Posted by Ravyn on April 22, 2013
Most cities in fantasy worlds have a vested interest in people not getting into fights to the death at the drop of a hat. It isn’t that different from the real world in that respect, after all. And one of the easiest ways to do this is to limit access to weapons. So that got [...]
Categories: Cultures, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Places, World-building |
Tags: fantasy worlds, roleplaying, weapon control, World-building, writing | 
1 Comment »
Posted by Ravyn on April 9, 2013
Most of my posts on building worlds have been at least one post per topic, sometimes a full series—which is nice and all, but not very good when covering things that don’t need ages of explication. So instead, I’m looking at simple questions with far-reaching ramifications that make for an interesting way of characterizing a [...]
Categories: Cultures, For Roleplayers, For Writers, World-building |
Tags: cultures, roleplaying, World-building, writing | 5 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on March 5, 2013
Yesterday, I talked about narrative uses of weather. When I discussed this with my mother the linguist, she didn’t hesitate to point out another—the interesting things that weather does to a cultural vocabulary.
There’s an Old English word, wederian. It means ‘to be good weather.’ Think about this a bit. What does it say about that [...]
Categories: Language and Linguistics, World-building |
Tags: language, roleplaying, weather, World-building, writing | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on March 4, 2013
Weather is one of the easiest things for a writer to forget. It’s all around us, but while it impacts us, it doesn’t always impact us much—modern conveniences tend to work around the worst of it, unless it’s reached the point of catastrophe. As a result, a lot of us—particularly those of us in “Weather? [...]
Categories: Description, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Plot, Technique, World-building |
Tags: plot, roleplaying, scening, weather, World-building, writing | 3 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on January 14, 2013
Remember when we were kids, and they’d introduce us to professions with the little Platonic Member of Said Profession? The doctors in their mint-green scrubs and their hats (often red-crossed), with stethoscopes about their necks and bandages in their hands, the police officers in uniform with badges and whistles?
We remember that. So most of us, [...]
Categories: For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, World-building |
Tags: imagery, professions, roleplaying, World-building, writing | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on December 6, 2012
The reruns continue. This one was originally posted on March 30, 2009.
One of the things that makes a world seem more like a world and less like a static backdrop is the presence of things that are suited to the location and aren’t directly relevant to the action. In some cases, this [...]
Categories: For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Places, Scening, Technique, World-building |
Tags: GM Advice, reprise, roleplaying, scening, World-building, writing | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on December 3, 2012
It’s finals week. A perfect time for reruns. Regular posts will (most likely) resume next Sunday night.
Originally posted July 13, 2008.
It’s one of the classical elements, and necessary for life. In legend, it has been credited with births and deaths, healing and disasters. It’s been walked through, walked on, and floated over. [...]
Categories: For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Thematics, World-building |
Tags: reprise, roleplaying, symbolism, universal concepts, water, World-building, writing | No Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on November 20, 2012
Yesterday, I talked about building a world around characters, rather than building enough of a world to mold characters into and moving outward from there. I’ve been toying with this recently, and I’ve found a pretty good sequence for trying to grow outward from one or two characters to a plot and a world.
I start [...]
Categories: Characterization, Characters in the world, Concepts, For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Plot, Technique, World-building |
Tags: concepts, plot, Technique, World-building, writing | 2 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on November 19, 2012
I’ve always looked at putting together a story in a fresh new world as starting with the world, getting enough of it together to give yourself ideas, then sticking characters in it, then letting them bounce off each other until you have something approximating a plot. Wasn’t that how all the people with the really [...]
Categories: For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Plot, Technique, World-building |
Tags: concepts, plot, Technique, World-building, writing | 4 Comments »
Posted by Ravyn on November 13, 2012
Yesterday, I talked about how nifty ruins were as a feature of a setting. But what does it take to make a good ruin? I’ve already talked about building, aging and abandoning cities in general, and these serve as a pretty good stopping off point. On the other hand, it might be that we’re going [...]
Categories: For Roleplayers, For Writers, GM Advice, Geography, History, Places, World-building |
Tags: roleplaying, ruins, setting, World-building, writing | No Comments »