Hail there Traveler!
Welcome back to another World Building post where I walk you through how I created one of my new factions, the Luctus Regenum.
Step 1: What is the theme of this place?
For the land mass inhabited by the Luctus Rege, I wanted to have medieval theme, something like out of Game of Thrones but with heavy Roman influences. I chose this theme because this countries history is derived from Dark Ages Europe, which has a lot of Gothic and Religious elements pulling from Rome.
Step 2: Who lives here?
Since I am designing this world to be used as part of a Dungeons and Dragons Campaign, I am using their races to populate my world. This particularly continent is mostly humanoids, with a bias towards non-humans. I chose humans, gnomes, half-orcs, half-lings, and half-elfs for my races.
Step 3: What is the geography like?
Usually this is step two, but I swap them depending on my mood and the kind of world I am working on. For this continent I came up with the name Occidens, which is Latin for West since this is my western most land mass. I wanted to give the continent geography similar to that of central Europe, Southern France, Northern Italy, Austria, and Germany. So there would lots of rolling hills, fertile farmland, grasslands, then with some rivers and large/dense forests.
Step 4: Details, Details, Details
At this point I have created the outline of my drawing, it’s time to start coloring it in. I start imagining and creating the government, towns, cities, capitals, landmarks, etc… I think about in this cause, who are the major players, the Noble Houses, who rules this land, what do they look like, etc… I keep going and going until my drawing(world) is so detailed that it looks and feels real. That is the kind of world I want to create for my players, the can go anywhere and talk to almost anyone, and those people and places each have their own stories.
Tip: Leave some blanks!
The most important part of an interactive story like D&D is the players. if you world is too detailed, your players can fit themselves into it. However you leave out some details, make some things vague, it draws your players in and allows them to fill in the missing details making them more connected to the story and the world.
Thanks again for stopping by, and check back soon for more content.
Farewell Travelers!!
Black Hole 