Creating a realistic fantasy game world is a challenging but rewarding task for any game designer. Fantasy worlds can immerse players in rich stories, diverse cultures, and unique mechanics, but they also need to be consistent, believable, and engaging. How can you design a fantasy world that feels realistic and fun? Here are some tips to help you out.
Before you start building your fantasy world, you need to have a clear idea of what kind of genre and tone you want to convey. Do you want a high fantasy setting with magic, dragons, and epic quests, or a low fantasy setting with more grounded and historical elements? Do you want a dark and gritty atmosphere, or a light and whimsical one? Your genre and tone will influence your world's aesthetics, themes, and rules, so make sure you have a solid vision for them.
Don't start with genre (unless is a requirement for whatever reason), that's a huge mistake. The Genre is a result of the world that you are creating, you should start with the tone and what are the themes that you want to explore. The themes will give you an idea of what kind of world you need and the genre. Genres offer instruments that can be used to speed up the process, or build your themes more easily
Steampunk soccer world Mutant Elephants hunt on humans A group of IA developers stolen ideas from society in the shadows Nicolas Cage turns to be Jesus Christ Nicolas Cage fight the IA developers World is full of trash New technologies emerge to make the trash into fashion Soccer players can travel in space thanks to trash balls technologies Indiana Jones is young again
Every fantasy world needs to have some rules and logic that govern how it works and what is possible. These rules can be based on real-world physics, biology, history, or culture, or they can be completely original and creative. However, they need to be consistent and coherent, so that players can understand and predict the consequences of their actions and choices. For example, if your world has magic, you need to explain how it works, who can use it, what are its limitations, and how it affects the world.
I think having consistency and creativity is the most important part. The consistent rules provide the logical framework that grounds the world and allows players to understand cause and effect. Too many arbitrary or contradictory rules, and the world will feel random and incoherent. At the same time, creativity in designing the magic system, cultures, creatures, etc. is what makes the world feel new and exciting to explore. Too little creativity, and the world might feel derivative or boring.
This is the part that will make the world good or bad. The easiest thing that you can do is to start from a ruleset that already exist (like high-fantasy) and change/add/eliminate certain rules to better serve your theme. However if you want to create a world from zero you should start creating rules from the themes. Your story, your world should be centric to your themes (think full metal alchemist) therefore your rules follow the themes too. Don't start by thinking eaon or millennia of world and it's rules, start by the everyday life, how people in this world live? Love? Die? Work? Etc then expand to families, then to tribes, then to villages, cities, nations, continent, the world, and millennials. Start from small to big
Trash can do everything just mixing it. ANYTHING YOU CAN IMAGINE. Bad guys are stupid and their plans always fail. Soccer players are handsome. Nicolas Cage has Jesus beard. Motorbikes can fly but only soccer balls can warp space-time. AI developers can clone themselves to even if they are beaten they came back next week episode. Fashion trash is the best. Main characters are always right and win easy and with cool violence, like not too violent but cool. Nicolas Cage can revive people.
A realistic fantasy world is not just a static backdrop for your game, but a dynamic and living entity that has a history and a culture. You need to create a timeline of events that shaped your world's past and present, such as wars, disasters, discoveries, or revolutions. You also need to create a diversity of cultures that inhabit your world, such as races, religions, languages, customs, or values. These elements will add depth and richness to your world and create opportunities for conflict and intrigue.
Another important aspect of creating a realistic fantasy world is designing its geography and environment. You need to map out the physical features of your world, such as continents, oceans, mountains, rivers, forests, or deserts. You also need to consider the climate and weather patterns of your world, such as seasons, temperature, precipitation, or natural disasters. These factors will affect your world's flora and fauna, as well as the resources, challenges, and opportunities for your characters and players.
Here is where you have some freedom. It's crucial, of course, to ensure that your designs adhere to the established rules of your world for consistency. Once that's covered, you can exploit this freedom to lay the groundwork for engaging gameplay, intriguing quests or even narration. For instance, you could introduce difficult terrains that add challenge to gameplay or incorporate clever puzzles that utilize the unique geography of a particular location. let your imagination run wild.
Finally, you need to populate your world with characters and stories that bring it to life and make it interesting. You need to create memorable and believable characters that have personalities, motivations, goals, and relationships. You also need to create compelling and engaging stories that involve your characters and players in conflicts, dilemmas, quests, or mysteries. These stories should reflect your world's genre, tone, rules, history, culture, and geography, and provide meaningful choices and consequences for your players.
By following these tips, you can create a realistic fantasy game world that will captivate and inspire your players. Remember to be creative, consistent, and coherent, and to have fun with your world-building process.
This is the part I love the most: character design. In my opinion, nothing captivates and resonates with players more than the presence of believable characters they can genuinely connect with. Crafting characters that have depth, relatability, and unique traits is what elevates a story from good to extraordinary. I suggest investing considerable effort into this aspect.
Super important a fractional world that can be interesting but it will very quickly became boring if you don't populate it with interesting characters. How can you make interesting characters? Now there are lot fo frameworks, to stay within the realm of world building you want to create at list this archetypes That's how they start, at the start of the story the might evolve in other direction with the story - the follower: someone who follow the rules of the world, they never asked a question - the enforcer: someone who enforce the rules of the world on other people - ancient/discoverer: someone who has knowledge of the past or is looking for it - the rebel: someone who wants to change the rules of this world
Try to use narrative games to help you build your worlds games like Dialect Bleak spirit Microscope The clay that walk These games are both roleplaying experience and world building tools