Gary Gygax's World Builder

Gary Gygax's World Builder by Gary Gygax and Dan Cross (Troll Lord Games, 2004) is described in the introductory material as a "descriptionary," a wonderful neologism that perfectly describes what you will find inside the book. Actually, the World Builder is divided into three sections that are themselves called "books," so perhaps the whole package should be thought of as a 180-page "anthology."

At the very beginning of the volume, the editors offer a quick discussion of silver, gold, and money in a fantasy world. In this discussion, they supply a clever solution for the highly unrealistic devaluation of gold in the d20 system, where one gold piece is equivalent in value to only ten silver pieces (in the real world, gold is about sixty times more precious than silver, not ten). The editors also insert, later in the book, a table of suggested values per once of precious metals in d20 terms, in which one ounce of pure gold has a value of 25 gp. These equivalencies help to make the d20 money system more realistic. (However, the table is not where the editors say it is; it's on p. 107, not p. 103.)

Book One: Stock-in-Trade deals with the sort of equipment you're likely to find in a fantasy role-playing world. The first section of Book One is a long illustrated glossary of armor types and parts. If you can't tell a gorget from an ailette, you'll find this section most helpful. There is an amazing amount of detail packed in here; for example, you'll find brief descriptions of some twenty-three different types of helmets, with an illustration for each one. The treatment of armor and shield types is similarly rich. Of special note are the copiously labeled illustrations of a full suite of plate armor and of Japanese yuri armor. I cannot vouch for the accuracy of any of this information, but Gygax and Cross have surely done their homework, and you will get a better idea of what it would mean to wear armor, and choose the different pieces, from this material than from most fantasy rule sets. Oh, and speaking of rules, Gygax and Cross provide appropriate d20 statistics for twenty-one types of armor, twenty-four types of helmets, and seven shields that don't appear in the SRD—and all the stats (but not the descriptions or illustrations) are designated as Open Game Content. The range and variety is impressive, maybe even to the point of being a bit overwhelming, but if you like choices you'll love this material. My biggest complaint about this section is that cultures outside of Europe and Japan tend to be treated with less attention than those two. Thus, for example, there are dozens of European helment varieties, but only one so-called "Middle Eastern helmet"; ditto with shields.

After the armor come the weapons, divided into several subcategories. The Player's Handbook knows seven different types of axes (including the dwarven urgrosh and the orc double axe); World Builder knows fourteen different axes and axe-like weapons. This trend continues for clubs and club-like weapons, daggers and knives, swords, missile weapons, and even firearms—and again, almost all are illustrated. In all, World Builder provides a full 125 new weapons of various types. Not all will be appropriate in your campaign world, of course, but now two characters wielding "axes" or "hammers" can be carrying quite different weapons as befits their culture and personality.

The third section of Book One covers measurements. Have you forgotten how many pecks are in a bushel, or how many bushels are in a caldron, or how many cubic inches of material that is? Turn to page 40. Need to know how much a bale of cotton ways? Page 40. Need to know how many bushels of dry goods can be carried in a wagon with a 6' x 3.5' x 1.5' bed? Yes, you guessed it: page 40. Tables for randomly selecting what might be found in a container, whether dry goods, food, or what have you, are also provided.

The fourth section provides all sorts of ideas about mundane items that might be for sale in local markets, even including a table defining fifteen different cloth patterns. There are even lists of different types of undergarments and ecclesiastical vestments, so that you don't have your cleric trying to wear his amice as if it were a fanon. There's even a list of types of furs with comparative rarities and typical uses. The glossary of medicines can be used to add richness to a local apothecary. Bard players will enjoy the list of musical instruments, though we could wish that, if Gygax just had to include the didgeridoo, he at least could have spelled it correctly (instead of "diggery-doo," as it appears in World Builder).

A visit to the local tavern or public house follows, with delectable lists of drinks, fruits, meats, nuts, and other edibles.

Section six of Book One treats vehicles and other forms of transportation. If your campaign involves sea travel, and you track such data as a ship's cargo capacity and the weight aboard, you'll find Table 1:10 Ship's Cargo Tonnage Weights useful for figuring out how many bushels of beans occupy one ship's ton. For d20 stats for vehicles, however, you'll need to consult a resource like WOTC's Arms and Equipment Guide or the relevant sections of environment books like Stormwrack, or third-party resources like Fantasy Flight Games' Seafarer's Handbook in the Legends & Lairs series.

Book Two: Geographics deals with the physical environment of your fantasy world. Gygax's and Cross's treatment of weather goes well beyond the Dungeon Master's Guide in terms of detail and complexity, but lacks any sort of d20 "crunch" to translate the wind and rain effects into game terms (except for visibility). But if you ever need to know how many pounds per square foot a 6" thick sheet of ice can support, this is the place to turn. The discussion of topographical features is helpful, although again it is really just a glossary; if you want how-to information about actually placing such features on your world map in a way that makes good geophysical sense, consult Expeditious Retreat Press's Guide to Mapping. In this section, the sidebar labeled as Table 2:6 (it's not exactly a table, but a callout in a gray box) is impressive for its attention to the relationship between population and arable land. It seems a little silly to me that Gygax and Cross included a birthstone chart using real-world zodiac symbols, and labeled it as d20 Open Game Content (as if something so commonplace could ever be closed!). However, the sidebar on p. 78-79 is a rich OGC source of ideas about using gemstones as power components for magic item creation or spellcasting.

After geography and topography come the flora. The first part of this section is just a group of lists of names of different types of plants. Following this, however, Gygax and Cross offer a useful collation of trees by biome, type, height, and diameter. (A few days ago I spent almost an hour trying to locate similar information on the Internet, so I could figure out what kind of tree was likely to fall on a small outpost during a violent thunderstorm. I could have had the same information in two minutes with World Builder.) The treatment of medicinal and magical properties of herbs is simply amazing in its scope, and Table 2:13 translates some of the suggested magical properties of herbs into convenient d20 crunch. There's a similarly amazing list of different types of real-world flowers, their blooming seasons, their color and size, and the types of soil in which they grow (along with a glossary explaining the soil types).

Fauna-oriented materials follow the flora-related lists. Table 2:14 provides a richer understanding of the horse than standard d20 materials provide, and Table 2:15 identifies some other common draft animals. Of course, this section also provides long lists of different types of animals, though without much additional information. On the whole, the fauna section is less useful than the flora section.

Book Three: Dwellings opens with a glossary of construction materials (including stone, earth, wood, and metal). Gygax and Cross provide tables showing the real-world melting points and tensile strengths of various metals, along with a d20-statted table of five magical metals. The subsection on construction techniques includes a table of d20 stats for a larger variety of door types than the Player's Handbook, a very welcome addition. Table 3:10 lists the real-world weights of one cubic foot of dozens of materials that might be encountered in a fantasy world, including different types of minerals, metals, and woods. (Again, I needed this information several days ago to calculate the weight of a tree falling in my fantasy forest, and spent the better part of an hour trying to find this information online. With World Builder, now it's right at my fingertips.) The dwellings section also includes a list of trap ideas (though not extensively developed, so DMs looking for ready-made traps beyond the Dungeon Master's Guide will need to look at volumes like Dungeon Master's Guide II or, from the Legends & Lairs series, Traps & Treachery and Traps & Treachery II). Following the theme of real-world statistics, Table 3:12 lists the weights needed to break ropes of various materials and thicknesses. The cost-of-construction information provided will have to be converted from Gygax's "dollar" system to the d20 system by DMs who want to use it.

The second major section of Book Three describes a wide variety of buildings. Reading through this section will not only define for you such possibly-unfamiliar terms as wickiup and yurt, but will also give you a good idea of the variety of types of buildings and business that might be present in a typical fantasy town. This section also contains a useful table that helps you calculate the storage capacity of a cistern, should you need to do so, without having to remember the value of pi.

Once the PCs enter a room, you'll need to describe it. While products such as Tabletop Adventures' Bits of Darkness: Dungeon give you ready-made descriptions, World Builder gives you ingredients that you can mix into your own descriptive recipes. Need a reminder of what objects might be found in a tavern's common room, or how a sacred space might be decorated? Here are lists that will spur your imagination. For some reason, this section also includes a glossary of herbalists' lore and remedies, which doesn't really seem to belong here.

The next section, which deals with the populace of a region or town, expands greatly on certain aspects of the d20 approach to towns. World Builder catalogs a significantly wider variety of government types than the Dungeon Master's Guide, and includes a useful glossary of government officials and town functionaries. There's even a nice list of unusual names for selected professions, just in case you've forgotten what a cordwainer or a pursuivant is.

The collection ends with a series of appendices. Appendix A provides a number of random selection tables, which the authors actually caution DMs not to use if "careful selection based on logic and common sense" is an option. I'm not really sure what use I would ever find from the several tables for randomly selecting armor and weapons. The random room decoration tables, on the other hand, could be really useful for "dressing" an otherwise drab room on the fly.

Appendix B offers random selection tables for human physical traits. Again, the authors recommend intentional selection over random selection, but if you need to "flesh out" an NPC immediately at the gaming table, these charts can help. They could even be useful during your preparation period to help you characterize minor NPCs the PCs might meet. These charts are very complete, right down to eight possible toenail qualities.

Appendix C, a couple of random building charts, doesn't seem terribly useful to me. Appendix D lists colors and associated hues, e.g., eleven different shades of black. Judicious use of these color terms can add richness to your descriptions. Appendix E describes the relative light intensities from different types of flame sources. Appendix F is a nice page-and-a-half glossary of archaic or unusual names for relatively commonplace things (e.g., "bodkin" for "dagger"). Appendix G presents a very detailed color and value typology of gemstones. For campaigns where law and order is important, Appendix H is a glossary of possible crimes.

So that's what you get in World Builder. In a nutshell, World Builder gives you tools for adding heaping helpings of verisimilitude to your fantasy world. My favorite aspects were the tables and charts providing real-world information about materials, measurements, and so on. My least favorite aspects were the mere lists (i.e., without definitions or discussions), especially those of animals. There are also a few production/proofreading errors in the book; for example, Table 2:13 is entitled "d20 Magical Affects of Herbs" when it should have been "d20 Magical Effects of Herbs"; Table 3:4a is labeled "able 3:4a" (the initial T is missing); and the editors' introductory comment about money refers to a table on p. 103, but the table is actually on p. 107. All in all, though, if you're a DM who enjoys world-building and rich descriptions, you should give World Builder a look.

By the way, there's also a bit of nostalgic value for old-time role-players. The tone of the commentary is pure, vintage Gygax, and the visual layout is reminiscent of the Judges' Guild supplements back in the late 1970s.

Filed in: D&D, d20, world building, Gary Gygax, Troll Lord Games