Fantasy Worldbuilding: A Guide to Homebrew Fantasy Worlds in Dungeons & Dragons

Cover Art for Lost Mines of Phandelver, a D&D 5th Edition Adventure.

If you’re new to Dungeons & Dragons, you may already be familiar with the term ‘worldbuilding’. Worldbuilding is the process of developing the culture, mythos, history, geology, politics, and environment of a world, usually a science fiction or fantasy setting. You probably have a favourite fantasy or sci-fi world, from pop culture icons like Star Wars or Lord of the Rings to niche universes like Warhammer 40k, Shadowrun, or the Forgotten Realms, but all tabletop gaming incorporates some form of worldbuilding. So how do I build my own world?

Especially in homebrew Dungeons & Dragons campaigns (homebrew is a term for game material made by the players instead of the official or licensed publishers), worldbuilding is absolutely critical to maintaining player immersion, and can be pivotal to the storytelling of high fantasy settings. Worldbuilding is an all encompassing term, spanning and influencing every aspect of your campaign, and it can be equally exhilarating and daunting to craft your own world. 

But when done poorly, worldbuilding can significantly hinder a campaign. Convoluted worldbuilding frustrates and confuses players, ruining the point of playing D&D; having fun. Likewise, when too much work is invested into irrelevant parts of the world, it’s only natural for a DM (Dungeon Master) to meander and deviate the story away from what should always be the main focus; the players. 

Worldbuilding can quickly become a sunk-cost exercise that consumes valuable creative time and energy, and when Dungeon Masters already have so much work to do, when do we stop? Where do we even start? Here is my process for building engaging worlds quickly and without wasting time.

5 Step Guide to Fantasy Worldbuilding

First, I would advise critically analyzing a 5th Edition Forgotten Realms adventure, and make note of what elements resonate with you; a personal recommendation is Lost Mine of Phandelver, which I and the tabletop community widely agree to be a fantastic introduction to DMing (you can find it for free at 5eTools). I mention the Forgotten Realms because the official setting for Dungeons and Dragons is a fantastic alternative to starting from scratch, and can be great inspiration for your homebrew setting.

If, however, you’re up to the challenge of building your own world from scratch, my step-by-step process is as follows;

1. Conceptualization; Create a clear beginning and end, themes, and a solid one-sentence pitch for your party.

2. Party Integration; Bring the idea to your party and see what elements resonate with them.

3. Element Breakdown; Consolidate as many elements from every player into the plot as possible, and throw away the extra information that isn’t vital.

4. The 3 Pillars of Worldbuilding; Assign your elements to one of three pillars; General, Specific, and Scope.

5. Final Considerations; A final checklist of advice, tips, and pointers.

Step 1: Conceptualization

Before we start building our world, we need a story. I’m discussing storytelling because worldbuilding’s main function is to support the storytelling; the world on its own is usually not that interesting. To explain my point, I’d like you to think of your favourite fantasy/sci-fi series; what made you fall in love with it? I’d wager it was the characters who hooked you in, then you learnt more about the world, and that’s because characters are the most compelling part of stories.

Stories are composed of two elements; plot, and characters. Plot is the chronological series of events, and those series of events are changed and influenced by the actions of our characters. 

In effective storytelling, the plot constantly challenges the characters to fight for their wants, and it’s up to the characters to overcome the plot; the audience is invested in our story by witnessing the characters overcome struggle. But without the plot, the characters would have no reason to act, and one component of a compelling plot is the use of worldbuilding to contextualize how the characters act. In other words, worldbuilding is the mechanism by which we inform and influence the characters into making interesting decisions.

In the context of Dungeons & Dragons, the Players are the characters, and the DM is the plot. We challenge our Players to overcome obstacles to achieve what their characters want, and the way we explain and communicate what those obstacles are is through worldbuilding. This is where we establish our golden rule; when worldbuilding, the most work should be put into elements that most affect, or are most affected by, the players. Regardless of our campaign, the story of the PCs (Player Characters) always comes first, and the worldbuilding should serve to inform their story, not override it.

Keeping these principles in mind, let’s start developing the story our world serves. This is the Prompt, and our goal is to communicate the campaign’s beginning, ending, and themes within a single sentence. This ensures everyone is on the same page early in the storytelling process, reducing our workload in the future. The Prompt’s structure is the following:

• An established genre

• The theme of the game

• What the players will do

• Who the antagonist is

• What is at stake in the world

Let’s start with a few examples of Prompts:

1. A Western about revenge; the players will exact revenge against the tyrannical mayor and their corrupt lawmen, who are bleeding their dusty town dry of oil, money, and food.

2. A High Fantasy quest about good vs evil; the players will slay an evil necromancer that threatens to awaken a dead God once worshiped across the land.

3. A Sci-Fi horror about survival; the players will find their loved ones and escape the space station before a shapeshifting alien that’s killed everyone else aboard finds them too.

The most worldbuilding I’m offering at this early stage is genre and a single sentence, because at this conceptualization stage, our world isn’t relevant yet. Focus on what the characters will do, and how they will change the plot first; all other details are irrelevant until they affect a character. The small amount of context provided is used to gauge what part of the world the Players are interested in, and how they’d like to interact with it. Speaking of the players, let’s use Prompt 2 for our example, and start integrating our Players.

Step 2: Party Integration

Our group of Players, otherwise called the Party, will use the Prompt to collectively build their characters. After briefly discussing the Prompt with the Party, I’ll ask them to imagine some characters and what they’d want to accomplish over the course of the campaign. To make it clear what I’m looking for, I present the following guide to each of them:

• Concept: A one sentence description of their character and what they do.

• Archetype: Details such as Class, Race, Alignment, Background, etc.

• Short Term Goal: Something the character wants to accomplish within a year.

• Long Term Aspiration: Something the character wants to achieve within their lifetime.

• Three Allies: Three characters or groups that will aid them.

• Three Enemies: Three characters or groups that will hinder them.

By filling in these guidelines, we develop a detailed understanding of what each player wants from the plot, where they belong in the world, and how we can integrate them into worldbuilding. Of course, at this early stage, it’ll be difficult to make concrete decisions about anything, but that’s not the goal; the goal of giving our Players a Prompt is so we know where to start worldbuilding. Continuing our example, after discussing Prompt 2 and brainstorming characters with my four players, this is what they’ve decided:

Player	James	Robert	Mary	Patricia
Concept	A scholar seeking to unravel the mysteries of the forgotten God.	A mercenary seeking glory by defeating what no one else can.	An outlander separated from his family by the undead, and swears to find them.	A holy warrior pledged to defend the lands from evil.
Archetype	Wizard, divination, crowd control.	Fighter, ranged, vanguard.	Barbarian, rage, tank.	Cleric, healing, defender.
Goal	Uncover the name of the dead God.	Earn glory by slaying the necromancer.	Find and save my family, or put them to rest.	Protect these lands from the advancing undead.
Aspiration	Become the leading scholar of Gods and mythology.	Form a renowned mercenary guild.	Rebuild my lands, and ensure this never happens again.	Purge the realm of all evil and wickedness.
Allies	• Wizard’s Academy • Owl Familiar • Theology Professor	• Adventurer’s Guild • Old Barkeep • Elven Master	• Daughter • Village Elder • Nomadic Witch Doctor	• Guardian Angel • Clergy, God of Protection • Blacksmith Father
Enemies	• Rival Scholar • Slighted Priest • Pact-Seeking Devil	• Mercenary Band • Former Ally, Betrayed • Lord	• Undead Lieutenant • Hobgoblin Raiders • Necromancer	• Necromancer • Rival Clergy, God of War • Vampire

The character Concept is essentially a character summary. The Concept in combination with the Archetype will help provide the basic questions about our world we need to answer; how do Wizards learn magic, what divine entities give Clerics their powers, where can a Fighter learn martial arts, etc. Unless a Player actively wants to learn more about how these elements work, make a quick note and move on; these questions will inform future elements of your world.

The Goals and Aspirations directly influence the plot. Throughout the course of the campaign, every PC should accomplish their Goal, and by the end of the campaign, it should bring them closer to their Aspiration. The Aspiration also informs the DM what element of the world each Player is most interested in learning about.

The Allies and Enemies is the most important part. Dungeons and Dragons is a collaborative storytelling experience, so allowing your players to introduce their own plot hooks will not only make your life easier, but will ensure even greater investment into the world because they made it. 

Now that we have a Story Prompt and four Characters Concepts, we can start building our Plot. 

Step 3: Element Breakdown

Each component of the Plot, which I’ll refer to as Elements, should serve to tell our PCs Story. We have a lot of Characters to work with now, which can get overwhelming very quickly. To make it manageable, and ensure we’re equally incorporating every Player, let’s start designating which Characters are most relevant to the Story, and seeing where we can combine Characters.

When referring to which Character is relevant to the Story, it can be very subjective, but you can find out if a character is relevant or not by asking this; how often does this Character change our PCs actions? Remember our golden rule; the most work should be put into elements that most affect, or are most affected by, the players; so if an Non-Player Character (NPC) has a great impact on our Player Character (PC), their worldbuilding should be proportional to their impact.

To avoid clutter and confusion, I like stick with one ally and two enemies per player. Likewise, keep an eye out for Characters that can be merged; the more Characters the Players have in common, the easier it is to combine worldbuilding elements, facilitate roleplay, and deepen our immersion.

Let’s apply them now. To help, I like to visually track character connections using a web; I recommend using Obsidian, it’s a free note taking app with lots of helpful features, including a node graph.

• Our most obvious elements are the PCs; James, Robert, Mary, and Patricia; as well as the Necromancer, Forgotten God, and the lands which are threatened.

  • James, Robert, and Patricia have elements that best suit a city, so let’s put all of their elements into Main City.

  • Mary’s concept implies her elements are separate, so they’ll go into the Outlands, which we’ll decide is about a day’s travel from Main City.

  • Since the Players need to stop the undead army, we’ll decide the Main City is threatened, and the nearby Outlands have already been overrun.

• The antagonist is trying to awaken the Forgotten God, and both James and Patricia have an interest in the Gods. I think a Pantheon of Gods is good for this campaign.

  • James needs a God of Knowledge

  • Patricia needs a God of Protection, and a rival God of War.

  • What happens if the Forgotten God awakens? Let’s decide that the current God of the Dead would be overthrown; should the necromancer succeed, the souls of the dead will have nowhere to go, and the dead will walk the Earth.

• Next, let’s see which Allies and Enemies we could merge into similar elements:

  • James has the Slighted Priest, let’s decide that priest follows the God of War.

  • Robert and Patricia both have rival groups, so let’s merge them together; the Band of Mercenaries competing for Robert’s glory were hired by the Clergy of the God of War.

  • The Slighted Priest could have been assigned to oversee the Band of Mercenaries, meaning we’ve combined elements from James, Robert, and Patricia into one.

  • Robert’s Former Ally could be interesting to explore, so I’ll decide he died when he was betrayed, and reanimated as a Revenant.

  • A Revenant sounds like a powerful undead, let’s decide the Former Ally is also Mary’s Undead Lieutenant.

  • The Undead Lieutenant who separated Mary’s family would need a place to keep them, so let’s decide he used his undead force to subjugate the Hobgoblin Raiders.

  • What use is Hobgoblin Raiders to an undead army? Hobgoblins serve as good cannon fodder, wasting the time and resources of Main City’s defenses. Let’s decide the Hobgoblin Raiders are pillaging across the Outlands, making them a common threat to encounter.

• We now have two strong and compelling enemies for the group to fight.

  • A Mercenary Band hired by a God of War Priest to slay the Necromancer, threatening to take away Robert’s glory, James' knowledge, Mary’s reunion with her family, and Patricia’s divine destiny.

  • A fallen brother-in-arms of Robert, now undead and leading the subjugated Hobgoblin Raiders is an excellent starting enemy for the group. Likewise, it creates interesting drama in the group, as Mary could blame Robert’s betrayal for the loss of her family.

• For the group’s allies, we repeat the process. 

  • Mary’s nomadic witch doctor could be useful for saving the party in a pinch; let’s make them a former member of the Wizard Academy, who the Party could use for healing.

  • The Elven Master could be native to the Outlands, meaning they may run into Robert's mentor while fighting off Hobgoblins.

  • The Guardian Angel can be used to present information on the Forgotten God, a topic of high interest to James. It could be interesting if James has to maintain a good relationship with Patricia so her Guardian Angel keeps talking to them.

  • The Owl Familiar’s spirit could also be tied to the Outlands, ensuring James has good reason to care about defending the Outlands beyond just learning about Forgotten God.

  • Mary’s Daughter wouldn’t sit by in the Main City while she goes off to fight. Let’s decide her Daughter is also capable of fighting; now the Daughter can help in combat.

  • Patricia’s Father is a Blacksmith, so he could provide and build magical items for the group when they return to Main City.

This process of going back and forth, connecting the dots and merging elements helps keep our Plot contained and focused. In addition, just by this process alone, we’ve already made some interesting decisions that beg to be fleshed out further with worldbuilding. However, note that I am excluding certain Allies and Enemies. As stated previously, these NPCs are not relevant, but it’s still important to have a basic idea of them. I’ll write a single sentence for them, and if they become more relevant in the future, I’ll add onto them further. This ensures I have more time and energy to devote to the NPCs I’ve selected, and helps keep the campaign from meandering.

Step 4: Three Pillars of Worldbuilding

Now we have a clear and concise list of elements to start worldbuilding. This is where we introduce the pillars of worldbuilding; General, Specific, and Scope.

General

General elements are commonly understood within the zeitgeist of its genre, meaning it requires little explanation and contextualization. In the case of high fantasy, we’re all familiar with magic, elves, dwarves, divinity, vampires, dragons, etc, so we don’t have to spend time explaining these elements. They’re a universally adaptable idea that helps lay the foundation for more complicated elements.

Using our current example, we don’t need to explain what a Wizard, Cleric, Fighter, and Barbarian is; Dungeons & Dragons has made those elements universally understood. Likewise, a Necromancer is a commonly understood idea; a wizard capable of creating and manipulating the undead. We don’t need to explain that Main City is big, or that it has a governing body that gets very political, those are assumptions we can make. Likewise, Outlands may seem unique at first, but if the Outlands is referring to the wild and untamed forest region surrounding the Main City, we can quickly fill in that there’s wild animals, nomadic people, violent raiders, and many more dangers.

General elements should never need more than a few sentences to communicate its function; if the idea is unique enough to warrant a lengthy explanation, ask yourself if the Players will engage with this. If they do, then it’s a Specific element, which is explained below. If not, then you’re likely engaging in a self-indulgent idea; remember the golden rule.

In our example, the players aren’t too interested in politics, but Robert’s aspiration is owning a mercenary guild. Instead of a long explanation of Main City’s undoubtedly intricate politics, we could summarize it generally; “The Main City is an oligarchy controlled by the five wealthiest Lords. The feudal system of Main City means common folk have no influence on politics, but exceptional service to the city can earn recognition from the Lords.” Within two sentences, we’ve explained the politics of Main City, how the Party could interact with it, and left it open-ended to be expanded on in the future if needed.

Specific

Specific elements are what makes your world unique from other existing fantasy settings; what we commonly associate with worldbuilding. Specific elements often expand upon a General element to deepen our understanding of an established part of our world, and explore how it affects other elements of the world.

In our example, while necromancy on its own is a General element, how does necromancy work in our setting? Perhaps in our world, we want to express the dangers of necromancy, and that the Necromancer is exceptionally cruel in his use. We could expand; “Necromancy is commonly understood to be a delicate and dangerous art. Clerics are wary to practice arts of undeath out of fear of upsetting the balance between the God of Life and the God of Death, and the Wizard Academy outright bans its practice outside of controlled and supervised study. It’s commonly believed that reckless use of necromancy bars the affected soul from the afterlife, and if the wielder doesn’t pay their due respects to the God of Death, they are cursed to an afterlife of purgatory.”

The general element of magic being separated by schools has now been specified further; now we understand why necromancy is part of a different school. Likewise, it’s opened more questions for us to expand upon: are other schools of magic banned? Is there a God of Magic or does each God govern their own school? What does the afterlife encompass? Many of these questions should already be answered with a General element, opening more opportunities to explore the parts of the campaign that directly matter to the Story we’re telling.

Scope

Scope is harder to understand, but important to incorporate. What is the scope of each of your elements? In conventional storytelling, it’s important that the stakes of the story is proportional to the capabilities of the characters, otherwise our suspension of disbelief as an audience falters, and we lose interest in the story. 

A common critique of characters like Superman is that he’s pretty boring. Barring Kryptonite and the name of his mother, Superman cannot be hurt, rarely fails, and doesn’t struggle to do the right thing; he fails to compel audiences because we don’t see any struggle. The most compelling Superman stories revolve around his death, or the compromising of morals, or his guilt at failing to be perfect. The reason those stories work while others fail is because the stakes of the stories are personal; we see how the world affects our characters, we can sympathize with their fear of losing, and we can cheer when they succeed after an uphill battle.

This is an important thing to keep in mind when creating any worldbuilding element. Our world still needs to be understandable, relatable, and plausible, especially since our Players need to imagine and interact with it. For example, let’s say we decided that Main City is a million soldiers strong, with giant walls made of indestructible adamantine. We’ve made the Scope of this element so massive, that any other elements which wish to rival it must be equally massive. If Main City has a million soldiers, then the undead army has two million soldiers, and if the walls are indestructible, then the undead army has tools to break indestructible materials. And our Party of Level 1 adventurers need to stop the undead army by… how would they? This example is hyperbole obviously, but it’s important to keep the scope of our elements in mind relative to one another to ensure the story can remain plausible.

Take for example an important question of Scope; how do you revive a dead God? A general element states that Gods are omnipotent, and our specific element that the Forgotten God is needed to overthrow the God of Death implies only a God can kill a God. So how strong does the Necromancer have to be to revive a God? This could be explained by changing the general element of our world, or by introducing a new specific element, such as by stating:

• Any mortal can revive a God through sufficient sacrifice and prayer, but the sacrifice is proportional to their power.

• Only a few mortals can wield the power necessary to revive a God.

• A God’s dormant soul can choose a mortal, making them a Demi-God capable of resurrecting them.

• A God’s power is proportional to how many people pray to it; if enough people pray to an imaginary God, they’ll become real.

• Gods can never die, they can only hibernate; it requires a special ritual to awaken them.

Whichever answer we pick will drastically impact the Scope of other elements of the campaign, so it’s important to be conscious and reflective of the consequences of every new world element we add. In almost all situations, it’s better to keep the Scope small, and instead increase the stakes by making them personal to the PCs, ensuring the Party feels that winning is plausible, and that failure will result in the death of their loved ones and allies.

Combining All the Pillars

Thus far, I’ve spoken of each of the Pillars as separate elements, but in practice there’s quite a bit of overlap. The point of these pillars is to help contextualize your worldbuilding elements as a part of the whole, and understand which should be given minimum effort, and which requires the most effort. When done correctly, your world should be able to answer 90% of your player’s questions with General elements alone, the majority of your Specific worldbuilding will be learnt naturally and when relevant through the course of the campaign, and the campaign will remain relatable, plausible, and comprehensible by balancing each element's Scope.

Step 5: Final Considerations

The guide I’ve provided for building a world for your campaign is hyper-focused and super individualized so as to provide the quickest start to your campaign possible, but it’s important to remember that this guide is only one of many ways to worldbuild; ultimately, the only limit to how much you write is time. With that in mind, let’s include some important notes:

1. Don’t be afraid to take inspiration. Should you wish to expand on the elements of a pre-existing world, all you need to do is incorporate your players elements and adapt them as appropriate. Art is an iterative process, and it’s okay to use art (with credit, of course) to make art.

2. Write the important stuff first. If you wish to write worldbuilding for parts of your campaign that aren't going to come up often, feel free to do so, but do it after you’ve completed the most important elements. There’s no wrong way to worldbuild, there’s only slow ways.

3. Half of your worldbuilding will be forgotten. A cold, hard truth of worldbuilding is that the players probably won’t remember half of it; their characters, NPCs, and the main story is going to be more important to them than most of your worldbuilding. Don’t take it personally if they forget.

4. Keep it simple. You don’t need to fully flesh out the economy and politics of every single empire in the world if your campaign doesn’t take place in an empire. Just stick to what your campaign needs to work, not every single detail you can think of.

5. It’s okay to not know. If after all of your prep and hardwork, a player asks you a question you never considered, it’s okay to not know. If your general elements can’t provide a rough answer, or if you feel like the question requires time to think, take a 10 minute break, or ask to answer the question next session.

6. You don’t have to homebrew your world. It’s a badge of pride in the D&D community to say you’ve homebrewed an entire campaign. I homebrewed my very first campaign, so take my advice; don’t homebrew your first campaign. Being a Dungeon Master is hard, worldbuilding is harder, and storytelling is even harder; you don’t have to dive into the deep end when you’re learning to swim.

7. Remember to have fun. The point of D&D is to have fun. If you don’t like worldbuilding, you don’t have to. Should you? Probably. Can you find a way around it? Definitely.

Above all else, if you really have no clue how to worldbuild, and are horrified by the idea of it; don’t. Remember that the story is mainly focused on how characters change the plot, if you have good characters and a compelling plot, you don’t have to create an entire world. But if this guide to fantasy worldbuilding helped you run your future campaign, I would love to hear about it below.

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