Fantasy World Building discussion

I dunno about you, but nothing quite gets the creative juices flowing quite like looking at a map. https://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c59/Rubberpenguin/Moon-Psalm/3d83ab12-5a54-4b44-b2c2-e04ad7849d0a.png But there are a variety of approaches to world building. Some of us go through great lengths to research real world societies, histories, geography, sociological concepts, and anthropology. Others might just have an idea like "Why has nobody done orcs like this?" And suddenly, they have a plant based orc creature to inhabit their world. Some throw the tropes to the wind, and design something completely original, others embrace the elves and dwarves, and focus more on adapting them "Well" instead of reinventing them. So, whether you're designing a world to facilitate a story you want to tell, or designing a world to drop a bunch of players in for an RP or tabletop D&D setting, what sorts of approaches do you like to take? What kind of tone is your favorite to work with? Do you look for inspiration in other works of fiction? Or in our own world? Do you go from the top down approach, or the bottom, up? Do you let the details fill themselves in by the seat of your pants? (AKA, the Toriyama approach) Or do you meticulously plot every detail before ever putting a pen to the paper? Is Music your prefered way to convey a fictional world? (I know of at least one musician who does this.) There's no wrong answer here. Just wanted to fill a void in the writing section that I have always felt was missing.

Well when I build worlds for my RPG campaigns I usually use whatever Fantasy thing I am viewing at the time for a blue-print. But rather than just blatantly ripping off something like Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings, I also tend to mix and mash things from other source of inspiration such as Magic the Gathering. For example, I made a DnD campaign based off of the first Asssassin's Creed game, but rather than the main antagonist being an Illuminati-group masquerading as a Crusader order, they were just a loose affiliation of demon worshipers. Furthermore, I also like to base some of the peoples I make for my world based off of existing cultures. I made a saxon-based peoples for one of my campaigns, even taking old germanic names for the names characters and places. When it comes to opponents in the form of creatures, mythology is another great source of inspiration. Otherwise, sometimes I've had to improvise my campaigns on the spot, and just go with what comes to mind.

The real world really is one of the best sources of inspiration. As you say, the etymology and naming conventions are important to me as well. I try to use names that were only active around the high middle ages. (Actually, I made a generator in Scriviner based on these names. Though I still need to break them down by each culture. https://www.mithrilandmages.com/utilities/MedievalBrowse.php?letter=A&fms=S ) Sure, I elect to go the "Pseudo real world" route with the "Not Asia", or "Not Saxony", but given I'm kinda a fountain of useless trivia concerning medieval times from 1200AD-1500AD, it works to my favor when I do have to improvise, and it gives the players something familiar to ground themselves in. Now, races like dwarves and elves are fun to work with within that context, because they have their own cultures that players expect, but given my "Not Europe" cultures are rarely completely homogenous ethnically (Different genetic groups tend to concentrate in certain parts of the continent, but they all tend to overlap.) then that "Totally not Germanic" kingdom on the border of a high elvin kingdom is both influenced by, and influences the elves in that region. Likewise, I kinda go into the mythological roots of the dwarves, so they speak with Norwegian accents and names instead of the Scottish accents that dwarves are famous for having in pop culture. (Like there are more Scottish dwarves, they just living in the Scarlic highlands, not the mountains.) Also, thank god for games like Kingdom Come Deliverance and Assassin's Creed 1. Cause now I could point at them and be like "This is what I mean by my world is more medieval than generic cookie cutter fantasy."

I generally use Baltic and Finnic names for Elves because of how unusual they sound. For dwarves, I will admit I follow the stereotype and give them Celtic first names and badass English words for surnames. The best name I came up for with a dwarf character was "Hockrand Firefist". Half-lings, English or French Names. And gnomes? Sorry, I don't put gnomes in my campaigns.

I admit, I've been trying to figure out what to do with gnomes myself. Like I have this fairy race of lunar pooka that kinda fill the same niche. (Small sized creatures with a magical affinity) So I might end up just replacing them.

I'd replace them, I've also made custom races in my campaigns for people to play as. (I made a dark-elf like race and a harpy race). Kind of sad for gnomes when people chose everything else and people make other races before using them.

Yeah, cause like gnomes have a lot of awesome lore. Both real world, and in pathfinder. My problem with them though is: 1: Anytime one of my players chooses to play one, it's always a character concept that is more of an immersion breaking joke, rather than a fleshed out character. I have nothing against comic relief characters, but at least give me something that isn't a gnome barbarian named "The Nut Cracker" who only speaks in the form of rap battles. 2: Writer's block. I just have a hard time fitting them in thematically with what I have so far. And yeah, I have like two and a half dark elf races in my setting, since the term "Dark elf" doesn't mean Drow, but rather elves who have been severed from the psalms of creation. So, you have your ash elves, which were forced into the underhollow after a war caused them to grow so discordant with their psalm that they could no longer hear it. Then those who made it back to the surface some thousands of years later to reclaim their homeland. (I wanted kinda a morrowind styled dark elf, since they just have more potential in world building than rehashing forgotten realms drow again.), but you also have the ice elves who are kinda based on the elves in Midkemia. And of course the high elves are kinda in an interesting position in that they weren't severed from their psalm, rather they kinda... Switched frequencies, more or less.