Where do you guys normally start with worldbuilding? Do you start with races, or an aesthetic theme, or gods? What?

Where do you guys normally start with worldbuilding? Do you start with races, or an aesthetic theme, or gods? What?

Yeah. One of those. Generally you're not going to start a world on a vacuum. You have an idea you like, then build around it. Extrapolate the world based on whatever seed you're interested in, then go back and smooth it out.

Usually, I start with one concept, system, or something like that. Then I ask why that is. Then I ask why things are that way and not some other way.
Then I ask how I can turn this into a PC crises.

i usually start with a narrative. a history. none of the physical or cultural characteristics of a setting can exist plausibly without a backstory. it's always good to have current conflicts be the direct result of past events.

a troll who lives in a toxic marsh, abducting children and turning them into horrible mutants - perhaps the marsh was once a pastural land and the troll had children of his own who were taken from him

I start where a campaign would start.

So normally with a town, sometimes a larger city or even a country's capital. But normally just a town. Decide if it's a farming town or a port or river city, decide if there's a forest or desert nearby, and just work out from there as needed.

Eventually you have a whole world.

I started with my character's city, then reworked and integrated my GM's homebrew setting. That started with collecting the info into a map which collected the many places he used along the years.

For me, making sense of what was already there was much easier than starting from scratch, because I wouldn't know where to start.

Also it was somewhat harder in that I had to keep the core of things even while they now made sense, and this self-imposed limit pushed my creativity.

I became an obsessed loremaster.

Probably physics or metaphysics.

I usually start with geography, then physics, then magic and such.
what societies would come into fruition in these environments? Why?

First, I establish the era. Then, the races. Then the factions. Then the geography.

With either a single(rather broad) idea which I like enough to build a setting around it or with a general theme and atmosphere. I go on from there

I first ask myself
>is it sci-fi?
>is it fantasy?
>is it modern era?

I just brainstorm a whole bunch of different ideas of what is interesting to me, treating every piece as its own separate entity, and then I get to work reconciling all those separate entities and figuring out how to bring them all together without having their designs or aesthetics clash. It does wonders for me.

I just start with the races then dump it because none of my fucking players bother to read my descriptions.

"The shop belongs to an(X race) with glowing blue curved horns"
"Huuuh... what is (X race) again ?"
"... the same race as your character..."
"Huh okay, i forgot, so i have horns too ?"
"Yeah..."

All the fucking time, i loe my friends but they take months to read just 3 or 4 descriptions, and they always forget. I shit you not one of them discovered he couldn't wear boots because he had hooves.... 6 fucking sessions in, even though i clearly told him.

Sorry for the blogpost

I start by considering what sorts of stories I want to tell in the setting, and then consider what elements would undermine or enable telling that story.

nigga Veeky Forums was made for blogposts.

Have you tried showing them an image of what they are? Maybe they can remember that.

I write a story, worldbuilding is for retards who can't write

Do what that other user said and give them images of their race. If that doesn't work, have other characters treat them like the blithering idiot they are for having forgotten their own body parts.

I usually come up with a single idea. It may be for a character or location or plot twist, then I build out from there or see if I can connect it with other ideas I've had.

I start when I think of something that would be really really cool today do, then build a series of events that lead up to the conclusion that is the cool thing. I'll come up with some events that act as a resolution to the cool thing, then start building generic locations in which the events can take place. Then I flesh out the locations, put in some anippita of history to the locations, add in pantheon for shits and giggles then adjust everything to make it all blend together in aanner that isn't completely ridiculous or incomprehensible.

For example, my brother and I are coming Dming a campaign for 5 of my friends right now. We started making the setting about a year ago after telling him I wanted to find a way to make the song lyrics "I found a way to steal the sun from the sky" fit into a basic fantasy tabletop setting. It evolves into resurrecting a giant the size of the moon in order to slam dunk a super machine into a spot on the sun to stop the spawn of a great old one from infecting the infant form of the offspring of the sun-god.

Yeah, that's typically how I do it too. Ideas form in nuggets, and the work is create structures to support and connect them.

Start with the story you want to tell and then what kind of history would propitiate that story. What kind of geography and politics would make that history work, and lastly what else there's in the world to distract from your story if the players need a break.

I draw inspiration for the gameplay loop of the campaign, usually from a TV show, for example my current game is set in a homebrew city on the sword coast, that has a bunch of rifts connecting too short to medium length fantasy adventures, theres enough going on in the city to keep the characters engaged and I play the stargate theme everytime they go through a rift (after they lock the magical chevrons in place). It was actually pretty fun to build the systems and the economic realities of a city like this over time.

I start with the theme (undead, super hero, space opera, etc), or the creation myth and pantheon, and go from there. I prefer the pantheon thing because designing deities and religions is my bag, baby.

I start with terrain, and work my way up from there. The campaign I'm running now is based off of a map of a tg Minecraft server

Start with your creation story.

If I'm making a magical world then I always put in a point on how some super power crazy Wizard had a fetish and invented most of the other races that inhabit the world.

That's always a must for me.

Always with a map. I usually make a basic theme around the same time as the map.
Why a map? Well, the nations on the map, who they are, what they are like, what lives there, what kind of creatures there are in the world, are all based on the map. Geography comes first, in its entirety, and nations can get stacked on top of that later.

I think of a high concept and then poke at it for a while. Basically, I want to tell a type of story or invoke a feeling and then I put a few pieces in place and ask why does this do that and who does what and how long has it been going on.

Check out Terrarium In Drawer chapter 23 for what I mean, the short manga chapter basically covers my world-building process.