Building Worlds

Pathfinder Gamemastery Guide (Second Edition), page 122

As a Game Master, you control the details of the world your players explore. The Age of Lost Omens campaign setting is a lush world suitable for countless adventures, but you might prefer to adventure in entirely new worlds, where every aspect of the setting and story is yours to decide!

Building your own campaign world can be a deeply fulfilling creative process, as it lets you bring to life the exact setting you envision. It gives you great flexibility, in that you can build only as much as you need for the next few adventures, and you can adapt the world on the fly to meet the demands of your story. It also gives you great control, allowing you to build precisely the setting you need for the story you want to tell. Finally, it bypasses some of the issues that can come with playing within an existing campaign setting, where you might create a narrative that contradicts published canon, or your players might stumble across major plot or setting spoilers. Whatever your world-building goals, this chapter guides you through the design process step by step.

In this section

Design Approach World building can be approached in many ways, but it fundamentally comes down to a simple preference. Do you start at a high level and zoom in, or do you start small and build up?
The World While world building might include building much more than a single planet, most adventures occur entirely on one world. It’s a good idea to have a broad understanding of that world as a whole.
Civilization With the major geographical features and terrain of your world decided, you’ll next want to establish significant nations and settlements.
Religion The greatest stories from myth and legend speak of immortals with incredible powers of creation and destruction.
Cosmology An enduring curiosity among many cultures is to ask what wonders lie beyond the night sky. Does anyone gaze back from the moon above?