How to Create a Dungeons & Dragons Fantasy World

Creating a Dungeons & Dragons world can be challenging when staring at a blank piece of paper. However, it's easier if you break it down into smaller tasks. Also, you only have to set up the basics. The specifics for any area can come later.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

Things You’ll Need:

• Paper
• Imagination
• Dice

1. Decide on an approach for your Dungeons & Dragons world. This can be based on history, a situation that controls the world, something you read in a book or saw in a movie or anything else that catches your fancy to create a world around.
2. Pick a shape for your world and the size of the planet your races live on.
3. Place water and bodies of land in various locations. Make sure some of your water sections are minor and there are islands in some locations as well.
4. Plant climates on your land and water bodies over your world. They do not have to make complete sense if you come up with a good reason for a jungle to be right next to an ice glacier, for example.
5. Select where your hills, mountains, flatlands and other land features go.
6. Develop cultures for your races. Some make more sense to be together, while oddness can make for an interesting world for play too. This includes your governing body.

Tips & Warnings

• Remember this is fantasy, so anything goes. But a few explanations can go far with things that don't normally parallel each other.
• Sketch your world or use a computer program to see it. Graph paper can help too, if you don't have good drawing skills.
• When you get down to individual cities, create one first and expand from there. Or, have a few with basics only and then fill in the rest as it comes to you.
• If you can't decide how to create any one thing, use dice and set parameters.