Room with a View (version 2), A by FORSTER, E. M.: Recent Episodes
Randy Ellefson
In every episode of The Art of World Building podcast, host Randy Ellefson discusses how authors, screenwriters, game designers, gamers, and hobbyists can do world building better, faster, and have more fun doing it. Popular topics include creating gods, species, animals, plants, races, monsters, undead, continents, settlements, kingdoms, star systems, time, history, cultures, magic systems, religions, the supernatural, naming everything, and travel estimates for land, sea, and space.
Explore how to create your species' senses, from the five basics to other real senses humans and animals have, to sixth senses (second sight).
Explore how to create maps like continents, settlements, and dungeon maps, and learn whether you should create any of this and why.
Explore how to create places of interest, including catacombs, interstellar sites, ruins, monuments, and more. Learn how easy these are to create and how they can improve interest in your setting and story.
Explore how to create time and history, including why we should usually keep timekeeping like minutes, hours, weeks, and more similar to Earth, and how to create historical events.
Learn about travel in space. This includes the different types of engines, what to include inside a ship, and why we have a lot of freedom to decide how long it really takes to get anywhere.
Learn how to determine travel times over water when using oars or the wind. This includes ship types like the frigate, galley, ship-of-the-line, and more.
Learn how to determine travel times for horses, wagons, people and more through various kinds of terrains and what can slow us down, and how.
Learn how to create a settlement. This includes the differences between an outpost, village, town, city, and even settlements in space.
Learn how to create a settlement. This includes the impact of location, population, zoning, its history, and any secrets it holds.
Learn how population, location, climate, symbols, and tensions between a sovereign power and others can all enrich your kingdom, republic, dictatorship, and more. Why have them all be the same when little details can bring out the vividness.
Explore how to create sovereign powers by understanding government types like federations, unitary states, kingdoms, dictatorships, authoritarian states, oligarchies, republics, and more, including how they rise and fall.
Explore how to create sovereign powers like kingdoms, dictatorships, republics, and more. This includes what sovereignty is, how it is gained and lost, the divine right of kings, some roles like head of state and what each means, and branches of government.
Continue exploring how to create land features, including grasslands, deserts, and various kinds of wetlands like bogs, fens, marshes, and swamps.
Explore how to create land features, including mountains, volcanoes, rivers, lakes, and various kinds of forests, from woodlands to savannahs, jungles, and run-of-the-mill forests.
Explore how to create a continent, including how hemispheres considerations, understanding plate tectonics, and when to use what term for bodies of water, like oceans, seas, bays, and more.
Continue exploring how to create a planet, focusing on climates. This includes understanding the role of the equator and oceans, climate zones, prevailing winds, rain shadows, and of course the climates themselves
Explore how and when to create a planet. This includes talking about its rotation, other planets in the solar system, asteroids, comets, constellations, and the impact of the Sun and moon on tides, hours in the days, and seasons.
Continue exploring how and when to create undead. Learn about their goals, traits, how to kill them, and what uses we can put them to.
Explore how and when to create undead. Decide whether you should create undead at all, what their minds are like and how this will affect them, their origins and how that influences their behavior, and learn to classify them.
Explore how and when to create animals. Consider the purpose your animals will serve for you as a creator or for your characters in their lives, including products, food, decoration, symbols, and medicinal uses. Learn how animals are classified to better organize your inventions, determine what to create, and have a balanced portfolio. Finally, learn how to get started.