Non-Generica

Greetings!

Let's talk about world building.

While the mechanics of an RPG are important ('how the world functions'), the world building -- the setting and all its moving pieces -- need to be just as solid for immersion. There are plenty of 'generic' RPGs out there (Tiny d6, GURPS, Fantasy Age, FATE, Savage Worlds, etc) which can lay out how the world functions through mechanics, but most such games lack when it comes to building the world you're going to be playing in.

Then you have games which lay out a world, but it is perhaps the most vanilla world that you'll ever see -- there's nothing fresh and unique about it.  Or it's just shallow, and any differences are superficial. (Of course, Dungeons and Dragons is a huge example).

So what makes a setting interesting? Here's a few things to consider:

• Culture -- what cultures exist? How do they interact? How long have they been there?
• Religion -- what pantheons exist? How do they interact? How do they relate to each other?
• Magic -- what magic exists? How are they connected to culture and faith? How does it work?

Perhaps one of the laziest ways to design a world is this:
'So we're looking at medieval fantasy, everything is the British Isles, the elves act like British aristocracy, the dwarves are Scottish, the halflings are common hillfolk, the gods are remote, and we use Vancian magic while orcs are barbarians and goblins are sneaky little murder creatures'.

Great. So, what makes it stand out from any other setting?

The typical thing is 'oh, the gods aren't real' or 'oh, this was once an advanced society but an apocalypse took it all down' or 'it's a magocracy' or ... yeah.  Still doesn't make it interesting.

Mixing Things Up

The first thing I like to do is lay out the creation story of the world. How did things start? What do people believe when it comes to 'how the world was made'. Because the creation story keys into what the population believes -- the core of their faith and their world view.

Next I build the pantheon. The pantheon determines what the people believe is important to their world. The pantheon is what society is built around. How they worship, who they pray to for aid, and who they pray to for protection. Which keys into something else:

Gods build society.  A god which isn't helping to create society isn't worshipped. There's no reason for that god to exist.

Hell, look at Set. He's typically marked as an "evil god". If you actually pay attention to his legend? That's 99% propaganda.  He guards the boat that goes into the underworld to protect Ra. That is not the job of an 'evil god'. That's the job you give someone you trust with your existence. He had a spat with Osiris, certainly - that makes him the rival of Osiris, not everyone.

So, anyway, look at your pantheon, who's who, how they contribute to society / the mythology, and what they add to the cultures that exist.

Example
For one of the cultures I built, I created a religion called the Joshuites. They revered a saint called Joshua - a martyr who died trying to free them from the enslavement of the rukshasa. The rukshasa were a shapeshifting race who followed an evil creature (formerly mortal) named Ravana, who gained gifts from the fey, the djinn, and the divine, to grant itself immortality.

Joshua battled them, and was betrayed by one who had shapeshifted to look like an ally, the death of the saint wiped out the entire region, and the survivors fled west. They eventually found a place to settle -- though fell far short of the 'blessed land' they were promised.  Battled the local pagan cultures, created a knightly order, and settled in.

Is there a 'great evil'? Not on a divine level, no. There's the remote 'big god', which is never seen. There's the archangels and angels who protect the faithful. There's the rukshasa who are fairly powerful, but nowhere near the level of the divine.  And then there's the fallen angels.

Oh, fallen angels? They're not evil.
No.  Each angel is tied to one of seven virtues. They move to help people live up to a specific virtue. But an angel who is exposed too much to society may 'fall' - they fixate on that virtue to the exclusion of anything else. They drive people to fulfill that virtue at any cost and punish anyone who falls short. Being angels, they can't be killed - they can be imprisoned, and that's as far as one gets with them. Fortunately, the number of fallen angels is few and far between.

But no, they're not evil, and in fact if you're incredibly careful, you can call on them to help you fight against actual evil beings -- it's just a huge gamble.

But see that?  That's myth-building. It helps establish a religion, and that lays out a lot of the culture for that group - what they believe, who they reverse, what threats exists, and so forth. They have things they need to worry about (rukshasa, fallen angels).

That setting has about 4-5 other pantheons to work with as well.  Take a look at their creation myth, who the gods are, what they stand for, and how the cultures mix and clash.  I mean, why do most fantasy settings have a single over-arching pantheon to the exclusion of everything else? I mean, imagine for example playing on Earth, and...

"So I'm from Ireland, and I worship the Irish gods.  I'm heading over to France where they worship the Irish gods.  Now I'm visiting Greece where they worship the Irish gods.  Now I'm heading over to India where they worship the Irish gods.  Now I'm going over to Japan where they worship the Irish gods.  And now over to Hawaii where they worship the Irish gods."

Like... what?

Magic
The next thing to consider is - you've got a pantheon and a culture.  Take a look at magic. Magic doesn't exist in a vacuum. Magic is almost always built right into a culture and belief system. 'Generic Magic' doesn't exist -- it can't.

Hermetic Magic in our world, the most 'generic' idea of magic we've got, is steeped in culture and faith? "The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn" is tied to Hermes Trismegistus and built around Egyptian mysticism. It's steeped in British culture and their fascination with Egyptianism, tied into the belief of the Four Elements, and is broken down into three categories, each with their own focus on occultism.

It goes far beyond 'I have spells on paper which I must prepare so that I can cast'.

If you go over to Japan, they pray to the kami for their magic, they have written prayers which they can call magic from, but their magic is a petition of 'please, spirits, make this work'. And they don't call on the spirits by name - that's rude. They request, and hope the spirits are willing.

There's name magic - the more specific you know the name of something, the stronger your magic to affect that thing.  (Animal, mammal, human, Canadian, the Brown Family, Jessica Brown, Jessica Brown daughter of Patricia and William Brown....)  The narrower the focus, the greater the effect.

So, how does magic influence culture? How does the fact magic and direct divine intervention influence and shape society? How does it change the way buildings are made, how fortifications are built, how armies fight?

If a single person can, after 5 minutes of song-and-dance, wipe out a 500 person army, how does it shape the art of war? Do military units just dog-pile and try to overwhelm with sheer numbers? Are there assassins who go out and try to murder mages as a lead-up to an attack? What if martial units can also perform inhuman effects?  If an archer, for example, can fire 25 arrows in the space of 10 seconds, how does that alter warfare?  If a druid can replenish an entire field over the space of 24 hours, what does this do for siege warfare?  If a mage can empower a printing press so that it is self-reliant, how does that change the course of education? If there are other planes to explore, what does this do for expanding out and spreading your culture?

Magic and faith don't exist in a vacuum, they feed off one another, feed into and draw from culture, and alter society on a grand scale. Even if magic is minor, it will have an impact.  The justice system, law enforcement, guards and soldiers, the faithful, criminals, and more.

Stranger in a Strange Land
Someone mentioned one of their favourite types of settings is 'group washes onto shore of new land, have to struggle to survive, cut-off from civilization'.

Sure. That can be a blast.
It doesn't mean everything I just wrote about doesn't matter.
If I got dropped off on a deserted island with 10 other people, my history doesn't vanish with it. I still have the culture I was raised in, I still have my faith. And if I'm from a society that has magic, there's that built in as well.

In fact, I'd argue it becomes more important, because all of that help define who your character is in contrast with everyone else in the party. If someone is an Irish aristocrat, and someone else is a Russian minister, and someone else is a Chinese alchemist, that's going to set up some very different dynamics than if everyone is from some vague, undefined region.

Anyway, when world-building, I think adding texture and integrating everything into building a deep culture or society is incredibly important for making the world feel alive and deep. :)