Intro

At this point i’ve been DMng different Tabletop RPGs for 6 years. However, i’ve been worldbuilding for far longer than that. Since childhood even, though the scope and seriousness of it has evolved.

While i could go into each and every “world” i’ve built, it’s probably easiest to go over all that are in my Legendkeeper first. And thus begins this short series of posts!

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Legendkeeper

Legendkeeper has been my Worldbuilding utility of choice for the last few years, since i got a hold of it during its beta. Before that, i used to have giant text documents, excel sheets and word documents. It’s really been a joy working with it, and i can recommend it. Maybe in the future i’ll make a blogpost on how i use it (which definitely isn’t to the fullness of its ability)

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Alvaridia

Alvaridia is an older project that i’ve sunset by now. I’ve taken some of the characters and stories within it i liked into my current main project (Aedas/The Soggyverse).

I mostly wrote Alvaridia during my apprenticeship and voc. school days, though when i got into Uni i already abandoned most of it. It’s a shame, there are some really cool concepts in it that i’d like to revisit. What i’m writing here i’m taking from my old notes, and whatever i’ve transposed into Legendkeeper.

Most of what i actually wrote was in german, so the images will have german annotation, my apologies.

The Setting

![[Enerisches Kaiserreich.jpg]] The map of the main region, ruled by the Enerian Empire, the Realm of the Verides lying to the south and the Land of the Geval to the north. Kal Dirith was a major elven kingdom.

The discerning reader will realize, despite the language barrier, that i was heavily inspired by the Eastern Roman/Byzantine Empire when writing this. Indeed i was in my Byzanttine phase back then and it shows. The main city in its make up on the isthmus is obviously a reference to constantinople.

Other Regions

While that was the main region, there were others. The deuteragonist of the novel indeed was an invader from the northern continent, as his people were fleeing a great catastrophe which drove them into this land. It was definitely reminiscent of viking-age scandinavia.

I’ve always enjoyed writing analogues to our world, and this is definitely where this began.

The Deuteragonists

The Deuteragonists were two men who could not be any different. Marcian and Arik, the first being an Enerian noble, the other a northern raider. They had to settle their differences and save the world.

The Central Conflict

An undead army has risen in the Land of the Enerians, while the northerners face a plague of deadly crows: Gnawing and feasting on flesh, wood, stone and souls, eating all except for the hearts of men. The Skarr (the northerners) abandon their homeland and island hop their way to the Enerians, to invade. Thus the conflict was about the connection between the plague, the undead and the Skarr which are forced to invade and make things worse/better.

The Shortcomings of the Setting

My writing has evolved since building this world. It lacks depth, though i’ve only scratched the surface here and there is much more. There is also definitely too heavy a reliance on real-world culture and history for my taste. There is also missing depth to the characters, as well as to how the central conflict was established.

Learnings that I took

This is probably the most important part of this series, what did i learn? This was almost my first “serious” world that i built, and so there were many takeaways:

1. Organization

I started by using notes and excel sheets and pictures, and soon enough started contradicting myself in writing, and losing control. I learned using a wiki to organize my world, as well as to make maps to plot major points.

2. Characters

The characters lacked motivation beyond the story, and i learned how to write better characters over time. Some of my favorite characters originated in this world, that i then transposed into my current project. They’ve also evolved over time, though sometimes i miss this context for them.

3. World Depth

A lot of the regions were very superficial, having less than a sentence of information on them. I like being able to pull from the world, be it in writing or Tabletop RPGs. I definitely started investing more time into regions that would never be seen after this world.

Conclusion

This was the first part of a probably 3-part series which will finish with Aedas (my current “main” setting). I hope someone is able to pull something from this and maybe learn from my lessons as well.