Adding Detail To Your Map That Actually Makes Sense
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 5 ก.ค. 2024
- So, as game masters, you have learnt where to start when homebrewing your own RPG world, and you now have your homebrew map all drawn out, but where do you start when you want to fill your map and your world in? Borders, civilizations, kingdoms - there is a lot to consider! In today's video, I look at step 3 in creating a homebrew world - adding in civilizations and everything that comes with it. We'll take a look at how you can plan your roads, kingdoms, transport and communication into your TTRPG world and begin to bring it to life - ready for your next D&D, Pathfinder or Star Wars roleplaying game!
Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction
02:14 Civilisations
04:08 Where did the civilisations start?
06:26 Distance between cities
07:50 Transport
09:07 Communication
10:46 Uniqueness of the culture
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*Thanks for watching!* What is something curious or different about your own culture? Share with us by commenting down below.
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Find each chapter of the video easily by clicking on the timestamps in the description.
A specific type of elf in my world is called Vos Elf, who live far in the southern deserts, in a nation called Vos Miht which in the old language is called “Slaver’s Hold” so Vos elf is named actually “Slave Elf”, old information in my world that was long forgotten until my players discover that in their exploration to take down the new empire that rose through a coup
Grew up in a town that was historically known for breeding ducks through the year, and shipping them to London for the Christmas season. Every family in the local area would have at least one brood of ducklings, and raise them to sell for some money at the end of the year.
I once used this in a town which my players arrived at - Ducksford. They arrived on the day when the ducks would be shipped out to the capital. The river was loaded with barges loaded with ducks bound for the city. The town's inns were full of people from the more distant hamlets who had driven their ducks to town to sell them on. The smell was absolutely ducking awful, and the streets were coated with the product you would expect to be produced by 10 thousand nervous ducks...
It gave the town a massive amount of flavour, and the players really remembered it.
That is awesome! What great imagery for entering the town haha
-Dan
I bet the ducks were full of flavour too.
I'll get my coat.
Having grown up in Germany I find it strange if villages are apart more than 1 hour by foot. True, in a medieval setting most of them would be 5 houses, a chapel and a traveling merchant that visits twice a month, but villages nonetheless. I don't know how that is in other countries around the world, but I know it's the same in all of Central Europe.
The game Kingdom Come Deliverance draws an accurate picture of an average region in the middle ages, and according to Google Maps it takes you 2 hours 11 minutes on foot from Sasau Monastery to Rattay Castle passing through Talmberg.
You can tell the game was invented in the New World.
I think it's the same in any sedentary civilization. Rural China also has villages an hour or two apart if there is no natural obstacle like a desert or mountain range.
There are also villages in between towns and cities. It makes no sense for a farmer to walk over an hour to their fields every day so either they live close enough or the land in between is uninhabited.
You get towns with over 25000 inhabitants every ~25 to 30km in Germany which translates roughly to 5 to 8h of walking. (probably longer before the roads were paved). So a trip to the city take a villager at least 2days.
If that distance grows, like for e.g. in the wild west (the setting I suspect D&D tried to emulate on the sword coast) the land is likely to be less 'civilized' (meaning controlled/worked) and that changes the culture. More wild spaces, heavier fortified villages, caravans, bandits & wild animals, white spaces on the map etc.
In one of my towns, it’s a good 85-90% tiefling population. Not only is the “The Devil’s Moon Inn” a hotspot for tourism due to the massive garden in the back which holds a portal to the Elemental Plane of Fire, but it’s also a historical site where a massive battle between tieflings and demons took place, with the tieflings gaining their freedom!
And if you need to wind down, there’s a spa and sauna called “The Hot Spot”…who has a very handsome cambion masseuse~
(~) 6:00 The first cities were founded along rivers, but as civilizations grew we expanded to coasts to expand trade between cities (and eventually between realms). So larger, more ancient cities will be more on the interior of the land masses where lots of rivers deposited silt.
Think: Fertile Crescent (modern day northern Iraq), Egypt (Nile river valley), Delhi (Indus river valley), and the Yellow RIver(??) in China.
(~) 8:00 Roads are just common trails from ancient trade routes, so think about how trade flowed between cities. Paved roads IIRC were only a thing in ancient cities or between major cities in big empires.
@@shalkonon013 True. But anything big enough to trample a path constantly would likely be something people would steer clear of
Here's a thought: a quadrapedal race like centaurs would NOT have roads generally, only major crossings. They can rapidly muster without them AND it makes crossing their terrain HARDER for any opposing army. The same for any flighted races - aside from dedicated and highly monitored paths for very large parcels of trade goods it's advantageous to keep their population centers less accessible and hidden from ground dwellers. You could have a farm while the village that is growing the food is at the top of a nearby mountain, something otherwise infeasible.
Making their cities less accessible also makes trade harder.
Really interesting ideas especially the centaur hadn't thought of that! I had fun in my current campaign setting having the birdfolk crafting nesting towers across the ocean so individuals could fly between continents for expedited messages and such.
For birdfolk interacting and trading with others could be that most larger settlements have some ground accessible outpost or merchant square but the majority of the settlement is tucked on/in a mountain inaccessable to those who cannot fly. Would mean some kind of setup to bring in larger items/materials too which would be fun to play with depending on the magic/tech level of the setting!
-Dan
We have a similar idea for our race of fey cat centaurs in our playtest of Khor. 😃👍🏻
Have been watching this entire series and have learned so much. Now with the PDF I am making even more connections
Love It!!
For my current, randomized, game, I made random table for all the ideologies, tool materials, building materials, food sources, and races that I wanted on the world. I rolled for the different aspects, and wrote them on index cards. This created a nice cultural diversity in the world.
Fun fact about Dutch people: they will congratulate you on a family member’s birthday. Another thing I have observed is that the Dutch people still living in the Netherlands are known for being happy and warm, but those who left and settled in other countries are notoriously grumpy. I guess there’s no place like home!
In my culture (Polish) it is considered rude to refuse a beverage when visiting somebodies house, nobody will get obviously mad at you but they might feel weird and not wanting a beverage may seem that you don't plan on staying long and wish to leave as soon as possible.
Guy, your content never ceases to be a welth of inspiration and resources. my greatest thanks to you and your team for this wonderful new series. I'm looking forward to seeing more each week.
This literally was perfect timing
Yeah, all the time with this series 😂👌
Great video. I surround all towns and cities with villages half a days travel so it becomes C-v-v-T. The result is it slightly more than one days travel between major centres so PCs must either stop on the way or risk exhaustion to get to the next town. This solves the instant teleport between towns and gives a space for adventure
Brilliant videos keep up thr great work !
I've started to build my own world using the zombicide game and your videos have helped a long way !
A really good idea to actually draw an icon of a faction's/race's city on a map. That way you can draw orc settlement within human borders and players would be interested in the 'why'. Is it becuase it was taken over? Or because a lot of orcs migrated and made an enclave under human jurisdiction? They are in our world to find out by themselves
Are we calling geography a part of culture? The area where my late father was born, 200 miles south of my home town, was in an area of limestone caverns. Limestone is soluble. From time to time, the roof on one would fall in and create a sinkhole. Tales are told of Volkswagens getting swallowed up, and so forth, and of that one sinkhole that the city filled with concrete and considered the problem solved--for about three days, until it fell in again. A bit farther south, people plant citrus orchards around the largest sinkholes, so the cold air will drain down into the sinkhole and be less likely to damage the trees.
Great video, and even greater question. I'm enjoying checking other people's answers.
The map grades from a darker but survivable where they all start. When the get to a decent rank I give the a fast and safe way to cross the mountains keeping them from the rest of the map. They then have forest, desert with questionable oasis, islands offshore, an area known for magical creatures. Plot hooks dabbling and relating them all to the ruler of the continent. It’s my first real world build.
I grew up in a strongly Dutch-American culture. The differences between current Dutch culture and where the current climate is rather interesting. They are a definitely strongly Conservative Protestant culture. They are also very close knit socially. You always hear gossip about everyone, it seems people like my mom and my aunts have an encyclopedic knowledge of everyone and who their related to as well as a past knowledge of who people have dated. I find it rather intrusive myself but knowing what’s going on with everyone all the time gives you a different perspective of what’s going on even on a local level. A few Dutch words are still in the local dialect, however for the most part the only people who still can speak Dutch are my grandparents who haven’t really had to use it since most of them moved to America when they were younger than ten.
A small cultural oddity from Germany:
Quite a number of families have a small garden (~20x20m) clustered in little colonies throughout the city. More often than not each garden is closed of by a big fence or (neatly trimmed) hedges and people use them as a weekend retreat where they will absolutely not be bothered by anyone, despite sharing the same hobby in the same place. (might be a late effect of denunciation culture, at least in the east)
One surprising element of heavy metal culture is how importantly it takes its history. This is not the academic history but the music itself.
4:20 did Guy really make a fat joke about himself at the funny number? Absolute legend
Potluck dinners. Every month, my family's church would host at least two potluck dinners, one of them was always the monthly church business meeting. It was a point of pride for all the women to show off their personal specialty dish. There were always a variety of meat dishes, a whole long table of side dishes and a whole table of desserts. You could tell who hadn't come by what was missing from the usual offerings. I guess I was raised with Hobbits.
Curious or interesting? Depends on if you mean local culture or family/ancestral culture.
Locally, most towns and cities are known for producing some kind of food product. And they each throw a kind of harvest festival every year that highlights that food stuff. From an asparagus, a chocolate festival, a crawfish festival, and pretty much anything else you can imagine. And people travel from all over to attend these festivals.
As far as family/ancestral culture... One of my ancestral cultures was known to, and still do in some cases, clean the bones of the dead, and then store them in boxes. They'd then store the boxes in communal funerary buildings that acted as crypts.
They would then pull them out for special events, religious ceremonies, and the like. That way they could still participate in the community.
As an aside, when the funerary buildings would get full, folks from nearby villages would come and bury all the remains in a communal mound. They did this because they didn't believe you should have to bury your own loved ones.
Something about German culture people from other countries usually don't know about:
It's part of your education to feel guilty, remorseful and ashamed about our German history. So much so that I, a person born 43 years after WW2, cannot say words like 'Jewish' without feeling guilt.
Usually we only focus on hate in fantasy role-playing, 'elfs hate dwarves because of something a long time ago'. Cultures could be so much richer in our games if certain people/races grow up with other feeling for cultures they never encountered.
Maybe the party arrives in a new town and the townsfolk start giving gifts too the Tiefling because for some reason nobody can actually remember they feel deeply sorry for them. And if asked they be like "isn't it obvious they are a Tiefling, and after all that happened what else could we do".
Wait, what? Where have you been socialized?
At least in the part of germany where I have been brought up, we were never told to be guilty or ashamed. How could I be guilty? I was born 42 years after the Seconde World War. I have been told, that it is our historical responsibility that what happend in Germany back then shall never happed again - certainly not in germany and if possible also not in other countries either. It's our responsibility to point out fascism and work agains ist.
Feeling guilt over the word "jewish" is absurd.
I'm not sure if with "we" in you second paragraph you mean "us germans", but if you do: No, we do not all focus on hate in fantasy games. Maybe you and your social circle does, but generalizing to the whole of germany is absurd once more.
While not by any means unique to my family, a keen interest in and engagement with genealogy, especially the efforts of my grandmother and some of her cousins, has led to reestablished ties to persons and families scattered not only throughout N. America, but in places as far flung as Scotland, Norway, the Low Countries, and too many elsewheres to give full justice. The bulk of the groundwork accomplished during the 1950s through the 1970s. As a consequence, I've been to visit and even live with for a time a number of such (and vice versa). Many of us in the younger(!) generations have kept up the connections, the channels of communication. They really do feel like family despite far remove. Especially one not-too-distant cousin who lives in Glasgow, with whom I speak on the telephone (or video chat) almost weekly, just to stay caught up, check on each other, bullshit, commiserate about quarantines and travel bans.
My culture really likes potatoes. There are so many ways of preparing potatoes that can be eaten with any meal of the day.
Almost every household keeps a sack of potatoes in the pantry and some people I know even have potatoes in their bedroom.
A noble people.
Certainly, Cherithal is a fantasy space for my world. There are 7 elements in the world within them are different types of magic. It’s inherited by people who can do magic but not necessary to actually learn it. Magic teachers generally quite talented and have a hierarchy within their class of Magics.
The desert hides a lush and beautiful ocean. Filled with all the marine creatures I could find. But no pc has ever ventured through and found it.
I love your videos, i see u from spain!
Do you have any videos on running nobility or a military?
Maybe I missed something. What program did you make the map with.
My People are kind of humble and always putting our self down. And when we succeed on intivitual level we always kinda go "oh that, nah thats nothing special really" but when we succeed on national level we go apsolutley ape shit like we are king of the universe or something.
Back in the time, man all left during winter to go cut logs and trees up north and came back with the spring to plant crops in there fields. Logs were brought back by throwing them in the river down steam.
I have a game where the orcs are mistreated and you have to save them from a warforged army
My world has large elephant sized beasts that are built like a pit bull (very muscular) they have semi translucent skin with not much fur, the country uses these beasts to pull multiple cart trains.
👍🏿
My current setting features a desert metropolis who is ruled by a benevolent ancient brass dragon
Sooo Marquet from crit role?
@@holdenblessing2836 never saw critical roll
All the words before benevolent led me to believe that the setting was Dark Sun. Oh well.
Guy, I love your videos especially insert the giant banana.
Man... calling the map he made ugly made me feel really bad about my own map drawing skills.
im struggling too, but here's something i learned that i needed to force myself into doing so, that will really make your maps better:
break your map to pieces, destroy some of your work, displace it, separate it, merge it, and then polish.
Great video, as always. In a part of my world, the oath of marriage is magically enhanced in a blood mark so that both persons become slave to one another. It allows them to use a limited form of telapathy between them and they can exchange their health between one another (a transfer of vitality. If they do something against that oath, the oath is broken, the mark opens and continually flows with blood (not enough to kill) and it causes eternal suffering (again, not enough to cripple).
In one part of my world, both lovers cut their tiny fingers and put it in the cup of wine of the other. They simultanously drink the cup and eat the finger of the other. So everyone without a tiny finger is considered married.
It could be great to see more videos about futuristic or modern worlds.
my scientific culture has fled far away from the world after abusing physics until it breaks creating magic by the same occasion oops sorry broke the laws of thermodynamics uwu
Hey GM's
Im from Germany and i am lazy and unpunctual. i dont have leather pants and i dont know one person who has. i dont have sandals but would never wear socks in it, cars aren't more than things that get me somewhere. i hate getting up early and i have never been to Mallorca. - all of this is true.
Feel free to use this. :P
Mallorca seems to be more a British vacation spot anyway. But that's just me being an ignorant Finn.
@@oz_jones maby, I can't tell :D
In my culture making good money is shameful so we mostly never talk about how much we make for a living, especially if one wins more than the average. It's so weird. Though we make awesome cheese, bread and saucisson :D and our capital is the most hated city by people living elsewhere in the country.
I have created weird civilisation whose children are totally human-looking. At puberty their heads change to animal head and they gain animal traits. Most match according to their animal aspect, but not all. Also not all snake parents have snake children. That depends on their god mood. There is a lot of tribe fighting. A lot of chaos xD
I was born in Texas, in the greatest country in the world, on the eve of our first birthday, all toddlers are given a 357 magnum! We become acquainted with GUNS at a young age because freedom.
I'm a white American mix breed. I don't have a culture. It's depressing sometimes to not have any history to feel like I'm a part of.
Fun Fact about Britain. If asked "How have you been/hows its going/how are you" its costamery to reply "been alright" & move on no matter how much it's a lie. We literally don't actually care how you're doing.
Same in Canada and the States. Everyone is “fine” when asked.
@@shalkonon013 I apologise for a misspelling. You know what I ment though 🤨
Fun Facts about germany: No fun allowed, go back to work.
Work does make you free :)
Something about my culture personally? I'm an American we don't have any. My game world is fantasy post apocalyptic. Low tech, low magic, with lots of room to fill in the blanks long forgotten by history. After watching these, I always think I went too small simple and boring.
The US does have culture, but it’s extremely varied depending on where you are in the nation.