Nevermind, I don't see any point in continuing to press my point.

SHARK, I think you're a bad person. That's what it comes down to. Whether or not you care about my opinion is up to you.

Quote from: GnomeWorks on January 05, 2024, 02:22:56 PM
Nevermind, I don't see any point in continuing to press my point.

SHARK, I think you're a bad person. That's what it comes down to. Whether or not you care about my opinion is up to you.

Greetings!

That's ok, Gnomeworks. I'm not worried that you think I am some kind of monster.

Semper Fidelis,

SHARK

To OP and everybody, Happy new year!

So, "back in my day", I used to create my own settings, but it was also common to use published settings, with your own twist.

For example, I had my own vision of Yrth, and a friend ran a Pendragon camapign based on the Winter King novels. More recently, I tried to add my own lore to Ravnica, using ideas from the novels and running Phandelver in it. My next project is probably my own take on Carcosa/Dark Sun.

I created my own settings becasue I had fun doing that, not exactly beasue it was a requirement.

Maybe part of it was ignorance: I didn`t know as many settings, so I had to create my own with all the stuff I liked about D&D and other media.

I wrote an entire world with nations, races, creation myth, etc., but used onyl for one campaing that lasted a couple of years. Then I started reading ASOIF and I relaized my setting was just not good enough. I still think of revisting it and publishing, which I might to someday... here is a small excerpt of that process:

https://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com/2017/08/the-empire-of-dead.html

Nowadays, I PREFER to run published stuff, but I`m currently running a sandbox in my own setting.

Is it worth the work? I'm not sure. If I had enough good campaign-settings-sandboxes to run (e.g., Curse of Strahd, Tomb of Anihilation), I think I`d run them instead, but they are few, and with old school modules you usually have to connect them yourself, which is what I'm doing.

EDIT: also, one ideal situation is having a setting that you know deeply and your PCs know only the surface. It happened with my Westeros and Ravnica campaigns, a friends Dragonlance camapign (he read more than a dozen DL books...), this Winter King thing, another friends Star Wars campaign, etc. It seems to work very well: the GM gets to explore a setting he likes, and the players start with enough knowledge to be familiar and still get to discover more as they go.

For me it very much depends on what I want to run and how. I usually never need a super fleshed out world. It just sort of gets fleshed out as we play. Generally a party in one area of the world doesn't need to know geographical and political specifics of what's going on another continent, or country away. So I end up just fleshing out the region the players are in. And rarely have my games lasted more than 1 and a half years due to IRL stuff always getting in the way. So my players have never explored more than a handful of regions anyway. So why bother fleshing out anymore than that?

I think you can just start with a large piece of poster board.  Put something in the center.  Name it.  Ok, what else is close by?  Name it.  What else is a little farther away?  Name it.  Just general descriptions.  Go out at least a 3 day journey in every direction from center.  No need to go any farther out yet.  The players may venture off in the opposite direction, from what you expected them to anyway.  If you have enough for a couple of sessions, just refine that; and see which direction the players choose to go in.  After that session, grow the map a little more in the direction they chose.  Don't railroad the players.  Just let it flow from there.  It's not hard to do this stuff.

Quote from: King Tyranno on January 12, 2024, 09:33:07 AM
For me it very much depends on what I want to run and how. I usually never need a super fleshed out world. It just sort of gets fleshed out as we play. Generally a party in one area of the world doesn't need to know geographical and political specifics of what's going on another continent, or country away. So I end up just fleshing out the region the players are in. And rarely have my games lasted more than 1 and a half years due to IRL stuff always getting in the way. So my players have never explored more than a handful of regions anyway. So why bother fleshing out anymore than that?

Every GM needs to find what works for them.  Any advice I give should be taken with a large scoop of salt and carefully considered before you just decide my way is right for you.

First, I didn't flesh out my fantasy setting from the get go and even today there's large blank spots on the map.  I have a rough idea what belongs there but so far I haven't needed it so it's vague.

Second, I generally just kind of throw in some geographic features around the area the PC party is likely to travel and then stretch it about 20% further out.  I like to offer a few kinds of biomes and geographical features but do it in a way where they fit together logically.

Third, I think people occupying the world are extremely important.  Even if it's a campaign all about dungeon diving, I like to have a town with a population that works for the game.  There should be a local culture and there should be cultural influence from other places exerted on the local people; I generally do this with traveling merchants and nobles that oversee the area but don't live in the town.  I throw a bit of tension in the local town as well, not as adventure hooks but more as flavoring to make it feel more real.  The tension I throw in would be like a deal that went sour and now there's animosity between neighbors.  I also like to run adventures on the edge of civilization so it's fun to throw in a tribal group that the PCs can run into.  I generally make the tribal people neutral and aloof but will trade and barter with things the PCs can't easily get for themselves.