Worldbuilding - How to Steal from History

I've said it before and I'll say it again: a good GM has to know how to steal.  This is never more true than when you are creating your campaign setting.  Even Tolkien, the father of fantasy worldbuilding, stole the language and culture of the Rohirrim from the historical Anglo-Saxons, with the twist that they are horse people of the plains rather than an infantry-heavy insular people.

It may be satisfying to create a whole continent of kingdoms and city-states and emirates from scratch, but it is even more time consuming and difficult.  Plus, you'll have to spend just as much time explaining your world to your players as you did creating it.  Worse still, you run the risk of creating a bland and unengaging world full of shallow, interchangeable kingdoms.  Pilfering ingredients from history makes your world easier to create and more accessible for players.  Once you've decided, for instance, than Kingdom X is going to be based on Charlemagne's empire, you can use pseudo-French and pseudo-German names to lend your kingdom a consistent overall character.

Immersion requires a sense of verisimilitude, which is just a big word that means realism.  Verisimilitude helps players become invested in your world, lose themselves in it, and have great roleplaying experiences.  For that, you need a world that seems real, that makes sense on a human level, and that is readily accessible.  There is no better source for realism than the pages of history itself.  You have ten thousand years of human history at your disposal, displaying a bewildering variety of societies, governments, religions, warriors, and architectural styles.  Steal something from here, something from there, mix and match them, add a twist of your own, and you've got something.  Even the more obscure historical civilizations will add that verisimilitudinous flavor to your campaign setting because they are inherently human, and on some level we understand them.

So go get an entry-level history book from your local library or used book store, read about history on wikipedia, watch some documentaries on Netflix (or the History Channel, if you can find anything that's not about aliens or Templar conspiracies or pawn brokers).  Even just dipping your toes in the waters of history will improve your worldbuilding.

Now, let's take a look at how we can apply what we've stolen to our campaign setting.

GotWK Campaign Part 4: The Underground Steamboat of Death

This is an account of part 4 of my ongoing campaign set in my homebrewed wild west setting, Guns of the Western Kings.  Get caught up with the previous parts here.  

When last we left our heroes, they were hired by the dwarven trading concern House Dent to investigate the source of a mysterious glowing dye being traded by their rivals, House Fleckstone.  Their investigations had led them to an underground warehouse housing a secret lab, which in turn hid a secret passage deep below the mountain to a subterranean river and - of all things - a steamboat.  Back up at the warehouse, the party got into a firefight with two dwarven guards, quickly dispatching one of them.  The other, finally figuring out what was up, called out that he too was working for House Dent.  We now return you to the blogpost already in progress:

via Wikimedia

The dwarf said his name was Quentin Plumbum, and explained that he had been hired to infiltrate Fleckstone, but hadn't yet been able to get inside the secret lab.  Ash told them of the underground steamboat he and Gudguníis had discovered, and Quentin suggested hiding the party inside the food shipment bound for this mysterious outpost that both he and the party had heard mention of.  He would cover for them by explaining that subterranean raiders had attacked the warehouse, wounding him and killing his partner before retreating in the face of Quentin's fire.  The party agreed.  But before he would put them in the crates, he insisted on bringing in his employer - a businessman who had been hired by House Dent, and had in turn hired Quentin to do his dirty work.

Quentin burst into his hotel room, still bleeding, and explained the situation.  Theodore was up immediately.  Adventure - just what he had been waiting for!  He grabbed his "go bag", his twin .577 revolvers, and his trusty melee weapons: a whip and a trident.  In a flash, he and Quentin were back at the warehouse.  They hardly had time for introductions before being shoved unceremoniously into the shipping containers.  Heather pocketed a few potatoes for a later stew.  Rusty, meanwhile was really enjoying his time in a pickle barrel.  They waited a few uncomfortable hours before being picked up and loaded onto the boat.