Exemplary Elves Part 3 High Elves
This is a continuation of a series that seeks to re-imagine the standard races of Dungeons & Dragons as more unique and fully developed cultures. The last article dealt with the Einolar, a Wood...
Category: World Building
Advice on world-building and setting design.
GET MEDIEVAL: Warfare in the Middle Ages, Part II Applying what we know about medieval warfare to a fantasy setting
This article is a sequel to Wallace Cleaves’ discussion of medieval warfare, in which the medievalist applies a scholar’s understanding of period warfare to his own fantasy world setting, the Vault. Warfare in the Vault...
The Einolar, Part 2: The Treesmith’s Treasures
The previous article in this series introduced the basic features of the Einolar Wood Elf culture. These elves are animistic–and potentially cannibalistic–individualists with a culture based on democratic consensus and reverence for the forests...
Calendars and Cosmology – Making Calendars Creative
Calendars are a fantastic resource for making your game world distinct and cohesive. They reinforce the cosmology, culture, and unique character of your imagined world while providing you with a powerful campaign-management tool. Indeed, the very...
Exemplary Elves Part 2: Einolar – The Wood Wardens – A Wood Elf Culture
The first elven culture I’m attempting to engineer is a version of the wood elves, based on my previous discussion about what the game mechanics tell us about elves in the new edition. I...
Exemplary Elves: Game World Design
Last time, in the final installment of my discussion of the Four Principles for Game World Design, I discussed the non human races of D&D and how the demi-human races in particular failed to...
D&D isn’t Even Human – Game World Design – The Fourth (of Four) Principles
This column rounds up the fourth of four principles of fantasy world design. You can read the other three here, here, and here. 4) If D&D “Isn’t even human,” then what is it? Alien,...
Magic is Prevalent and Pervasive – Game World Design – The Third (of Four) Principles
The post below continues a series that started with an overview of the four principles Wallace Cleaves used in thinking about his world, the Vault. The first principle and second principle have been covered...
American Geography and European History – Game World Design – The Second (of Four) Principles
If “Fantasy geography is that of the American West,” then what should that setting look like? Answer: It should have American Geography– and European History Aproper fantasy setting should be big–really big. Imagination-capturing big....
A Classical Medieval Fairy Tale Western Game World Design: The First (of Four) Principles
Previously in this column, Wallace outlined four “First Principles” for game world design, four things that many would-be world creators don’t get right when they think about how to create a setting for the Dungeons ...
