Hai, this post is a collection of relatively simple ideas and guides for worldbuilding. It is based on my experience in a low population personal IRL friends Minecraft Bedrock server that I self-host. Most of these ideas could still be useful in larger servers though, and in other sandbox games that centre on player generated worldbuilding and roleplay. They may also be fun in a single player world!
Mods Preamble: There are endless mods available that can add a lot to worldbuilding, but this post will focus on a vanilla experience as I don't personally use mods (afraid of corrupting the world save file). We do use texture packs though, which add to worldbuilding. Dokucraft Light is our main one, and on occasion we will use Dokucraft High (for festivals and celebrations), or Dokucraft Dark (for some festivals/events like Halloween or winter solstice). The Dokucraft packs have a 32-bit RPG style to them (like SNES Zelda games), which grounds us in a medieval fantasy style on the server. Adding texture packs on Bedrock is relatively easy and does no harm to the game/world save file :)
Sections
Naming Places
Landscapes & Landmarks The most common way to name any place is via its landscape features. There's a real world town I've been to called 'The Rock', can you guess why? lmao. Some landscape based name examples from my Minecraft world are; Sakura Valley (literally a valley surrounded by cherry grove), The Meadows (village in a flower meadow biome), Hillsplit (literally a split hill). This can be expanded to include player made structures; 'Deepslate Peak' is an underground village primarily constructed of deepslate inside a mountain peak, 'Everburn' is a town with an everburning campfire atop a log cross on it's church. These types of names usually come pretty easily, and you get better at creating them the more you do it. You shouldn't feel 'uncreative' or whatever if you use simple names though, like I said before theres real world places called like Boulder or Bath, or that translate to North and South Capital (Beijing & Nanjing respectively). It honestly may be more realistic to use simple names.
Thesaurus, Alliteration, Humor Beyond this, I often use a thesaurus website to find more interesting and unique sounding names for everyday things or landscape features. This has been more useful to me in naming large areas or maps, which I do separately from naming towns so that they can be easily identified on a large map wall. I also like to incorporate alliteration and humor into the less used large area names, I will explain out two examples. 'Runnel Range' is a map with high mountains broken by a snaking river system, mountain = range, and I came across 'runnel' on a thesaurus, which means river/creek/brook. 'Nicewind Dale' is a map with a valley through it, thesaurus showed me 'dale' means valley and I can't think of that word outside of the game title 'Icewind Dale', except this region was temperate or 'nice' and the idea of Nicewind Dale made me laugh.
Inverting/Swapping Word Parts Sometimes you hit gold with a random idea. The funniest place name on my server that still sometimes makes me laugh today came instantly from my friend. Three of us were exploring in the earliest days of the world (2020) and came across a mushroom biome island. One of us was like "woah, this kinda reminds me of Morrowind" to which our other friend says "why don't we call it Yestergust". Silly inverting/swapping of words can make some very unique sounding place names, especially for a more medieval-fantasy leaning world.
Old Naming Conventions To add to the above, I sometimes look to old place naming methods as well. 'March' is a very old term for outer borderlands of a territory, that were typically very hostile. From that I have read, Austria's original name was 'Ostmark', or East March when translated, i.e. the east borderlands of the Holy Roman Empire. In our world I named an unpopulated borderland of our spawn town (Aridnia); Aridmarch. While it is not hostile in the sense of invaders like real world Marches are/were, it is hostile due to being unpopulated and poorly lit, allowing mobs to spawn. Another old naming convention I have used is directional prefixes, with places like Wessex, Sussex, Essex being well known examples (literally West, South, East Saxon-land). I named the southern outlet of the Yestergust Sea, 'Sustergust Bay' with this convention. Only drawback is; adding W to a town/region west of one starting with A puts you in Wario/Waluigi sounding territory, use with caution lmao.
Street Names Once towns become more advanced across your world, it may be helpful to give names to streets and roads. This can help players get around more dense urban areas. To draw on older naming traditions again, it it easier to start this process by naming roads after where they go, what they primarily give access too, or the landscapes/landmarks around them. I have only given names to Highways throughout my server, and the streets of our spawn town, Aridnea. Our highways are usually just named after where they go (Sakura Valley Highway, South Coast Highway) with the spawn town being the origin point. As for urban streets, some examples are 'Stable Street' (goes by town stables), Spawn Alley (the actual 0,0,0 world spawn point), Boundary St (ran along an old protection wall we have since dismantled), Portcottage Way (goes to the town port and a standalone player's cottage). There is a page on wikipedia; Street suffix, that has helped me come up with more appropriate street names instead of using 'Street' all the time. You can use street names like 'Avenue' for tree-lined streets, 'Crescent' for crescented roads, 'Quay' for waterside roads, and so on. *Unsure if these street naming conventions are common outside of english speaking countries, hopefully this idea can still be adapted or maybe there is an equivalent article in localised wikipedia/elsewhere*.
Connecting Places
Follow Natural Progression Typically in earlier human history, water travel was easiest and most predominant (and it remains dominant in the realm of cargo today). You will feel this is the case in Minecraft as well, the amount of area you cover by boat usually far outpaces foot travel and even horses when encountering rough terrain. Following rivers and digging canals is an easy and low resource way to connect settlements. You can take cargo via boats with chests, and animals will float along behind on leads without much issue. As the need arises, roads and highways become more useful, especially in areas without waterways/rivers. These can start with tree/foliage clearance and simple shovel made 'paths', or using spare gravel, and eventually be upgraded with various stone blocks (especially within towns).
Improve Connections When Necessary Unless you have an abundance of iron, railways are a massive resource drain. It is more efficient to build a nether railway system to connect far away places (just make sure it is enclosed for safety). Start with better connections between frequent travel sites like other towns built by players, and coveted resource sites (mines, badlands). Expand on these rail systems when needed and when the resources are available. Don't be afraid to rip up old unused lines, I recently did this in our spawn town with an on street 'tram' line I built a year ago. It wasn't as useful anymore and I decided to make a labelled (purple leather armour) town-horse system instead (or 'e-bikes' as my friend calls them). This freed up a lot of rail for use elsewhere in the world. This happens in real life all the time as well, and adds to game worldbuilding in an interesting way. It can lead to genuine post boom/resource-rush 'ghost towns' in your world with 'real' history.
Leaving Rural Areas Isolated You don't have to connected EVERY build and settlement in your world, and leaving some areas isolated will add to their worldbuilding. Just like in the real world, when rural villages or landmarks are harder to get too (poor or absent transport infrastructure), it adds to the feeling of isolation once you are there. We have several barely visited rural outposts and inns that are only accessible via dirt path road or waterway in our server, it kind of adds to their mystique.
Mapping
Maps provide a clear visual aid to players and help most people understand the world and landscape around them better.
Local Maps These are easy to make and are best to keep in a central location within your town (ours is inside an inn at spawn). It can help players get around and also help visualise town planning with the amount of spare space you have. I usually do these at the base 0/4 map size so that more detail can be seen, I think they are 1 pixel per block at this size. These can then be collated together in frames to make a larger continuous map. I have made a local map in our spawn town and named each map segment with what it primarily contains, then placed copies of these maps, in frames, in locations that I want to mark (this is the only way to put landmarks on maps in Bedrock, Java can use banners). Here is a link to our recently updated spawn town map for reference, it is unlabelled but in game it shows the names of each section upon looking at it, with the green markers being the landmarks. *I can't actually find an official explainer on how to put the green markers on maps in Bedrock, I will give that it's own section below after the World Map paragraph*
World Map This is a much larger effort that takes a lot of time to map. I created a 'Grand Map Room' of the world in our spawn town, collated together in frames like the local map, but at 3/4 size. I found the 4/4 size to be too difficult to read, it does not provide much detail at all (each pixel is 16 blocks at this size). 3/4 seemed to be a sweet spot where you could identify towns, rivers, and some roads even. I started the world map while searching for jungle biome in our world, which was surprisingly far away from spawn. The map isn't a perfect square or circle, but I think it gives a good idea of the world around our towns. Also often in medieval fantasy games or books, maps are often incomplete as theoretically the inhabitants hit impassable terrain or have no need to venture further. This was common in real world history as well, and even sci fi fantasy games/media have incomplete galaxy maps (Star Trek's Delta and Gamma quadrants for example). You are able to stop mapping the world at whatever point you want, and can pick it up again later if needed. As I mentioned in the naming places section, I give each map segment a random unique name if it is unpopulated. Otherwise it will be named after the town it contains. Here is my server's world map for reference, our spawn town is in the centre, and that one map sticking out the very bottom is where I finally found jungle biome XD.
Map Markers in Bedrock There is a way to put markers on maps in Bedrock, but it is not as easy or clean looking as Java's banner method. You must make a map, then copy it and physically place one of them in a frame at the location you want marked. Then you can place the original map wherever you want (on a wall, in a map room) and once placed it should show a green marker where the other map is. If the original map is placed within the boundary of it's own land, it will also show up as a green marker. I often will bury these second marker maps (in their frame) underneath the place I want marked, or hide them within a wall so they are not accidentally tampered with or picked up by others. The original map may need to be a locator map too (map+compass) but I haven't done this in a while so I don't remember if that's necessary, if it doesn't work with a regular map then make it a locator one.
Events & Festivals
Game World Historical Events/Festivals These are probably the most engaging type of event in a fictional world, the ones which commemorate things that have happened in your world. It can be fun to celebrate the lore and worldbuilding that you have created or helped create. Every year we host a 'Harvest' Festival which celebrates the migration of our world from a paid Realm to our self-hosted server. I set the difficulty to easy and may change the resource pack to the fancier Dokucraft High, the lesser difficulty allows easier harvesting of resources in celebration. We then decorate the spawn town's Town Square with activites, markets, and a red-orange-yellow colourway (like many real world crop harvest festivals in autumn). Some other towns in the world decorate similarly as well. You may have similar events that occured in your world that are important amongst it's playerbase. If not celebrating the creation date of the world/server/realm, maybe commemorating dates where peace was made between competing factions, or the dates that alliances were made. I am also currently planning a worldwide Olympic-style games for the end of this year to coincide with our world save file's fifth year of existence. Events like this can add extra engagement among the world, similar to how there are many real-world events that are unique, one-off, or irregularly held, that bring a lot of people to one place.
Natural World & Real World Events In our server we hold a few 'festivals' each year that centre around real world equinoxes/solstices. This felt like an interesting way to make somewhat unique events that weren't directly tied to real world religious ones. While solstice & equinox events were celebrated in earlier human history, this is less common now, or those dates were absorbed/supplanted by religious festivals. Aside from these, the solar and lunar new years are other 'natural' events that can be fun to celebrate in your world. And there is nothing wrong with celebrating real world events/festivals, we just wanted to make our world less tied to those. We do usually do some Halloween event though, changing the texture pack to Dokucraft Dark and difficulty to high in order to encounter more mobs. Halloween is an easy one that typically doesn't come with the baggage that some other real world holidays do, plus it's mostly centred around fun decorations and stuff. I made a very rudimentary 'Trick or Treat' dispenser room that would shoot nice armour/tools (treat) or fire charges and arrows (trick). I also put a few 'Curse of Binding' enchanted pumpkin heads into the machine, which can't be taken off without dying, they ended up causing more trouble than I though, lmao.
Keep Events & Festivals Going (If Possible) I personally keep yearly events going, even if next to nobody is showing up. It can be hard to spare the time and manage the discomfort/awkwardness around doing this, so I don't recommend it for everyone. As the server runner I do this to ensure a 'living' world that people can come and go from as they please, and because I have the time to maintain it. While this won't work for everyone/every world, it reminds me of the feeling of skipping some real world event for multiple years, then coming back to it. It makes these events feel like they are bigger than just you, and happening whether you engage with them or not (this mostly applies to the other players in your world though, not the people running/managing the events and server, sadly).
Sports These are a bit limited in vanilla minecraft, but there are some very fun sport-like events that can work without mods. Sports can help create friendly rivalries between players or regions in your world. Some very simple activities that require little to no resources are archery and javelin (trident throwing), and various means of racing (boat, swimming, on foot, horse, camel). A small PVP/gladiatorial circle could also be a fun thing to engage in, providing your world does not have strict player death RP rules. I have seen some people online make a 'basketball' game where the net was a spider web surrounded by signs and you used the 'drop' button to shoot, but it seemed a bit jank. One big sport we have in our world is Spleef, something unique to minecraft. It is a simple minigame with an elevated arena made of easily breakable blocks (glass, leaves, ice) where you break blocks under the opposing players to make them drop to the ground. Spleef is highly customizable too, the arena can be any shape or size, it can have multiple levels of breakable blocks, and the ground level can be made of anything (lava/magma to increase the stakes). Another very fun sport is ice boat racing, but you have to find enough ice to make a decent enough race course. In our world, we were lucky to have a large glacier right near spawn town (you can see it bottom left of the local map). And we also came across and conquered a woodland mansion, which provides mountains of red and white carpets that we used to act as a barrier for the course. *I will expand on sports a bit more in an 'entertainment infrastructure' section. This will be in a follow up 'Part 2' post*
Literature
Signs eventually hit a limit of information they can provide, and in my experience having dozens and dozens of signs can be overwhelming to some players, and lag inducing as they are technically considered entities. One solution for these issues is writing books instead, as they can hold much more information and can be placed on a lectern to be read in-world. Some elaboration on styles/types of books that can be made is below.
Guide Books & Non-Fiction
Enchiridion is another medieval-ey sounding term for guide books. I have written non-fiction enchiridions for a number of places and subjects in our world.
Local Town Guides These are almost like travel brochure books. I have done about three revisions of the one in our spawn town, and one for the second oldest town in our world. I started these with a bit of history about the town, when it was founded and by whom, then they move into information about local points of interest and amenities (including any rules attached to these, which is none in our spawn town). I feel like there has coincidentally been major changes & improvements within a week after I have written each version of the spawn town guide, so trying to keep them up to date is a bit sisyphean. I enjoy doing them though, and have improved the way I write them with each revision. Now I focus more directly on clear concise information related to town amenities and points of interest, forgoing history stuff as I want them to be current guides.
Subject Guides Three examples of subject guide books I have written in our world are; Adventurer's Enchiridion, 'The Known World' (a travelogue), and 'Ice Boat Racing 101'. The Adventurer's guide gives in world advice on dungeon-like structures and their locations within our world, as well as overview guides on enchanting, XP levelling/farming, and where to acquire adventure related gear (all specific to our world and towns). This guide sits in our Adventurer's Guild Hall, with a copy in every town. The travelogue is a book I wrote that provides advice on cartography, a style guide on how to make maps for our Grand Map Room, and information about the landscape of each map we had at the time of writing (this is why I name each map even if the area is unpopulated). It can give the other players some ideas about resources or settling locations. And finally, the Ice Boat Racing guide book is a bit more meta than the previous too (which are wholly grounded in the kayfabe of our world). This is a short guide book left at our ice boat race track with tips about how to race, as it is a very drift-heavy style. It also has suggestions regarding render distance on different devices, and controllers vs keyboard. These books were fun to write, and get a bunch of world specific information out of my head and onto a medium that is easily accessible for the other players, allowing them to read as they need.
Code of Laws This is 'non-fiction' within the fiction of the world. I wrote a 'Code of Laws' for our spawn town (Aridnea) that lays out a few things that are prohibited and a few inalienable rights. I also kept it open to loopholes as a method of worldbuilding. Essentially our spawn town is a communal one where anyone is allowed at any time, and it does not project it's laws outside of it's territory. I included guidance on inter-settlement diplomacy and provide the spawn town as a medium for this, with every player being considered a citizen of Aridnea even if they have their own town. This kind of leaves a loophole where because nobody can be banned or have their status taken away (within the world), theoretically they can break any fictional rule and not be held accountable within the spawn town. It also outlaws confinement of villagers and has the foundation layed for new laws to be made, with input from every citizen. This kind of book is very 'layers within layers' worldbuilding, and may not work outside of a close-friends server like mine (as you probably want very strict rules layed out prior to strangers joining). But maybe some people will find this fun or useful.
Gazettes & Newspapers
Gazettes/Newspapers are a fun worldbuilding element that add ongoing news to the world. I typically use the term 'gazette', as it is the earliest form of newspaper, and they did not usually have a set release schedule. I find this idea works better within a minecraft world, as there may not always be enough news for a weekly or monthly issue (sometimes I go 6+ months without a new one). I write two gazettes for our world; a spawn town-to world news focused 'Aridnea Gazette', and a trading/resource tips focused 'Merchant Gazette'.
Local/World News There are many different ways to formulate this idea. I maintain our world's news gazette as a genuinely impartial report of recent events. I wanted it to be a useful tool for the other players learn about changes, discoveries, and improvements across the spawn town and world as a whole, so I don't add any fake drama to it. That could be a fun worldbuilding idea though, having competing local tabloid style newspapers. I also made news stands at each settlement across the world with a barrel, lectern and sign. The barrel holds old editions, lectern holds the most recent edition, and the sign just informs players of this. Can be a good way to keep up with new dungeons-like structures and biomes being discovered, as well as world events or festivals.
Subject Specific News I made the Merchant Gazette as a way to keep track of, and inform others about, resource sites and trading villagers. I typically will give a page or two to each resource site, explaining how to find it and likely resources available (like a large mine scouted but not looter). I also provide several pages with villager trading tips, like the types of villagers certain towns have in abundance, and what certain villagers are after (farmers vary wildly in which crops they buy). I also post this to the news stands across the world, and keep the original inside our Merchant Guild Hall.
Ledgers
Ledgers are the term I use for placing an unsigned book on a lectern. I only recently found out this was possible, I thought books had to be complete and signed (uneditable) to go in a lectern. It opens up the ability to have a labelled (with an external sign) book that can be edited or added to over time. The Merchant Gazette started out as a ledger in our guild hall, otherwise I use a ledger for town planning in our spawn town, marking out areas for specific builds or detailing where is free to build. These could be helpful for players roleplaying with businesses (assuming that nobody interferes and edits the ledger).
Fiction
We don't really have any examples of fictional literature works in our world, but it is a fun potential worldbuilding idea. I guess technically local law and history books are technically fiction, as they detail created 'facts'. We do have fictional worldbuilding, but it is primarily spoken between one another, as we are a very low population server. I think this would thrive in larger servers though, I have seen many examples online.
I am going to leave this here and make a part 2 later that will centre on town/world infrastructure Part 2 is now complete. Thanks for reading!