How would societies form in a newly-created world?

Question

I'm trying to build a setting in a fantasy world that has "just" been created by a pantheon of gods (the D&D gods, if that helps) and seeded with sentient creatures. This plane would be no more than a few decades old, maybe a century or two at most.

My main struggle is understanding how societies in the form of cities and towns would form. Are there any precedents, historical or fictional, for how human(oids) would come together to form communities in this kind of context?

Answer 1

"This context" is almost identical to when humans first started forming settlements - it was like a whole new world to them, and they went through a process before starting to settle. Let's talk about what the first humans had to do.

They needed to learn to farm.

About 200,000 years ago, the first modern humans walked the Earth. For the next 188,000 years, (almost) no permanent settlements existed - prey was always on the move, and areas would run out of resources if you hunted and gathered in them for too long.

About 12,000 years ago, agriculture first developed. Growing crops and domesticating livestock provided a steady food supply in one place, so there was no reason to continue to move.

Note that there are exceptions - some societies may have found enough resources in one place while still hunting and gathering, while others may have ignored agricultural development, simply weren't exposed to it, or did not develop it on their own - and so continued to hunt and gather after agriculture became popular.

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In order to get larger towns and cities, you need to

• Wait until people learn how to farm: Or, as @a4android said, give them knowledge (or existing farms) so they don't have to develop agriculture after hundreds of thousands of years. Without agriculture, no sustainable towns or cities will form.
• Allow some tribes to merge: Perhaps a steady food supply will be an incentive for communities to join. Note that this will invent warfare - hunter-gatherers who don't farm will want that food - as well as religion - with so many deaths due to war, where are their souls going? if neither existed already
• Give them time to develop infrastructure: I'm assuming you want more than tents with dirt paths, adjacent to fields - give your civ(s) time to develop stronger shelter, tunnels, bridges, and whatever else they need. This will help them expand. (This step will also take thousands of years, so consider creating people with this knowledge already, or making a few structures in the wild for inspiration)

Answer 2

"Off Armageddon Reef" is science fiction that explores this topic over 300 pages, and that's volume 1 of an unfinished 7-volumes-so-far series.

In non-fiction, check out John Rawls writings on the "veil of ignorance" and establishing a new society from scratch. The original book is called "A Theory of Justice". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Theory_of_Justice Compare with philosophy of Thomas Hobbes "state of nature" theory.

Speaking of Hobbes, back in fiction, we have "Lord of the Flies" which speculates that we will spend a lot of time destroying each other before we get around to setting up a new society.

Historically, i suggest you check the history of San Francisco. It is the closest thing I can find to a place settled rapidly by a large group of strangers (i.e. Not an existing group that moved together) all coming from different places. That's the best analog I can think of to your Day of Creation.