World Building is a messy, messy place and I’ve yet to figure out how to put it in order. Where to start. Some say start with the religion, others say start with a faction or with the map. Personally, I think it’s best to start with a village and make reminders where needed to link to the other facets of world building.

This is going to handle building a village for a long-term world. For one you intend to reuse. If you’re building a town for a one-shot this’ll probably be far too much.

When we’re building a town we have to keep track of quite a few things. First the geological position. Is it a seaside town, is it a trading hub? You can sort of fill these in afterwards. For my example it’s going to be a town by a river in a temperate area. My mind travels to Spain or France. Rich fertile fields rolling in each direction for (almost) as far as the eye can see.

One of the other basics we need to establish is a rough guestimate of the population. Us humans and definitely not mimics are really poor when it comes to large numbers. What does a town of five thousand look like? A town of fifty thousand? I always struggle to imagine so I like to google towns near me to help build a feeling. In this case, my number is 7.000, same as the village I live in so I have a much easier time imagining the scale.