Iron Horizons & Genesys RPG Worldbuilding: Building the World

If you’re visiting for the first time, this is the third post (1, 2) discussing my Iron Horizons setting, which is a dieselpunk space opera, and continues on from the two post series trying to define dieselpunk (part 1, part 2). At this point, we can get our hands dirty and start worldbuilding our RPG setting using the Genesys Expanded Setting Sheet and the Expanded Player’s Guide.

The Expanded Setting Sheet- Step 3

The entirety of step three on the worksheet is one page with boxes to fill in. The smallest, top section includes spaces for the world name, the world structure, the world climate, and the three most notable features of the world. The rest of the page is divided into six boxes that focus on regions. Each box includes six sections to help flesh them out in more detail, which are described in more detail in the EPG itself.

• Region Name: This is self-explanatory and they don’t go into very much detail about this in either the worksheet or the EPG. Give it your best shot! It can be quite fun! There is no random rolling on a table here. You have to come up with names by yourself.
• Description: This is a broad section that looks be focused more on the overall impression or picture the region, but also touches on the physical characteristic of the world. The table, for example, includes moons, planets, artificial constructs, and such. This one could be particularly interesting depending on if you were switching genres. Perhaps playing a fantasy game that takes place on an artificial construct or the moon of a gas giant. There is also an option for an Earth-like world to keep things simple, as many of the others add setback/boost die to different skill checks.
• Location: At its most basic, this section asks where the region/world can be found. Pretty simple and depends on what you want to go with, so you don’t have to spend a lot of time on this one.
• Environment: This one comes with a table as well! It’s looking primarily at climate and ecosystem types. There was a brief discussion in this chapter about single ecosystem vs. multi-ecosystem worldbuilding, but this is mainly designed to have one dominant ecosystem for each region or location, choosing simplicity over realism. This one includes both climate (primarily temperature) ranging from searing temperatures to frozen waste. Additionally, there’s a table specifically for environments. These are smaller, more narrow ecosystems— forest, plains, oceans, etc.
• Population: This one looks mostly at the general number of inhabitants, if I’m reading this correctly. This also comes with a random table based on how densely populated the region feels. Much easier to work with than some TTRPG games that use actual population numbers. These ones range from uninhabited to megalopolis, with everything between.
• Other Inhabitants/Oddities: This is where things get very interesting. Essentially, this one focuses on what makes this region unique compared to the rest. We’re back to a good old d100 table here with a wide array of options. We’ve got monastery as one option, warlike wanderers as another, sky islands, dragons, and something ominously called The Hunter.

Overall, this page of the sheet is well designed, easy to use, and I think it’s a great framework to use for a minimum viable setting. Six regions is enough to have a variety of climates and cultures without being overwhelming for either players or game masters. There’s no giant setting book to read through to comprehend the gist of the world. It’s clean, simple, and has all the essential information to create a plot.

The Expanded Setting Creation Process

This section is much longer than the previous two and has several tables that can be used as inspiration or random generation. There is an important disclaimer at the beginning of the section about how the information in the process is meant to create a single world or perhaps, ideally, an even smaller region.

The book goes on to describe how it could be used to scale up to do multiple planets, but they recommend simplifying the planets to a primary defining ecosystem. Yes, they suggest doing what so many people criticize Star Wars for. And you know what, both they and George Lucas are correct. Unless the worldbuilding project is meant to be encyclopedic, there’s no need to have a completely fleshed out ecology for an entire planet that will only be seen for a short amount of time.

That puts us in a bit of a pickle. Do we stick to one planet and thus ignore the interplanetary and interstellar aspects? Or do we broaden the scale at the expense of detail? Let’s return to our earlier steps— what is our overview? What is the most important element?

For Iron Horizons, the space travel is a critical element that makes the setting what it is. That’s not something I would abandon if I wanted to give potential players a taste of the setting. We have to include space travel in that case.

Yes, that does mean we will lose the ability to go into great detail. It’s unfortunately one of the trade-offs that has to be made. I don’t think it’s a bad thing, however. Genesys is a narrative-first game rather than a simulation-first game. It is neither designed nor intended to be a perfectly accurate simulation of the real world. It focuses on how mechanics influence the feel and flow of the story created during the game. We can pick a few themes that we want to explore and create a location to explore each of them.

Space exploration is a big part of the setting, so we should include something along those lines. Space travel is key, so definitely some regions that have lots of opportunities for pilots and ship captains. On the more ambivalent side, colonialism is one of the primary antagonistic forces, which should certainly be included. That suggests a frontier of some sort, so let’s go for something with a lawless wild west vibe. With that, we can also tie into the themes of labor rights and capitalism with some sort of mining operation.

Let’s find a middle ground between the options and pick a small star system. We can call it the Alathni System. That will to the top of our sheet as the world name and the world structure will be a star system.

Let’s give it one inhabitable planet to cover half of the regions on the sheet, a somewhat inhabited moon with what some eccentric archaeologists believe to be underground ruins, a massive space station, and an asteroid mining colony. The planet is the largest, so let’s leave that for last, and start by focusing on the fringes of this system’s society.

Region 1

• Region Name: Station Forlorn Hope
  • Forlorn Hope is a term used to describe a detachment of soldiers who volunteered for an impossible mission. I first ran across it in the book Sharpe’s Company by Bernard Cornwell, in which the forlorn hope is a group of volunteers who are the first into the breach at Badajoz. So, for this space station, let’s say it was an old defensive picket station with no real chance of holding the system, but had to try anyway. Then perhaps it was abandoned and it was taken over and repurposed as an orbital habitat by enterprising squatters. Perhaps colonists on the planet needed government approval before they could settle, so those who wanted to get in, took to staying on the station to wait, but never made it to the planet, adding dimension to the name Forlorn Hope.
• Description: Ramshackle, cobbled-together space station with hulks and decrepit ships bolted together to make a vast orbital habitat.
• Location: In orbit around Alathni Major
• Environment: Oily, greasy, recycled air. Inhabitable and strictly climate controlled to be livable with the smallest amount of resource expenditure as possible. Chilly, poorly lit, low atmospheric pressure (like high altitude).
• Population: Densely Populated
• Other Inhabitants/Oddities:
  • No one knows how to access the original core of the station anymore. It’s been lost beneath the accumulated layers of ships and modifications. Legend speaks of a naval payroll still in its vault somewhere in the original station.
  • Faith of the Forlorn: A syncretic religious group has developed on the station as people have flowed in and out, praying and hoping for a chance to settle on either the moon or the planet, with some viewing it as a genuinely sincere religion while others view it as a cult meant to steal money from the desperate. Once joined, it is very difficult to leave, and concerned friends and relatives have been told their missing person has left the Forlorn and been giving settlement on the planet’s surface, but nobody has been able to prove or disprove.
  • Rival Gangs: As more and more people have crammed into the station, gangs have formed between the different groups, with different ones claiming their own territory. Several of them have been noted to be acting more and more eccentric recently, eschewing violence in favor of dance competitions, and song instead of speech. Nobody is quite sure why, but many are worried there might be something wrong with the environmental systems in their sections, some new drug or other contamination.

Region 2

• Region Name: Aldottorai Colonial Trade Company Mining Outpost 7394B (Alathni-Aldot Mines, ACTC Mines)
• Description: An asteroid belt filled with small mining camps distributed on the surface of asteroids, as well as dug within the mined out asteroids. The mineral rights for the entire asteroid belt are owned by the Aldottorai Colonial Trade Company, so most of these are company camps, but there are still plenty of outlaw mining camps hidden in different parts of the belt, with various levels of criminality.
• Location: Edge of the inhabitable zone in the Alathni sector, spread across dozens, if not hundreds, of asteroids in relatively close proximity to each other.
• Environment: Vacuum, with dome settlements on asteroid surfaces and small settlements buried inside asteroids.
• Population: Sparsely populated
• Other Inhabitants/Oddities:
  • The Graveyard: A region of the belt known for its unsettlingly tombstone-shaped asteroids surrounded by the wreckage of multiple ships, and attendant human remains. Nobody is sure when this was created, or by whom, as it was there when the first recorded expedition reached the system. Whether it was an earlier survey expedition that didn’t make it back, smugglers who were killed by their own hideout, or Nazis fleeing Terra, nobody knows, but there are always those who will pay to find the answer, and those who might pay to keep it hidden.
  • The Comet Chaser’s Union: A burgeoning labor rights movement thought to have ties to the growing Kais Independence Movement, the CCU is a grassroots unionizing effort among the Company miners, lobbying for safer work conditions, safer living conditions, and better pay. Still in the process of organizing, the ACTC has begun to bring in mercenaries to protect their assets and prevent strikes or other disruptions to their profiability.
  • The Rock Robbers: One of the more notorious outlaw mining groups in the Belt, these are believed to be a single group of pirates whose ships are camoflauged with asteroid debris to avoid notice, suggest they are a single, coordinated organization. There’s been no discernible pattern in their targets- going after both ACTC claims and the independent outlaw claims, leading both the ACTC and the nominal governments of the Alathni system to offer rewards for information leading to their capture or destruction, or at least the retrieval of the stolen ores.

Region 3

• Region Name: Alathni Minor
• Description: The temperate moon of Alathni Major, Alathni Minor is a mostly-complete ecoforming project overseen by the Holy-Mendicant Order of St. Joseph of Cupertino. They aren’t able to ecoform most moons, but Alathni Minor is an unusually dense moon, giving it enough gravity to hold onto an atmosphere, although this has left the world very swampy and humid.
• Location: Orbiting Alathni Major
• Environment: Ecoforming in process, but still requires sprawling dome cities with a warm, humid internal climates due to the external environment not being entirely habitable without support yet. The oxygen-carbon dioxide cycle is not yet complete, meaning the atmosphere lacks enough natural oxygen to breathe unsupported. This density has led to the development of plant-rich swamps
• Population: Moderately Inhabited
• Other Inhabitants/Oddities:
  • The Holy-Mendicant Order of St. Joseph of Cupertino (Cupertinans): The official owners and rulers of the moon, to the displeasure of the contesting governments, the Cupertinans are well known through human space for their effort in settling uninhabitable worlds and making them habitable over the course of generations, while their smaller order, the Knights-Stellarum, maintains the closest thing to a consistent law enforcement and defense presence in the fringe sectors of human space. The Alathni Minor monastery is the main habitation on the moon, functioning as the primary city, administrative center, and ecoforming headquarters. Many of the people who live on the moon are Cupertinan monks and their families (both inside and outside the order).
  • Cavern Site #9056: Discovered by an independent survey team dispatched by a collection of groups interested in purchasing and colonizing the moon once it is habitable, the cavern caused an immediate stir in the Diskward Marches. Within the cavern are large, angular stone features that occur in a regular pattern that many laypeople interpret as being ruins of a civilization that once dwelt on the moon. Most astrogeologists, however, say that it’s simply a case of naturally occurring lattices within the rock structure. Debate has remained heated and numerous expeditions into the underground cavern have brought no additional clarity, although the scientific pursuit of evidence to seal the argument either way remains fierce.
  • The Swamp People: Not formally recognized as inhabitants of Alathni Minor, the Swamp People are the colloquial name for the people decide to live on the moon by themselves, without regard for the dangerous atmosphere or transitional legal status of the moon. They live in the swamps of the moons, isolated from the main monastery and the smaller, satellite hubs that oversee different regional ecoforming progress. Some regard them as eccentric, others see them as dangerous, but they are the ones making a living from an uninhabitable world, living off the plants and algae they can harvest.

Region 4

• Region Name: Athena Proxima (North-Central continent on Alathni Major)
• Description: A small continent in the north-central part of the planet, split down the middle by the Scar, otherwise featuring pleasantly temperate, if storm-ridden climate for settlement.
• Location: With the southern edge of the continent touching the equator and the northern edge ending well before the north pole, Athena Proxima is the primary inhabited region of the world, with a large capital city, numerous smaller cities and towns, and a rapidly developing agricultural industry to support further growth.
• Environment: Temperate scrub land, rolling hills, young forests, ancient and worn down mountains, with regular, if infrequent, massive storms blowing across the landscape.
• Population: Densely Populated
• Other Inhabitants/Oddities:
  • Alathni Prime Sinkhole: The original Cupertinan Monastery-turned-city is a dome city built inside a massive sinkhole, whose origins are still unknown, but the sinkhole releases enough geothermal energy to keep the temperatures comfortable and power the city at the same time. Now administered by the Alathni Company on behalf of the Aldottorai Republic, which views all other colonies in the system as illegitimate, and so keeps an extensive military garrison to push its claim.
  • The Scar: A large tectonic rift valley that connects to the Alathni Prime Sinkhole, stretching eight hundred miles and close to a quarter mile deep. The intensity of the storms has encouraged much of the populace of Athena Proxima to dwell within the Scar, beneath where the worst of the winds can reach. Most of the colony’s towns and cities can be found within the Scar or along the small fractures breaking off from the main Scar.
  • The Greenwood: One of the more extensive projects on this continent, the Greenwood is a carefully tended attempt to recreate an old-growth oak forest. Started as soon as environmental conditions allowed, the Cupertinans used forestry to help sustain the monastery. The slightly higher gravity allowed for denser, if shorter, trees, whose lumber served excellently for construction. This forest, now covering tens of thousands of acres, is a rich, if juvenile, forest, with the oldest sections being close to two hundred years old, and the home of a gradually increasing number of wild creatures brought from Terra and helped to adapt to their new environment.

Region 5

• Region Name: Old Alathni
• Description: A series of equatorial mountain ranges, whose valleys enclose the first non-Cupertinan settlers. While the equatorial region is very hot near to sea-level, the valleys are protected against the heat by their altitude. These mountains also house small glaciers that began to reform as soon as the water cycle began moving, which feed the valleys with numerous small lakes that help feed the colonies.
• Location: In the northeastern continent, right along the equator, in a long range of mountains.
• Environment: Cold, brisk, high-altitude taiga, tundra, and colder scrub land.
• Population: Moderately Populated
• Other Inhabitants/Oddities:
  • The First Alathni: Descendants of Terrans who joined the first wave of generation ships meant to settle space, the First Alathni consider themselves indigenous to the world, despite their home being the long defunct generation ship at its crash location. They are stockier than typical humans and have more unique coloring, but are otherwise exactly the same as Terrans. They dwell in Old Alathni, where they built their own society high in the mountains without realizing there were others also settling the world.
  • Wreck of the Herald of Humanity: A massive generation ship, built in the early days of space travel, when the were uncertain about using the -Nth dimensional drives, this ship dates to shortly after humans settled every planetary body in the Terran system. It has since crashed into the mountains, leveling a significant portion of the nearby hills and mountain ranges. It acts as a central meeting point and refuge for the Old Alathni.
  • The Crystal Caverns: Not far from the wrecked ship, there is a network of caves running beneath the valleys and surrounding mountains. One of the earliest shelters for the people from the generation ship, this cavern system is well-charted and well-lit, its small number of lights reflected outwards by thousands of clear crystals with line the walls of the system. Not permanently inhabited, the Crystal Caverns are a wonder of human space and visited by mane of those who dare travel beyond the edge of colonized space.

Region 6

• Region Name: The Islands
• Description: Between the continent of Athena Proxima and the mountains of the Old Alathni like the endless archipelagoes of the Islands. Straddling the shallow sea between the two continents, these are a hot, sultry, and tropical environment surrounded by shallow, heavily salted seas inhabited mostly by plankton, algae, and other micro-organisms necessary for food.
• Location: Along the equator, between the north eastern and north-central continent, running north/south and east/west.
• Environment: Tropical archipelagos, small floating towns, tropical desert
• Population: Sparsely populated
• Other Inhabitants/Oddities:
  • The Smugglers: Officially, trade and communication between the Old Alathni and the Athenian Proximans is banned by the Aldottorai Republic, which recognizes neither the islands nor the Old Alathni. Unofficially, it’s very easy to get around the letter of the law by doing trades through the islands. As a result, many of the islanders are employed in smuggling or other criminal enterprises between the two governments. Predominantly laid back and easy going, there is an occasional burst of violence from them, but that is rare and usually taken care of by combined government forces and the Cupertinans, none of whom acknowledge the cooperation.
  • The Lagoon: The main heartland of the Islands, the Lagoon is a massive, artificial lagoon that was created when the early dredgers and ecoformers dumped the spoils from their work in a large semi-circle, which eventually flooded as the sea-basins began to fill in. Only a few feet deep for the most part, the Lagoon is the main hub of commerce and habitation in the Islands, with the sandbars constantly shifting as new work is done to expand, the still-rising sea levels swallow older parts, and so on. Most of the planet’s gray market commerce occurs here in the lagoon, as there’s a solid floating landing platform for small freighters to land and unload. Much of the off world trade happens here, evading the tariffs of the Alathni Company, while also dodging the ban on commerce with Old Alathni.
  • Bioluminescence: The waters of the islands, including in the lagoon, are densely populated by ostracods that are bioluminescent after Alathni Minor has its full moon phase. These turn the entire seaway between the two colonies into a glowing light show that draws people in from the entire system and beyond to see the unearthly glow fill the night sky and mirror the constellations above. It happens one night a month, only for a few hours, but that’s usually enough to make something like a truce between the various factions. It’s also the monthly festival/market, which draws people from across the system to stock up on supplies, sell small amounts of valuable ores, and socialize in an environment that at least resembles Terran environments.

Reflections on Step 3

This was a pretty intensive step in the process! It took me close to three weeks to get through everything here, including reading the chapter, examining the sheet, and then filling out the regions. If you’re following along at home, I would definitely give yourself plenty of time for this one, even if you’re using the random tables (which I did not). While the tables were helpful, I have a hard time using them for anything because I dislike the sometimes chaotic or incoherent results. In this case, I’m leaning toward something more consistent and grounded. If I was making setting purely for a Genesys game that didn’t need to fit into a setting, I could see them working really well. The different combinations would also lead to some interesting possibilities.

The one part of this step that I had a more difficult time with was the other inhabitants/oddities table and its section. It seemed a bit at odds with the rest of the step’s focus on a wide angle perspective on the physical aspects of the world. In the random table especially, the first result was warlike wanderers, the final result was The Hunter, but there were also things like flying islands and landmarks. My guess is that this step was meant to create plot hooks.

That’s a great idea, and would fit really well if the table included only natural elements and not the cultural ones. We don’t really get into cultures and people groups until later in the process, so this felt a bit like leaping without looking. I think it would be a great contribution to the later steps, but I had a hard time keeping the focus on the world itself rather than getting diverted by the social or political contexts. Part of that is because I rarely split the plot, character, and setting elements apart from each other and most often view them together, like molecules rather than atoms. So, for people who are better able to view the elements separately, it shouldn’t be an issue.

Otherwise, I think this is a super useful step. In many ways, it reminds me of the agile worldbuilding method put together by the folks over at World Anvil. Not entirely the same, because this is essentially the opposite from what they describe. Genesys’ expanded setting process seems to take a big picture to small picture approach, while World Anvil’s is a small picture to big picture (assuming I understood it correctly). I particularly appreciate how it ties everything together with the game elements. The different types of worlds can have add Setback or Boost die to skill checks due to planetary sizes affecting gravity, or other physical conditions. That’s a kind of narrative-mechanical integration that I really appreciate. I’m not sure how deeply I’ll use that for Iron Horizons yet, but it is something to keep in mind.

That’s all for this week! Check back again next week as we dive into the steps of the process!