Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Resources for Creating a Fantasy World

Running a role-playing game can be very fun. But sometimes the fun is reduced by the amount of time it takes to plan the setting.

A wonderful article about populating a fantasy world is Medieval Demographics Made Easy, by S. John Ross. He also wrote The Big List of RPG Plots. Also see Shawn Vincent's list of Medieval occupations.

After you have determined the size and population of the world, and some of its troubles that need fixing, you need maps. Resources include a City Map Generator for cities, Dungeon Crafter 3 for dungeons, the WotC map of the week archive, and the booklet of 201 random caves from the Dragonsfoot website. Also be sure to read Dennis Tetreault's map guide.

Finally, it's a bother to make up names for all the people the adventurers meet. Help includes Dragonfoot's Book of Names and the RinkWorks Fantasy Name Generator.

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