Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding, Volume 2
edited by John Joseph Adams
Learn to Build Worlds with Titans of Fantasy and Tabletop!
Middle-Earth, Faerûn, Westeros, Eberron, The World of the Wheel, Exandria … these richly-detailed fantasy worlds have captured the imaginations of legions of fans worldwide. These settings offer worldbuilding that launched a thousand—or a thousand thousand—dreams.
Whether you’re worldbuilding because you want to write the next Game of Thrones; intend to build a rich, vibrant world to enthrall the players of an upcoming tabletop RPG campaign; or you’re just curious to find out how all these creators did it, the Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding, Volume 2 puts a team of master world-architects at your side.
Featuring practical essays and roadmaps for the intrepid worldbuilder to follow, this anthology shows you how to:
- create a pantheon of gods
- incorporate technology into your fantastical environments
- build great settings that look beyond our own history and cultural expectations
- design a world in just 30 minutes
- leave space when building a world so the characters can help bring it alive
The Kobold Guide to Worldbuilding, Volume 2 features 18 stars of tabletop roleplaying games and fantasy fiction, such as Gail Simone, Keith Baker, Veronica Roth, Ken Liu, Kate Elliott, Mike Shea, Tobias S. Buckell, Shanna Germain, James L. Sutter, Jeff Grubb, Gabe Hicks, the Dungeon Dudes (Monty Martin & Kelly McLaughlin) and more.
What worlds await? Let’s find out!
Table of Contents
Introduction
John Joseph Adams
Airships and Dragonbone Barons:
Developing Magical Industries
Keith Baker
Weave Your Worlds Thread by Thread:
A Guide to Diverse and Inclusive Worldbuilding
Coral Alejandra Moore
Good Gods!
Designing Unique Deities
James L. Sutter
The Marketplace Microcosm
Ashley Warren
It’s This Meets That:
Using Comparables to Inspire Your Worlds
Banana Chan
Spiral Campaign Development:
Building a Campaign World in 30 Minutes
Michael E. Shea
Six Hot Takes on Worldbuilding for Roleplaying Games
The Dungeon Dudes
The Worlds We Adore
Gabe Hicks
Technology as a Set of Story-Telling Tools:
Or How We Can Learn to Build a World from Herodotus
Ken Liu
First Came the Word
C.L. Clark
Hamster Trek:
The Nature of Co-operative Creation
Jeff Grubb
Building a Physical and Social Landscape
Kate Elliott
Growing Your Worlds Organically:
How to Build an Immersive World Your Audience Won’t Want to Leave
Andrea Stewart
Worldbreathing and the Importance of Space
Rajan Khanna
Deep Time on Middle-Earth:
Layering in Time and Change for More Effective Worldbuilding
Tobias S. Buckell
The Topography of Verisimilitude,
or, What Walt Disney Taught Me About Worldbuilding
Gail Simone
Break the World to Make the World:
Eschewing History and Cultural Norms to Create Unique Settings
Shanna Germain
Revel in Revelations:
Worldbuild Efficiently with Fictional Religions
Veronica Roth