Great video! Poor Hugh. I bought the pdf for this game a couple weeks ago and have been slowly reading though it. I have a character ready to go but haven't started yet. It looks really good though. As long as you don't roll a 1...
Thank you! Adding them to the list alongside the other picks from the comments. I think we'll end up with a D6 roll to determine the name so it's not too unlikely that it'll be one of those two!
Probably late to try and give suggestions, but an idea for orcs that I've been sitting on that kinda fits ibto what you were saying you wanted out of the orcs in this setting: nomadic traders/merchants. Think like the khajiit traders in Skyrim combined with the mafia and maybe some Mongol Empire for flair. A caravan rides up to do trade at exorbitant prices, and if people refuse to do business a raiding party rides in to tear up the town and take their stuff to add to their stock of trade goods. Kinda like protection money with extra steps
That sounds interesting! Not really too late, we'll eventually get around to fleshing that part of the world, history and culture out and having that potential perspective on their activities could be quite helpful. It'll likely be a while but we'll get there.
It's definitely versatile both as a system and as a worldbuilding tool. Sine Nomine just doesn't really miss with their output, I love Scarlet Heroes and Stars Without Number, too! The Anglish was definitely a lucky find some years back, it makes sticking "medievally-sounding" names on things a lot easier.
My feedback: I love "Farlen" and "Withermark" and to a lesser extent "Withermarch". Maybe we could name the "world" or the overarching region "Farlen" but the drawn region is the "Withermark/march". To further flesh out the "why is it called that way?" - here are some thoughts: * The melting ice made a big march there, where most things are dead / withering. * Maybe the blockade wasn't snow but some sort of curse. (Don't need to be a magical curse) could be whatever but the inhabitants of the world called it "curse" because it did something to the living things in that reagion - ie: Make them wither, become some sort of undead or close to that state. So nobody dared to go there. Maybe it was actually some sort of plague (risk of spreading it into other regions?) Edit: Awesome idea to use Anglish. Pls don't stop using it. :D
Good stuff! I'll add Farlen to the list of items that I'll be rolling on, it has a ring to it for sure! I'm also liking it as a name for the hub city to be honest. Gives me a sort of "town name" vibe that might work well. Interesting idea to integrate the origin of the "withering" into a bit of backstory. As far as curse instead of frost goes, I'm generally leaning towards "why not both?" in situations like these. So maybe as the frost came to close the passes, the creeping death entered the region beyond the mountain, wiping out any remnants of the previous imperial presence and leaving only the people of the forests and the tribes on the plains, who may or may not have been affected and thus significantly reduced in strength or were miraculously spared for some reason. It all depends on the origin of the calamity of course. Sort of gives me the vibe that "something" in the borderlands wanted it closed off and all outside influence gone, that might make for an interesting meta-antagonist right away!
Thank you for this. I’ve just discovered your channel and this is an excellent video. I can see that you and I see a good many things the same way. Your setting sounds like it will be awesome and I look forward to seeing it evolve.
So we are back to playing God? Lol I just wanna say thank you. I've gotten worlds without number because of you. And also I wanted to make a UA-cam channel just to world build with random tables because of you . Keep up the awesome work
Wow, excited to hear that! Absolutely go for it, there's definitely an audience for this kind of content out there (albeit it niche one, which is great if you're starting out!) and the specific style I enjoy consuming doesn't seem very prevalent. I find a lot of long, unedited videos that for me personally are tough to follow and not much else. Presumably there's either not a lot out there or I'm bad at finding it (or it's bad at making itself found).
Did you only do three episodes of these? There seemed to be such a grand idea in the beginning! I just bought WWN and am looking for good videos on its use. I hope you make more videos!
Hey, I appreciate you taking the time to comment even if it was a long time ago. I had to step away from UA-cam for a bit and got a little frustrated by that, so I wasn't answering comments like I should have. Apologies for that! Yes, unfortunately this got stuck at the third episode due to a very unforeseen lengthy UA-cam absence. I'm leaning towards rebooting it entirely around the core concepts as it's been a long time with no traction, feels a bit stale now. Easier to get into with fresh eyes and a new approach, most likely! Great to hear you got yourself a WWN copy, it's fantastic!
This sounds amazing. Maybe I ditch my worldbuilding efforts and just help here and use what ever comes out of here. Love the dark fantasy setting cornerstones you brought up. It ticks all the boxes for me so far.
Hey, not sure I'd go so far as to give up on your own efforts but definitely happy to have you pitching in here! It'll be a fair while before this is going to be a finished, playable product though, I'd imagine. Following the rhythm of my previous WWN series, having a week between uploads seems to work well to gather enough comment feedback and still comfortably record/edit the video.
@@killtenratsrpg I am still 10 to 20 weeks away of wrapping up my curse of strahd campaign. So I guess there's plenty of room to get this project somewhere. If it's not ready to play in by that time - I'll figure something out.
Nice! I need to get a hold of the redone Ravenloft stuff, I've only played the AD&D version and read one of the early novels but I always liked the setting. 10 - 20 weeks I'd say (if somewhat optimistically) should at least put enough meat on the bone to have some regions and plot points fleshed out to a playable degree. Here's hoping!
Really excited by your collaborative worldbuilding initiative! I’m sure you’ll get a lot of input , the main difficulty will be to organize and channel it so that it doesn’t get out of control! That’s what happened to me a few years back and there were only six or seven people involved in my group. But definitely, the collective effort is great to generate a setting with original and unexpected ideas and connections. For the Borderland name, my personal favorites are Edermark and Wendelmarch. As a contribution to your project, I offer “Grendelmark”. I don’t know exactly why but your very cool list of elements for a grimdark setting quickly made me think of Beowulf. Grendel could have been a famous character of the past, key in establishing the border march before it was isolated? Or maybe Grendel or the “Grendels “ were a mysterious and fearsome danger (elves? Some kind of demons or alien beings ? ) that the border region was intended to guard against, like a buffer zone for the southern empire?
Curious to see whether there'll be challenges regarding sorting through the amount of content down the road. We've done a first series of eight episodes building a city using WWN and it wasn't an issue but there's probably a "critical mass" point where it becomes a bit more labor intensive depending on how many participants we have. I'll definitely keep an eye on sorting what's currently relevant and storing what's not for later use, otherwise the comment input from video to video will bloat up for sure. Grendelmark sounds interesting and I like the ideas of the "Grendels". One thing standing in my way a little is quite a personal association I have with this since it's the username a close friend of mine has been using for 20+ years so that might be hard not to constantly conflate in my mind. Still, regardless of name, having a "grendel-ish" bunch of people out there could be fun!
@@killtenratsrpg I understand the personal reference issue and there is really nothing you can do against it in the end. I’ve been told some German gamers feel the same about the Harn setting because of this word meaning in their language… Being French myself, I’m unable to use the “Nuthela mountains “ in this Harn setting because it inevitably conjure the image of a hot crêpe dripping with chocolate! I tweaked the name and maybe we could do the same for Grendel ? Graendel or Grendaell or Grendayle ? So that could be the Graendelmark or the Grendaylemarch. Or even both if we consider two different languages/dialects spoken in the area (Grendaylemarch for the posh decadent empire and Graendelmark for the northern tribes or the borderlands population)
Hahahahaha oh boy I vividly remember getting a hold of the trusty old "Fantasy Shop" catalog straight out of Düsseldorf somewhere in the late 80s and seeing "Harnmaster" in there for the first time. Definitely a strange moment until I read a review that cleared that up for me. I did get past that one and rather like the setting but yeah... definitely an unfortunate choice for the German market! I didn't even know it had "Nuthela" mountains, that sounds delicious! I really rather like both Grendaell and Grendayle, very elegant solution to make it seem different enough to not be immediately noticeable. I'm adding that to the list of "to be rolled for" names, thanks for the suggestions! Like them a lot! And naturally every name that's not getting picked for the region might still end up a town, a river, a tribal coalition or something else, so we'll very likely find a use for it no matter how the dice fall.
Maybe the thing blocking the way to the borderlands was an ancient dam (something like the hoover dam) from a lost civilisation which over time had overflowed and frozen thus making it impossible to climb but as the ice melted it revealed doorways inside the dam and up to the borderlands. Could even make the inside of the dam a dungeon crawl, maybe it is infested with something nasty.
I think we're gonna need a kind of river with a massive gorge running through our mountain range and that dam might be the center piece, maybe even a series of dams, docks and such that were made either by a lost and now unknown civilization, the former Northern empire or the dwarves. I like it!
Nice! Glad to get in "on the ground floor" for this one. (I found the megacity world-building playlist after it was already done : ) Thoughts: - Make the mountain range run north-south, and the borderlands region is in the *East*. For Europeans and Americans, the frontier was always West. So why not make this frontier East. Also, if the frontier is to the north, it seems a bit too similar to the Wall from Game of Thrones. - The empire in the settled region can't be very large; they should be much much smaller than Rome. If they were a big empire, they could've just gone around the mountains. - Maybe there are no Dwarves, Elves, Orcs, and other demihumans. Removing the demihumans will really help make this a Dark fantasy setting, rather than just a Fantasy setting. - I love love love the idea of a lost city in the mountains, locked in ice, the route unknown, but the subject of myth and legend - Why do people access the frontier (non-settled side of the mountains) right here, instead of everywhere else along the mountain range? How about there's a big mountain pass here, so cross-mountain travel is easiest in this area. The peaks of the mountains may still be inhospitable, so there's no other way across, but in this region there is a pass - If there's no demihumans / orcs, then the people who are already in the frontier could be the tough, feral descendants of those who were cut off when the mountains froze. Perhaps there were cities in the frontier, but they depended on trade through the Pass, and when it froze these cities fell apart, and now lie in ruin... #dungeonDelving! - "Withermark" sounds a lot like "Riddermark", from Lord of the Rings. Maybe instead it could be, "Witherlent"?
Ouh, that's a lot of input! Thanks for taking the time! And also let me preface my response by saying that I do appreciate (maybe most) the comments that challenge things already put in place although there's a decent chance that I might end up disagreeing. It's the sort of back-and-forth that'll ultimately make it better. So uh... spoiler alert... I'll end up disagreeing with some things here (and that's a good thing)! Apologies in advance as this'll be a long one and will not exclusively address your points, it's also just hammering out ideas as they come in based off what you said. 1. Why not make the frontier East A few reasons, some maybe a bit personal, some maybe wider ranging. I think the main reason would be a "future threat" component, meaning: if we're to extrapolate that things get wilder and more dire the farther into the frontier you go (and what lies beyond), if we do ultimately end up introducing a threat coming at us from the opposite direction it'd mean "threat from the East" and not too far East from where I'm sitting right now is Russia. It feels a bit too topical to be honest. I'd much rather have the more historical connotation of "North = Threat" that an early medieval peasant might have than a current century human. 2. Similarities to ASoIaF (North = wilderness/beyond the wall) and Withermark = Riddermark: Yeah that'll keep happening. We all have our own lines to draw here with where it's too close to an "original" thing vs. where it's still acceptable. Specifically with regards to names, bringing in Anglish will keep throwing the Tolkien comparisons our way since he used Old English for a lot of names (e.g. Theoden, the Riddermark, etc.). That's an overlap that'll just be there since we go to the same linguistic well. Similarly, the GoT comparisons will likely also keep coming since it's a) still fresh in people's memory and b) I've been reading the series (and waiting for sequels...) since the late 90s, so it's a big influence on me, too. As pointed out above, I'm much more comfortable with a wild North than a wild East and a "Wild West" is a bit on the nose, which leaves the South and that intuitively doesn't feel right to do since I immediately acquaint that with a more Mediterranean flavor due to the association bias of where I'm sitting culturally. That's not to say I won't be running into my own "eeeeeh that's WAAAAY TOO MUCH like this other thing" moment regularly here, it just doesn't apply to these two. It's an entirely arbitrary line, that doesn't mean your observation's invalid. 3. No Demihumans = Dark Fantasy? I think you may be mixing up "low fantasy" with "dark fantasy" here, possibly? If you consider the origin of the term grimdark (which is now quite heavily prevalent in Dark Fantasy, too), it was a space opera retro-future sci-fi setting full of orcs, xenomorphs and superhuman soldiers. I'm not quite sure the equation that having demihuman ancestries in a setting makes it in any way less "dark fantasy". It is, however, closer to high fantasy than low fantasy. What I'm looking to build here is a "low magic dark fantasy" setting and part of the aim is to make it possible to integrate pre-existing OSR bestiaries and monster manuals (up to a point), which means I'd like to keep the elves, dwarves, orcs, goblins, ogres, etc. in there but the more "outlandish" (again, a fairly arbitrary term) it gets, the less likely it is to be included (e.g. there's unlikely to be bird people, three-headed apes, etc.). Even Ironsworn, which is as low fantasy as anything without being outright strict about it, has pseudo-werewolves cavorting about without detracting from the theme, it's just a question of how we incorporate it and the frequency of it. I think encountering demihumans, even Elves, will be an exceedingly RARE thing (outside of maybe one or two exceptional ancestries that historically adapt to human society but by doing so also lose much of what makes them unique). We'll land somewhere on the dial of the Witcher universe dialed down a tad, I'd imagine. 4. The Mountain Pass Yeah there's got to be one and that'll be the one that recently reopened, whereas our lost city megadungeon might be a lot harder to reach. If we keep it dwarven, maybe the dwarves built artificial "passes" (e.g. dwarf architecture) to bridge chasms in the past but all of that has collapsed under the weight of the calamity and nobody's consistently able to reach the place, whereas the few who have report back that it looks dead. There'll also need to be additional boundaries that prevent our "point of view empire" from getting around the mountains, we just haven't put them in yet (and there'll also have been a reason why those other separating areas could no longer be crossed) - that's definitely on the to-do list! 5. The Empire Needs To Be Small I'd agree, not particularly because of the Roman argument (they also eventually found their frontier that they couldn't quite crack) but because it's probably too corrupt to be stable and will constantly face secession and balkanization. My main touchpoint here was the Holy Roman Empire but maybe a bit more cohesive, with a hard core of a handful of duchies that have always stayed together but a varying degree of expansion over the years, as it unfolds and contracts through historical events and civil wars. I feel like there's probably room for a "former province but now fractured dominion of individual rulers that the empire is too weak to bring back to the fold" kind of region on the Southern side of the mountain range, maybe. That might be worth pursuing. We do need there to be something in place that is "sort of civilized" without already being the empire and some former provinces fit quite well! But yeah, no world-spanning global dominion, it doesn't really fit the blueprint! 6. Why Do People Access The Frontier I know you asked this in the context of "in this particular place" but if I shave this part off it also hits home a point we need to clarify in the building sessions - why go there? Maybe the empire is so bad and corrupt that trekking out into the wild unknown is preferable or maybe there's another McGuffin Unobtainium up there. Maybe there's a huge misleading campaign by the imperial authorities in place promising riches and ultra-fertile land and incentivising settlement (for whatever reason) but it's all a bit far off from the actual reality of things (or at least doesn't tell the whole story). Worth keeping in mind that we also need a reason why people even want to go up there! Whew, that about does it for this one - again, much appreciated that you're throwing in some points that challenge the design as is, it forces me to think about whether some "gut feeling" decisions are actually the preferable way to go, even if I end up going with the original idea or only slightly adapting what's been built so far. Hopefully that's no frustrating to you!
@@killtenratsrpg Hey thanks for the detailed reply! These answers make a lot of sense. I'm on-board! Your points on 5 & 6 gave me a thought. There's the former-province-now-fractured-dominion that the empire can't bring back under control. And there's the question of why do people go to the frontier? I think there's 3 ways to combine these. 1) The former-province also has a Pass through the mountains (they lie east or west of our main Pass). People might be trying to flee the evil empire, make a journey around the mountains through the frontier, and resettle in the former-province. 2) The evil empire might be trying to take control of the frontier before the former-province does. They don't want a rival power to expand its borders right onto their doorstep, so they (the empire) will expand first. 3) The former-province to not be connected with the frontier at all; it lies south. The empire is trying to bring it back under control; the situation has not flared up to a full-scale conflict yet, but it's simmering. Most importantly, commoners are conscripted into labor or military service in the effort. In order to avoid this conscription, some commoners flee north to the frontier. They might give an excuse like, "I'm only going up there for the resources; you know, to help with bringing the former-province back under control." ... Options 1 & 2 allow the former-province to be an active presence in the campaign setting, but this might make the frontier too "crowded". It's only a frontier if it has very little central authority, and that might not make sense if there's 2 rival political powers involved. You could minimize this "crowded" problem by just saying the mountain pass of the former province is really far away. ... Option 3, on the other hand, gives us a reason why the evil empire is not flooding the frontier with its own political apparatus, why the frontier remains untamed despite being right on the empire's doorstep (other than it just recently being opened). Also, maybe the former-province is actually sending secret agents/rangers through the empire, into the frontier, to stir up unrest and rebellion. This would allow the former-province to still be an active presence in the campaign setting. Anyway, I'm just thinking out loud here. Feel free to use some or none of these ideas. I just like worldbuilding!
Interesting! It's an option to have another mountain pass or to put the fractured former province between the empire (whether it's inherently evil or just ineffective due to corruption remains to be seen) and the one reliably traversable mountain pass instead. Both would work to create a bit of competition, maybe in the form of some of the former provincials banding together less to get ahead of the empire but the keep its influence out - perhaps even implicitly guaranteeing the independence of the "hub city" while the empire constantly tries to bring it under control. I do like the idea of there also being unrest down South - both to drive people North to escape conscription, to hit home the waning power of the empire and to provide a reason why the empire can't just launch an all out conquest North (because who knows, then the East and West suddenly secede, too)! I'm actually leaning towards integrating a lot of this as new elements and not substituting existing ones, just adding another challenge for the empire and building onto its themes. Good stuff!
It's like you live in my head, haha. I could have sat and written a list of what to include and it would be identical to yours. I'd recommend you grab a copy of Into the Wyrd & Wild, it's fantastic for forest campaigns. As for names, Farlen is my favorite one!
Hah, well - I'm not sure whether that means we both have fairly insular tastes that just overlap or it's an indicator that these sort of elements have a fairly wide appeal (but I'd lean towards the latter). Hopefully we'll manage to give a unique spin to the well-worn setting elements and not end up with a bland mix of things that everyone sort of knows and like but without much character of its own. Ouh neat, I hadn't heard of "Into the Wyrd & Wild". Seems hard to get a hold of a printed copy, cheapest shipping I found was $65 which... uh, yeah. I'll keep an eye out and might have to make do with a digital version for a start but it's good to have another target to keep watch for and hopefully snag at some point, it's half the fun of collecting this stuff! I'm adding Farlen to the "name oracles" then, it's already got one other vote so I figure it appeals. Maybe if it's not making the cut for region name, it'd be a good one for the hub city, too.
@@killtenratsrpg there was a recent KS for the second edition of Into the Wyrd & Wild and yeah, I think it's tricky to get your hands on one. I have a copy of the first edition, I'm hoping the second one will become widely available soon! Looking forward to the rest of the series!
Love it! I'll be following along every step of the way :-) I think Riddermark is used in some RPG setting, not sure which one. My favourite out of your list would be Ellanmark
More world building! Awesome. Also, a note since you made that footnote that you don't like the word "race." Would terms like heritage or ancestry work better when talking about dwarves & elves & orcs?
Yeah, that's a certainty. The first WWN series, an eight-parter which ended up with a urban sprawl sort of fantasy metropolis, will serve as the backdrop for a Scarlet Heroes campaign. We'll have to wrap up the current story arc for Ironsworn first (probably by mid-July), then I'll throw in a mini-series of Disciples of Bone and Shadow (probably from mid-July to late August) and then it's Scarlet Heroes time in the WWN-designed setting. I'll also be playing in the borderlands setting we'll be designing with the current WWN series but that'll be a while. I think maybe once we got enough material for an early playtest I'll be running Knave with some OSR supplements just to take a gander for a few episodes and a longer series with a more complex system once the entire setting is done, but that'll likely be second half of 2023 if not later.
Scarlet Heroes is slated to follow Disciples of Bone and Shadow, which is intended to release once Ironsworn is done. Unfortunately it seems Ironsworn insists on becoming a rather loooooong story arc, which means it'll likely wrap up mid July or somewhere near there, with another four to six episodes of Disciples of Bone and Shadow to follow and then, finally, Scarlet Heroes. That'd be... potentially late August, early September, at a guess? I'm not going to be able to put out more than one edited Actual Play episode per week with the production quality I aim for so that's probably gonna be the time it'll take. The worldbuilding series takes a fair bit less behind-the-scenes work to produce so that'll be running concurrently on the Friday upload slot while the Actual Plays go up Tuesdays.
Just so I understand how to watch these videos: Are the first 8 videos (entitled Worlds Without Number Setting Creation - THE WORLD - Worldbuilding/Campaign Setup - Part One, through WORLDS WITHOUT NUMBER - Setting Creation - WRAP-UP - Worldbuilding/Campaign Setup - Part Eight) part of the same series as this video? The changed thumbnail art makes this unclear. Are the first eight parts the setup to starting the actual worldbuilding, which begins here with Session Zero? Please explain.
There are two separate series. The first eight are a finished playlist that's unrelated to the currently running second series and shows off the world building toolkit by creating a fantasy city of a rather large scale. The second series attempts to use the same resources to build a whole world. The changed thumbnails hopefully make them easy to tell apart at least! Sorry bout the horribly late response, really appreciate you taking the time to leave a comment. A new puppy hit the house and wrecked my schedule. All good now!
Ah, the eternal ttrpg curse: so many games, so few people to play anything but 5E with... hope you find a chance to give WWN a whirl at some point, if not for play then maybe also for worldbuilding - it's been working really well so far!
Thank you! It’s on a bit of a hiatus right now as I build a nicely padded backlog of actual play content (which I suppose is the main point of the channel) but as soon as I’m a few weeks ahead I’ll bring this back around for a bi-weekly appearance. Shouldn’t be too long now, recording of the actual plays is progressing pretty nicely.
![Doomed Alissar | BLACK SWORD HACK | World-Building & Solo Campaign Setup ["Session Zero"]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/c8L8sjkGIFU/mqdefault.jpg)
Low magic dark fantasy is my personal favorite setting as well.
Great video! Poor Hugh. I bought the pdf for this game a couple weeks ago and have been slowly reading though it. I have a character ready to go but haven't started yet. It looks really good though. As long as you don't roll a 1...
Great work! I'll be catching up with this as I work on my own setting.
My favorite names from your list are Widdermark and Ellendmarch. This all sounds like so much fun!
Thank you! Adding them to the list alongside the other picks from the comments. I think we'll end up with a D6 roll to determine the name so it's not too unlikely that it'll be one of those two!
Probably late to try and give suggestions, but an idea for orcs that I've been sitting on that kinda fits ibto what you were saying you wanted out of the orcs in this setting: nomadic traders/merchants. Think like the khajiit traders in Skyrim combined with the mafia and maybe some Mongol Empire for flair. A caravan rides up to do trade at exorbitant prices, and if people refuse to do business a raiding party rides in to tear up the town and take their stuff to add to their stock of trade goods. Kinda like protection money with extra steps
That sounds interesting! Not really too late, we'll eventually get around to fleshing that part of the world, history and culture out and having that potential perspective on their activities could be quite helpful. It'll likely be a while but we'll get there.
Perfect timing. I recently bought the pdf and hardcover of WWN and I am excited to follow along with your work on this one.
Awesome! It's a fantastic book. I enjoy using it a lot and partly for the simple reason of how well-made a product it is!
Look forward to how this turns out.
It's good to see U again
I have used WWN with other games like Into the Odd and Numenera, it's such a great resource! I really like how you're pulling in Anglish as well.
It's definitely versatile both as a system and as a worldbuilding tool. Sine Nomine just doesn't really miss with their output, I love Scarlet Heroes and Stars Without Number, too!
The Anglish was definitely a lucky find some years back, it makes sticking "medievally-sounding" names on things a lot easier.
A great check out for rpg's is D100 Dungeon.
Very late to the party, but here's one for the Algodrithm.
My feedback:
I love "Farlen" and "Withermark" and to a lesser extent "Withermarch".
Maybe we could name the "world" or the overarching region "Farlen" but the drawn region is the "Withermark/march".
To further flesh out the "why is it called that way?" - here are some thoughts:
* The melting ice made a big march there, where most things are dead / withering.
* Maybe the blockade wasn't snow but some sort of curse. (Don't need to be a magical curse) could be whatever but the inhabitants of the world called it "curse" because it did something to the living things in that reagion - ie: Make them wither, become some sort of undead or close to that state. So nobody dared to go there. Maybe it was actually some sort of plague (risk of spreading it into other regions?)
Edit: Awesome idea to use Anglish. Pls don't stop using it. :D
Good stuff! I'll add Farlen to the list of items that I'll be rolling on, it has a ring to it for sure! I'm also liking it as a name for the hub city to be honest. Gives me a sort of "town name" vibe that might work well.
Interesting idea to integrate the origin of the "withering" into a bit of backstory. As far as curse instead of frost goes, I'm generally leaning towards "why not both?" in situations like these. So maybe as the frost came to close the passes, the creeping death entered the region beyond the mountain, wiping out any remnants of the previous imperial presence and leaving only the people of the forests and the tribes on the plains, who may or may not have been affected and thus significantly reduced in strength or were miraculously spared for some reason. It all depends on the origin of the calamity of course.
Sort of gives me the vibe that "something" in the borderlands wanted it closed off and all outside influence gone, that might make for an interesting meta-antagonist right away!
@@killtenratsrpg "Why not both?" - I totally agree. Love it. Can't wait to see the next video.
I love world building! So excited to see what's going on. And I will participate... ;)
Thank you for this. I’ve just discovered your channel and this is an excellent video. I can see that you and I see a good many things the same way. Your setting sounds like it will be awesome and I look forward to seeing it evolve.
Oh, nice one! Welcome aboard, it'll be a long trip but there's a pretty wide variety of things to design so I'm rather confident it'll be a fun one.
Really like the idea of using Anglish. Widdermark is my favourite name for the borderlands
So we are back to playing God? Lol I just wanna say thank you. I've gotten worlds without number because of you. And also I wanted to make a UA-cam channel just to world build with random tables because of you . Keep up the awesome work
Dude! Same! I'd love to do that too.
Me too! Seeing more tools being used helps me in fleshing out the fiction for my games
Wow, excited to hear that! Absolutely go for it, there's definitely an audience for this kind of content out there (albeit it niche one, which is great if you're starting out!) and the specific style I enjoy consuming doesn't seem very prevalent. I find a lot of long, unedited videos that for me personally are tough to follow and not much else. Presumably there's either not a lot out there or I'm bad at finding it (or it's bad at making itself found).
@@killtenratsrpg thank so much for blessing. Can't wait to see how you cook up this world
@@magusking5362 100% agree .
Did you only do three episodes of these? There seemed to be such a grand idea in the beginning! I just bought WWN and am looking for good videos on its use. I hope you make more videos!
Hey, I appreciate you taking the time to comment even if it was a long time ago. I had to step away from UA-cam for a bit and got a little frustrated by that, so I wasn't answering comments like I should have. Apologies for that!
Yes, unfortunately this got stuck at the third episode due to a very unforeseen lengthy UA-cam absence. I'm leaning towards rebooting it entirely around the core concepts as it's been a long time with no traction, feels a bit stale now. Easier to get into with fresh eyes and a new approach, most likely! Great to hear you got yourself a WWN copy, it's fantastic!
This sounds amazing. Maybe I ditch my worldbuilding efforts and just help here and use what ever comes out of here. Love the dark fantasy setting cornerstones you brought up.
It ticks all the boxes for me so far.
Hey, not sure I'd go so far as to give up on your own efforts but definitely happy to have you pitching in here! It'll be a fair while before this is going to be a finished, playable product though, I'd imagine. Following the rhythm of my previous WWN series, having a week between uploads seems to work well to gather enough comment feedback and still comfortably record/edit the video.
@@killtenratsrpg I am still 10 to 20 weeks away of wrapping up my curse of strahd campaign. So I guess there's plenty of room to get this project somewhere. If it's not ready to play in by that time - I'll figure something out.
Nice! I need to get a hold of the redone Ravenloft stuff, I've only played the AD&D version and read one of the early novels but I always liked the setting. 10 - 20 weeks I'd say (if somewhat optimistically) should at least put enough meat on the bone to have some regions and plot points fleshed out to a playable degree. Here's hoping!
Really excited by your collaborative worldbuilding initiative! I’m sure you’ll get a lot of input , the main difficulty will be to organize and channel it so that it doesn’t get out of control! That’s what happened to me a few years back and there were only six or seven people involved in my group. But definitely, the collective effort is great to generate a setting with original and unexpected ideas and connections.
For the Borderland name, my personal favorites are Edermark and Wendelmarch. As a contribution to your project, I offer “Grendelmark”. I don’t know exactly why but your very cool list of elements for a grimdark setting quickly made me think of Beowulf. Grendel could have been a famous character of the past, key in establishing the border march before it was isolated? Or maybe Grendel or the “Grendels “ were a mysterious and fearsome danger (elves? Some kind of demons or alien beings ? ) that the border region was intended to guard against, like a buffer zone for the southern empire?
Curious to see whether there'll be challenges regarding sorting through the amount of content down the road. We've done a first series of eight episodes building a city using WWN and it wasn't an issue but there's probably a "critical mass" point where it becomes a bit more labor intensive depending on how many participants we have. I'll definitely keep an eye on sorting what's currently relevant and storing what's not for later use, otherwise the comment input from video to video will bloat up for sure.
Grendelmark sounds interesting and I like the ideas of the "Grendels". One thing standing in my way a little is quite a personal association I have with this since it's the username a close friend of mine has been using for 20+ years so that might be hard not to constantly conflate in my mind. Still, regardless of name, having a "grendel-ish" bunch of people out there could be fun!
@@killtenratsrpg I understand the personal reference issue and there is really nothing you can do against it in the end. I’ve been told some German gamers feel the same about the Harn setting because of this word meaning in their language… Being French myself, I’m unable to use the “Nuthela mountains “ in this Harn setting because it inevitably conjure the image of a hot crêpe dripping with chocolate! I tweaked the name and maybe we could do the same for Grendel ? Graendel or Grendaell or Grendayle ? So that could be the Graendelmark or the Grendaylemarch. Or even both if we consider two different languages/dialects spoken in the area (Grendaylemarch for the posh decadent empire and Graendelmark for the northern tribes or the borderlands population)
Hahahahaha oh boy I vividly remember getting a hold of the trusty old "Fantasy Shop" catalog straight out of Düsseldorf somewhere in the late 80s and seeing "Harnmaster" in there for the first time. Definitely a strange moment until I read a review that cleared that up for me. I did get past that one and rather like the setting but yeah... definitely an unfortunate choice for the German market! I didn't even know it had "Nuthela" mountains, that sounds delicious!
I really rather like both Grendaell and Grendayle, very elegant solution to make it seem different enough to not be immediately noticeable. I'm adding that to the list of "to be rolled for" names, thanks for the suggestions! Like them a lot!
And naturally every name that's not getting picked for the region might still end up a town, a river, a tribal coalition or something else, so we'll very likely find a use for it no matter how the dice fall.
Maybe the thing blocking the way to the borderlands was an ancient dam (something like the hoover dam) from a lost civilisation which over time had overflowed and frozen thus making it impossible to climb but as the ice melted it revealed doorways inside the dam and up to the borderlands. Could even make the inside of the dam a dungeon crawl, maybe it is infested with something nasty.
I think we're gonna need a kind of river with a massive gorge running through our mountain range and that dam might be the center piece, maybe even a series of dams, docks and such that were made either by a lost and now unknown civilization, the former Northern empire or the dwarves. I like it!
@@killtenratsrpg sounds awesome! My copy of worlds without number is in the post.
Nice! Glad to get in "on the ground floor" for this one. (I found the megacity world-building playlist after it was already done : )
Thoughts:
- Make the mountain range run north-south, and the borderlands region is in the *East*. For Europeans and Americans, the frontier was always West. So why not make this frontier East. Also, if the frontier is to the north, it seems a bit too similar to the Wall from Game of Thrones.
- The empire in the settled region can't be very large; they should be much much smaller than Rome. If they were a big empire, they could've just gone around the mountains.
- Maybe there are no Dwarves, Elves, Orcs, and other demihumans. Removing the demihumans will really help make this a Dark fantasy setting, rather than just a Fantasy setting.
- I love love love the idea of a lost city in the mountains, locked in ice, the route unknown, but the subject of myth and legend
- Why do people access the frontier (non-settled side of the mountains) right here, instead of everywhere else along the mountain range? How about there's a big mountain pass here, so cross-mountain travel is easiest in this area. The peaks of the mountains may still be inhospitable, so there's no other way across, but in this region there is a pass
- If there's no demihumans / orcs, then the people who are already in the frontier could be the tough, feral descendants of those who were cut off when the mountains froze. Perhaps there were cities in the frontier, but they depended on trade through the Pass, and when it froze these cities fell apart, and now lie in ruin... #dungeonDelving!
- "Withermark" sounds a lot like "Riddermark", from Lord of the Rings. Maybe instead it could be, "Witherlent"?
Ouh, that's a lot of input! Thanks for taking the time! And also let me preface my response by saying that I do appreciate (maybe most) the comments that challenge things already put in place although there's a decent chance that I might end up disagreeing. It's the sort of back-and-forth that'll ultimately make it better. So uh... spoiler alert... I'll end up disagreeing with some things here (and that's a good thing)! Apologies in advance as this'll be a long one and will not exclusively address your points, it's also just hammering out ideas as they come in based off what you said.
1. Why not make the frontier East
A few reasons, some maybe a bit personal, some maybe wider ranging. I think the main reason would be a "future threat" component, meaning: if we're to extrapolate that things get wilder and more dire the farther into the frontier you go (and what lies beyond), if we do ultimately end up introducing a threat coming at us from the opposite direction it'd mean "threat from the East" and not too far East from where I'm sitting right now is Russia. It feels a bit too topical to be honest. I'd much rather have the more historical connotation of "North = Threat" that an early medieval peasant might have than a current century human.
2. Similarities to ASoIaF (North = wilderness/beyond the wall) and Withermark = Riddermark:
Yeah that'll keep happening. We all have our own lines to draw here with where it's too close to an "original" thing vs. where it's still acceptable. Specifically with regards to names, bringing in Anglish will keep throwing the Tolkien comparisons our way since he used Old English for a lot of names (e.g. Theoden, the Riddermark, etc.). That's an overlap that'll just be there since we go to the same linguistic well. Similarly, the GoT comparisons will likely also keep coming since it's a) still fresh in people's memory and b) I've been reading the series (and waiting for sequels...) since the late 90s, so it's a big influence on me, too. As pointed out above, I'm much more comfortable with a wild North than a wild East and a "Wild West" is a bit on the nose, which leaves the South and that intuitively doesn't feel right to do since I immediately acquaint that with a more Mediterranean flavor due to the association bias of where I'm sitting culturally. That's not to say I won't be running into my own "eeeeeh that's WAAAAY TOO MUCH like this other thing" moment regularly here, it just doesn't apply to these two. It's an entirely arbitrary line, that doesn't mean your observation's invalid.
3. No Demihumans = Dark Fantasy?
I think you may be mixing up "low fantasy" with "dark fantasy" here, possibly? If you consider the origin of the term grimdark (which is now quite heavily prevalent in Dark Fantasy, too), it was a space opera retro-future sci-fi setting full of orcs, xenomorphs and superhuman soldiers. I'm not quite sure the equation that having demihuman ancestries in a setting makes it in any way less "dark fantasy". It is, however, closer to high fantasy than low fantasy. What I'm looking to build here is a "low magic dark fantasy" setting and part of the aim is to make it possible to integrate pre-existing OSR bestiaries and monster manuals (up to a point), which means I'd like to keep the elves, dwarves, orcs, goblins, ogres, etc. in there but the more "outlandish" (again, a fairly arbitrary term) it gets, the less likely it is to be included (e.g. there's unlikely to be bird people, three-headed apes, etc.). Even Ironsworn, which is as low fantasy as anything without being outright strict about it, has pseudo-werewolves cavorting about without detracting from the theme, it's just a question of how we incorporate it and the frequency of it. I think encountering demihumans, even Elves, will be an exceedingly RARE thing (outside of maybe one or two exceptional ancestries that historically adapt to human society but by doing so also lose much of what makes them unique). We'll land somewhere on the dial of the Witcher universe dialed down a tad, I'd imagine.
4. The Mountain Pass
Yeah there's got to be one and that'll be the one that recently reopened, whereas our lost city megadungeon might be a lot harder to reach. If we keep it dwarven, maybe the dwarves built artificial "passes" (e.g. dwarf architecture) to bridge chasms in the past but all of that has collapsed under the weight of the calamity and nobody's consistently able to reach the place, whereas the few who have report back that it looks dead. There'll also need to be additional boundaries that prevent our "point of view empire" from getting around the mountains, we just haven't put them in yet (and there'll also have been a reason why those other separating areas could no longer be crossed) - that's definitely on the to-do list!
5. The Empire Needs To Be Small
I'd agree, not particularly because of the Roman argument (they also eventually found their frontier that they couldn't quite crack) but because it's probably too corrupt to be stable and will constantly face secession and balkanization. My main touchpoint here was the Holy Roman Empire but maybe a bit more cohesive, with a hard core of a handful of duchies that have always stayed together but a varying degree of expansion over the years, as it unfolds and contracts through historical events and civil wars. I feel like there's probably room for a "former province but now fractured dominion of individual rulers that the empire is too weak to bring back to the fold" kind of region on the Southern side of the mountain range, maybe. That might be worth pursuing. We do need there to be something in place that is "sort of civilized" without already being the empire and some former provinces fit quite well! But yeah, no world-spanning global dominion, it doesn't really fit the blueprint!
6. Why Do People Access The Frontier
I know you asked this in the context of "in this particular place" but if I shave this part off it also hits home a point we need to clarify in the building sessions - why go there? Maybe the empire is so bad and corrupt that trekking out into the wild unknown is preferable or maybe there's another McGuffin Unobtainium up there. Maybe there's a huge misleading campaign by the imperial authorities in place promising riches and ultra-fertile land and incentivising settlement (for whatever reason) but it's all a bit far off from the actual reality of things (or at least doesn't tell the whole story). Worth keeping in mind that we also need a reason why people even want to go up there!
Whew, that about does it for this one - again, much appreciated that you're throwing in some points that challenge the design as is, it forces me to think about whether some "gut feeling" decisions are actually the preferable way to go, even if I end up going with the original idea or only slightly adapting what's been built so far. Hopefully that's no frustrating to you!
@@killtenratsrpg Hey thanks for the detailed reply! These answers make a lot of sense. I'm on-board!
Your points on 5 & 6 gave me a thought.
There's the former-province-now-fractured-dominion that the empire can't bring back under control. And there's the question of why do people go to the frontier? I think there's 3 ways to combine these.
1) The former-province also has a Pass through the mountains (they lie east or west of our main Pass). People might be trying to flee the evil empire, make a journey around the mountains through the frontier, and resettle in the former-province.
2) The evil empire might be trying to take control of the frontier before the former-province does. They don't want a rival power to expand its borders right onto their doorstep, so they (the empire) will expand first.
3) The former-province to not be connected with the frontier at all; it lies south. The empire is trying to bring it back under control; the situation has not flared up to a full-scale conflict yet, but it's simmering. Most importantly, commoners are conscripted into labor or military service in the effort. In order to avoid this conscription, some commoners flee north to the frontier. They might give an excuse like, "I'm only going up there for the resources; you know, to help with bringing the former-province back under control."
... Options 1 & 2 allow the former-province to be an active presence in the campaign setting, but this might make the frontier too "crowded". It's only a frontier if it has very little central authority, and that might not make sense if there's 2 rival political powers involved. You could minimize this "crowded" problem by just saying the mountain pass of the former province is really far away.
... Option 3, on the other hand, gives us a reason why the evil empire is not flooding the frontier with its own political apparatus, why the frontier remains untamed despite being right on the empire's doorstep (other than it just recently being opened). Also, maybe the former-province is actually sending secret agents/rangers through the empire, into the frontier, to stir up unrest and rebellion. This would allow the former-province to still be an active presence in the campaign setting.
Anyway, I'm just thinking out loud here. Feel free to use some or none of these ideas. I just like worldbuilding!
Interesting! It's an option to have another mountain pass or to put the fractured former province between the empire (whether it's inherently evil or just ineffective due to corruption remains to be seen) and the one reliably traversable mountain pass instead. Both would work to create a bit of competition, maybe in the form of some of the former provincials banding together less to get ahead of the empire but the keep its influence out - perhaps even implicitly guaranteeing the independence of the "hub city" while the empire constantly tries to bring it under control.
I do like the idea of there also being unrest down South - both to drive people North to escape conscription, to hit home the waning power of the empire and to provide a reason why the empire can't just launch an all out conquest North (because who knows, then the East and West suddenly secede, too)!
I'm actually leaning towards integrating a lot of this as new elements and not substituting existing ones, just adding another challenge for the empire and building onto its themes.
Good stuff!
It's like you live in my head, haha. I could have sat and written a list of what to include and it would be identical to yours. I'd recommend you grab a copy of Into the Wyrd & Wild, it's fantastic for forest campaigns. As for names, Farlen is my favorite one!
Hah, well - I'm not sure whether that means we both have fairly insular tastes that just overlap or it's an indicator that these sort of elements have a fairly wide appeal (but I'd lean towards the latter). Hopefully we'll manage to give a unique spin to the well-worn setting elements and not end up with a bland mix of things that everyone sort of knows and like but without much character of its own.
Ouh neat, I hadn't heard of "Into the Wyrd & Wild". Seems hard to get a hold of a printed copy, cheapest shipping I found was $65 which... uh, yeah. I'll keep an eye out and might have to make do with a digital version for a start but it's good to have another target to keep watch for and hopefully snag at some point, it's half the fun of collecting this stuff!
I'm adding Farlen to the "name oracles" then, it's already got one other vote so I figure it appeals. Maybe if it's not making the cut for region name, it'd be a good one for the hub city, too.
@@killtenratsrpg there was a recent KS for the second edition of Into the Wyrd & Wild and yeah, I think it's tricky to get your hands on one. I have a copy of the first edition, I'm hoping the second one will become widely available soon!
Looking forward to the rest of the series!
Love it! I'll be following along every step of the way :-)
I think Riddermark is used in some RPG setting, not sure which one. My favourite out of your list would be Ellanmark
The Riddermark is Rohan.
Ah dang, yes of course!! 😅
Way late to the party but figured I'd help out. @@Multiklaaas
More world building! Awesome.
Also, a note since you made that footnote that you don't like the word "race." Would terms like heritage or ancestry work better when talking about dwarves & elves & orcs?
Definitely liking these alternatives, I think ancestry is a good one for just about anything really. Thank you!
Yes, Das Orkland!
Grüße aus Deutschland.
Haha die Zwölf zum Gruß oder wie ging der Spruch noch wieder?
@@killtenratsrpg 😄 Ja, genau.
Any chance to see you play solo through the world you build using WWN or a similar OSR game?
Yeah, that's a certainty. The first WWN series, an eight-parter which ended up with a urban sprawl sort of fantasy metropolis, will serve as the backdrop for a Scarlet Heroes campaign. We'll have to wrap up the current story arc for Ironsworn first (probably by mid-July), then I'll throw in a mini-series of Disciples of Bone and Shadow (probably from mid-July to late August) and then it's Scarlet Heroes time in the WWN-designed setting.
I'll also be playing in the borderlands setting we'll be designing with the current WWN series but that'll be a while. I think maybe once we got enough material for an early playtest I'll be running Knave with some OSR supplements just to take a gander for a few episodes and a longer series with a more complex system once the entire setting is done, but that'll likely be second half of 2023 if not later.
Looks awesome what going on with your scarlet heros game?
Scarlet Heroes is slated to follow Disciples of Bone and Shadow, which is intended to release once Ironsworn is done. Unfortunately it seems Ironsworn insists on becoming a rather loooooong story arc, which means it'll likely wrap up mid July or somewhere near there, with another four to six episodes of Disciples of Bone and Shadow to follow and then, finally, Scarlet Heroes.
That'd be... potentially late August, early September, at a guess? I'm not going to be able to put out more than one edited Actual Play episode per week with the production quality I aim for so that's probably gonna be the time it'll take.
The worldbuilding series takes a fair bit less behind-the-scenes work to produce so that'll be running concurrently on the Friday upload slot while the Actual Plays go up Tuesdays.
Just so I understand how to watch these videos: Are the first 8 videos (entitled Worlds Without Number Setting Creation - THE WORLD - Worldbuilding/Campaign Setup - Part One, through WORLDS WITHOUT NUMBER - Setting Creation - WRAP-UP - Worldbuilding/Campaign Setup - Part Eight) part of the same series as this video? The changed thumbnail art makes this unclear. Are the first eight parts the setup to starting the actual worldbuilding, which begins here with Session Zero? Please explain.
There are two separate series. The first eight are a finished playlist that's unrelated to the currently running second series and shows off the world building toolkit by creating a fantasy city of a rather large scale. The second series attempts to use the same resources to build a whole world. The changed thumbnails hopefully make them easy to tell apart at least!
Sorry bout the horribly late response, really appreciate you taking the time to leave a comment. A new puppy hit the house and wrecked my schedule. All good now!
thanks for this! i bought the WWN hardcover but can’t get my group to play with me 🤨
Ah, the eternal ttrpg curse: so many games, so few people to play anything but 5E with... hope you find a chance to give WWN a whirl at some point, if not for play then maybe also for worldbuilding - it's been working really well so far!
Loving this so far! Going to watch the next one right away.
Thank you! It’s on a bit of a hiatus right now as I build a nicely padded backlog of actual play content (which I suppose is the main point of the channel) but as soon as I’m a few weeks ahead I’ll bring this back around for a bi-weekly appearance. Shouldn’t be too long now, recording of the actual plays is progressing pretty nicely.