3 Pillars of Great Worldbuilding!

✨Sign up for dScryb and get 10% off with the coupon code "BARON":

✨Support me on Patreon!

So, you have started constructing your D&D world, but are struggling to understand how it all connects together. With this primer on the three Rs of Geopolitics: Routes, Resources, and Relationships, you'll be able to quickly map out how all your Dungeons and Dragons factions interrelate with the world they exist in, and have a springboard for all manner of quest hooks for your players to chose from!

[davidmcguire]

Incredibly fascinating to think about how interconnected networks of organizations work both with and against each other in the context of fantasy role playing. It’s so easy when you think about hooks in this context…

The adventuring party, having recently completed the clearing of a goblin encampment for a local merchant, are invited to an uptown soirée at a chancellor’s manor. There, the bard strikes up a conversation in the garden with one of the chancellor’s aides, who complains about a trade route disruption due to bandits on a seaside route. The party investigates only to find that the bandits are members of the city’s thieves guild who’ve been paid by a rival chancellor to sway the merchant vote in an upcoming election… it writes itself.

[bayardmartins]

Routes 1:43
Sponsor 4:20
Resources 5:06
Relationships 7:38
Conclusion 9:04

[cmrogers]

Writing a book, and using my "D&D" campaign as a baseline to help develop ideas, and this channel is INCREDIBLY helpful! Thank you!🙏🙌

[macoppy]

Most world building tutorials start with the map, then derive the Routes, Resources, and Relationships. Pro challenge: generate the 3 Rs first, then create a map that "justifies" them.

[DaDunge]

3:00 sea travel is much faster than overland travel. Its been joked that in preindustrial europe to get from prague to vienna the fastest way was takigm a riverboat down river to hamburg take a ship there around all of Europe to the mouth of the Danube and then a riverboat up to Vienna.

[kapitankapital]

Have you ever read The Influence of Sea Power upon History by A. T. Mahan? It's mostly known for its huge impact on naval theory, but it is first and foremost a treatise on how control over the sea dictates which nations will become great powers. Today we would probably call it a work of geopolitics, although the term wasn't used back then. Plus it has the rare advantage among these sorts of books of actually having predicted something that came to be; namely the Panama Canal turning the United States into a major naval power and by extension a major world power.

[KnarbMakes]

This is really useful for worldbuilding in general, even outside the scope of D&D. Well done!

[f.a.santiago]

This is still, and likely forever will be, one of the most important videos related to worldbuilding. Thank you SO MUCH for this.

[codybeames]

*looks at clock* (11am)

"Uh, good evening Baron"

[smaspa]

Hey I really appreciated the well cited research in this piece. Could you consider adding references to those citations in the description? It would be useful to look up those books you mentioned.

[hewkii]

I'd love-love-LOVE to see you do an analysis on the Old World setting of Warhammer Fantasy Battle & Role Play

[BigCowProductions]

Watching this multiple times and taking notes like you would in school? Of course.

[SpiritWolf]

I enjoy all of Dungeon Masterpiece videos

[mrosskne]

You could be fighting off vicious beetlemen and saving space princesses, instead you're building a world for a game you'll never run.

[hoos-karl]

Your best video topic yet, sir. I would be great to see you do an example of worldbuilding and put this all into action!

[simmonslucas]

My friends and I are making a video game, I have been plowing through your back log again.

[kevinsmith]

You have outdone yourself with this one sir!
I haven't been so satisfactorily info-barraged in a while. All good interlocking points to be extrapolated upon, especially with route maintenance - the more used and valuable it becomes, the more expensive it is to maintain. Thus potentially making it too expensive for some goods to be profitably traded, or opening the market for mercenary enforcers along the route and all drama with competing security factions and the state.

[matthewshroba]

Nice, three Rs… useful and easy to remember. Thanks Baron.

[DM-CW]

I love to see you build a world and show what geopolitics principals apply as you add routes, natural land barriers, or monsters to a region.

[ethanc]

Latecomer to this channel but thank you so much for keeping the information concise and organized. Immediately what stood out to me after two videos and makes the meat of your content that much more enjoyable!