chance of any particular resource (for example Blacksmith, Potter or Clockmaker) but then you ALSO have the number of these resources which often includes a negative number to the dice roll.
So for example, the Clockmaker has a 5% chance of showing up in a Population 500 town. But how many Clockmakers? 1d20-19. So this leads to a LOT of wasted die rolling for no good reason. But that’s the way they did it.
It does give a very useful description of all these resources however.
Demographics is next. But this means how many of the people in these cites, villages and towns actually have a class and level. Not many.
NPCs have a couple of small but well written paragraphs.
There’s also some really good advice about creating towns and villages and encounter tables. Specially designed to save you some work.
Next is an interesting guideline on Building Encounter Tables with whatever list of monsters you have. Good advice!
Next is a useful and interesting set of notes about Lairs and Ranges and a table with a rough guide to the hunting range of predators by size. So how many dragons should an area of wilderness contain? With this there will be some semblance of verisimilitude.
History and Mythology discuses and provides tables for creating the pantheon of gods for your world.
All deities in the campaign belong to a single pantheon, regardless of racial or social divisions. Several gods may share responsibilities (or squabble over) important portfolios, such as war, leadership, or love. The FORGOTTEN REALMS pantheon is a universal pantheon.
After determining the type of pantheons, you roll for the size.
Huge Pantheon with 3 Greater Powers, 3 Intermediate Powers, 8 Lesser Powers and 8 Demi-Powers.
Next you determine it’s organization. Heroes, Elemental, Celestial, Family, Racial, Mixed, etc.
How involved are the gods? Moderate, Oblivious, etc. Then for each deity you roll to determine their portfolio and alignment. For example Oceans, Fertility, Hunting, Competition, Healing, Thunder, Arts, Rulership, Wind, War, etc.
Next you roll for Cosmology. What the solar system is like. For example: Wildspace, with Spheres, Real physics, etc. The number of planets and number of moons. These are all very much tilted towards the fantastical, ie, Spelljammer.
There is much discussion, though no tables, about creating myths and legends around the gods. \
A wonderful thing that I have NEVER seen before is a Historical Events timeline table!
For example…
6 years ago : War, internal
9 years ago : Weak ruler
11 years ago : Raids/brigandage
50 years ago: Religion, temple supremacy
50 years ago: Exploration/colonization
60 years ago: War, succession
500 years ago: Cataclysm, natural
500 years ago: War, epic
700 years ago: Expansion/exploration
The best worlds aren’t built on the pads and forms provided with this product—they’re built in your imagination, and then tempered in months and years of play.
I came away very impressed with this product. It’s got a lot of good solid guidelines, inspiring tables and a good step-by-step process that will go a long way to alleviating creative blocks.
And you won’t just get a bog-standard “D&D” worlds. In fact, how “bog-standard” it is, is entirely up to you. It shows you how you can stay close or far away from ‘normal’ expectations for an RPG fantasy world.
I like that a-lot. And I haven’t seen anything that comes even close to being this helpful since this was printed. And that was 1996!
Not perfect, but the best so far. I’ll give a very strong 4 stars and highly recommend it to anyway who wants to build their own world.
I thought I’d take it for a spin and see if it works.
Interestingly it starts with the ‘hook’ for your world. It kind of gives the world a ‘theme’. I think this is a pretty cool idea. There’s a table for it to be determined randomly if desired.
World Shape and Form are next. Also with table, in case a ‘sphere’ (60% chance) wasn’t good enough for you. This also lets you know the ‘hex’ sizes of different scales of maps.
Hydrographic is next (how much water takes up on the planet). It also has a distribution of the water, islands and land mass.
The number of continents are next. Then it actually gets into plate tectonics which honestly seems like it’s more than necessary.
Worlds and Planetology add mountain size adjustments for the size of the world, and how much volcanic and earthquake activity there is.
Climatology is next giving climate bands across the words of temperatures and even allowing for super-tropical and super-arctic areas.
You even get tables for the Seasonal Variation, and are shown how to determine Prevailing Winds and Ocean Currents.
The Continents and Geography section have tables for land masses.
The Climate and Weather section has tables for Regional Climate and Prevailing Winds. These are of course broad areas.
Continents and Geography starts zooming in on large multi-hex areas with Predominant Terrain tables. You also start to add rivers, lakes and seas.
Honestly this is a little bit much for me because personally (though this was certainly not true when this book was first published) I think it would be easy to find a fantasy land map on the web that you wanted to use and start from there. There are plenty and they are beautiful. I don’t really think this map will lead to anything better than what’s out there.
Human Geography talks about where to plop the non-human races. It then gives tables of Dominant Races (53), Subterranean Races (17) and Marine Races (16). It also includes a Settlement Patterns table to determine where the race likes to live.
Kingdom and Sociology start with Cultural Archetype tables (Central Asian, Egyptian, Arabic, etc.) and Race Status and Position (how do the races get along) tables. It also has tables for the Kingdom Technology Level which goes from Stone Age to Renaissance.
Government comes next. It’s a character that covers 20 or so, such as Militocracy, Dictatorship, Hierarchy, etc. Again very broad strokes but it could be inspiring.
The Social Alignment table adds that uniquely D&D concept of Neutral evil, Chaotic evil and Lawful evil to your societies.
Physical Cartography takes it down to the size of the kingdoms in miles x miles, relating it of course to the diameter of your planet. It also covers Coasts, Seas and Lakes. Then it gets to Climate.
Kingdoms and Sociology drills down even further with Subsistence Systems tables that determine how your kingdom gets food depending on the terrain and climate you are in. This then determines the settlement parents and two and city distribution (how far away from each other they are).
Cities and Provinces deals with the Local Campaign Area, starting with the Seas and Rivers in the Local Area table. Followed by the Local Mountains, Hills and Tablelands table.
Next you determine the population levels which depends on both climate, terrain and the type of subsistence system you have.
Next the size and type of Towns, Cities and Villages are determined.
Cities and Provinces drills down even more. It includes a Seas and Rivers in the Local Area and Local Mountains, Hills, and Tablelands tables.
It has Village, Town and City Populations tables and for each and every City, Town and Village a Resource/Services Available table. It’s kind of annoying in the percentage chance of any particular resource (for example Blacksmith, Potter or Clockmaker) but then you ALSO have the number of these resources which often includes a negative number to the dice roll.
So for example, the Clockmaker has a 5% chance of showing up in a Population 500 town. But how many Clockmakers? 1d20-19. So this leads to a LOT of wasted die rolling for no good reason. But that’s the way they did it.
It does give a very useful description of all these resources however.
Demographics is next. But this means how many of the people in these cites, villages and towns actually have a class and level. Not many.
NPCs have a couple of small but well written paragraphs.
There’s also some really good advice about creating towns and villages and encounter tables. Specially designed to save you some work.
Next is an interesting guideline on Building Encounter Tables with whatever list of monsters you have. Good advice!
Next is a useful and interesting set of notes about Lairs and Ranges and a table with a rough guide to the hunting range of predators by size. So how many dragons should an area of wilderness contain? With this there will be some semblance of verisimilitude.
History and Mythology discuses and provides tables for creating the pantheon of gods for your world.
All deities in the campaign belong to a single pantheon, regardless of racial or social divisions. Several gods may share responsibilities (or squabble over) important portfolios, such as war, leadership, or love. The FORGOTTEN REALMS pantheon is a universal pantheon.
After determining the type of pantheons, you roll for the size.
Huge Pantheon with 3 Greater Powers, 3 Intermediate Powers, 8 Lesser Powers and 8 Demi-Powers.
Next you determine it’s organization. Heroes, Elemental, Celestial, Family, Racial, Mixed, etc.
How involved are the gods? Moderate, Oblivious, etc. Then for each deity you roll to determine their portfolio and alignment. For example Oceans, Fertility, Hunting, Competition, Healing, Thunder, Arts, Rulership, Wind, War, etc.
Next you roll for Cosmology. What the solar system is like. For example: Wildspace, with Spheres, Real physics, etc. The number of planets and number of moons. These are all very much tilted towards the fantastical, ie, Spelljammer.
There is much discussion, though no tables, about creating myths and legends around the gods. \
A wonderful thing that I have NEVER seen before is a Historical Events timeline table!
For example…
6 years ago : War, internal
9 years ago : Weak ruler
11 years ago : Raids/brigandage
50 years ago: Religion, temple supremacy
50 years ago: Exploration/colonization
60 years ago: War, succession
500 years ago: Cataclysm, natural
500 years ago: War, epic
700 years ago: Expansion/exploration
The best worlds aren’t built on the pads and forms provided with this product—they’re built in your imagination, and then tempered in months and years of play.
I came away very impressed with this product. It’s got a lot of good solid guidelines, inspiring tables and a good step-by-step process that will go a long way to alleviating creative blocks.
And you won’t just get a bog-standard “D&D” worlds. In fact, how “bog-standard” it is, is entirely up to you. It shows you how you can stay close or far away from ‘normal’ expectations for an RPG fantasy world.
I like that a-lot. And I haven’t seen anything that comes even close to being this helpful since this was printed. And that was 1996!
Not perfect, but the best so far. I’ll give a very strong 4 stars and highly recommend it to anyway who wants to build their own world.
August 1, 2021
The best single resource for worldbuilding ever.
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November 1, 2010World Builder's Guidebook assumes that you are familiar with the Dungeon Master Guide and the Player's Handbook. See Notes for complete contents.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews