Incredibly fascinating to think about how interconnected networks of organizations work both with and against each other in the context of fantasy role playing. It’s so easy when you think about hooks in this context… The adventuring party, having recently completed the clearing of a goblin encampment for a local merchant, are invited to an uptown soirée at a chancellor’s manor. There, the bard strikes up a conversation in the garden with one of the chancellor’s aides, who complains about a trade route disruption due to bandits on a seaside route. The party investigates only to find that the bandits are members of the city’s thieves guild who’ve been paid by a rival chancellor to sway the merchant vote in an upcoming election… it writes itself.
Most world building tutorials start with the map, then derive the Routes, Resources, and Relationships. Pro challenge: generate the 3 Rs first, then create a map that "justifies" them.
I’m doing something similar now. I have my different races/factions/kingdoms, where they reside and how that influences their behavior and culture, and how those differences effect their relationships to others nearby who reside in a very different environment. It’s harder for me to visualize and start a map than it is for me to write up stories of people and the world they know. For example I have a nomadic desert people made of orcs who have a positive relationship with the neighboring tradesman of halflings and gnomes. The orcs trade muscle and raw materials from the desert and it’s monsters to the halflings and gnomes for crops, protection, and crafted/refined goods. The orcs know life is easier working with their neighbors, even though they could physically take them over. Meanwhile, the gnomes and halflings know they can’t win in a physical fight but can offer their bountiful harvests and skilled tradesmen. It instantly breeds life into the world more than, “mountains here… plains here… oh volcanoes are cool…”
Have you ever read The Influence of Sea Power upon History by A. T. Mahan? It's mostly known for its huge impact on naval theory, but it is first and foremost a treatise on how control over the sea dictates which nations will become great powers. Today we would probably call it a work of geopolitics, although the term wasn't used back then. Plus it has the rare advantage among these sorts of books of actually having predicted something that came to be; namely the Panama Canal turning the United States into a major naval power and by extension a major world power.
Hey I really appreciated the well cited research in this piece. Could you consider adding references to those citations in the description? It would be useful to look up those books you mentioned.
Well Yves Lacoste's book was a nightmare to read. It's only in French and I had to use Kindle translate speech to text to read it to me in English. Roger Baker was my instructor, and the VP of Applied Geopolitics at Stratfor Private Intelligence, so it's stuff I learned directly from him.
You have outdone yourself with this one sir! I haven't been so satisfactorily info-barraged in a while. All good interlocking points to be extrapolated upon, especially with route maintenance - the more used and valuable it becomes, the more expensive it is to maintain. Thus potentially making it too expensive for some goods to be profitably traded, or opening the market for mercenary enforcers along the route and all drama with competing security factions and the state.
In my last campaign I took the geographical region i live in and use it as the basis for our world. All real places have fantasy equivalents making it easy for players to reference.
Latecomer to this channel but thank you so much for keeping the information concise and organized. Immediately what stood out to me after two videos and makes the meat of your content that much more enjoyable!
A follow up explaining how improved horse technology allowed the Achmid empire to suppress Egyptian power. Or how chariots were the Abrims tank of the Bronze Age world that Egypt used effectively to haunt the Hittite Empire using a slightly different configuration. Or how bronze was the oil of the Bronze Age that on disruption of tin deliveries proved to be the straw that broke the camels back breaking all but one Empire.
3:00 sea travel is much faster than overland travel. Its been joked that in preindustrial europe to get from prague to vienna the fastest way was takigm a riverboat down river to hamburg take a ship there around all of Europe to the mouth of the Danube and then a riverboat up to Vienna.
This feels like an absolutely tedious and herculean task to build out, and I'm afraid though my notes would be very detailed when read, I'd be unlikely to recall them in a way that is useful at the table.
Do you have a good way of visualising the different relationship between different organisation or nations? Just having it in free form text makes it hard to get an overview. Tables, matrixes, graphs, wikis? Feel all of them could work, but it also need to be easy to cross reference and keep updated during the course of the campaign
Thank for this, this just gave me the inspiration I needed for figuring out realistic stress from my players nuking an entire country by summoning a demon lord......don't ask....
I use Rick and Morty as a great example of how dungeons and dragons should work. Like in the show the villains, heros, universe and plot involves either Rick or Morty for the most part. I just try to do the same with dungeons and dragons being the main focus and structure of the universe and world. Dragons are lesser deities, rulers and heros are created by their relationship to Dragons, dungeons are simply a reflection of civilization with the core lore being that a civilization isn't created until they kill a dragon, gain civility through using it as a resource and some of the most powerful people and dungeons have a direct link to a single Dragon.
This is a really helpful video, but I couldn’t help but notice the typo in the thumbnail! Shouldn’t it spell ‘building’ and not ‘building’? Regardless, many thanks for sharing this info. Can’t wait to use this in revising the cities on my world’s map.
Good video overall. I am going to be a pedant and talk about one of your specific examples, A harp maker would not be dependent on a Timber mill necessarily, Harps don't require a lot of wood but they do require very specific pieces of wood, such that a harp maker could go into the forest fell and split the right trees themselves or hire a woodsman to do so. A mill becomes much more necessary if the harp maker needs to output more harps than can be hand crafted by a handful of skilled artisans or suitable wood becomes scarce enough that it can't be sourced from the local area. Most people don't have a good handle on the practice of woodcraft prior to industrialization taking over in the early 20th century. For those interested in what preindustrial woodcraft looks like for their RPG campaign this channel is a really good starting point ua-cam.com/users/MrFollansbee
I love your worldbuilding stuff! ...unfortunately it makes me realize how poorly thought out my own gameworld is. Fortunately, my players don't look beneath the surface for these things, so I can just fill them in ad hoc. Need an excuse for bandit incursions? Suddenly the old forest road is the main trade route for the umptyflaxis supply! Whatever will the wiz-priest-psycops do without their umptyflaxis? Adventurers, assemble! LOL!
There are imo only a few choices. 1: outright evil 2: composed of non-humans, who think/act very differently than we do, 3: ruled by divine authority. The state is God, because it actually is one.
Actually modern scientific communism was derived from medieval utopian socialism. So, you just have to pick up any social utopian idea (like ideas of Leonardo da Vinci and others), spice it up with magic, because it is used for well-being of all members of the society, removed the exploitation of the people's labour. And there it is, it works.
Well, it depends on how far you want to take it and what flavor of communism/socialism you're shooting for and what kind of vibe you want to have. 1) Tribal where nobody can own land/water etc. Everyone learns a trade (hunter, weaver, cook, etc), takes cares of that and in return gets food/goods he needs to function. 2) City driven mostly by the guilds where every member gets to have a vote and the profits are used to take care of the members and their families. 3) High fantasy place where most people study magic & other arts, magical spells and contraptions take care of all the mundane tasks. Just a few ideas.. they're not very detailed but maybe they're of some use =)
For a d&d world, it's probably sufficient to leave things at the first stage of a resource- ore, wood, farmland, etc, and a path to a town or city. D&d isn't an RTS game, and even the most diehard world builders don't have anything even vaguely resembling a functional economy. Show an obvious valuable. Show a credible threat to that valuable. Drama ensues.
Incredibly fascinating to think about how interconnected networks of organizations work both with and against each other in the context of fantasy role playing. It’s so easy when you think about hooks in this context…
The adventuring party, having recently completed the clearing of a goblin encampment for a local merchant, are invited to an uptown soirée at a chancellor’s manor. There, the bard strikes up a conversation in the garden with one of the chancellor’s aides, who complains about a trade route disruption due to bandits on a seaside route. The party investigates only to find that the bandits are members of the city’s thieves guild who’ve been paid by a rival chancellor to sway the merchant vote in an upcoming election… it writes itself.
Routes 1:43
Sponsor 4:20
Resources 5:06
Relationships 7:38
Conclusion 9:04
G
Thank you friend.
Not all heros wear capes.
Writing a book, and using my "D&D" campaign as a baseline to help develop ideas, and this channel is INCREDIBLY helpful! Thank you!🙏🙌
Same
I enjoy all of Dungeon Masterpiece videos
Most world building tutorials start with the map, then derive the Routes, Resources, and Relationships. Pro challenge: generate the 3 Rs first, then create a map that "justifies" them.
That's fun!
I’m doing something similar now. I have my different races/factions/kingdoms, where they reside and how that influences their behavior and culture, and how those differences effect their relationships to others nearby who reside in a very different environment.
It’s harder for me to visualize and start a map than it is for me to write up stories of people and the world they know. For example I have a nomadic desert people made of orcs who have a positive relationship with the neighboring tradesman of halflings and gnomes. The orcs trade muscle and raw materials from the desert and it’s monsters to the halflings and gnomes for crops, protection, and crafted/refined goods. The orcs know life is easier working with their neighbors, even though they could physically take them over. Meanwhile, the gnomes and halflings know they can’t win in a physical fight but can offer their bountiful harvests and skilled tradesmen. It instantly breeds life into the world more than, “mountains here… plains here… oh volcanoes are cool…”
Have you ever read The Influence of Sea Power upon History by A. T. Mahan? It's mostly known for its huge impact on naval theory, but it is first and foremost a treatise on how control over the sea dictates which nations will become great powers. Today we would probably call it a work of geopolitics, although the term wasn't used back then. Plus it has the rare advantage among these sorts of books of actually having predicted something that came to be; namely the Panama Canal turning the United States into a major naval power and by extension a major world power.
It's actually next on my reading list. I'm currently working on Grand Strategy by John Collins
Hey I really appreciated the well cited research in this piece. Could you consider adding references to those citations in the description? It would be useful to look up those books you mentioned.
Well Yves Lacoste's book was a nightmare to read. It's only in French and I had to use Kindle translate speech to text to read it to me in English. Roger Baker was my instructor, and the VP of Applied Geopolitics at Stratfor Private Intelligence, so it's stuff I learned directly from him.
I love to see you build a world and show what geopolitics principals apply as you add routes, natural land barriers, or monsters to a region.
I'd love-love-LOVE to see you do an analysis on the Old World setting of Warhammer Fantasy Battle & Role Play
This is still, and likely forever will be, one of the most important videos related to worldbuilding. Thank you SO MUCH for this.
Your best video topic yet, sir. I would be great to see you do an example of worldbuilding and put this all into action!
This is really useful for worldbuilding in general, even outside the scope of D&D. Well done!
*looks at clock* (11am)
"Uh, good evening Baron"
Watching this multiple times and taking notes like you would in school? Of course.
You have outdone yourself with this one sir!
I haven't been so satisfactorily info-barraged in a while. All good interlocking points to be extrapolated upon, especially with route maintenance - the more used and valuable it becomes, the more expensive it is to maintain. Thus potentially making it too expensive for some goods to be profitably traded, or opening the market for mercenary enforcers along the route and all drama with competing security factions and the state.
Nice, three Rs… useful and easy to remember. Thanks Baron.
Always love the geopolitical videos!
This is an excellent video. I often use Mountains, Deserts and Oceans as a way of dividing one region from another that they don't trade with.
These are really going to help my world building! I love the simple and concise explanations!
In my last campaign I took the geographical region i live in and use it as the basis for our world. All real places have fantasy equivalents making it easy for players to reference.
All good. The last sentence's double-entendre gave me a chuckle.
You've really sparked my interest in geopolitics. Do you have a book recommendation suited for beginners?
Disunited Nations by Peter Zeihan
Latecomer to this channel but thank you so much for keeping the information concise and organized. Immediately what stood out to me after two videos and makes the meat of your content that much more enjoyable!
You could be fighting off vicious beetlemen and saving space princesses, instead you're building a world for a game you'll never run.
This is exactly what I needed!
My friends and I are making a video game, I have been plowing through your back log again.
Some nice thoughts i will use for my world. Thanks for sharing
I love your videos man, they are some of the best on the d&d youtube platform 👍 keep it up
Love the advice on hand in this video!
A follow up explaining how improved horse technology allowed the Achmid empire to suppress Egyptian power. Or how chariots were the Abrims tank of the Bronze Age world that Egypt used effectively to haunt the Hittite Empire using a slightly different configuration. Or how bronze was the oil of the Bronze Age that on disruption of tin deliveries proved to be the straw that broke the camels back breaking all but one Empire.
You are great!! Another great video!!!
3:00 sea travel is much faster than overland travel. Its been joked that in preindustrial europe to get from prague to vienna the fastest way was takigm a riverboat down river to hamburg take a ship there around all of Europe to the mouth of the Danube and then a riverboat up to Vienna.
Woohoo, Geopolitics :D
Thumbnail promised "Buidling"
My spelling is terrible. Thank you for calling attention to it. It's been corrected! :D
Well presented once again!
Would really love a ‘Geopolitics Appendix N’ for those of us who want to learn more.
1:15 You could have mentioned the Hanseatic league but you went went with the lords alliance.
Very useful video, thank you!
Routes are why the spice must flow.
This feels like an absolutely tedious and herculean task to build out, and I'm afraid though my notes would be very detailed when read, I'd be unlikely to recall them in a way that is useful at the table.
Talking about Faerun with a picture of Stormreach in Eberron up. No fair.
Man, this is great!
This took an unexpectedly dark turn 😅
Another great video!
Good stuff.
Thanks for expanding my "world".
Do you have a good way of visualising the different relationship between different organisation or nations? Just having it in free form text makes it hard to get an overview. Tables, matrixes, graphs, wikis? Feel all of them could work, but it also need to be easy to cross reference and keep updated during the course of the campaign
Thank for this, this just gave me the inspiration I needed for figuring out realistic stress from my players nuking an entire country by summoning a demon lord......don't ask....
That is some world altering events if I ever saw any.
I use Rick and Morty as a great example of how dungeons and dragons should work. Like in the show the villains, heros, universe and plot involves either Rick or Morty for the most part. I just try to do the same with dungeons and dragons being the main focus and structure of the universe and world.
Dragons are lesser deities, rulers and heros are created by their relationship to Dragons, dungeons are simply a reflection of civilization with the core lore being that a civilization isn't created until they kill a dragon, gain civility through using it as a resource and some of the most powerful people and dungeons have a direct link to a single Dragon.
4:00 The Achamenid cross the midditerranean? You mean the levant right?
I can’t be the only one who saw two different thumbnails. Am I?
He's about to say the R word!
This is a really helpful video, but I couldn’t help but notice the typo in the thumbnail! Shouldn’t it spell ‘building’ and not ‘building’?
Regardless, many thanks for sharing this info. Can’t wait to use this in revising the cities on my world’s map.
Good video overall.
I am going to be a pedant and talk about one of your specific examples, A harp maker would not be dependent on a Timber mill necessarily, Harps don't require a lot of wood but they do require very specific pieces of wood, such that a harp maker could go into the forest fell and split the right trees themselves or hire a woodsman to do so. A mill becomes much more necessary if the harp maker needs to output more harps than can be hand crafted by a handful of skilled artisans or suitable wood becomes scarce enough that it can't be sourced from the local area. Most people don't have a good handle on the practice of woodcraft prior to industrialization taking over in the early 20th century.
For those interested in what preindustrial woodcraft looks like for their RPG campaign this channel is a really good starting point ua-cam.com/users/MrFollansbee
You should write a book.
I love your worldbuilding stuff! ...unfortunately it makes me realize how poorly thought out my own gameworld is. Fortunately, my players don't look beneath the surface for these things, so I can just fill them in ad hoc. Need an excuse for bandit incursions? Suddenly the old forest road is the main trade route for the umptyflaxis supply! Whatever will the wiz-priest-psycops do without their umptyflaxis? Adventurers, assemble! LOL!
How many times can this guy hand me a sandwich in 10 minutes.
I'd like to like the video, but too many informations to process and I have even less idea of where to begin now.
Wait wait wait. Wheat, a boring commodity? Take a look how pizza and pasta had dominated cuisine my dude
Is there a good geopolitics reading list out there? Preferably one not stuffed to the gills with propaganda like a bunch of econ books are.
I actually have a reading list I'll post in a community post
What would a realistically successful fantasy communist or socialist society look like?
There are imo only a few choices. 1: outright evil 2: composed of non-humans, who think/act very differently than we do, 3: ruled by divine authority. The state is God, because it actually is one.
Tribal societies often employ a primitive form of communism.
Actually modern scientific communism was derived from medieval utopian socialism. So, you just have to pick up any social utopian idea (like ideas of Leonardo da Vinci and others), spice it up with magic, because it is used for well-being of all members of the society, removed the exploitation of the people's labour. And there it is, it works.
Well, it depends on how far you want to take it and what flavor of communism/socialism you're shooting for and what kind of vibe you want to have. 1) Tribal where nobody can own land/water etc. Everyone learns a trade (hunter, weaver, cook, etc), takes cares of that and in return gets food/goods he needs to function. 2) City driven mostly by the guilds where every member gets to have a vote and the profits are used to take care of the members and their families. 3) High fantasy place where most people study magic & other arts, magical spells and contraptions take care of all the mundane tasks.
Just a few ideas.. they're not very detailed but maybe they're of some use =)
I like your talk, but damn if you being in a full-fledged suit throwing me off from the topic of worldbuilding and DnD
You look too formal, my guy XD
For a d&d world, it's probably sufficient to leave things at the first stage of a resource- ore, wood, farmland, etc, and a path to a town or city. D&d isn't an RTS game, and even the most diehard world builders don't have anything even vaguely resembling a functional economy.
Show an obvious valuable.
Show a credible threat to that valuable.
Drama ensues.