Worldbuilding an alienscape

Welcome to this the beginning of how I will build out an alien world. Now just so we’re clear I am creating this for folks to use in a game or to write stories in. I am the creator of the framework as well as the basic rules. I am releasing this under a creative commons. The full creative commons will be at the end of this post and all posts related to this project. 

So let’s start with the questions we started with in the very first post. Ok so here are the questions in a short form. 

• Is the world Earth-like or Alien?
• Is the technology old, current and advanced? 
• What do the players need vs. what you want to have ready?
• Do you want to have players add things in the beginning or wait?

Ok so lets start here with answering these and going a bit into the style of worldbuilding we are going to do. 

Is the world Earth-like or Alien? I like the idea of having a world that is a bit of both and I will explain how we are going to do that now. So the first thing we are going to say is that the world is Earth-like but with pockets that are very alien to the world we live in. What does that mean? Well it means that large portions of the world will have things like Goldielocks band planet elements. Things like liquid water and a rotation around a star and an axial rotation (the planet spins so there are days). But there are going to be things that are very not like this planet we live on. 

Is the technology old, current and or advanced? I am torn on the question of technology. I like the idea of the technology to be advanced. But parts of it not being able to be fixed or replicated. So I am thinking that things like stardrives will not be replicable. The ships are being made new but the drives for them are pulled from old ships and reused. The tech that most people use on a day to day basis is very advanced to what we would use. Weapons are a thing that is not used by the general population. 

Ok next is what do the players need vs what I want to have ready? So this is a fun question when you think about what I need versus what the players need. I said this is going to be a thing that others can build on so I will be laying out that framework and some of the muscle. I will be going into more depth about what I will have done for the world. There will be big sections left for others to fill in with what they want for their games and stories. So the answer to this is I need the basics of the really big picture and a few tightened in locations. 

And finally we have. Do you want to have players adding things in the beginning or wait? The answer to this is very easy for me. They will have to add things later on since I will be building things in a void of sorts. I am not going to build this while running games in this world. I will do that after I have finished up the things I would need to run a game. Once I start running games in this world I will be letting players help to build out sections as we go. I love when players get involved in the building out of the places that their characters have come from. 

So we have come to the end of this as I work on things for this I will be creating the sheets I am going to be “filling out” as it were. I will be making both the finished sheets available to you. And those that are Patrons will get access to blank sheets as well as more talk about the world as I build things out. I will try to do a short, 5 minute or less thing a few times a week about this new world. So if you are interested and can afford to come join us on Patreon. 

This is created under creative commons