My friend and I are trying to build a world for dnd 3.5 homebrew...

My friend and I are trying to build a world for dnd 3.5 homebrew, but its our first time trying to do this type of thing. What are some of the essentials we need to come up with?

We currently have
-Races
-Countries/Continents
-Landmarks for most countries
-Religions

-major historical events (wars, plagues, cataclysms, etc.)
-major historical figures (heros, emperors, etc.)
-current world leaders

Try to build a narrative and describe major characters and their relationships.

you need to establish exactly how important large breasts are to social standing and societal rankings

I'm going to assume that "races" also includes notes on cultures, languages and customs. When I worldbuild, I generally start with the people; How they think, act, live. Their culture, art, music, food, all the good stuff that makes a race unique and interesting. After that's fleshed out, everything else kinda takes care of itself to a degree. Kingdom borders are then drawn to make sense, world leaders embody the best and worst that culture has to offer, cities and provinces basically name themselves, etc.

I would say you also need general guidelines on how magic works. Nothing cobcrete, just some outlines. Is there a Weave? Is magic like background radiation? Is there a Force that binds all living things together? Is there a mystical ore that can be refined and used like coal?

thanks guys

The first thing you need to do is not make a 3.5 homebrew.

- Air currents.

Make some cultural quirks and traditions for your various races and countries. Helps flesh out the setting, especially if they're that kind of weird that's totally beliveable.

My favorite example this will always be Reign's setting having the superstition that riding astride on a horse causes impotency in men, so all men ride sidesaddle. Weird detail that gives a whole lot of game flavor.

I mean, the FIRST first thing you wanna do is figure out what kinda tone you're going for. Tolkeinesque fantasy? 1980's Kung Fu meets D&D? High-magic dungeonpunk?

Figure out what overall theme or themes you wanna aim for, and expand from there.

Make sure you at least put a little work into the relationships between races and cultures. Things like slurs and stereotypes (unfounded or otherwise) make a world feel more alive.

Also, when it comes to culture, consider how in real life people don't necessarily follow the culture dictated by their race. If you have a large city that's considered a melting pot of sorts, then the city itself might have its own culture shared by its citizens regardless of their race.

Our theme is somewhere around the time where the radio was invented (late 1800s early 1900s) with a large side of fantasy (magics and shit). starting to industrialize but not entirely there yet

Okay, cool. You might enjoy taking a look at Eberron, since in a lot of ways it sounds like what you're doing.

Since it's for your own benefit, sit down and think about what YOU care about in a world.

well its a group effort type thing, we have a split amount of creative liberty (i added moogles as a main race)

Do not have multiple races. Have humans only. That is a good place to start. Later you can add more but if you are starting on the assumption of "and this is where the tieflings live" you are going to create a cluster fuck of a universe with the tone of Star Wars blended with severe autism.

the races we have dont necessarily have places they live specifically as much as origination country

Do you have human-in-rubber-suit races or did you two dig out the alien stick ?

humans in rubber suit races, but we're definitely adding at least one bizarre race

If i might say, try to avoid the "bizzare" route, because more often then not people put "unreasonable for the sake of strangeness" on that path.

Traveller is a setting with some non-Human alien races which are different, but not unreasonable (except hivers, fuck hivers... damn space elves) but different.

Also eclips phase has some interesting lines on thei uplift races.

Decide where your industries and resources are. Who mines the world's salt? Who supplies certain staple foods? Who has the most forest, and thus the most sawmills and lumber industry, and how do the fey/firbolg/treefolk feel about it? Who manufactures fine cloth? And how are all these things supplied to the rest of the world? Designate some major roads and rivers as trade routes. They'll be an easy place to throw bandits at your PC's. You can even make some easy improv side quests by having your PC's look into a shipment that didn't arrive somewhere. At the very least, this can add verisimilitude to your world, even if it's nothing more than adding a quick "this is the world's leading exporter of fine dyes and incense" to your description of a new location your players visit.

we're going to expand on this a bit. thanks!