Worldbuilding Wednesday Hardcore Edition.

It’s not Warm-and-Fuzzy Wednesday.

Looking back on a lot of what has been randomly rolled so far I’m noticing a trend toward the settlements and kin encounters being very friendly. The first round of Ophidslakt were even communal and pretty much non-violent. The metagame reason for this is the dice. I’m figuring out the in-game reason for this is that kin/NPCs who get along with one another and the land itself aren’t attacked by the various forces around them.

This goes with another one of my setting design philosophies that there needs to be a balance between good and evil. Nature itself is commonly neutral with good tendencies. That’s not to say corrupting forces and evil does not exist. It’s to provide more contrast when evil does rear its ugly head. This is opposed to the concept of a grimdark world where everything is a dark shade of gray and even the good guys are a little sketchy sometimes.

Even my own homemade d12 encounter tables span from 1 always being a dragon to 12 always being a demon. However, not all dragons in my world are beneficent. They still hoard treasure and eat meat. Some of them might be neutral or even kind to the Player Characters, but there’ no guarantee.

Creatures in my world don’t wear their alignments or disposition on their sleeves. In other words, one Panther Dragon might be willing to let the PCs bunk down in its lair as long as they agree not to touch its treasure. The next might eat one of the group’s mounts in the middle of the night because it hasn’t eaten recently. (Yes, in case anyone is wondering, all of my dragons are build around cats of some kind as an homage to my wife.)

But not all settlements are happy Smurf village type places.

I haven’t done any kingdom or faction building yet. I’ve determined that many larger towns, cities, or settlements are built on or near the ruins of an older civilization. In some cities, such as those owned by the Reptilians, the ancient civilization never left. Their ultimate goal is to subvert other kin and take over their settlements blatantly or covertly.

Most civilized hexes, or at least those with towns, are spread out at least 15km or 30km from one another. In medieval Europe, most settlements were 2-3km apart in many cases. Again, if the planet is larger, maybe there aren’t as many inhabitants to populate or support towns that close together. Maybe they are less reliant on roads and more reliant on water travel or even air travel in some rare cases.

There will be larger settlements where the PCs might be taken advantage of or find outright hostile. I think some of those warlike, nasty, inhospitable humans might be making an appearance in some of these areas. I’m also trying to figure out what happened to the Elves and Dwarves of this world. Maybe they finally had enough of everyone’s shenanigans and became isolationists. Still thinking about how I want that to go.

See you tomorrow.

Thank you for being here with me today. I appreciate you. Keep it real, but please strive for positivity, too. Please embrace the things that bring you the most joy in your life.