Worldbuilding Tips - Blog Posts

[🔗Building a Diverse Culture] [🔗Elements of culture] [🔗Cultural Iceberg]

🗺️Geographic Distribution

Why knowing where your culture is important:

Enviroment ➡️ Materials from the enviroment ➡️ affect their clothes, food, weapons etc.

Enviroment ➡️ Certain resources are limited ➡️ plays into their values

Areas, planets where the culture is primarily found

Migration patterns throughout the world

Influence of the environment on their everyday lives

🍵 Values, Beliefs and Traditions

Values and Beliefs:

Core values and principles that guide the culture's behavior and decision-making

Moral and ethical codes that shape their interactions with other cultures and their environment.

Beliefs about the universe, spirituality, the afterlife, and the nature of existence.

Customs and Traditions:

Rituals, ceremonies, and traditions that are significant to the culture's culture

Celebrations, Festivals, holidays, or coming-of-age rituals.

Customs related to birth, marriage, death

Belief Systems and Religion:

Religious or spiritual beliefs practiced by the culture

Deities mythologies and legends

Rituals, ceremonies connected to their faith

sacred sites

👯Relationship and Communication

Social Structures:

Hierarchies and social classes within the culture

Systems of governance, including monarchies, democracies, councils, or communal decision-making. [see government template]

Gender roles, family structures

Interactions between different generations or age groups

Language and Communication:

Unique language(s) spoken by the culture

Dialects and variations within the language

Non-verbal communication, gestures

Written scripts, alphabets, or symbolic systems used for recording and transmitting knowledge.

Relationships and Interactions:

Protocols and etiquette for social interactions, greetings, and forms of address.

Values placed on community, cooperation, or individualism.

Attitudes towards outsiders, including hospitality, suspicion, or xenophobia.

Education, training, and knowledge transmission practices

🪐History and Origins

Mythology or creation stories related to the culture

Historical events that shaped their culture and identity

Moments of triumph, struggle, or transformation in their history.

Conflicts, wars, or alliances that influenced their development and interactions with other Cultures.

How do they prerve the past? (Art, oral traditions, written texts, artifacts, monuments ?)

Are there any guardians of historical knowledge? (historians, scholars?)

Historical Figures and Heroes:

Notable individuals who played pivotal roles in their history

Legendary figures of inspiration within their culture.

Stories and folklore surrounding these historical figures and their impact on the culture

Cultural Revivals (If there was any)

Periods of cultural revivalthat brought about significant artistic or intellectual growth

Factors that sparked these revivals, like social movements, political changes, natural disasters or technological advancements.

How much of these revivals are still affecting them today?

Where do they keep their cultural items?

Interactions with Other Ethnicities/Cultures:

Relations with other culture in the past (conflict, alliances, trade, etc.)

Cultural exchange, assimilation, or integration with other groups

Prejudices, stereotypes, or tensions between different culture bleeding from past events

Are they welcoming?

🎨Art and Architecture

Arts and Entertainment:

Describe their forms of artistic expressions: visual arts, music, dance, storytelling, theater, etc.

Cultural appreciation for literature, poetry, oral histories.

Clothing and Fashion:

Traditional clothing styles and attires specific to the culture, fashion trends

Materials, colors, or patterns commonly used in their garments

Dresscode, Clothing related to social status, ceremonies, events (symbolic accesories, wedding gown, mourning attires, etc.)

Symbolism or cultural significance of specific garments and accessories

Architecture and Built Environment:

Unique architectural styles, construction materials, design principles.

Landmarks, sacred sites, structures of cultural importance.

Adaptations to their homeworld's environment ,technological advancements in their architecture

🎙️ Economics and Technology

Economic Systems:

Modes of production, distribution, and trade

Economic practices (bartering, currency, communal sharing)

Attitudes (or even predujices) towards wealth, resources, material possessions.

Economic activities and industries prominent

Currency, barter systems

Technology and Advancements:

Technological prowess specific advancements

How their technology shapes their way of life and cultural practices

Interaction between traditional and advanced technologies

🍱 Food

Traditional dishes, cooking techniques, culinary customs

Staple foods, spices, ingredients

Rituals and etiquette associated with food preparation, sharing, and dining

Sacred abd holiday dishes.

Impact of environmental conditions on their culinary practices

🏦 Law and Leadership

Political systems or governing structures within the culture

Leadership roles, decision-making processes, and power dynamics

Forms of governance (monarchy, democracy, tribal council, etc.)

Conflict Resolution and Justice:

Methods of conflict resolution

legal systems

Cultural attitudes towards justice, punishment, and rehabilitation.

Traditional systems of governance, decision-making in matters of conflict

Need to make a last minute fantasy city/town?

I got just the trick for you. Exaggerate a city you’re already familiar with. A hometown? Capital? Friend’s town? Exaggerate it with fantastical elements and maybe even inside jokes. Not too long needs to pass before you got a convincing fantasy city.

A small rural town known for its flowers? A secluded village swallowed by giant boughs of wildflowers, where masterful but painstakingly traditional druids live.

A city with terrible potholes and construction that never ends? Make it a city built upon massive caverns and canyons, repairing the results of constant dangerous dragon attacks.

Detroit? A city of thieves, that upon entering, with each passing hour you yourself become more and more thief-like.

Really do this! Exaggerate more than one element, and you get a place even more unlike with what you started from.

How to Make Worldbuilding Easier and More Efficient

Hey everyone! I recently found a method that makes worldbuilding much more efficient and structured, so I thought I’d share it here. Maybe it’ll help some of you! :)

Step 1: Approach Your World with a “Why?” Mindset

Whenever you add an element to your world, ask yourself **why** it exists. Keep questioning it like a curious child. This method prevents inconsistencies and ensures that every part of your world is connected.

Step 2: Use a Checklist to Stay on Track**

To make this process easier, you can create checklist of key questions to answer. Here’s an example:

• Does your world have magic? → Yes?

THEN:

• Why do people have magic?

• Does everyone have it, or just specific groups?

• Where does this magic come from?

• Are there rules or restrictions for using magic?

• Are there different types of magic?

• Are there beliefs tied to magic (e.g., religious, cultural, or political conflicts)?

If, for example, magic comes from gods, then suddenly you have:

✔ A mythology

✔ Different groups with different beliefs

✔ Possible conflicts between those groups

Step 3: Use Worldbuilding to Shape Your Plot

Once your world has structure, it naturally helps shape the plot

For example:

• If there are different groups with opposing beliefs, you already have a conflict

• If magic is restricted, maybe your main character wants to change the system

• If there’s a prophecy, maybe someone wants to break or fulfill it.

Instead of creating random events,each event should naturally lead to the next

A → causes → B → causes → C

This makes your plot more organic and keeps everything connected!

Hope this helps! Let me know if you have any other worldbuilding strategies that work for you! :)

Another worldbuilding application of the "two layer rule": To create a culture while avoiding The Planet Of Hats (the thing where a people only have one thing going for them, like "everyone wears a silly hat"): You only need two hats.

Try picking two random flat culture ideas and combine them, see how they interact. Let's say taking the Proud Warrior Race - people who are all about glory in battle and feats of strength, whose songs and ballads are about heroes in battle and whose education consists of combat and military tactics. Throw in another element: Living in diaspora. Suddenly you've got a whole more interesting dynamic going on - how did a people like this end up cast out of their old native land? How do they feel about it? How do they make a living now - as guards, mercenaries? How do their non-combatants live? Were they always warrior people, or did they become fighters out of necessity to fend for themselves in the lands of strangers? How do the peoples of these lands regard them?

Like I'm not shitting, it's literally that easy. You can avoid writing an one-dimensional culture just by adding another equally flat element, and the third dimension appears on its own just like that. And while one of the features can be location/climate, you can also combine two of those with each other.

Let's take a pretty standard Fantasy Race Biome: The forest people. Their job is the forest. They live there, hunt there, forage there, they have an obnoxious amount of sayings that somehow refer to trees, woods, or forests. Very high chance of being elves. And then a second common stock Fantasy Biome People: The Grim Cold North. Everything is bleak and grim up there. People are hardy and harsh, "frostbite because the climate hates you" and "being stabbed because your neighbour hates you" are the most common causes of death. People are either completely humourless or have a horrifyingly dark, morbid sense of humour. They might find it funny that you genuinely can't tell which one.

Now combine them: Grim Cold Bleak Forest People. The summer lasts about 15 minutes and these people know every single type of berry, mushroom and herb that's edible in any fathomable way. You're not sure if they're joking about occasionally resorting to eating tree bark to survive the long dark winter. Not a warrior people, but very skilled in disappearing into the forest and picking off would-be invaders one by one. Once they fuck off into the woods you won't find them unless they want to be found.

You know, Finland.

1) Risus Monkey Fantasy Language Cypher

This is amazing!!!!!!!!!!

Are you creating a fictional language? Do you need help coming up with words that sound like they fit with what you’ve come up with so far?

Just put your fictional language in the model text, type some words in the translation text, and click “translate”. It’ll “translate” whatever words you put in using patterns from your sample text.

2) Speed Distance Calculator

These calculators aren’t perfect, but they can help you figure out:

How long it will take your characters to get somewhere based on how fast they’re going,

how far your characters moved based on how fast they were going and on how long they were moving,

how fast your characters need to move to reach a certain distance in a specified time

The calculator was meant for cyclists, but you can use it to get estimates for other things too.

3) Fantasy Calendar Generator

Another amazing resource!

This can create a random calendar for you or you can input the year, the number of months, the name of the months, the number of moons, the number of days in a week, the names of each day, and more.

You can even save the data for your calendar so that when you go back to the generator, all you have to do to get to your calendar is paste the data.

4) Inkarnate Map Maker

This is a new resource that’s still in beta, so it’ll probably be updated in the coming months.

This map maker is easy to use and free. You can add different climates, mountains, trees, towns, cities, text, and notes. For an example of these maps, look at the quick map I made for this post’s header.

Beyond this, consider how these professions might vary depending on who the customers are - nobles, or lower class. Are they good at their job or just scraping by? Do they work with lots of other people or on their own? City or village?

For younger characters:

Apprentice to any of the above

Messenger/runner

Page/squire

Pickpocket

Shop assistant

Student

Looks after younger siblings

(Images all from Wikimedia Commons)

Worldbuilders naming towns: I named this town Elygwe’meth which means “Where the Dearly Beloved King died next to his Lover” in the language I invented and also a combination of the Old English word for diamonds and the Maori word for apples since that’s their main exports

People in real life naming towns: I named this town Big Falls cause big fall there

Oh my gosh. I just found this website that walks you though creating a believable society. It breaks each facet down into individual questions and makes it so simple! It seems really helpful for worldbuilding!