General Worldbuilding Resources

[Scipio]

Hey everyone, I'm relatively new here, but I'm glad to finally join the community and have been slowly working on my first map project recently, but I thought I'd share some quality resources for the wider process of worldbuilding that I've found during the course of my research. I'm sorry if these have already been posted many times, but I seems like most the stickies have to deal with actual cartography, image editing and so forth. I initially thought about starting a blog here that incorporated my current map project with a general worldbuilding overview/tutorial, but I decided that would really just slow down my progress on the actual map too much. I still have interest in eventually making a worldbuilding tutorial, as I am a firm believer that a successful cartographer must also be a reasonably proficient worldbuilder, but here's some useful sites I've found in the meantime:


Generators
World

• http://donjon.bin.sh/world/ - a nice little fractal-based world generator, fun to mess around with for inspiration, many options for different projections as well

Kingdom/City

• http://citygen.crystalballsoft.com/ - cool little widget that returns partially-random logistical values for settlements of various sizes
• http://www.rpglibrary.org/utils/meddemog/ - same as above but for entire kingdoms and nations rather than individual settlements

Names

• http://www.rinkworks.com/namegen/ - simply the best name generator I have come across, unprecedented customization
• http://www.seventhsanctum.com/ - very popular, but somewhat generic
• http://nine.frenchboys.net/ - a couple of decent name generators, can also generate short descriptions if you're that desperate for inspiration

Articles
Climate

• http://fmwriters.com/Visionback/issu...erandworld.htm- describes global climate patterns for those seeking realistic worlds
• http://scienceinmyfiction.com/2010/0...h-real-worlds/ - same as above with pictures

Demographics

• http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/blueroom/demog.htm - nice reasonably short article that ostensibly served as the inspiration for the previous two widgets

Miscellaneous

• http://www.worlddreambank.org/P/PLANETS.HTM - a nice little collection of "dream worlds", most of which serve to illustrate some sort of geographic or climatic truism, therefore very valuable to those interested in a more or less scientific approach to the early stages of worldbuilding

WIP- will add some overall worldbuilding guides soon, let me know if you have anything else you feel should be added, such as resources regarding astrophysics, plate tectonics, biology, culture etc.