# World Building Prompts

1. Create the major kingdoms and nations of your world, mark their borders on the map and discuss their relations: mutual trust, strained alliances, or open conflict?

   Each person at the table should contribute at least one kingdom or nation during this step, providing some details about their customs, beliefs, industry, denizens, and creatures.

2. Choose a shape for your world: is it round, flat, or are the regions floating amidst the clouds? Could it be donut-shaped, in typical JRPG fashion?

   You might even decide that the shape of your world is yet to be discovered!

3. Grab a map sheet that fits your concept (or draw a custom map; just make sure to leave plenty of blank space for settlements and locations). Your world can span more than one sheet, of course — but let’s keep things simple for now. Remember to establish the length of a travel day on the map (see page 106).

4. What is the role of magic and technology in your setting? Are you living in an age of industrial development, or is it more Renaissance-like?

   - Is magic seen as a form of science, or mostly as a great mystery?

5. Discuss the major historical events that shaped your world into what it is. Each person at the table should contribute at least one important event that dramatically altered the history of your setting.

6. What are the great enigmas and mysteries of the world? The questions left unanswered, and the truths that are now indistinguishable from legend?

   Each person at the table should contribute at least one mystery of the world that they want to explore over the course of the group’s adventures.

7. What terrible threats cast a shadow over your world? Environmental disasters, furious deities, power-hungry empires, or perhaps even clouds of corrupting miasma that are enveloping and consuming the land?

   Each person at the table should contribute a threat, preferably something that is endangering the future of entire nations. The Game Master will base a majority of their villains and antagonists on these worldwide threats.