Worldbuilder and Game Master's Guide to Culture and Lore

Every character needs a place to curl up by the fire, and chitchat with the neighbors. Whether it’s peaceful shires or intrigue filled port cities, the communities of fantasy worlds are often as memorable and captivating as any of the characters or plots. After all, what’s more pleasant than a village pub, or a comfortable home surrounded by caring people. At the same time few things get the blood stirring as trying to save one’s home or trying to track down conspiracies through foggy streets and gothic architecture.

These two books and the program will help you build the cultures and societies using cultural psychological and anthropological theories. In addition, I will use folklore and fairy tales as well as a touch of imagination to help guide these ideas.  Finally, we will speculate on how fantasy cultures might have formed and behave in a world of monsters and magic.

It is the small personal moments and encounters that individuals have which matter most to the world and story you are creating. Even if the quest is epic and earth shattering in scope, and a world is filled to the brim with massive scale nations and histories that determine the characters quest, the citizens of communities are how the characters will experience these earth-shattering events. The frazzled and overworked mayor begging the characters to take a job, the family at the vineyard where they spend a night on their journey, and the emaciated looking goblins who are desperate enough to try to devour the characters.

It is true that the goblins in this last example might be starving because of a war with dragons and demons that occurred a hundred years before, leaving them without a home. The mayor might be overworked because the new king of the vast empire they are a part of is incompetent and this forces them to do much more. Yes, large scale events inform smaller ones, but it is still these personal moments that the characters will experience most often, that will tell the players about the world, for they will encounter these moments everywhere, after all they still need a place to sleep and food to eat.

Oracle Build a world using prompts in less than an hour, and a culture in minutes: 

This is a pair of books and simple program to go with it that will act as a sandbox to help you build interesting and unique cultures, religions, villages, and people quickly with the roll of a dice if you prefer to use the book or the click of a button, if you prefer the program. This book and related program will provide you, and possibly a few friends, with a number of methods to quickly build the campaign setting of your dreams so you can begin playing, writing, or just enjoy the experience of worldbuilding. 

The goal of this is to help you quickly create complex cultural psychologies and cultures, ideas for foodways, governments, histories, and cities within minutes, while also providing you with the information you need to expand on each of these. 

What you get

A Gamemaster's Guide to Cultures (eBook)

A Dice Goblin's Worldbuilding Tables (eBook)

Dice Goblins Sandbox Worldbuilder (program)