World Building: Ruins First, History Later

 

Every setting begins in silence. The silence of what’s already broken, already gone.

That’s why I say: start with the ruins. The toppled tower, the collapsed bridge, the cratered colony dome, the derelict starship. The ruin is implication made solid. It tells you history happened here, but refuses to explain. That refusal is powerful.

Too many GMs start with history first—lineages, dynasties, calendars, maps annotated with centuries of backstory. I say this as a certified history nut (seriously, you should see my personal library): you don’t need it. Worse, it can strangle you. Tolkien could afford to write a thousand years of elven genealogy because he wasn’t on a clock with friends waiting to roll dice on Friday night. You don’t need to be Tolkien.

You need the ruin.

Because ruins do all the heavy lifting:

• Legend. If there’s a ruin, there’s a story about why it fell.

• Myth. People will argue whether that story’s true.

• Mystery. Players will want to know more.

That’s the loop. You don’t need the centuries of notes—you need the collapsed wall, the scorched statue, the village that exists only as chimneys. Players will ask questions, and you’ll discover the answers with them.

And yes, sometimes your answers will contradict earlier ones. Good. Those inconsistencies are sparks. Players will seize on them, and you’ll stretch your imagination to make them fit. A ruined temple that “burned in the war” might later be remembered as “swallowed by the earth.” Which is true? Maybe both. Maybe neither. Maybe the contradiction itself is the story.

This is the fun of discovery. Not a history lecture, but a mystery puzzle that the whole table unravels.

So don’t feel pressure to write the history bible first. Leave the past jagged, unfinished, contradictory. Let the ruins speak louder than the records. When the players poke at those ruins, you can invent just enough to give them weight. Each game session adds another fragment, another shard. Slowly, the history of your world emerges, stitched together by the choices and obsessions of your group.

And here’s the best part: the less you define up front, the more alive your world feels. Like a map with “Here Be Dragons” scribbled on the edges, the unknown keeps calling. A forgotten past leaves room for exploration.

So put a ruin on the horizon. Let it loom. Let it whisper. And when your players ask what happened there, smile and say no one alive remembers, but it is time to find out.

Some Examples:

The Sunken Keep (Fantasy)

Once it was a fortress on a hill. Now the hill is gone, swallowed by a marsh, and only the upper towers jut like broken teeth from the reeds. Adventurers come chasing tales of a king’s vault, but the keep is more than a dungeon crawl—it’s a reminder that kingdoms sink as easily as they rise.
Hints of the Past:

• Frescoes of knights battling a faceless foe. Is it myth or was it real?

• Rusted armor fused into stone walls as if melted. What magic could do such a thing?

• A half-buried throne, carved with names that no bard remembers. How old was this kingdom?

---

The Shattered Relay (Sci-Fi)

A comms station orbiting a dead world, its antenna array twisted like ribs around a hollow core. Power flickers unpredictably, and fragments of messages echo through its corridors. It could be salvage, sanctuary, or trap—depending on who arrives first.
Hints of the Past:

• Repeating transmissions in dozens of extinct languages. What was so important to send?

• A cryo-pod cracked open long ago, nothing inside.Who or what was inside, and where did they go?

• A mural of stars that doesn’t match any known chart. Alternate dimension? Another galaxy?

---

The Abandoned Mall (Modern/Post-Apocalypse)

Glass skylights shattered, escalators frozen mid-climb, food court overrun with weeds. Once a place of gathering, commerce, and cheap joy, it now feels like a cathedral of emptiness. Survivors whisper it’s haunted—not by ghosts, but by the memory of crowds.
Hints of the Past:

• Children’s shoes lined neatly in front of a locked toy store. Who placed them, why, and are they still around? What's the significance?

• Spray-painted warnings in layers, the oldest unreadable. Is the warning still valid?

• A radio still playing faint music from hidden speakers, decades after the power should’ve died. Is it on automatic repeat or is someone keeping it 'alive'?