[Mattias Gustavsson]

For a while, I've intended to someday get some proper stuff done for my own fantasy world, which I call "Rivtind" - and now I've finally started! (I have a website for it here http://www.rivtind.com)

But I wanted to ask you guys if you have any advice for how to go about creating your world, what sort of things one should keep in mind, how to get started even, or if you have any cool links to some good resources for it.

I have a lot of ideas for how I'd like it to be, to fit the sort of stories I want to have taking place there, but I feel it would be helpful to have more of it defined - but it does feel a bit daunting to start such a task, so any pointers are appreciated... :-)
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www.mattiasgustavsson.com - My blog
www.rivtind.com - My Fantasy world and isometric RPG engine
www.pixieuniversity.com - Software 2D Game Engine

[RampantCoyote]

Bottom-up or top-down design... ;) I've done it both ways. In fact, I think doing it simultaneously both ways can be helpful.

For me, starting at the bottom and working my way up seems to work best to start with. I think about a small setting, and some general ideas of how I want the world to "feel." The quirks and interesting bits.

Then I answer the "why" questions. And "how." Maybe you want a world (or a community) where they worship dragons, yet nobody has actually seen a dragon in generations. It's an interesting detail, and you can build upon those little details to evolve a larger history.

Think about it. What if dragons never really existed, yet dragon-worship came about. Or if the dragons used to roam the world, why did they disappear? Will they return? How? Why are they worshipped in the first place?

Anyway, that's what works for me.
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Tales of the Rampant Coyote - Old-School Game Developer talks Indie Games, RPGs, and the Games Biz

[Mattias Gustavsson]

That's some good advice, Jay, thanks!

I think you have a good point that doing both bottom-up and top-down design simultaneously can be helpful - that's sort of what I'm currently doing, but mostly I'm just making a mess and failing to get things organised neatly :P

And the dragon-worshippers example is a cool one :D
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www.mattiasgustavsson.com - My blog
www.rivtind.com - My Fantasy world and isometric RPG engine
www.pixieuniversity.com - Software 2D Game Engine

[Hajo]

If I try top-down I usually end up with huge dreams, which I cannot fill with enough detail to make them come true.

A thing that I want to try as an exercise some day is to have a confined environment, like a room or maybe a house, and try to pack a whole lot of interactive elements in there. This would also need some kind of a background story, though.

[Malignus]

I never really got the whole "write a history book about your world" approach to making an RPG setting. If any of that makes it in the game, it will come across as very abstract and dry. I find it best to take the bottom-up approach: start with a setting that is easily defined, add characters, flesh out their stories, and incidental details of the setting will fall into place as you go.

For example: in TRPG2, I had a couple of characters whom I wanted to be able to move very quickly across the battlefield. I decided that they were trained assassins. In TSoG, I had an assassin character who is in trouble with a different order of assassins. In order to provide the player a way to convince the order to leave him alone, I decided that the two orders of assassins were rivals perpetually on the brink of an inter-order war, and that the player could use that to his advantage.

I suppose you could call my method setting expansion by convenience. :)