World Building: Zoom out to Realm

A Realm is a geographic area that comprises several Regions. It may be the entire extent of an island or the territory of a single nation. Unlike a Region, a Realm's borders need not be defined by natural boundaries. Instead, a realm is usually defined by the people that live in it, their culture, politics, and the flow of resources. A single realm can be considered a self-sufficient territory that is able to produce food and common goods and consume those things within itself.

Gameplay-wise, the majority of a small-to-medium campaign can be played at the realm level. A typical realm is large enough to provide numerous adventure opportunities and a variety of terrains, while at the same time the cultural uniformity reduces the amount of time necessary to spend setting up new NPCs and settings. You can describe the look and feel of a town in this realm once and then while adventuring within the realm players can keep that look and feel in mind so that new towns don't require entirely original design. You may be tempted to make each town and location unique and that's excellent, but towns should be unique in ways that entice players to do things and explore them rather than just having a different style of buildings or different food.

Many of the principles that work at the settlement and region levels. Access to water is still a fundamental requirement for settlements, terrain types should still transition, and the speed of travel still dictates how large an area one government can control. However, as the map zooms farther out things become fuzzier:

Diversity of Resources

At the realm level the rules for deciding where settlements form start to change. Like any good game of Settlers of Catan or Civilization, access to a variety of resources is essential. People will go to amazing lengths to access valuable resources. Water still remains essential for survival, but it might not always come from coastlines or rivers. If there's ore in the mountains settlers may utilize glacier melt for water. Settlements in arid lands might tap underground aquifers or construct extensive viaducts to bring water to places where they want to settle. Areas in your realm that have resources like ore, lumber, or powerful natural magic will attract crafty settlers who make their settlements work somehow to tap those resources.

Trade Routes

The essentials of life circulate within a realm. Water, staple foods, meat, and building materials should all be produced and consumed within your realm. These goods usually won't all be found close to eachother though so they'll probably circulate by trade routes. Trade routes are the main arteries of any realm. They bring goods and information to and from far corners of the land. Usually there are a few large central cities that have markets that act as trade hubs. These will be the most populous and influential settlements in the realm.

Points of Authority

Cities exert influence over the territory around them. If you're building a nation-state there will be usually one capital city and usually a handful of provincial seats-of-power that follow policy from the capital. These provincial powers handle the actual administration of their surrounding regions and are usually the same cities as the major trading markets. If you're building a collection of related feudal states there isn't a capital dictating policy but the noble rulers may still share customs and values that dictate how people act. In the presence of external threats people from across a realm will usually band together to resist and preserve their common culture and way of life.

Evolution & Conservation of Detail

Evolution and conservation of detail go hand-in-hand. A realm is large enough that it's impractical to fully populate in one sitting. Additionally, you want to have lots of low-detail space to fill in with new adventures you come up with. Start with the region the players started in and add progressively less detail the farther from that realm you get. Regardless of how far from the players they are, you should have all major cities, trade hubs, and seats of power drawn on the map with major trading roads joining them.

Drawing a Realm Map

I don't have a super-simple grid-based system for this.

1. Figure out roughly the distances you want your realm to span and determine a map scale that works for you.
2. Draw large terrain features such as ocean coastlines, mountain ranges, and major rivers
3. Determine where resources like lakes, forests, farmland and mines are. These should be consistent with your starting region.
4. Place major trading cities in areas that are:
• On the coast if you have one
• Located very close to one one resource and not very far from others
5. If you're building a nation-state, choose one trading city to be the capital
6. Place adventure sites, towns and smaller settlements in the area around your starting region. Leave plenty of blank space to populate later as players explore the area.

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