Just my two cents ...

QuoteThey describe a couple of ways to build a world. One of them is by staring with the bigger details (macroscopic) and the other by focusing on a smaller area and building from there.

Yes, I think you better work on the microscopic, but you'll need at least some macro done first.
For instance, I would recommand doing a rough "history" of the whole world (macro) and while working on a region (mirco), incorporate its history into the "big picture".

QuoteIdeally, I'd like to have variations. Different "families" of orcs.

I'm doing this in my campaign (white/grey/sand/black orcs), but I'll point out something about it. In my campaing, "orcs" is the other, the non human, non elf, non dwarf. Those guys people are afraid of, there are orcs !!! Even if there are not really ones ... It's more a designation than a race.

QuoteI stay two steps ahead of the players (most times) in terms of ongoing setting creation. I slip in interesting things about the world in every adventure/session.

I believe that's a good way to do it. But here, we're more talking about plots than setting (even if related). That said, you'll come with some parts you design and don't use (because your PCs don't go there) and others you won't do at all (PCs don't go near it).
IMO, it my not be a bad idea to leave some "blank" spaces to be filled by a DM.

QuoteIt's these little details that establishes tone/atmosphere very effectively IME.

I approve !!! The micro will more influence your game than the macro.

All right, here goes!  Baby is asleep, other kids are at school and nursery, I'm back from work, have a new stereo fitted in my car and I no longer feel crap.  This all bodes well I figure.

Anyway, ideas.  I was mulling over various things last night, flitting from cliched idea to cliched idea, stopping off at anthropomorphised animals (I like the Yuan-ti, so sue me) many times along the way.  Eventually I hit upon something a little different.

What if your big, bad, evil race were humans once?  Corrupted by some kind of insane/evil/misguided sorcerer long ago by the use of a magical virus that was designed to produce a warrior-like slave race.  Now whether he succeeded and now has the ultimate in evil shock troops or whether the experiment ran away with him and they are now in control of their own destiny I'll leave up to you (with the caveat that I prefer the second option.)

So how does the virus work?  Well, if the blood of a creature of the same origin (i.e. a creature that was originally of human stock for humans) as the victim is ingested (this is usually done forcefully to selected prisoners) then the virus takes hold.  At that point there is a 50/50 chance of dying in a twisted, mutated pool of tormented flesh or becoming one of the creatures.  If the blood of an infected creature of different origin is ingested you're just looking at tomented flesh pool all the way.  (I guess there'd be a small chance of the virus passing an individual by and granting them immunity but that's largely irrelevant in the grand scheme of things.)

And what does this virus turn you into?  I'm thinking something humanoid but obviously wrong.  Huge, smooth skinned giants (7 foot tall or so), massively muscled but with no definition or tone, just unblemished lines.  No hair anywhere on their bodies, small cavities instead of ears, hollows where their eyes should be (maybe they see in infra-red?) and massive, stretched mouths, their permenant grins sweeping back almost to their ear-cavities with, of course, the obligatory mouth full of sharp, pointy teeth (heck, it's a magical virus, the teeth may as well be metal.)  No sexual organs either, just plain skin where they would be, they would probably seem vaguely male to humans just due to their size and build but there would be no males or females, reproduction is soley through the blood rite.

At least that could be the 'standard' strain of the virus, the one that produces the terrifying warrior class.  You could get your different families by invoking different strains of the virus (it having mutated over the intervening millenia/centuries), maybe some kind of smaller strain to fill a goblin-esque servile role?  Not that they'd specifically need such a thing but, hey, human slaves are weak and pathetic right?  Plus you need some kind of fodder for enemy archers.  You could have a strain that made a leader class, maybe something akin to the slaan in WFB or the Mekon in Dan Dare, i.e. physically atrophied/incapaciated in some fashion but immensely intelligent.

Of course despite looking like some kind of savage, demonically twisted version of humanity the creatures retain their intelligence, if not their personality (which is warped and distorted by the virus) such that they are perfectly capable of working together efficiently, planning assaults, ambushes, etc., building cities, using tools, all of that stuff that makes them significantly more dangerous than a bunch of mindless savages.

I'm not certain quite what their civilisation would consist of.  I'm not envisaging a tribal, nomadic existance.  Rather an empire, large, powerful and aggressively expansionist, always seeking new victims for either slaves or to create more of themselves.  Possibly various city states vying for power amongst themselves with the leadership strain ruling each city, the warrior strain acting as guards, army, etc. and the 'lower strain' fulfilling other roles.  Some kind of twisted mockery of the society from which they originally came.  Breeding pits of regular humans for slaves and to provide new members of their race...

I'm not sure how well I'm articulating this to be honest.  I've got some cool images in my mind of one of these warriors brandishing two huge swords and letting off a terrifying, inhuman screech to the heavens.  Sometimes I wish I had some vague skill at drawing stuff but I don't.  Ah well, that'll have to do for now, the baby is awake.

Any strategic Gaming also needs a pretty well defined World.

Quote from: Geoff HallAll right, here goes!  Baby is asleep, other kids are at school and nursery, I'm back from work, have a new stereo fitted in my car and I no longer feel crap.  This all bodes well I figure.

Congrats on the stereo!

Thanks for the ideas! It's almost zombie-esque. I particularly like that their senses would work very differently from a human.

I'm going to think about this further, although preliminary work last night was around ideas involving demonic creatures.

Quote from: Consonant DudeCongrats on the stereo!

Thanks for the ideas! It's almost zombie-esque. I particularly like that their senses would work very differently from a human.

I'm going to think about this further, although preliminary work last night was around ideas involving demonic creatures.

Thanks, it's better than the old one (the one with the broken CD player and dodgy radio.)

You're right, it is kinda zombie-esque, I guess with more voo doo-like zombies where they're actually powerful creatures in their own right rather than mindless minions.

Equally demons are cool too though!  Let me know what you come up with, I'm all interested and stuff now

Generally what I like to do is start by writing an adventure. By time I get done I have very small sketchy setting. Play the adventure and see what the player contribute to it and build fromt there.

Quote from: Consonant DudeAre there any pitfalls to starting with a small place? Anyone has experience building a world from small areas and adding other pieces later? I'm kind of afraid I'll have to backpedal, retcon, fuck up some details. Will the world still look coherent?

I get most of my ideas by starting small; it's where most of the creativity comes in.  I don't start off with a world, but with a character, and the character's nature usually implies some basic things about some parts of the setting.  I move outward from there, building most of the setting by the accretion of details.

I think I could proceed like this indefinitely when I'm writing, because I can always revise.  But when I'm building a world to play in, there comes a point where I have to go up in scale if I don't want inconsistencies to come back and bite me.

The big thing is the relationship between geography, climate, economics, social structure, and history.  I don't have a complete world map, but before we started play I did draw a rough map of the local continent so I wouldn't end up claiming that something like the Silk Road existed between two lands that turned out to be readily connected by a maritime route, or describing a land was extensively forested when I put it in a place that would have to be dry.  The geography is my basis for intelligent improvisation.

I also got at least as far as deciding on the really major political shift in the last few centuries.  I really need to add to the historical timeline, but at least I have a vague grasp of how the society came to take its current shape.  Otherwise it might not feel as if it had a past at all.

One thing to look out for when starting at the micro level... and I've seen signs of it in published works, is making one part of the world too central, too important. You start there, and as you expand you keep either want to keep the coolness of that first region, or worse... TOP it. So, if Nation A has three godwizards roaming the streets and a orc horde at the city gates, Nation B has SEVEN god wizards and that horde is Dragons!!!

Okay, so that's not an elegant way to look at things but:

In history while one nation or historical event can have a wide ranging impact, usually it is not the sole defining event in a world. While Nero fiddled the Chinese went about their daily lives.  Alexander the great was just a guy to the Jomon of contemporanious Japan...  And that's all on one landmass, think about how minimal their impact was on the proto-Incas.

So, there isn't going to be ONE all important city, and there is going to be great heroes and kings all over the place.  

So. Micro: After detailing up an area, you can move to a new area and start from scratch and sort of weave them together as they naturally would have started to meet, rather than just expanding out from that one point.

Some good advice!

I think I was about to fall into the trap Spike just described. I need to keep some "coolness" for other areas later.

Thanks guys!

Glad I could help. I was feeling incoherent when I posted....:raise:

I use a sort of Escher "Hands" approach like the painting.  The place where the PCs begin is highly detailed and as you expand out from that spot the world becomes more and more of a sketch.  

This is both macro and micro in its detail.  Microscopic is easy to understand as it's the highly detailed starting area.  Macroscopic comes into play regarding the big elements of the world that exist in that local area too.  For example: seasons, star charts, weather patterns, physiologies, etc.  You don't need to have a stack of textbooks on hand for these, but keep in mind that the underlying physics, metaphysics, magic, heavens & hells, etc. are all going to have their easily experienced elements in play from the start so be prepared to fit within these perceptions.  Water is wet, magic needs a source, Gods give power, seasons pass as on Earth, whatever.

A big thing to remember is many of these, like calendars, common tongues, star charts, and religions, are all just as local as every other microscopic element.  You don't need every God to start, nor do you need every type of magic.  Leave room to grow and add for foreign cultures farther afield.  "The Truth" is as each locale understands it.  It is the culture and simply answers for the "big" questions.  Medieval worlds are nice like this as there is no "shrinking world" aspect like we have in our real one.

"Time and Space" are the two vectors I use in my approach.  It's not just the map that is detailed locally and sketched globally.  Time, as well, is really only important for the starting point of the campaign.  I sketch it out in this "Hands" way both forward and back with the future as a series of potentialities based on NPC plans and plotted actions.  I don't really need ancient history, but I do want to know why this locale has come to be as it is.  If their are ancient sites around I want to know generally when they came into being, but I can always make those fit as I expand with newly created histories conciding with what has come to light in game.

This technique requires some intensive preparation before a campaign begins, but not so much work during one.  I like to stick 7 or so adventures in the starting area and intwine them in the setting.  This means all NPCs, their histories, the dungeons, towns, everything becomes the setting.  This way I never really need adventure hooks as the adventures themselves ARE a great deal of the world.  By simply being within the world the PCs will run up against exciting goings on.  Even if they do their own thing and ignore what's around them, the world (i.e. the adventures) doesn't go away.  It remains relevant even if all aspects of the adventures are never directly experienced.

As we play time moves forward and the PCs move around the map.  Between sessions I then expand the world along the time and space vectors.  Like the "Hands" painting I keep the locations where the PCs are and are going to at the highest level of detail.  Time moves forward too and people, places, even adventures are all slightly adjusted to take into account what happened.  An adventure can completely change, but every element of it has the potential for reuse, even multiple uses.  Also, if a lot of time passes in game, I'll detail more of the future as well.  

The key things to watch for are PC travel speed and when Players decide to fastforward.  In truth, I'd have some difficulty if the group sat for 3 years or flew half way across the globe, but I'd also have at least a sketch of what was going on then and there.  Even a lightly placed adventure and setting can work for a single session.  Earlier versions of D&D and some other older games had safeguards in place for this potentiality.  Very fast travel was hard for most groups and almost always used Encounter tables anyways.  Teleportation required viewing the intended area beforehand and risked possibly landing somewhere else (presumably somewhere you've already detailed).

Personally, I use a number of published adventures and modules and also a published setting, but there are plenty of folks who used to homebrew everything when stats didn't bog down prep time.  My suggestion is: NPC generators and plenty of generic NPCs to place as needed.  Just because a portion of the world wasn't in place before the PCs arrived does not mean what you winged isn't just as legitimate.

Not that it's much help now, but I'm of the hybrid approach - general big picture, rough sketch of events/timeline, more focused area where you start. This also has the benefit of allowing you to decide some major conflicts in the large sketch, and then throw in some ties in early adventures.

And as for orcs - I'm going to kinda second Geoff's idea.  The first thing I thought of, because I've been watching the DVD's while sick is Firefly/Serenity and the Reavers.  In the beginning, they are described as once being human, but having been outside of civilization for so long they have gone savage, in a most brutal way - feeding off human civilization (no settlements, no crops, no gathering, simply hunting human ships).  Now later (in Serenity) you get a more in depth reason as to why they went savage, but essentially they are no longer "human." It fits with Tolkiens original orc idea in the sense that orcs were twisted elves.

Don't know if that helps...

All the replies were a tremendous help.

I've been extremely busy gaming (finishing off a few short campaigns and playing) so I haven't dedicated any time yet to the world design.

I've decided to take a microscopic approach, but with a few hybrid elements. A general idea of the big picture, followed by a focus on a smaller area. All my gaming is coming to a close except one game, so I plan to design intensively my fantasy world for 1 month. From February 25th to March 25th.

During that month, I want to come up with something playable, enjoyable but also expandable. It's going to have many recognizable cliches of fantasy, tailored to fit my players. So I'll start a brand new thread in a few days, ask for ideas and design out loud.

Thanks again!