16 Mar 2025
Worldbuilding for fiction and TTRPGs is easy
It’s been over 5 years now that I slipped on a banana peel and fell head-first into the wonderful hobby of analog, improvised storytelling. It has been truly one of the most liberating experiences of my life to learn that I can just… make stuff. And if somebody finds it good, great. If they don’t, that’s fine too.
I’ve built a fantasy world called Zemera, and a lot of it is empty. Maybe I’m the one who’s stupid, but when people say they’re “worldbuilding”, I didn’t realize that they don’t necessary mean a planet.
But when you get into D&D, you probably will find your way towards some sort of mapmaking software. So I did, and I used whatever influences I could find in my life plus a few handy name generators, and I slapped down some landmasses and locations and named them all.
But when it comes time to use your map, you realize that stories are local by nature, not global. Maps like the one above are no help, because stories are about characters.
So you pick one of the dots you put in place of a town and you drill down and make that, and give it yet another bunch of names that don’t mean anything until they’re used. And you then write a bunch more names for people who live in that place and are doing things.
It’s just names all the way down.
But then the marvelous bit of business happens — you start making those names mean something, one story at a time. You pick a place, and you pick a person, and in your chosen medium of art, you talk about the time they did something, and suddenly that name comes to life. It multiplies in ways you could not think, as the events that do happen imply or even inspire the events that are left unsaid. You create vibrance and harmony, and this name carries all of it forward to all those who partake in that story.
In my realization of the need to be local, I picked an island in the archipelago, called Teressa, and I focused on it for a few years. In that time, I’ve told a lot of stories on this island:
* A 55-session D&D campaign (2 arcs) over 2.5 years in the Eastern third + the 3 small islands to its south.
* A short story from that campaign, set in Farbarin. (https://vaibhavguptawho.substack.com/p/fireflies-in-farbarin)
* A 4-session D&D adventure in The Floating Plains
* A 4-session adventure in the Nam Valley (south of the Ashtea Peaks)
* A short story in that valley, about the location titled Gudrun’s Door (https://vaibhavguptawho.substack.com/p/the-tale-of-gudruns-door)
* Several 1-session games in multiple locations
* A short story in the Emeraldhide forest and Divyista (https://vaibhavguptawho.substack.com/p/the-mischievers-in-the-shadows-part)
* A short story in Sin-Duzh (pending publication)
* Multiple short stories in Ishash (in drafting)
And I plan to keep doing this, and also spread out to the other islands. My first novel (in drafting), Karsica and the Sky Islands, starts on the island called Aves, far to the west of Teressa, and hundreds of years before what is depicted in the following map.
So, if you think about it, worldbuilding is easy. You just slap a bunch of names down, either on a map or in a list, and when you get that itch to tell a story, you come back and pick one, and you build it out. All the other stuff we worry about — magic systems, politik, philosophy, meaningful characters, memorable relationships, and more — happen as you keep coming back.
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Personal update
I’m not well, but at this point that’s just the normal course of life and I’ll be okay.
I’m enjoying working video-first and then writing a post around it, and I want to see how long I enjoy doing that. In the meantime, my writing-first efforts are focused exclusively on fiction, so I don’t think I’ll be writing essays. My next two short stories are:
* Conscious Choices — I won’t give up on this story. It WILL be on this blog site. Please look forward to it.
* The Mischievers in the Shadows Part 2 — I want this to be on this blog site, but it’s also intended for something much bigger. There are 5 parts planned plus some fun stuff which I want to publish as an e-book. We’re far from that dream, but we’ll get there, one word at a time.
I want to take my time with these stories. Memories of Magnolias (https://vaibhavguptawho.substack.com/p/memories-of-magnolias) resonated with you in a way that Thank You for Coming (https://vaibhavguptawho.substack.com/p/thank-you-for-coming) did not, and I can only assume that the reason is that a lot more time, love, and effort went into the former, so I shall do the same with the upcoming stories.
Thanks for reading and/or watching my stuff. I’ve been feeling a little alone lately, so if you see this, leave a comment or at least a like so that I know I’m not throwing stuff into a void.
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