Could also look at Eddings' The Rivan Codex, which is about him creating the world of the Belgariad and the Mallorean (and writing them as well).

For a more nuts and bolts approach people seem to like my How to make a Fantasy Sandbox series of articles.

http://batintheattic.blogspot.com/2009/08/how-to-make-fantasy-sandbox.html

Note that the steps are designed to front load the work so you can focus on writing things in response to what the players do in the campaign. If you want to do minimal prep then you can omit or skip over many of the steps. Just realize that at some point in the campaign you will find that you have done everything I outlined. Some referee like just to jump in others like to do a bit more preparation.

Another vote for ICE's amazing Campaign Law[/b].  It's wonderfully short, but packed with helpful worldbuilding information.

Estar's posts on making a Fantasy Sandbox also are very good (although I've only read a few of them).

If you have any interest in non literary sources, there is a stunning amount of information here http://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/ although the forum runs a bit slow.

Quote from: RPGPundit;461399Only Pseudo could be this ridiculous, as to recommend Marx... why not Andrea Dworkin while we're at it?

RPGPundit

...Says a man who believes in magic and pseudoscience, and thinks Jungianism is anything but utter nonsense mildly useful for fanciful works of literature. Will no one help this poor widow's kook get his head screwed on straight?

On Marx...

I just read through 'The Decline of Feudalism and the Rise of the Bourgeoisie' to see what I thought about it as a world-building resource for a medieval world. I have to say that it looks much more naive than I thought it would (even giving it a fair bit of leeeway for having been written a century and a quarter ago). The factual accuracy is so poor that I would find it very hard to take the analysis seriously. That being said, it does look like a good rubric for a sort of grimdark, pseudo-Victorian view of how the middle ages worked, and that viewpoint could IMHO make for a very compelling RPG setting. Perhaps a more compelling one than the IRL middle ages.

For a less naive perspective on the politics of the time, it occurred to me that The Prince (available for dirt cheap or for free download) might be a good choice. It's short, fun, and written by someone who really knew what he was talking about. I have a copy annotated by Napoleon, and it's a blast to read through (lots of little comments like, 'Yes, this is the tactic I used when I conquered the shit out of Kingdom X.'). On the downside, it really only covers rulership, not going into much detail on other institutions.

Quote from: loseth;461602On Marx...

I just read through 'The Decline of Feudalism and the Rise of the Bourgeoisie' to see what I thought about it as a world-building resource for a medieval world. I have to say that it looks much more naive than I thought it would (even giving it a fair bit of leeeway for having been written a century and a quarter ago). The factual accuracy is so poor that I would find it very hard to take the analysis seriously. That being said, it does look like a good rubric for a sort of grimdark, pseudo-Victorian view of how the middle ages worked, and that viewpoint could IMHO make for a very compelling RPG setting. Perhaps a more compelling one than the IRL middle ages.

I read it in college. It really isn't what I am looking for here. Looking for more up-to-date and less ideological material. Interested in political structures and their histories, but not through the lens of the writer's political viewpoint.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;461620I read it in college. It really isn't what I am looking for here. Looking for more up-to-date and less ideological material. Interested in political structures and their histories, but not through the lens of the writer's political viewpoint.

If you want something that is gamable and well researched then I recommend Harnmanor, and Lionheart both by Columbia Games.

http://www.columbiagames.com/cgi-bin/query/cfg/allharnitems.cfg

http://www.columbiagames.com/cgi-bin/query/cfg/zoom.cfg?product_id=4751

http://www.columbiagames.com/cgi-bin/query/cfg/zoom.cfg?product_id=7001

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;461620I read it in college. It really isn't what I am looking for here. Looking for more up-to-date and less ideological material. Interested in political structures and their histories, but not through the lens of the writer's political viewpoint.

That basically doesn't exist. All historiography has a viewpoint. There are only viewpoints close enough to your own that you think they're dispassionate, factual accounts.

Harnmanor, for example, is a materialist text. It is concerned with the manor as economic unit and only covers the relationships of people in the manor's community as necessary to accurately track the flow of money through it. I actually really like Harnmanor for totally deromanticising the manor and village, but if you think that it does not have a political viewpoint of the manor (and one strongly influenced by Marx and the other economic historians of the 19th century for that matter), you would be incorrect.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;461650That basically doesn't exist. All historiography has a viewpoint. There are only viewpoints close enough to your own that you think they're dispassionate, factual accounts.

I think there is always a viewpoint. But they aren't all political or ideological in nature. And I think some approaches are more objective than others (and some historians are better than others at preventing their biases form interfering with their conclusions). It is largely a matter of degree.

On my favorite historians is Braudel for example. And he most definitely has a lens. But I am really not trying to debate the merits of Marx or approaches to history. Marx is simply not what I am looking for in this case. Really not interested in a drag-down debate on this subject as it isn't something I've thought much about since college. All I am interested in doing here is creating a cool fantasy world.

Don't tell that to me. So far I've recommended more books than everyone else in this thread put together.

When you choose to look for an ideology behind one's words, you'll find it.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;461667Don't tell that to me. So far I've recommended more books than everyone else in this thread put together.

And I appreciate your suggestions.

Quote from: estar;461630If you want something that is gamable and well researched then I recommend Harnmanor, and Lionheart both by Columbia Games.

http://www.columbiagames.com/cgi-bin/query/cfg/allharnitems.cfg

http://www.columbiagames.com/cgi-bin/query/cfg/zoom.cfg?product_id=4751

http://www.columbiagames.com/cgi-bin/query/cfg/zoom.cfg?product_id=7001

I'll check these out for sure. I haven't seen the Harn books in a while, but I remember being impressed by them in the past. Their maps were always especially good.

If you are looking mostly at how a society arrived at a certain form of rule, I think the best approach is to take a particular example and look at its history and make it fantastical. So if I have one country occupied by another, I might take Cordoba as my starting point and draw on say Moorish Spain by Fletcher. When it references another society being interacted with, pick a likely candidate on your map to supply that interaction and play "what if."

Pseudo gave some good recommendations above. Some other interesting, readable primary source books off the top of my mind are Dino Compagni's chronicle of florence, Early History of Rome (as penguin calls the volume) by Livy, Diaz's conquest of new spain, various Icelandic sagas, Eyrbyggja Saga and Burnt Njal come to mind. Bede's Ecclesiastical History could be another one.

Remember if your world is fantastic your models don't have to get the history right - they can include the mythic as primary source 'histories' tend to. When Herodotus (great source) colors things up for the rubes, as a GM that's an advantage to me. I get the sense you are more interested in building a grounded, more earth-like world but to address the question more broadly it can be interesting to look at more satirical "histories" like Lucian's True History, utopian ones like News from Nowhere, or cock-and-bull stories like John Mandeville. Manguel & Guadalpi's Dictionary of Imaginary Places is a pretty great source.

When it comes to the "reasons why" in terms of running the game it is usually more about how people today say it happened than how it "really" happened in your game world's history though if PCs are exploring ruins, finding ancient texts, talking to ghosts, etc. it can be interesting to find something that contradicts the common wisdom of the day. If you have a standard D&D model you'll need some fallen empires; Rome is the canonical example for the western world - on a smaller scale mesoamerica had a few. Book 2 of Simmon's Collapse could be an interesting source of ideas for ways things collapsed if you don't assume your standard mystical cataclysm.