World Building #1: Matters of Theme

This will be the first part of a new project: creating a campaign setting from scratch. To the uninitiated, a campaign setting is a fictional world that serves as the setting for a role-playing game. In this instance, I will be making a setting to run my own games in. I've GM'd role-playing games before, of course, but I've mostly set them in generic worlds or in established settings.

This will be something different. A world of my own.

The first thing I'll want to decide on is a theme for the setting. By theme, I mean something that binds the setting together. A core concept, if you will.

For some settings, the setting is defined by a single conflict, a single overarching narrative. Good vs. Evil, Empire vs. Rebels, Mordor vs. Men, etc. This might be a great idea for a focused story campaign, but I'd like one where the PCs (that is player-characters) are bit more... independent. A traditional roleplaying game involves the players running around the world, doing odd adventures, without having to be wrapped up in an epic narrative that spans the entire world.

So, ditching the narrative, what other themes can we think of?

For this world, I'm inspired by Avatar. That's The Last Airbender, not the James Cameron film. Their world is themed with the four Western classical elements, but has a distinctly Eastern style. Why not turn that on its head? Take the traditional European fantasy, but theme it around the five Chinese elements: Fire, Earth, Water, Metal, and Wood.

I actually like this idea. Since a fantasy world must have magic, why not have all the magic stem from those five elements or combinations of them? A flight spell in this setting might be using Water magic to "swim" through the air or Fire magic to create jets. A teleportation spell might involve walking into a tree and coming out in another or moving instantaneously through the ground.

The more I think about the idea of a completely elemental system of magic, the more I like it.

A traditional fantasy setting also has various races and, taking inspiration from Avatar's elemental themed nations, why not tie each fantasy race to an element?

Dwarves and elves are easy, tying them to earth and wood respectively. With metal... why not the generic "barbaric" race like goblins or orcs, given metals warlike and harsh overtones. Fire is associated with passion and inspiration, so lets give it to fun-loving gnomes, hobbits, or some other sort of small folk. Water is associated with flexibility, which is the traditional role of humans, so lets match those together.

I've got a basic idea of how magic works in this world and how the races are connected to it now. If you have any ideas on how to build a world using the five elements, feel free to tell!