Building like a God

In every game system, across every platform and at every level, there exist a number of pre-defined worlds and settings in which to play. Yet for many of us, playing a game in someone else's world is only half the fun. For many of us, the true joy of role-playing games come when you are able to create a world of your own imagination. For some, the real joy comes in watching a party of characters as they explore and delve into this new and never-before-seen world to discover all the treasure of creativity you have poured into it.

In this series of articles, I will explore the many facets of world development, and provide theories and advice for how to develop your own game world from a clean slate to the most intricate of details. Each week, I will guide you further through the process of developing a world that is vibrant, breathing, and fully defined.

The goal is not to create a perfect, immutable world, but rather to create a world that can evolve and change over time. By reading through these articles, you should have a playable world with only one month of work, even if that world is not yet complete. I will show you what steps to take to get the world ready quickly, what things to avoid along the way, and how to most effectively continue expanding the world even while players are already interacting with it.

But in the interests of not reinventing the wheel, I will first begin by explaining the two most common methods of world development, and exploring what works and what doesn't work about each. Next time in Intelligent Design: World Building Every Which Way.