Hi!

Last post, I looked at some of the benefits and downsides to using Local-First worldbuilding, that famous method where you begin with a single small town and slowly build out.

This post I’ll tell you my way of quickly making complex, connected worlds that at every scale remind the players of the central tension and theme of the campaign. And then I’ll explain why, for some DMs, that might be a better tool than Local-First.

Top-Down Worldbuilding

This method starts with the central tension, a thematic question facing the whole setting, and cascades it down multiple size scales. We start at the largest size scale, perhaps the Continent, and consider the following questions:

What central tension is the Continent dealing with?

What is the character of the Continent? Like, what does it feel like to be in and of that place? What does almost everywhere in the Continent have in common?

What organisations, characters, or events are important on this scale, such that everyone in the Continent is affected by them?

What is the size scale just under Continent? (I’ll call them Countries)

How many Countries exist in the Continent?

How does each Country add up to define the Continent’s character?

What is each Country’s unique character, that differs them from each other?

We’re moving from one size scale to the next one down. To make sure we only do work that’ll matter, we leave most of the countries only as detailed as that, picking the one we’re going to start in and zooming in on it.

Now that we know the context our Country sits in, we ask the next round of questions:

How does this Country relate to the others?

What, in-setting, shows the unique character of the Country? Art, culture, religion, customs etc.

What organisations, characters and events are important to everyone in the Country?

How is this Country affected by the central tension? What has recently changed because of it?

What is the next size scale down? (Regions, here)

How many Regions are there, and how do they add up to define the Country’s character?

We’re starting to repeat ourselves, and that’s by design. The fractal nature of this method means we can have as many rounds of questions as we like separating the Largest Scale (Whatever size that actually is) and the Starting Area.

We’d ask the same questions for the Region we choose to start in; the only difference is that we want to know how the Region is reacting to the Country’s reaction to the Continent’s central tension. And so on down the size scales until we get to the starting town:

How does this town relate to the others?

What shows the uniqueness of this town?

What groups, characters, and events are important to the town?

How is the Town affected by the City’s reaction to the Region’s reaction to the Country’s reaction to the Continent’s central tension? AND how do the players easily see that?

You can freely design encounters and NPCs who have a real place in the world, because you have basic knowledge of the whole Continent, pretty good knowledge about the Region, and detailed knowledge of the Starting Area. It’s like a videogame’s rendering distance. Your scenarios can be more closely linked to the central tension, and you can ensure there’s always a general sense of what things are like far away. Medieval Soup is averted.

How is this any better?

Let’s look at the list of design features that we came up with for Local-First worldbuilding:

Able to build enough to start playing quickly

Ensures a detailed starting scenario

Doesn’t sweat the faraway stuff – Reduces work to that which will matter

The same world can be used multiple times and added to

Needs some information about global scale/context

Can feel less real/connected – Medieval soup

Difficult to achieve certain themes and genres

Of these, we have reproduced the following advantages:

Ensures a detailed starting scenario

Doesn’t sweat the faraway stuff – Reduces work to that which will matter

The same world can be used multiple times and added to

And we’ve addressed the following disadvantages:

Needs some information about global scale/context

This method is more cognizant of the dependence on context, and so the time spent defining the Largest Scale pays off in providing guidelines that help us stay on theme.

Can feel less real/connected – Medieval soup

Medieval Soup is completely averted, the DM is now much more able to paint a picture of what it’s like far away because they know at least a little bit about everywhere.

Difficult to achieve certain themes and genres

This method makes it easy to base campaigns around particular themes, because you can set at the start “The Largest Scale is defined by a similarity to the Wild West”, or Harry Potter, or Ghibli or Sci-fi, fairy tales or anything else. You set it at the start and ask what else needs to be such that the theme is supported.

The only downsides to this method of worldbuilding compared to Local-First are:

It may take longer

It may be difficult for new DMs to go through the stages.

Which leads directly to a profile of who this method might suit:

Who is this for?

In the end, this isn’t meant to to replace Local-First, which is clearly helping a lot of new DMs get started. I’m suggesting it for the DMs who’ve maybe run a campaign or two and who are now excited by the idea of theming a world all their own, that’s like no other campaign setting. This is a shortcut to a Tolkien-like sense of worldbuilding depth, that doesn’t require you to write endless details before you can get started.

So in that way, it’s good for any DM who has tried to make a complicated world, but either they got lost in the weeds and never finished the world, or the campaign failed because they didn’t detail where the players were. Top-Down worldbuilding is the path of least resistance between that extreme and Local-First, that has you only asking the most important worldbuilding questions to achieve maximum apparent depth.

Next post we’ll see this in action as I go start to finish with a campaign setting. I’ll time how long it took me to get a complicated, detailed world. Cheers!