I recently got the physical book Wondrous Worlds, another book in Nord's world building series. I do seem to collect these. The link above gives a free preview and other people's reviews. But here is mine anyway!
Overview
Physically, it is a nice hardcover, with artwork similar to their other books. Nice art, if, hmm, not bland per se, but nothing really outstanding. I'd go with typical fantasy art. Which I may be getting jaded on, as with the internet it is everywhere and easy to find. Not like when you had to go out and buy books. But it is nice art. The pages are sepia toned with a spot of blue around the page number.
The contents have 8 chapters and 7 appendices. The chapters are relatively short, with the meat of the book in the appendices for the detailed tables and a few other things.
Chapter Overview
Chapter 1 is the introduction, with an overview of the process and the advice to start small and build up. It has the usual advice that sometimes the results look strange, but often you can find good stories in those contradictions. Which any Traveller player already knows from world generation! It gives succinct paragraphs about the various things that go into deigning the world.
Chapter 2 is a quick start guide and runs through creating a region. Roll for the environment on a d12 table, adding points of interest such as landmarks, settlements, and destinations. Of course, they also have the Wondrous Destinations: Forests and Wondrous Settlements books, so you can really expand upon those. I also have those books and have used them. If anyone wants, I can also do reviews of those if I've not already. Decades of blogs and well, I don't always remember! Then step 3 is the realm, where you throw in all your regions. Realms have governance and rules, as well as borders.
Chapter 3 is regions, the entire purpose of the book. To quote from the book:
In this chapter, you’ll shape your world by first choosing or rolling for different environments—each with unique topographical features, weather patterns, resources, recent history, flora, fauna, and looming dangers. You’ll then populate your region with points of interest such as majestic waterfalls, ancient monoliths, bustling trading posts, hidden villages, and haunted ruins. Finally, you’ll delve into the region’s culture and society, exploring its governance, traditions, economy & trade, history & lore, and conflicts. By blending these elements, you’ll create a richly detailed setting brimming with intrigue, laying the perfect foundation for your worldbuilding journey.
The environments table now includes the appendix where that gets expanded out a good deal more than the quick start chapter. There are more landmarks with d4 options for each. You roll on the history table, 20 possibilities with another d4 set of options each. You can have magical effects such as "arcane amplification", another d20 table with d4 options per effect. Settlements are next, with an abbreviated version of the Wondrous Settlements process. Destinations give a d12 list of various destinations, such religious structure or outpost. Dangers exist in the worlds of course - but apparently only d6 types. It finishes off with 20 possible regional conflicts.
Chapter 4 is Realms. Regions (and I suppose it could be a single region in a realm). There are 8 sections getting created: culture and society, inhabitants, governance and rules, history and mythology, economy and trade, magic and technology and conflict and tension. Multiple tables per each section expand out on this, along with the note that you are of course, allowed to add more. Heck - I could see possible even adding some of Traveller's government types here, though tis books has 20 types already. There are some interesting tables that can help spark the imagination.
Chapter 5 covers continents. Just as realms are made up of one or more regions, continents are made up of one or more realms. It is like those Russian nesting dolls. In the case of mapping to Traveller, we probably have a balkanized world. The continents chapter incudes sections for geography, climate, global powers, lost civilizations, continental trade and cultural divisions. Multiple tables give all sorts of possible options, such as atmospheric rivers, glacial advances and retreats and so forth.
Chapter 6 covers worlds. Which of course, are made up of one or more continents. Here we cover the solar system, celestial bodies, cosmic phenomena, divine and magical influence on the world level, and cultural influence that flavors the world. Interestingly for a fantasy world system, there are tables for the moons, the type of suns and how many, things that are more generic and fantasy based than our Traveller system generation. Of course, this book is for creating a fantasy world. But I can see a fair amount of overlap between the systems.
Chapter 7 covers the planes. Our created world may live in one of a series of planes, such as the feywild with magic pretty much oozing out of everything. This is a short chapter of just a few pages and a short paragraph for each plane. Wondering if they are planning a Wondrous Planes books to expand on that :)
Chapter 8 covers pantheons. Creating your deities based on the planes, choosing forms, power source, abilities, motivations, methods, bonds, familiars, and relics. Then we have several pages going over existing pantheons: Greek, Norse and Slavic. A fairly short chapter with more general information than anything really specific. Of course, bringing in deities do not really need much more than what their attitude is and how they do things: they are gods so stats and things like that are useless and to me even counter productive.
Appendix Overview
Appendix A Environments. This is where each environments gets 10 or so pages with environment specific tables. Each of the 12 environments gets a few steps. Step one gives a type, an age, weather, characteristics, resources and local history. Some may have additional tables. Step 2 covers life: plants and animals, how many and what kinds of each, food chains, monsters, humanoid populations, traffic and dangers. This is the real meat of the book to be honest and is also the largest section. I'll give an example in the next few posts of creating a region as this post is already longer than I normally do.
Appendix B is a brief overview of mapmaking. Those who read this blog know I love maps. This is a pretty short chapter covering some really basic map making, breaking it down to 4 steps: sketch, outline, detail and shading. Obviously, this is for the old-school (and still my favorite despite just how many map making programs do I have again?!) pencil on paper map drawing. It covers various ideas for drawing a variety of things, mostly using the
1-point perspective if I remember my high school art classes from almost 5 decades ago.
Appendix C covers iconic regions. It is a set of pre-generated regions, one per environment. It is a good place to see what the end product could be, and is just over a single page per region.
Appendix D gives iconic characters. There is a d12 table that could be useful for NPCs with archetypes, and gives their strengths, weaknesses and goals. Then we get a few characters with their role and archetype, along with a couple paragraphs to help define them.
Appendix E gives some iconic landmark examples. This helps give you some ideas on how to use those tables to give a more nuanced and in-game perspective on the landmarks you have rolled up.
Appendix F are iconic settlements. Which, if you have the Wondrous Settlements book is a short rehash of that albeit with different settlements. Basically 1 page or so summaries of a few settlements ranging from outposts to major cities.
Appendix G are iconic destinations. A dozen destination examples. I did a quick run-through 5 years ago (!) for that book
here.
Summary
Yes, another book on world building. It is pretty detailed, has a lot of tables that, like Traveller, can be expanded on and at least give a spark to creativity. As with generating characters, random stuff I think helps me from creating the same old thing every time.
Is it a useful book? I think that really depends on how often you create new worlds and regions. Most of my fantasy games, regardless of the actual game, are on the same world. It just happens to be a very large world with a lot of space. Cidri (the Fantasy Trip world) is several times larger than Earth, and my little fantasy world sits on it someplace. As does the Dolmenwood forest, which I'll be running next on our Saturday games (and yes, I owe the players the last game Corsair recap, and that will cover why we are switching games).
For players, it is not something they need unless they want to read up on things like that. Or write and would like some inspiration. For GMs, if you are running sandbox games, I think it is a good tool though to be honest, a bit more limited due to the tables. Yes, there are d20 tables with d4 options. That does give 40 possible things often. And used as the start of something I think it can be a good springboard. As much as I dislike the idea, you can also ask AI to generate a lot of this for you, and it may come up with really interesting things as well. I buy books like this as I prefer the human touch. There are also a LOT of on-line tables and generators created by people that are probably just as useful.
There are also some appendices I don't think need to be there - the iconic characters, settlements and destinations are covered in their other books. I know this book is sort of the capstone of their other books, but those sorts of things are available all over the place. I've backed far too many Kickstarters for NPCs, settings and so on. Some of which I've actually used but mostly, not. But that fault lies with me honestly.
In the end, I do recommend the book because it does give more options and may create a really unique setting to play in. It is a tool I think that can be useful. And of course, I do like books!
I'll have an example run through at some point using the book.
