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I am sort of coming out of a semi-retirement from most table-top gaming and am looking to start producing my own home brew settings and characters and creatures again. Back as a kid I never once used a box-set type world or adventure module. Doesn't mean my personally created stuff was any good but it's what I liked to do. At any rate I know enough to know I need to create a world before I can think about who specifically lives on or what kind of lives they lead. And I'm not fishing around to get other people to do the work for me and steel ideas either, just to let you know. I'm rusty and a little intimidated at the size of such a project and I could really use some guidance and tips for putting together the best thing I can put together. I'd like to hear how other people approach this kind of thing. Or maybe I'm too old and busy in real life and I shouldn't bother creating a whole entire by myself. I should just go buy premade stuff and maybe tweak that if I feel the need. Let me share some ideas I've already got for ideas for my setting. It is not just one world but two planets that mirror each other and are both a positive/negative version of the other. Same planted in two dimensions but it's fairly easy or common to travel from one to the other. One is full of forests and clean waters and lots of healthy life  One is poison and desert and hard to live on  One one the only magic is black and destructive On the other magic is good and for healing and creating On one world the people never developed the idea to make clothing for the top part of the body  On the other there is no such thing as kilts or a skirt or pants  And maybe it is surprising to learn what is good and what is evil on both worlds. It is cool to be thinking about this kind of stuff again. Thank you in advance for any help anyone gives. Thanks.
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Mar 30, 2016 18:31
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| # ? Apr 24, 2024 03:25 |
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Can a TG mod please move this thread to creative convention? Creative convintion does seem more like the right forum for a project like this one. Sorry. Thanks
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Mar 30, 2016 22:22
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I think you have a great start, OP. I'm no guru or anything but I can offer some advice on world-building from a few years of DM/GM experience. -Don't worry about having everything done at the start. Players are creative too and they like helping you build the world, even though some times that means going against ideas you had in the very beginning . Maybe one of your players will want to be a Desert World native that believes in a forbidden garment called "pants", and they worship at a secret heretic temple devoted to pants. You never planned on their being such a temple in the desert world, but the same is probably true of every "my character grew up at ____" or "I'm at war with the ______ tribe" location in the game; you won't know about them until you have character sheets, or maybe not even until later. I've had players "reveal secrets" to their party and I have to scramble to say where that thing they just totally made up actually is, as though it were always there. It's fun! You've already got some good maps to treat as a canvas, maybe add one or two location markers relevant to your first adventure and plan on adding more. Have a big baddie lair as your loose final goal, maybe a few major cities that relate to your factions, but really staying flexible with your map lets you work player ideas in more often and players like that. -Populating the world is the same way: have some story-essential characters planned in your starter locations, organize them into factions like nations or religions or races, probably get yourself a central baddie and then most importantly leave yourself room to expand. Player-informed characters are simply better than ones you make yourself beforehand. I personally think the all-time best characters are ones nobody planned on- townsfolk you wronged that are hilariously still following you, bosses that critically fail against Geas and are now your new sidekick, etc. Remember that Bigby from Grayhawk was originally an NPC that Gary Gygax's wizard Morradin recruited with fancy dice work. That decision affected literally decades of D&D modules to follow. -Now that you're using your players' input to shape your world, pretend like you're not. Make your players think every single thing that happens was planned. Roll dice that mean nothing before adding map locations on the fly, make them think they almost missed out on content. Somebody rolled a critical success and found a magic diamond under a big weird tree? Put six more of those big weird trees around the world and make the players go dragonball hunting. Roll with what works, discard what doesn't, and just stay cool. Being a good DM is a lot like being a good manager at a small business- you will never actually have your poo poo together you just need the group of people you're working with to think you do, and their child-like faith in what you know is guesswork will both shock and inspire you. -Finally, not exactly world-building specific but Rule 1 of all campaign gaming applies: if anybody starts to take anything seriously even a little bit stop the ride for a while and everybody take a breather. I have lost good friends over PnP arguments and it is exactly as pathetic and demeaning and lovely as it sounds, so just don't go there. Rule 1 is HAVE FUN. TLDR: Don't worry so much, let your players worldbuild for you then take credit for it, and for the love of god have fun with it.
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Mar 30, 2016 22:29
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Thank you. There's a lot of good help there.
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Mar 30, 2016 22:33
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You'll need to think about the stories themselves. Do you have any characters planned?
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Mar 30, 2016 22:48
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Rando posted:Thank you. There's a lot of good help there. Any time. If you'd like a more visual example of what I'm talking about, here's the map I'm using in a CYOA over in LP:  See that spattering of locations in the middle of the big continent? The starting location, the cave, was planned. Every other location is based on background elements the players fixated on, or stuff that was convenient or funny at the moment. And I still have tons of extra room to continue this process until the whole thing is Bethesda-crammed with map locations, very few of which were planned. But I will let you in on my secret: I have a cheat sheet for my map. Even though the locations are being added as the story calls for them I can use THIS map to know some general ideas about them beforehand:  By having loose faction regions set, I can very quickly piece together specifics I need as GM. I know with a glance that any Dwarf locations revealed for quests will probably be in the SW, that combat tables in the Northern seas shouldn't involve Merfolk raiding parties, that human/kobold relations are probably worst in the very middle, etc. Just by laying out really basic political boundaries between factions you give yourself enough to grip onto as you build; and of course those boundaries can and should change as the story progresses. But knowing where they are at the start lets you kinda freewheel and everything still feels like it's adhering to a central logic. -Edited to link like I ought to know to do by now- BoldFrankensteinMir fucked around with this message at 23:13 on Mar 30, 2016 |
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Mar 30, 2016 22:57
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| # ? Apr 24, 2024 03:25 |
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chaos rhames posted:You'll need to think about the stories themselves. Do you have any characters planned? Way back I had one of those AD&D 2ed paperback supplement books called the campaign sourcebook and catacomb guide. The section on world building in there advocated this organic method where creating the details of your world went in a kinda-sorta realistic chronological order. Like, first draw out the shoreline of the oceans and continents. Then you choose where the highlands and mountains are. The existence of high ground and low lands gives you an idea of how rivers would naturally flow and lakes fill. Seeing where all your fresh water in the world shows where forests and plains and deserts would naturally come about. Now you have enough info to see where this or that type of animal would have it's habitat. And lastly you can figure out the most likely places intelligent civilization and thus cities and roads would be built. Now ideas and stories about how cultures would spread and where wars would be fought helps you create a history. And only after all that do you start thinking about quests and adventures for your players that fit naturally and seamlessly into specific parts of your world. It was a pretty cool method, I always thought.
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Mar 31, 2016 00:07
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