Worldbuilding Prompt of the Day 2024 Master List

1/1: Where does your setting come from?

1/2: Where do your monsters come from?

1/3: Who are the gods, and how do they affect the world?

4 : What culture or cultures are you basing your setting on? If you don't choose to draw from cultures intentionally, you'll often just default to 'standard fantasy', which is overwhelmingly Eurocentric, even Anglocentric.

5 : What is magic and where does it come from? Is there a distinction between types of magic based on their source, or not? Is it an inborn spark, or can anybody learn?

6: What ancestries are most common on your world, and which ones are dominant? Do different ancestries or species share cultures? Or are they separate entities? Why? Which ones even exist, in DnD or other games with lot of options?

7: What kind of world do you have? Is it a sphere, like ours, revolving around a sun? An infinite flat plane? A finite flat plane floating in mist? A disc on the back of 4 elephants on the back of a sea turtle swimming through space? The possibilities are endless.

8: What is your afterlife like? Is there more than one, for reward and punishment? Are there different ones for different religions?

9: What are your naming conventions? What linguistic base do you use to inspire them? Randomly thrown together syllables like a Fantasy Name Generator are ok, but to really sound legitimate, use the sounds and constructions of real languages , either dead ones or ones you know fairly well, to match the culture you've chosen. Tolkien's constructed languages follow real world patterns. (To be fair, for the most part, using his works pretty well, especially if you aren't a pro.)

10: What ancient empires have come before your current nations? Especially in games that focus on ruins and such, like DnD, what culture or cultures made those ruins? IS one of those cultures the source of the 'common tongue' if any? What effects did this lost empire have on the world?

11: What are your taverns like? Taverns, cantinas, inns, bars . . . they are the center of any small community, often a de facto town hall. This applies to both Fantasy and Sci Fi, btw, think of Quark's on deep space nine, the Cantina in a New Hope. There's a reason meeting in a tavern is trope.

12: What kind of games do they play in your setting? Do they have chess? Poker? Holochess? Their own card games, their own roleplaying games even? How do they pass the time in camp before sleep, or in the evenings after work? Everyone has leisure activities...what do people in your setting do?

13: Does your fantasy setting include firearms? Why not? Given that the tech used to make full plate and rapiers came after we'd been using guns for a while, what happened to keep folks from using gunpowder in your world?

14: How do people celebrate birthdays, in your setting, if they do? All on the same day of the year? On the day they actually are born? Do they receive gifts?Do they give them, like hobbits?

15: What do poor people in your setting eat? How does it differ from what rich people eat? Why? For instance, in the middle ages chicken and white bread were rich people food, while salmon and brown bread were for the poor...very different from today.

16:What do folks drink? How does it differ by social class? Ale? Wine, Mead? Dwarven Firewine? Romulan ale? Water, if they have the clean stuff?

17: What is the climate like in the primary region of your setting?

18: What are the names of three people in your setting, historical or current, who almost everyone has heard of? Why are they famous?

19: Almost every culture has a bogeyman, a monster they tell stories about to children to scare them into behaving. What's yours like? Are they real or made up, in the setting?

22: What are the governments like in your setting? Feudal monarchy? Representative democracy? True democracy? Chieftainships? Tyranny? An empire with regional governors? This can have drastic effects on the day to day of your setting.

23: What are three conflicts between nations in your world that don't have anything to do with 'good' and 'evil'?

25: What religions are there in your world? Separate from the gods, sort of...are there multiple religions with different gods? One religion with many gods? The same god or gods worshipped entirely differently by different religions? All these examples exist in the real world.

26: Tolkien has athelas, mellorn, and the like. Terry Pratchett has sapient pearwood. Niven has integral trees. DC comics has the Black Mercy. What special rare or magical plants exist in your setting, and what are they used for?

27: Many worlds have magical or exceptional minerals and metals. Examples include mithril , tilkal and galvorn from Tolkien, adamantine (and adamantium) from greek myth, DnD, and Marvel, and so many more. What such metals and minerals exist in your world? Who uses them? What do they do?

28: How common is magic in your world? We've talked about origins and types..but how much of it is out there, and how has it changed your world as a result?

31: What is the most terrifying, apocalyptic monster in your setting? Where does it come from? What does it eat when it isn't rampaging?

2/1: Today is Imbolc, the ancient Gaelic celebration of Spring. How do your societies celebrate spring? What deities are honored then, and how?

2/2: Today in 1438, 9 leaders of the Transylvanian Peasant Revolt were executed. They revolted over unfair taxation. What revolts/revolutions have happened in your world, esp. in the main region? What caused them? How recently? How did they end?

2/3 : Feb 3rd, The day the music died. What are some famous bards and musicians in your world? Were any tragically lost before their time?

2/4 National Thank a Mailman Day! How do people communicate between settlements or over vast distances? Is there an actual postal system, do they use magic, or just hand a letter to a passing bard or tinker and hope for the best? (The bard thing could actually be a formal system...)

2/6 Feb 6, 1891: the Dalton Gang robs their first train. What groups of brigands threaten your travelers, and what drove them to banditry?

2/7 It's Rose Day, celebrating giving and receiving roses. What flowers represent love in your setting? What other flowers might represent other things?

2/8 On this day in 1950, the Stasi, secret police of Eastb Germany, were established. How is law enforcement handled in your setting? City watch, city guard, nobles and knights, a formal police force, secret police?