About Worldbuilding

These are some meta-articles and resources about world-building itself, rather than “how to” type resources.

• Thud and Blunder: Poul Anderson on the importance of world design; a fairly basic article.
• Wikipedia articles about Constructed worlds and World building.
• Imaginary Worlds World Building Blog
• College course about World building - for the really serious worldbuilders…

World Building Link Lists

These web pages do not offer anything themselves, but - much like this page - are lists of links to other web pages that do.

• The World Builder’s Library at ImaginaryWorlds.net offers a good list of world building links.
• World Builder Projects hasn’t been updated in several years, but still contains a lot of good links.
• World Building Links is even more outdated… but still can serve as a starting point.

Geography

• PhysicalGeography.net, in their own words, is “an educational web portal that focuses on a specific area knowledge known as Physical Geography. Physical Geography is a sub-discipline of two much larger fields of study - Geography and Earth Sciences. The main purpose of Physical Geography is to explain the spatial characteristics of the various natural phenomena associated with the Earth’s hydrosphere, biosphere, atmosphere, and lithosphere.” Looks very helpful!

Maps and Cartography

• The PALEOMAP Project of Christioher R. Scotese offers a several historical Earth maps; that is, historical in geological timeframes.
• Dr. Ron Blakey offers very beautiful “satellite image” style Paleogeographic Views of Earth History.
• Strange Maps is a website that features strange and unusual maps. These are often - but not always - original ways of looking at our own Earth. It is a great resource not only because of the beautiful maps, but also because it offers unique and new ways of looking at old ideas.
• 3D-Starmaps is a site dedicated to the creation of, well, star maps.
• Fantasy Mapmaking with Photoshop video tutorials.

World Building Resources

The important stuff.

• Primitive Ways has a collection of articles about how to make low-tech goods; for example, how to tan hides and make pouches and so on. It seems to be quite an interesting resource for us 22nd Century persons.
• World Builder’s Questions is an exhaustive list of questions a world designer should ask themselves about the world and culture he is developing.
• Shakespeare & Dragons Podcast is focussed on world-building from a story-based approach. (Blog post.)
• The California State University offers a course in World Building.
• Climatology for World Builders
• Language construction kit.
• A Way with Worlds: Collection of world-building articles.
• Creating Fantasy and Science Fiction Worlds at FARP
• Geek Dad’s How to build a world series.
• Medieval Deomgraphcis Made Easy

Real World Resources

If you base your world on our current Earth, you’ll sooner or later have to look up facts that you do not know. Here’s where you should do so.

• Wikipedia is always a good starting point for research.
• The CIA World Factbook answers all the basic questions you have about the nations of Earth. Life expectancy in China? Male-to-Female ratio on the Bahamas? Here you go.

Software

• Inkscape is a free (as in beer and speech) vector drawing software that I use for illustrations and maps.
• Inkscape - A Guide to a Vector Drawing Program by Tavmjong Bah

Everything else

Articles that didn’t fit elsewhere.

• Atomic Rockets contains pretty much everything you’ll need to know if your setting makes use of rocketships. And then some. It also has a great section of graphics of various realistic and fictional rocket designs.
• How to design a good flag
• Flag generator
• Armageddon: Wikipedia article on the end of civilization
• Exit Mundi also covers the end of life, the universe, and everything.
• Animal senses - useful for monster and alien species design.

What did I miss?

This list will be constantly updated - I’ll be happy to include any valuable resource, so if you have something I missed please let me know.