Planetary worldbuilding for D&D

[Gareth3]

I've been thinking about the modern kind of physical, planetary worldbuilding, and wondering how you would apply it to making a campaign setting for Dungeons and Dragons. None of the major settings seem to have been created this way, so it might be a new, interesting approach. A couple of assumptions:

There's no "a wizard did it" in the geography of the setting. The world has either evolved naturally over billions of years, or appears as if it has. Magic either can't permanently change the landscape on a scale bigger than a few miles, or just hasn't.

On the other hand, the characters, NPCs, and monsters aren't limited to being "realistic". All the options in at least the core books are available.

The planet of the setting is identical to Earth in all the general characteristics: size, insolation, axial tilt, atmosphere and so on. Changing these makes worldbuilding much more complicated, and there's plenty of interesting possibilities within the values for Earth.

Looking over the core books for the Fifth Edition, the only constraint on geography seems to be that Rangers have favoured terrain which can be anywhere from "Arctic" to "Desert", with some other options that can be found in a wide range of latitudes. So even though I'll be creating an entire planet, I'll focus on a continent that stretches from a tundra to a hot desert climate, roughly the size of Canada and the US. Coincidentally, this is also the climate range that Westeros stretches across in the A Song of Ice and Fire books. Different kinds of dragons also have different climates for their lairs, but the range is mostly the same.
Any other thoughts?

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Presumably, Elves, Dwarves, Hobbits Halflings, Orcs, Ogres, standard Humans, would presumably all have diverged from a common ancestor at some point, and at very least Elves, Humans, and Orcs would probably be of the same genus, if not variations on the same species, i.e. Homo sapiens sapiens, Homo sapiens alfus, Homo sapiens orcus. Elves are presumably somehow influenced by magic, but Elves and Humans, and Orcs and Humans can canonically interbreed — unless you remove this element alongside the Half-Orc race as something too unrealistic to really work — so Elves and Orcs should be able to, even if this is unlikely. If Dwarves and Halflings cannot, either with each-other or with the rest, I assume that maybe one got or lost a pair of chromosomes, or had something else switched round somewhere (maybe Halflings have somewhat defective mitochondrial DNA, resulting in their smaller sizes and lesser physical strength, and Dwarves were simply isolated long enough that speciation occurred just enough that an embryo conceived between a Dwarf and any other fantasy hominid will always be unviable).

Tieflings are more easily accounted-for, as they come from another "plane", and Dragonborn seem to have been created by dragons through some sort of magical or alchemical process.

A lot will depend, I think, on how you want magic to work. There are certainly some elements of that sort of worldbuilding I think aren't the best to work with. I've actually been toying around with rebuilding the mechanics significantly, but I haven't made enough progress to share anything very interesting. A part of it was born out of the problems of the current campaign in which I'm involved. I don't personally like the canonical existence of deities — without any apparent foul play, the cleric in this same campaign has succeeded far too often at Divine Intervention, but even before this, I didn't care for it because of both its moral implications (if the world is bad, all gods are technically evil, impotent, or both), and because it tends to make the lore far, far messier than I like — or the power of some spells (like "Wish"). I don't know if you want to keep all the spells in the book, but I think determining what you don't want magic to be able to do (which seems to include large-scale geological transformation), that might be a good place to start.

[Gareth3]

I get the idea about the genetics of the races but I probably wouldn't be that specific myself. The real science would only go down to the level of mundane plants and animals, with the origin of the sapient races including humans and monsters left ambiguous. As for gods and magic, I'd keep all the mechanics the same. Nothing really conflicts with a naturally-evolved world. Even a large-scale Wish could be reversed with another Wish.

[zompist]

As you may know, this is how Almea started. The D&D world is just earthlike, so there's no real problems in giving it a realistic geography and climate.

But I think the D&D lore is pretty much hopeless, and I happily abandoned it once Almea was no longer tied to a campaign. It works as a game because it's so open-ended, but their strategy of putting absolutely everything in all at once makes for terrible conworlding.

[Gareth3]

I keep wanting to throw out three-quarters of the Monster Manual to make a more coherent setting, but I can never decide on which three-quarters. For this project I'd just accept the kitchen-sink supernatural elements and concentrate on the natural world being more consistent.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

You could instead start with what you do want, and work from there. When worldbuilding, I tend to think of things as I might like them to be, then build outwards from there. For elements you want similar to our own civilisations, convergent evolution can occur, but anything else can go its own way. The only thing I don't explain very much is why the languages of my own setting resemble Earth ones (it's presumably simply another case of convergent evolution; it's also that I don't like just grabbing words out of the aether).

You could also reskin swaths of the monster manual rather than cutting it.

[vegfarandi]

I keep wanting to throw out three-quarters of the Monster Manual to make a more coherent setting, but I can never decide on which three-quarters. For this project I'd just accept the kitchen-sink supernatural elements and concentrate on the natural world being more consistent.

When I ran a AD&D2 campaign years ago, I permitted only Humans, Elves and Dwarves of the then-playable races. For NPC races, I allowed Orcs, Goblins and Kobolds as "generic" enemies that were just around, each set up in a particular area. In theory, I also had animal-human hybrid races (lizardfolk, gnolls etc.) and left open the possibility for the like "all-magical" beings such as doppelgängers, dragons, undead etc. The idea was that the hybrids were the result of some kind of magical accident/experiments a long time in the past. We only played a half a dozen or so sessions, which included lizardfolk under attack by pirates who turned out to not be as bad as people thought and a wily doppelgänger who took over an inn the questers were staying at and impersonated and murdered the other guests. I got the adventures from Dungeon magazine and when necessary and mostly looked for ones that included the ones I already permitted or changed the races to fit into my restrictions. I liked how it all felt, I've been dreaming about doing some D&D again.

[Richard W]

so Elves and Orcs should be able to, even if this is unlikely.

FWIW, Tolkien had Orcs bred from Elves.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

so Elves and Orcs should be able to, even if this is unlikely.

FWIW, Tolkien had Orcs bred from Elves.

Though I always understood Tolkien's orcs to be closer to goblins, and Dungeons and Dragons orcs to be closer to Uruk-Hai, or to human-ish-size ogres or trolls (being of the same height, but physically larger and stronger). I also don't recollect anything in Dungeons and Dragons specifying a connection between orcs and elves, but there's plenty I could've missed, other than that humans can produce viable offspring with both.

[WeepingElf]

so Elves and Orcs should be able to, even if this is unlikely.

FWIW, Tolkien had Orcs bred from Elves.

Though I always understood Tolkien's orcs to be closer to goblins, and Dungeons and Dragons orcs to be closer to Uruk-Hai, or to human-ish-size ogres or trolls (being of the same height, but physically larger and stronger). I also don't recollect anything in Dungeons and Dragons specifying a connection between orcs and elves, but there's plenty I could've missed, other than that humans can produce viable offspring with both.

And Tolkien wasn't even sure about Orcs being bred from Elves! He considered many options, including the idea that Morgoth had transformed some kind of beast into a humanoid shape in mockery of Elves. At any rate, Orcs were not endowed with free will, but driven by instincts and trainable - very smart dogs with fingers, essentially.

[Rounin Ryuuji]

FWIW, Tolkien had Orcs bred from Elves.

Though I always understood Tolkien's orcs to be closer to goblins, and Dungeons and Dragons orcs to be closer to Uruk-Hai, or to human-ish-size ogres or trolls (being of the same height, but physically larger and stronger). I also don't recollect anything in Dungeons and Dragons specifying a connection between orcs and elves, but there's plenty I could've missed, other than that humans can produce viable offspring with both.

And Tolkien wasn't even sure about Orcs being bred from Elves! He considered many options, including the idea that Morgoth had transformed some kind of beast into a humanoid shape in mockery of Elves. At any rate, Orcs were not endowed with free will, but driven by instincts and trainable - very smart dogs with fingers, essentially.

This actually strikes me as a more plausible origin. He probably never had one in mind originally beyond that they were some sort of always-evil goblin-like creature (which is all his narrative intent needs them to be, though on some level, it is unsatisfying to think a single group of at least quasi-sentient beings might never have the chance at free will), so there wasn't a pressing need for a direct explanation of orcogenesis. Elves seem to have the ability to have their souls leave the body at will if they're put in such a situation as they would be to be transformed into Orcs, and changing some non-human animals (probably pigs or boars, I would guess) into humanoid shapes would also be more in-keeping with Morgoth's character, one who "cannot make, only mock".

[WeepingElf]

Though I always understood Tolkien's orcs to be closer to goblins, and Dungeons and Dragons orcs to be closer to Uruk-Hai, or to human-ish-size ogres or trolls (being of the same height, but physically larger and stronger). I also don't recollect anything in Dungeons and Dragons specifying a connection between orcs and elves, but there's plenty I could've missed, other than that humans can produce viable offspring with both.

And Tolkien wasn't even sure about Orcs being bred from Elves! He considered many options, including the idea that Morgoth had transformed some kind of beast into a humanoid shape in mockery of Elves. At any rate, Orcs were not endowed with free will, but driven by instincts and trainable - very smart dogs with fingers, essentially.

This actually strikes me as a more plausible origin. He probably never had one in mind originally beyond that they were some sort of always-evil goblin-like creature (which is all his narrative intent needs them to be, though on some level, it is unsatisfying to think a single group of at least quasi-sentient beings might never have the chance at free will), so there wasn't a pressing need for a direct explanation of orcogenesis. Elves seem to have the ability to have their souls leave the body at will if they're put in such a situation as they would be to be transformed into Orcs, and changing some non-human animals (probably pigs or boars, I would guess) into humanoid shapes would also be more in-keeping with Morgoth's character, one who "cannot make, only mock".

Yep. In the movies, the Orcs look like pig-men; and I seem to remember that their suine features are already mentioned in The Hobbit, but I am not sure. This characterization may have originated in a word play, as the Celtic cognate of Latin porcus would be orc, but AFAIK, the latter doesn't actually mean 'pig' in any Celtic language.

[Raphael]

Where did the idea for orcs come from, anyway? I mean, dwarfs are an old aspect of European folklore, and elves seem to have mythological forerunners, too, but - well, I had known European fairy tales before I first became familiar with the post-Tolkien subgenres of fantasy, so when I did become familiar with those subgenres, I was like "ah yes, there's dwarfs, and wizards and monsters and... ...hey, what are those 'orcs', who came up with them, who thought they were a good idea, and why is it apparently assumed that everyone will already know all about them?"

[Ketsuban]

This characterization may have originated in a word play, as the Celtic cognate of Latin porcus would be orc, but AFAIK, the latter doesn't actually mean 'pig' in any Celtic language.

It means "piglet" in Old Irish, hence modern Irish arc and Manx ark. It was also loaned into Old Norse for the name of some islands, Orkney.

[Ares Land]

When I was a kid, French D&D books (and I believe the LotR translation too) used the spelling orque, just like the word for killer whales (these days they prefer orc and restrict orque to marine mammals.)
I think I was eight, and really into Commandant Cousteau documentaries when I first came across a D&D book. It was a very confusing read.


(That anecdote aside, I don't think orcs or goblins work very well. Even within LotR -- the Balrog or the Nazgûl or Shelob are memorable villains, and I'm still kind of scared of the Barrow-Wights, but the orcs? Meh.)

[Rounin Ryuuji]

Tolkien's use of orc seems to have just been part of his fondness for old-fashioned or obsolete words (whence also mathom, eyot), though the word seems to exist internally — the Sindarin word for "orc" is confirmed to be "orch", and the plural "yrch" is uttered in dialogue in the text; it also seems to be a doublet of ogre.