There are a many great resources on the web when it comes to worldbuilding, and some of the best are not even dedicated to the craft but are generic scientific resources. I’ll attempt to collect everything that is useful – and I need your help to update this list. Please send me links you think should be included, and I’ll take a look.

Since there are so many links, I’ll group them into categories:

• About World Building – What is worlbuilding all about? General links about the topic.
• How-To’s and Guides – Guidelines, advice, tipps, tricks, and general articles on how to build worlds.
• Other World Building Resource Collections – Sites that collect world building links
• Software and tools – A little digital help to assist you with building worlds
• Maps and Geography – Information on map-making, cartography, and the general geographic makeup of a conworld
• World building project sites and blogs – Sites about worlds being built
• Shakespeare & Dragons – Worldbuilding Podcast

Linguistics and Con-Languages

• Mark Rosenfelder, aka the Zompist, has a good site on conlanguages. The Language Construction Kit is a good quick “how-to” on the subject.
• The Zompist Bulletin Board is an awesome resource for conlanguages.

Real World Resources

If you base your world on our current Earth, you’ll sooner or later have to look up facts that you do not know. Here’s where you should do so.

• Wikipedia is always a good starting point for research.
• The CIA World Factbook answers all the basic questions you have about the nations of Earth. Life expectancy in China? Male-to-Female ratio on the Bahamas? Here you go.

Everything else

Articles that didn’t fit elsewhere.

• Atomic Rockets contains pretty much everything you’ll need to know if your setting makes use of rocketships. And then some. It also has a great section of graphics of various realistic and fictional rocket designs.
• How to design a good flag
• Flag generator
• Armageddon: Wikipedia article on the end of civilization
• Exit Mundi also covers the end of life, the universe, and everything.
• Animal senses – useful for monster and alien species design
• The Free RPG Blog
• Vectorized playing card faces – You never know when these may come in handy!