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wondrousworldbuilding · 7 years

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Populating Your New World

Building a world from the ground up has almost countless facets to consider. Even after you’ve created your protagonist’s culture, city, government, religion, etc., you might go along writing only to find that the meadows and forests and even alleyways are devoid of life. Wildlife. Your main characters’ species won’t be alone on its planet, and if you’ve created a brand new world entirely from scratch, you might find that populating the land and water with terrestrian plants and animals doesn’t feel right, not when every other aspect is original. So what’s a world builder to do?

Figure out how your main species fits into the world

Are they at the top of the food chain? What kind of predators or dangers might they face in the wild?

How much more intelligent are they than the animals around them?

How has their technology, gardening, hunting, etc. altered nearby ecosystems?

To what creatures in the world are they most closely related?

What creatures and plants have they domesticated and bred? Why? How similar or dissimilar are the creatures, plants…or even the reasons behind their cultivation or domestication?

How much control are they able to exert over their environment?

Are they carnivores, omnivores, herbivores, or insectivores?

Developing an ecosystem

(If you are creating a multi-biome planet, you will need to do this separately for all different types of climates and/or regions.)

I like to think in terms of terrestrial evolution; I make a chronological checklist starting with what came first, and then what followed. I find that method very useful. So (in brief summary): basic geography, weather, plants, microorganisms, aquatic creatures, amphibians (or similar), small land creatures, larger land creatures, flying creatures. This section might benefit from sketches and charts (even if your crap at drawing, it’s just for your eyes anyway. It will help solidify your ideas and keep them cataloged for later reference as you write).

What is the general climate? What biome classification(s) does it fall under?

What does the basic landscape look like? Draw a picture.

What early activity (tectonic, erosion, or otherwise) has helped to shape the land?

How unpredictable, violent, or mild are the weather patterns? How different are the seasons? What weather might be considered “nice” by local inhabitants? What weather do they dread?

What is plant life like in the region? How has water supply, sunlight, or soil fertility affected plant growth?

How do plants breed and spread? Have they grown to rely on other creatures (bees, mammals, etc.) to pollinate or spread seeds, or do they take care of it themselves? Why?

What role do microorganisms play in the ecosystem? Have they been discovered and studied by the intelligent species of your world, or do they remain largely a mystery?

Salt water or fresh water? How has the quality, size, and richness of the body of water affected creatures living there? Consider the types of aquatic plants as well and how this environment has affected them…and how they have affected it.

What’s the largest creature inhabiting the average body of water in this region? What’s the smallest? Draw a food chain or food web (see the difference here).

What creatures use camouflage as a primary method of survival and/or hunting? How has this affected their appearance?

What animals live both in and out of the water? How similar or dissimilar are they from the amphibians of our world? Why do they live in both land and water? How do they fit into the water and land food webs/chains?

What animals have become exclusively land-dwelling? How do they make their shelters?

Draw a food chain/web for the land creatures in this region.

What are the largest land animals? The smallest? How does their size give them an advantage or disadvantage in their environment?

General creature-development questions and tips

General thoughts for your original creatures

Eye color, shape, behavior

Skin/hair/fur texture

Social behaviors (among its own kind)

Behaviors around new creatures or situations

How does it reproduce? How many of its young survive?

What does its home look like? How does it find or make its home?

Strength/weakness and physical build (muscles, teeth, agility, etc)

Number of limbs and use thereof

Take existing animals or fantastic creatures and use them as a jumping off point for your imagination.

Blend characteristics of animals from a similar climate or region.

Add unique (and logical) characteristics to familiar creatures that helps them fit your new world.

Create something entirely new from the depths of your imagination

Place yourself in your new ecosystem and create new creatures with features that make sense for that setting.

Let the magic or technology of your world play a part in how your new creatures have developed. How have the unique parts of your world molded its creatures?

Consider how an existing creature or fantasy creature might continue to evolve over millions of years in the climate you’ve created. Let that help you develop your own animals.

How balanced are your ecosystems? Do the predators outnumber the prey? Are there are enough creatures eating insects to keep the populations under control? How plentiful is the flora? Can it feed as many herbivores as it needs?

What natural processes work to keep the circle of life moving? (i.e. forest fires)

Draw pictures of your creatures to keep on file. They don’t have to be perfect. The simple act of sketching them out will help solidify their appearance in your mind. This will help you with consistency when describing them in your narrative.

Remember that you don’t have to have a full sketch and profile for every living being on your planet. For many of mine, I have blank spaces in my food webs where a “fill-in-the-blank” creature needs to be–is–but I haven’t sketched it out. I just know what it eats and what eats it. You can create only the handful of animals you need for your story, but still have a fully developed food chain, filled by creatures you’ve never seen and, therefore, don’t know what exactly they look like.

When developing your creatures and ecosystem pulls your focus away from your story for too long, you might be taking it a little too far! It’s okay to do creature development a little bit at a time. You don’t have to have any part of worldbuilding completely fleshed out before you start your novel. Otherwise, none of us would ever get any actual writing done!

Integrating your hard work into your narrative

Any animals that appear in the narrative, you need to know what they eat, what eats it, etc. In an ecosystem nothing happens in a vacuum. It’s a web, not a line.

A setting serves many purposes. One of the most important ones is something for your characters to react to in order to develop and deepen them. So as you handle nature (creatures, plants, ecosystems) within your narrative, keep in mind the purpose that it is serving. Bear in mind how each individual character would see and react to their world, and let that reflect who they are to the reader. Make sure to pay attention to what your characters will pay attention to. In a rainforest, you might see beautiful, colorful creatures, like a poison dart frog. An artist will think, “That’s beautiful,” while a survivalist might think, “That’s dangerous,” or even, “That’s useful!”

Don’t be afraid of over-including details in your first draft. Write what comes to mind, what feels important, and then you can whittle down to the most important details in later drafts. Some of what you write in your first draft might not make it to the final, but that doesn’t mean it’s not important for you to actually write it! You might learn a lot about your world from your first draft.

Happy building!

Check out the rest of the Brainstorming Series! Magic Systems, Part One Magic Systems, Part Two New Species New Worlds New Cultures New Civilizations Politics and Government Map Making Belief Systems & Religion Guilds, Factions & Groups War & Conflict Science & Technology History & Lore

#brainstorming series #brainstorming #writing #amwriting #help for writers #worldbuilding #animals #ecology #writing things #setting #wildlife #creatures #world building #writing help #novel planning

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riccardolll-blog · 7 years

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NPC Building Tips #1 - Flaws

Why do players come to bond with some NPCs but not others? What makes an engaging NPC? How do you create a recurring NPC who your players will love?

I think the answer to this question has a couple of different answers, but in this post I’ll be focusing on what I consider one of the most fundamental requirements for creating key NPC - their flaws.

Why focus on the NPCs flaws? Quite simply because whatever flaws your NPC has will make the character a) memorable, b) likeable, and c) creates story and world building opportunities.

Memorable NPCs

Players are more likely to remember the queen who can never find her coronet, much to the exasperation of her elderly lady in waiting. Or the blacksmith with several missing teeth who likes to whistle loudly through the gaps while he works.

These tidbits give clues about the kind of personalities your players are dealing with, and can form a reference point for your players when they later want to revist that NPC.

“Where was that ranger who dressed entirely in snakeskin? Didn’t they know something about poisons?”

“Didn’t we meet a young gnome merchant who liked to gamble in that city? Maybe they know someone from the underground we can talk to?”

Lifelike NPCs

Players are also more likely to connect with a character they see as in some way fragile or lacking because an NPC who revealing their “human nature” is more real/lifelike. Their flaws will resonate with your players own humanity.

What’s more is that NPCs with flaws gives you options for story building. An NPC with no weaknesses has no need for the heroes (or villains) of the story. To build a story around an NPC, push the flaw to a small extreme and imagine what the consequences would be. For example, a salty old seadog whose love of sailing keeps him away most of the time comes home one day to find his wife missing. He now lives in a disorganised dump of a dwelling and pines for his love day and night. Can the players help?

Story/World Building Opportunities

Giving NPCs flaws also allows for world development outside the players story arc. Take the above example our beloved seadog. After the players successfully reunite the sailor with his wife, there is a graceful cut scene and the players continue on with their adventures elsewhere. After some time, something brings them back to the coastal town where the seaman and his wife live. They discover that the sailor has learnt the error of his ways, but still struggles with his passion for sailing/the sea. In an attempt at loving compromise, the sailor has opened a ship building business. The business allows him to continue to sail, but means he does not travel too far or for too long. Unfortunately, it’s early days and the business is struggling which is putting financial strain on the couple. Etc.

Building NPCs with Flaws

Assuming you’re now sold on the idea that flaws are a critical part of NPC character building, how do you go about picking/dreaming up your flaws? And how many flaws should an NPC have?

To be annoying and answer in reverse, generally your players won’t remember more than two flaws in a character, and generally you as DM won’t have enough time to sufficiently illustrate/explore more flaws than that.

Personally, I think one major flaw and a minor flaw in an NPC is enough. Remember, your NPCs like your characters have other facets to their characters like dreams, ideals, relationships, etc. The flaws do not make the entire NPC, but they will be a defining trait.

With this in mind, how do you pick your flaws? Well, you have two main options. You can either build your character from the flaw up (see generator below), or if you already have a character with some kind of context/story behind it, pick a flaw that seems to fit with that context. Take into account factors such as the NPCs age, race, what kind of environment they were born/raised, the society they live in now, influential people in their life and their potential flaws,

E.g. a little mermaid with an interest in goods that fall from passing ships may be naive and strong willed. Alternatively, an old warrior whose people are facing almost certain genocide from an invading force may suffer from a deep existentialism and be slightly deaf.

NPC Flaw Generator

A little silly, but a fun way to get the creative juices running.

Follow the generator twice.

Your NPC is:

Roll 1d4.

A little

Somewhat

Fairly

Very

Roll 1d100

Gullible

Obsessed with [open the nearest book to page 6 and read until you find the first common noun]

Pedantic

Timid/shy

Allergic to something (anything! e.g. herbs, insects, dust, grass, magic, sunlight before 9am, constructs, etc.)

Blustering/bombastic/flamboyant

Frugal/meager/scrooge

Annoyed by people younger than them.

Tired at all times

Cold

Missing something (a nail, eyebrows, fingers, eyes, teeth, lips, limbs, a heart, a loved one, etc.)

Arrogant

Pious and/or religious

Deceitful

Acerbic/sour

Paranoid

Evasive/keen on avoiding questions

Overly cheery/chipper/optimistic about everything

Absent minded

Reclusive

Overweight or underweight

in debt to someone

Traumatised by something (e.g. lost a parent when young, witnessed a murder, was conscripted into a rebel army at a young age, seen a ghost/apparition, experience a severe drought/famine, survived the black plague, etc.)

Unlucky (could be mechanical as well as story based, e.g. always rolls with disadvantage)

Callous/insensitive/tactless/abrasive

Socially awkward

Pretentious

Unsubtle about being a peeping Tom/Tammy

Nosy/in need of getting to the bottom of everything

Unscrupulous

Fastidious

Lazy

Cruel

Servile

Impatient

Ignorant and/or bigoted

Ungainly

Legalistic

Dreamy/disconnected from reality

Susceptible to outbursts of small person syndrome (whether actually short or not)

Cheat

Uncouth

Discourteous

Aggressive/vexatious/pugnacious/cantankerous

Doubtful

Mad/insane

Narcissistic/egocentric

Insomniac

Tall tale teller/liar

Over energetic

Anxious

Patriotic

Mechanical

Psychic

Stubborn

Delicate/frail/sickly

Weak/feeble/elderly

Easily embarrassed

Fussy

Self indulgent

Prejudiced (your choice of prejudice)

Claustrophobic

Tone deaf

Tattletale/snitch

Overworked/stressed

Rebellious/surly

Nihilistic

Despised (by someone specific or in general)

Creepy

Nomadic/itchy feet

Bossy

Idiosyncratic. Pick a distinct/unique personal behavior proportionate to your first roll. (e.g. waves their hands above their heads before entering another room, always turns/travels in a clockwise direciton, must always be carrying something in their left hand, will never wash their hair, adopts every stray cat they come across, etc.)

Gluttonous

Guilty about a crime they committed that has not yet been found out

Talkative/chatter box

Domineering

Flirtatious

Fearful of change (a specific change or change in general)

Untidy

Bludger/moocher

Confused

Fickle/capricious

Pessimistic

Easily distracted

Paternalistic

Elitist

Evangelistic for a specific cause (pick your own! e.g. veganism, industrialisation, communal childminding, fitness lifestyles, unions for magic users, compulsory documentary photography, etc.)

Punny, at all time

Conflict adverse

Expensive in their taste (whether they can afford it or not)

Colour blind

Conformist/complacent

Uncooperative

Privileged

Childish/immature

Insecure

Epicurean or stoic

Insipid/irresolute

Procrastinator

Cynical

Which grates on the nerves of:

Roll 1d6.

Family member

Friend.

Authority figure.

Neighbour.

The players.

No one in particular (but may have other consequences!)

All the best for your planning and playing.

#npc #character building #character design #dnd #dnd 5e

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