D&D: Five Ways To Make Your World Feel More Fantastic
Are you brewing up your own world? Here are five worldbuilding tips to make your world feel more fantastic.
The many worlds of D&D are cool and all, but have you tried making your own world? Yes, it takes work, but it pays off so well. There is nothing like coming up with a cool setting and getting your players invested in it. When someone asks you a question about a part of the world you didn’t even know existed? It’s better than a better than sex cake, which may or may not be better than actual sex. But we’re not here to judge your performance (that’s a job for your ex), we’re here to help with worldbuilding tips to make your world feel like a cool fantasy realm.
You don’t need thousands of years of history or a pantheon full of your own creations, you just need to find what makes your world work. One of the best places to start is in figuring out what’s going to be immediately apparent to your players. Sure, your world might have this intricate mercantile system, but if your players never interact with it, it may as well not exist.
So start with the obvious. Stuff like…
What Do People Ride Instead of Horses?
Riding horses is for suckers who have to live in the real world. If you want to let people know right away that this is a fantasy realm, put people on birds. Or lizards. Or like cool frogs. It’s a trope older than Final Fantasy, even, for those of you whose brains are screaming “but that’s just chocobos“—look at something like Nausicaa, break out the horseclaws. Or have people ride on reindeer.
Maybe you go the Avatar: The Last Airbender route, and people ride different animals depending on where in the world they are. There’s no end of possibilities, but something like this is immediately apparent the first time a character riding on something is “on screen.” It’s a fun detail that invites players to look closer at the world, without being too weird that it pushes them out of it.
How Many Suns and/or Moons are There? What’s in the Sky?
Another classic. Fantasy worlds often have more than one sun or moon. Don’t be afraid to show them off—spend some time describing what the sky above your world looks like. In Star Wars, one of the most evocative moments comes on Tattooine, when Luke gazes out at the binary sunset. And while maybe people will call you out if you try and do the same thing, it’s a good reminder to think about what people can see when they look up. Or out.
Maybe there are many moons. Or there’s a shimmering aurora over the planet. Maybe the clouds create luminescent shapes—think about the first time you’ll describe this to the characters, don’t be afraid to get real poetic either, if that’s the vibe at your table.
What Kinds of Creatures are There?
Closely related to the horses one, above, what kinds of creatures are there, creeping around? Do we see wolves and sheep and bunnies, or is it like domesticated giant insects and plant creature predators and the like?
How Much is Your “Weird Budget”?
An important thing to keep in mind is that the human brain only has so much space for “weird” things. There’s no hard and fast rule to follow here, you’ll have to feel it out. But if you change big things, like, the world is actually a bunch of floating islands, and each one has its own ecosystem, and travel between them is restricted—you’re going to want to give your players a bit of normalcy to hang on to.
So just keep the balance in mind as you design your world.
What Secret History Can You Convey?
One of the biggest parts of a game like D&D is exploring ancient ruins and delving into long-forgotten dungeons. And these are incredible tools for you as a worldbuilder, because it lets you layer in some of that rich background texture you’ve made for your world. For instance, a dungeon might be a ruined fortress from the days of the dawn war, or maybe the ancient prison that once held the froghemoth general. Every dungeon can be a story unto itself, and even seeing the ruins dotting the landscape can help tell it.
What are your favorite worldbuilding tips?
