Happy New Year, everyone. With the turning of another year, I guess it's natural to find yourself thinking about past and future creations, hence this thread:
Growing up with D&D, I remember a sort of unspoken presumption that each DM would have their campaign setting: A world they spent years making and running, and over time would build out until it was the match of a Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms. A herculean undertaking to be sure, but I remember almost thinking of it like a craftsman's masterwork, as if making your world was how you graduated from a journeyman to a true DM. A lot of this is probably the naivete of youth talking, but the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide seems to have been written with this idea in mind (not that TSR minded selling people settings to use), and things I've heard around the old school RPG space suggest that I was not alone in thinking this way.
More recently, it feels like this convention has fallen out of fashion. Rather than building a single setting which you run over and over again, building more detail in along the way, it seems like more GMs (including myself) either use published settings, or design one-off settings narrowly focused for use in a single campaign. But over the last year or two I've caught the bug again, and wanted to finally set out to make a full campaign setting from scratch and do it right.
So this thread has a few purposes. First, am I totally off in my perception, or was this really an expected thing for DMs back in the day?
Second, for those of you that have undertaken the task of building "your world" and running it repeatedly, any thoughts? Is it worth the work? What's your methodology? Do you keep it within the D&D structure (divine pantheons, elves, dwarfs, etc.) or aim to break that down? That sort of thing.
And finally, I guess this thread is an excuse for all of us to reminisce on the campaign settings we've designed over the years. Somewhere, I still have the first world map that I drew up on notebook paper in 7th-grade science class. If I can find it I'll scan it and throw it up here for a laugh.
The more I work on my fantasy setting, the less defined it becomes.
That is to say: rather than map and detail every sauare meter of a world, I is easier for me to have some idea of what is where and then define it when the time comes so that I can better tailor it to what my game needs.
Onething I have been doing in my world building is stealing stuff from real world history. If I need a name for a town or a person I'll find the mangiage that best relrese ts that region in my world and then choose a word that is close to my description. For example:
I needed a name for an insignificant settlement in the desert/mountainous region: I looked at the Armenian language for "un-named", found the word "An Annun" and named by little town "Anuun".
Likewise I needed a name for a magic flaming sword. I pictured this weapon as a Deva, who was too lproud and was transformed into a sword to teach him humility. I looked up the words "Flame of Truth" in Hindi, and eventually got: "Sachai Key Low".
Well, I've definitely got my own setting I'm using for my game books, but in terms of developing a bespoke world I think my best example would be my long running Mage campaign.
The gist is simple... I started with a small area of the city and a small cast of NPCs (I think it may have been less than six at the time), but as the years went by and players came and went it became a tradition to shift every former PC who hadn't died to be shifted into NPC status, continuing on whatever their established goals were when the player released control.
Fast forward two decades and there are now dozens and dozens of realized and established NPCs with goals, allies, enemies and history. The last campaign I didn't even need to have any sort of detailed plot as GM; I just needed to ask the players about what their PC's goals were and then went through the past PCs to see who else would have interest in or be affected by this goal... the rest took care of itself.
I will sometimes use the same home brew setting for multiple campaigns. However, I've never really had the itch to have "a" setting that keeps growing. Part of it is that I like my settings rather restrained, but still want to explore different things. Sufficiently different means that the previous settings might not even be a good fit. I'd rather make another one than force it.
Most of the players I've had really appreciate mysteries within the setting itself. Once they unravel some of the key mysteries, they'd rather move onto another setting with a different set of mysteries. Naturally, that compounds with my own inclinations.
I'd like to think that my later settings are better than my earlier ones. I don't change everything from setting to setting. So lessons are learned.
This is something of a longstanding fad that fell out of favor. I think there are two reasons for it; the first is because the publishing field has grown up a fair bit and player tastes have matured, but your average GM's skills as a worldbuilder have not kept up. Homebrewing for the 90s/ 2000s market was pretty reasonable, but it is somewhat unreasonable today in the 2020s. To worldbuild today I would suggest you need to actively pursue some informal creative writing training rather than pulling things out of thin air.
The second is that worldbuilding is a creative process and bad politics like Wokism interfere with the creative process because you have to filter the work through another layer of public perception. This additional filter displaces at least one and more likely two of the drafting stages, which tends to mean that the final product's quality tends to be raw.
When you combine these two factors, you wind up with fewer GMs doing custom worlds. It's definitely still a thing, but it isn't as much of a thing as it used to be.
Quote from: Fheredin on January 01, 2024, 10:28:49 PM
This is something of a longstanding fad that fell out of favor. I think there are two reasons for it; the first is because the publishing field has grown up a fair bit and player tastes have matured, but your average GM's skills as a worldbuilder have not kept up. Homebrewing for the 90s/ 2000s market was pretty reasonable, but it is somewhat unreasonable today in the 2020s. To worldbuild today I would suggest you need to actively pursue some informal creative writing training rather than pulling things out of thin air.
The second is that worldbuilding is a creative process and bad politics like Wokism interfere with the creative process because you have to filter the work through another layer of public perception. This additional filter displaces at least one and more likely two of the drafting stages, which tends to mean that the final product's quality tends to be raw.
When you combine these two factors, you wind up with fewer GMs doing custom worlds. It's definitely still a thing, but it isn't as much of a thing as it used to be.
That's an interesting take. Particularly regarding that second point, it occurs to me that a major component might be the fact that as Svenhelgrim noted, almost all fictional worldbuilding starts from building off current or historical cultures in the real world. That's kind of a no-win scenario if you follow a woke mindset. Recreate a real culture inaccurately and you're being "culturally insensitive". Recreate it accurately and not only is it "cultural appropriation", but you're probably going to be including quite a lot of "problematic" cultural traits.
Still, the idea makes me more inclined to embark on the venture. We all owe a duty to do our little bit to stymie the wave of creative stagnation in the mediums we love.
Quote from: Steven Mitchell on January 01, 2024, 06:48:32 PM
Most of the players I've had really appreciate mysteries within the setting itself. Once they unravel some of the key mysteries, they'd rather move onto another setting with a different set of mysteries. Naturally, that compounds with my own inclinations.
That's something I've struggled with a bit. I'm inclined to think that big world-shaking secrets are something that just can't work in an RPG setting designed to have any longevity. I've been working towards the approach of a setting which includes a big known mechanic that can produce a semi-infinite array of medium-sized secrets to be uncovered in one campaign after another.
We jumped systems and setting frequently. Play some RIFTS or Robotech, some AD&D, some Deadlands, some Cyberpunk 2020, back to AD&D for a while, etc. Most premade settings were good enough for us.
We did switch GM for each game, so everyone got a chance to play a PC eventually.
I do love the idea of every campaign and/or GM having their own, consistently played campaign setting, but in practice none of us ever really did it.
Quote from: ForgottenF on January 01, 2024, 02:45:54 PM
Second, for those of you that have undertaken the task of building "your world" and running it repeatedly, any thoughts? Is it worth the work? What's your methodology? Do you keep it within the D&D structure (divine pantheons, elves, dwarfs, etc.) or aim to break that down? That sort of thing.
And finally, I guess this thread is an excuse for all of us to reminisce on the campaign settings we've designed over the years. Somewhere, I still have the first world map that I drew up on notebook paper in 7th-grade science class. If I can find it I'll scan it and throw it up here for a laugh.
I'll skip the first questions since I wasn't around to really know, but I'll give what I can with these two (really showing my age here xD).
I think that running and creating your own world is always worth the work, and it's always as much fun as its made out to be. In the end, you'll have a world you can repeatedly return to and flesh out with every campaign you run in it. In a sense it'll take on a living feel as you add more and more details, and if you run it with the same group, or a cohesive group of players it will feel real.
I find the best way to start is to start off small. If this is the first adventure of the first campaign, just detail the local area and hold onto the vaguest details about the world in question. What kingdom are they in? Where is the dungeon? What is the name of town they'll be in? I find it's always best to throw out details as they're needed, rather than having a codex of information to rely on. That being said, keep a notebook of ideas, cool names, interesting things you've heard, etc so you have a resource to pool your ideas in. Just be sure to write down whatever you tell the players afterwards, so if they ask again later you've got consistent information. That being said, it's good to keep some details set in stone right from the start. Essentially I've found you always want flexibility and consistency.
Now here's the part where I can gush about my totally original campaign setting I've run a few games in. It was more or less a conglomeration of shit that I found really cool, and a lot of its inspiration came from a combination of my own reading and books I read for schoolwork. It's basically 9th century Europe, with a big focus on the Frankish Empire during its height, and split, in 843. It had a standard, but small, pantheon of gods which included names such as Mannanan, Ehlonna, Morrioghain, and some others as well as some mysterious cults that popped up. My groups' favorite always seemed to be D'yer, the god of pragmatic and honourable battle, whom I named after Led Zeppelin's D'yer Maker.
The campaigns usually started right as the Empire's civil war is about to begin, and involved the players trying to stay out of the way or fleeing to adventure as a means to escape the wars, or sometimes becoming directly involved. The original campaign took place in Varremheimr, which was home to the Varrenfolk (vikings) and it was the edge of the empire. I ran B2, and it was a hit. The party fled the civil war, and ended up taking on an old lich named Seer Torval. This all spawned as a result of a random tower I placed on an island in B2. Another saw the players travel to Rus', and the final campaign started in Italia and ended in England (later renamed Albion after I read Pundit's Dark Albion) as the players were investigating the elves there.
It was a pretty standard setting otherwise. It had scattered city-states of elves that were remnants of the last great elven empire, growing human states, and a great dwarven conclave in Switzerland, and the halfling homeland being shires in the general Benelux states. It was very Tolkien, but I tried to throw some of those tropes on their heads to keep it fresh. The elves, for example, lost their longevity and rather than going west to Vallanor to die, they'd journey to The Black Spring in Wales and go to the bottom, wherever it went to die in peace (it's a real cave in Wales, but I made it into a weird megadungeon with the caveat that once an elf enters, they can't leave).
Pretty much all of this was done on the fly, with little prep work to tie it all together. I just up and thought a viking game sounded fun one day, and ended up creating a world out of it. Whatever you do, don't get your inner fantasy novelist ticking away because most of those details won't matter until a player asks for it. If that's the case, then just provide info as needed.
Various things have occurred and, as of this evening, I am developing an underdark campaign setting based on the Black Sea area. The Sea of Marmara and the Sea of Azov are going to be separate caverns controlled by the Drow and the Aboleth Aliance respectively. Crimea will probably be controlled by the duergar with Sevastapol as their capital. I haven't decided who will be where Odesa is in the real world or where the starting town will be. The town will be loosely based on Saltmarsh but mainly populated by dissident Drow who have left the Drow Empire for a wide variety of reasons.
For my fantasy world, I figured out a long time ago that I cannot make something original that it's easy to game in so I leaned into old tropes. I borrowed deeply from Norse, Celtic, and Greek mythology. Almost everything anyone runs into in a fantasy game I'm running comes from one of those three sources interpreted by my understanding and tweaks I make to fit it all together. It keeps evolving and I've stitched in things from other material over the years. Pundit's stuff had been coming in a lot stronger lately.
What I was delightfully surprised by is that a lot of things were very alien to my players. I get to see guys in their 30s and 40s that want to unravel the mysteries of my world with the glee of 10 year olds. These moments are probably the most fun in gaming I've ever had.
I run a far future scifi setting that's a blend of my thoughts of where Frank Herbert would have gone if he'd wrote more dune books before he died, the kind of stuff I thought Disney should have done with Star Wars, and influence from the scifi books i read as a kid from Asimov, Heinlein, and the like.
I also run a near future/cyberpunk setting heavily influence by some of the more gritty 80s scifi films like Aliens and Outlander. A few years ago I discovered Hostile by Zozer Games and I couldn't believe how close it was to my own setting.
Quote from: ForgottenF on January 01, 2024, 02:45:54 PM
Second, for those of you that have undertaken the task of building "your world" and running it repeatedly, any thoughts? Is it worth the work? What's your methodology? Do you keep it within the D&D structure (divine pantheons, elves, dwarfs, etc.) or aim to break that down? That sort of thing.
All right, now that I have a moment I can wax on about my own work because I suppose it is relevant. Bear in mind that this is notably more ambitious and aggressive than making a custom homebrew setting within an established setting; this is how you homebrew a completely novel experience.
I have three questions I tend to ask while building worlds, each by asking questions. Instead of following a rote formula of doing X, then Y, then Z, I instead prefer to answer one question, then step back and ask what question sounds easiest to answer next. As this is a process you learn through example, I will walk you through the process I used to do the worldbuilding for
Selection: Roleplay Evolved.Question 1: What did this popular world get badly wrong? For me, that was XCOM Enemy Unknown (or Enemy Within) and the answer was that they badly botched the motivation for the alien invasion. The motivations revealed at the end were shockingly poorly thought out because it doesn't make emotional sense to most readers.
Question 2: Can I tweak the worldbuilding formula in a slight, but subtle way that produces a completely different result? This time, I started with Call of C'thulu, and I asked myself what if an Elder God became a patron of sorts for the Player Characters. The easy explanation may be that the Elder God is manipulating the PCs to summon themselves, but I think that you shouldn't bake lies into the worldbuilding of a Roleplaying Game. Players become savvy to them in metagame too easily. But what if, instead, the Elder Gods are not getting along and so an Elder God who perhaps doesn't have any human cultists at this moment but who is desperate to stop another Elder God could conceivably form an alliance with the Player Character investigators. At that point it stops being Call of C'thulu, but that's kinda the point.
Question 3: What obscure work of inspiration fits into this? I generally feel that one of the key reasons games can circle the game of all feeling the same is that many of the creative people making them are sticking too close to mainstream experiences. At some point in the creative process, you should leave mainstream and try to find something obscure just to be sure you are providing a novel experience. In my case, that was the video game Parasite Eve, which has a unique modern found biohorror aesthetic, with many of the monsters being mutated animals, and Aya is subtly worried about loosing her humanity to her new-found abilities (the antagonist is in some ways Aya's dead twin sister, so her connection to her sister is pulling her away from the rest of humanity). The transhuman loss of humanity can replace the standard Call of C'thulu insanity with needing to adapt yourself to a situation.
Putting these together, the final world for Selection is an alien invasion where a few survivors of the Protomir Civil War come to Earth, destroy most of the technology they arrived with so it can't be traced back to them, and become human to assume human identities. The Arsill approaches the PCs with alien abilities and information, asking for help, and the Nexill just wants to kill the Arsill by any means necessary and making Earth uninhabitable is a great way to make sure you didn't miss.
Cool topic.
I think the presumption definitely used to be that everyone would build their own world, at least with D&D, though they started selling supplements like Greyhawk fairly early on. But I thought it was cool that you often had fairly minimal info in these settings so that you could make it your own. Then, from the mid-80s, it seemed like TSR was more into creating settings, which really proliferated in the 2e era to the point that there were simply too many competing ones.
I started out with just a few place names and vague notes inspired by history and fantasy literature I read, first and foremost, Tolkien. After several years I finally drew a map of a small part of the world, which I call Krysonia, the named being derived from these little figures my mom bought me in the 80s called Krystonians, which also had stories attached to them. It was originally a sort of mash-up of northern european cultures and mythologies with your classic fantasy elements in. Certain places and names were taken from various D&D modules or pop culture references; others were original. I later decided to add an Asian analogue (centered around the Mysterious Celestial Empire of Leng) since we used Oriental Adventures. But I decided to (gasp) put those lands to the west of the main region, beyond mountains, desert, and steppe. I eventually created a broad timeline for events and set different campaigns in different eras, so I could tinker with factions, states, and the like.
In terms of influences, it's remained connected to all kinds of personal references for me, including books, history, popular culture, music, etc. So the Chthulhu deities are in there and we've got recurring villains like the Starry Wisdom Sect, the Blue Oyster Cult, the Union of the Snake, and the like. A couple years ago I even decided to get Glynn Seal from Monkeyblood Design to redraw my old hand-drawn colored pencil maps. He did them in color and black and white and I laminated a couple copies for table use. They look fantastic.
And I still drop in other settings, like Hyperborea, in spaces off my main maps, which allows for different flavors in adventuring, bringing in exotic classes, spells, races, etc. So it's a real hodgepodge, but we have fun with it.
I created the skeleton of my own world when I was younger and even designed a campaign for said world. However, as I got older (and lazier) I started just shoehorning/meshing my campaign into the Forgotten Realms. The Dark Cabal became the Zhentarim, the desert became Anauroch, etc...
Now I have a pretty polished campaign that takes about 2-3 years to run through. I've run it Four times now from start to finish adding and subtracting bits here and there.
My first D&D world lasted maybe four years before we had a great world war and ended the campaign.
It grew very organically. Started with a dungeon, and then a town near the dungeon where we would go to buy stuff to go back into the dungeon. Then a local area map, so that we might have adventures on the way to and from the dungeon. Then a bigger scale nation-map so that we might travel from one town to another, with adventures along the way. By this time I had a Judges Guild subscription, so places like the CSIO and Thunderhold and Modron and Tegel Manor got placed on my map. As time passed and the characters wanted to adventure farther from "home" I slowly built more of my map until I had a whole continent.
Nowadays when I build a new world I decide upon a theme first. Maybe I want something like Middle-earth or something like Ravenloft. Without using their world directly, I like to steal place-names which will tell me what is where. Places like Rivendell or Helm's Deep from Tolkien, Paranor from Shannara, Aquilonia and Stygia from Howard. Sometimes a nation in the other author's world becomes a city in mine, but still similar enough that I know what is found there.
I'm okay with stealing names because doing this has the advantage that players often have clues in advance as to what they can find there, too. In the real world I've never been to Paris, yet I have a mind's-eye vision of what Paris might be like. I figure if the players have some insight it's easier than me making up totally new names and having to teach myself and them what is there.
Building your own world made a lot more sense back in the early days of D&D.
For one thing, there were not all that many premade settings in 1982. Oh, there were modules, and even campaigns, but there was a pretty good chance that if you had an idea of what you wanted to do, there was not something out there that did that exact thing.
Also, most of us were a lot younger then, and we had more time than money. I couldn't afford to buy a lot of modules, and I certainly couldn't afford to buy them on speculation.
Plus, making a dungeon was pretty easy, and it was part of the fun.
Nowadays, I definitely have more money than time, and being able to buy a campaign book that is nicely put together and playtested seems like a good idea.
Back in the origin-time of the hobby we made up our own "worlds" because we had to. It was part of being a DM, and there weren't other options at first. It may have started organically around a dungeon and its village or town. Or the DM may have basically sketched out an area and expanded as necessary. Inspiration came from Appendix N sorts of sources, along with history.
My very first DM used the Judges Guild Wilderlands maps for his campaign. As my fellow elders know, this was very, very sketchy and every DM's Wilderlands would have been very different. When I finally started my own campaign I followed his lead. I used the Wilderlands maps but came up with my own cultures and "nations." My campaign ran for twenty years until I and my players had all gone our separate ways. I never thought of a campaign as anything but open-ended; I can't relate to a "campaign" that runs on a timetable and has a pre-plotted "end." I just don't see the point.
Also note that in JG's City-State book there is a portal to "Venus." (My assumption being the Burroughs version.) And Bledsaw had his version of Wilderlands connected to Middle Earth. Not uncommon to visit our literary heritage.
One of my first DMs had a degree in Anthropology and his world had cultures lifted from history, with tweaks and amalgamations. My other DM ran his campaign in the world of Midkemia, at my request. He took the books and the few available gaming publications and expanded the whole thing. I doubt his campaign ended up much like any other Midkemia DM's.
When the Greyhawk folio came out it was pretty much just a map with country names. The few lines of description were inspiration but easily ignored, and every Greyhawk would've felt different.
I remember that Anthropologist DM dismissing others as "module lords" if they just used published products. Obviously this was in the 80s when we saw a lot of modules published.
IMO, the more we saw detailed published settings, the more we lost overall creativity in the hobby. It's not at all hard to make a campaign world of your own. It's just a game to play with friends, and we all know the tropes.
But today? The bulk of young gamers I've met are all for having a VTT that handles everything for them, with pre-written resources. The DMs I've talked to don't have any prep time at all – they just make their purchases and schedule the game.
One downside with pre-published settings, particularly indie ones, is that they often have a metric ton of lore and backstory to master. In some cases this has real implications for character design and gameplay, which is fine, but I have little interest in doing that these days.
Quote from: Persimmon on January 03, 2024, 01:39:07 PM
One downside with pre-published settings, particularly indie ones, is that they often have a metric ton of lore and backstory to master. In some cases this has real implications for character design and gameplay, which is fine, but I have little interest in doing that these days.
Yep. At first, I was in that "more time than money" camp and did my own. Then it flipped, and I used the bought ones. Now it takes less of my time to do my own than to absorb the details on someone else's. The money gets spent on maps and handouts.
Quote from: Captain_Pazuzu on January 03, 2024, 11:17:07 AM
I created the skeleton of my own world when I was younger and even designed a campaign for said world. However, as I got older (and lazier) I started just shoehorning/meshing my campaign into the Forgotten Realms. The Dark Cabal became the Zhentarim, the desert became Anauroch, etc...
Now I have a pretty polished campaign that takes about 2-3 years to run through. I've run it Four times now from start to finish adding and subtracting bits here and there.
I think on a practical level there's not much difference between creating your own world whole-cloth, and "settling into" an existing setting and making it your own. Obviously if you want to do something wildly different than Forgotten Realms, you're going to have to made a setting to fit, but for most fantasy gaming, Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms or whatever will work fine. And then you carve out a corner of it, tweak a few things, and build up a history around the player characters adventures.
I didn't really answer the question of how I manage my world.
First, yes, it's perpetual. Any changes I make on my side of the screen I make sure doesn't invalidate previous player experiences.
Second, I have major NPCs occasionally make moves in the world but I rarely allow anything but PCs to upset the balance of power or reshape the cultures.
Third, I keep track of major PC actions and stitch into the world lore. One group of PCs could run into things shaped by previous PCs.
Quote from: Steven Mitchell on January 03, 2024, 01:47:12 PM
Quote from: Persimmon on January 03, 2024, 01:39:07 PM
One downside with pre-published settings, particularly indie ones, is that they often have a metric ton of lore and backstory to master. In some cases this has real implications for character design and gameplay, which is fine, but I have little interest in doing that these days.
Yep. At first, I was in that "more time than money" camp and did my own. Then it flipped, and I used the bought ones. Now it takes less of my time to my own than to absorb the details on someone else's. The money gets spent on maps and handouts.
That is an interesting way of summarizing the problem, but I've noticed something tangentially related. DIY Worldbuilding in some capacity is almost inevitable for RPG play just because players explore parts of the world you can't expect, and the less creative I am during actual play, the harder I find it to switch back into a creative state. If I am running a minimalist setting I can effortlessly switch between running the game and making crap up because I do that all the time, but if I am creative less often I have to consciously try to remember if there's a canon answer and then make something up. That extra step can really slow down the process, especially if the setting has a lot of lore, and I wind up having to consult the internet or multiple players at the table only to determine that there isn't a canon answer.
And then I have to use my creative abilities from a cold start. If you've ever worked with creative people (and most people here are at least somewhat creative) you know that most creative people perform better when their creative skills are warmed up, often with a ritual. Calling on creative skills from a cold start is just not how most creative peoples' brains tick. It can be done--in fact it seldom actually causes problems--but it isn't particularly pleasant.
Quote from: Lurkndog on January 03, 2024, 12:40:47 PM
Building your own world made a lot more sense back in the early days of D&D.
For one thing, there were not all that many premade settings in 1982. Oh, there were modules, and even campaigns, but there was a pretty good chance that if you had an idea of what you wanted to do, there was not something out there that did that exact thing.
Also, most of us were a lot younger then, and we had more time than money. I couldn't afford to buy a lot of modules, and I certainly couldn't afford to buy them on speculation.
Plus, making a dungeon was pretty easy, and it was part of the fun.
Nowadays, I definitely have more money than time, and being able to buy a campaign book that is nicely put together and playtested seems like a good idea.
This is all very true. When I started there weren't any worlds you could buy, so we had to make our own. Judges Guild changed that, and later TSR released "Greyhawk" (which wasn't actually Gary's campaign, but probably close) and there weren't any modules at first, either. Making worlds, and making dungeons, was clearly part of the fun! 8)
Quote from: ForgottenF on January 01, 2024, 02:45:54 PM
Happy New Year, everyone. With the turning of another year, I guess it's natural to find yourself thinking about past and future creations, hence this thread:
Growing up with D&D, I remember a sort of unspoken presumption that each DM would have their campaign setting: A world they spent years making and running, and over time would build out until it was the match of a Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms. A herculean undertaking to be sure, but I remember almost thinking of it like a craftsman's masterwork, as if making your world was how you graduated from a journeyman to a true DM. A lot of this is probably the naivete of youth talking, but the AD&D Dungeon Master's Guide seems to have been written with this idea in mind (not that TSR minded selling people settings to use), and things I've heard around the old school RPG space suggest that I was not alone in thinking this way.
More recently, it feels like this convention has fallen out of fashion. Rather than building a single setting which you run over and over again, building more detail in along the way, it seems like more GMs (including myself) either use published settings, or design one-off settings narrowly focused for use in a single campaign. But over the last year or two I've caught the bug again, and wanted to finally set out to make a full campaign setting from scratch and do it right.
So this thread has a few purposes. First, am I totally off in my perception, or was this really an expected thing for DMs back in the day?
Second, for those of you that have undertaken the task of building "your world" and running it repeatedly, any thoughts? Is it worth the work? What's your methodology? Do you keep it within the D&D structure (divine pantheons, elves, dwarfs, etc.) or aim to break that down? That sort of thing.
And finally, I guess this thread is an excuse for all of us to reminisce on the campaign settings we've designed over the years. Somewhere, I still have the first world map that I drew up on notebook paper in 7th-grade science class. If I can find it I'll scan it and throw it up here for a laugh.
The 1st Edition AD&D DMG implied a lot of expectations, upon the DM.
I am already getting demands for thing like the removal of any depiction of slavery or to run a different setting. I am thinking about how to respond to this.
Quote from: yosemitemike on January 04, 2024, 02:51:29 AM
I am already getting demands for thing like the removal of any depiction of slavery or to run a different setting. I am thinking about how to respond to this.
I have some suggestions... ranging from the use of fingers to the possible discharge of firearms.... (It's a joke, people.)
In all seriousness, people that make the demand "the removal of any depiction of slavery" are not good people to game with. It's one thing if they ask you not to use it in a callous manner or expound upon it's virtues, it's quite another when they demand control over your setting.
Quote from: BadApple on January 04, 2024, 03:12:41 AM
I have some suggestions... ranging from the use of fingers to the possible discharge of firearms.... (It's a joke, people.)
In all seriousness, people that make the demand "the removal of any depiction of slavery" are not good people to game with. It's one thing if they ask you not to use it in a callous manner or expound upon it's virtues, it's quite another when they demand control over your setting.
Also, none of them are addressing any of this to me directly. They are all going to the discord serve admin.
Greetings!
Yes, have even more slavery. Show the slaves being crushed, trampled, and beaten down by the Masters. Naturally, many people are natural-born slaves. Just look around at our own current culture. Millions and millions of people yearning, begging, to get on their knees and serve the powerful and elite. Lots of people *want* to be slaves. They know, deep down, they are inferior, and worthless, and they *need* the strong hand of the Master to run their lives for them. These people are born for the yoke. They are like animals, needing to be trained and supervised constantly.
Left free to themselves, many of these people would simply wallow in savage chaos and degenerate cesspools.
So, yes. Have slavery firmly established in your campaign. Let them REEE and sob like the crying children they are.
If they get "Triggered" let them jerk themselves a soda. Tell them to get fucked, and find a set of different players that are mature, and functioning firmly in the real world, and not drifting along in some hazy candyland, like a bunch of 10-year old children.
Semper Fidelis,
SHARK
Quote from: yosemitemike on January 04, 2024, 02:51:29 AM
I am already getting demands for thing like the removal of any depiction of slavery or to run a different setting. I am thinking about how to respond to this.
One nice thing about a campaign with slavery is that it gives bad guys for the players to overthrow. "You don't like slavery? Your characters should try to change the system!"
Isn't that half of the purpose of evil druglord bad guys in so many TV shows? The good guys feel like drugs are bad, so they want to thwart the druglords. Or gun runners. Or any of a number of bad people. A campaign without bad people would be pretty dull, I think.
Quote from: yosemitemike on January 04, 2024, 05:49:26 AM
Quote from: BadApple on January 04, 2024, 03:12:41 AM
I have some suggestions... ranging from the use of fingers to the possible discharge of firearms.... (It's a joke, people.)
In all seriousness, people that make the demand "the removal of any depiction of slavery" are not good people to game with. It's one thing if they ask you not to use it in a callous manner or expound upon it's virtues, it's quite another when they demand control over your setting.
Also, none of them are addressing any of this to me directly. They are all going to the discord serve admin.
Dude, that sucks.
You're always welcome to sit at my table as either a GM or a player. At least you'd get an adult conversation if material isn't a good fit.
Quote from: SHARK on January 04, 2024, 06:52:21 AMYes, have even more slavery. Show the slaves being crushed, trampled, and beaten down by the Masters. Naturally, many people are natural-born slaves. Just look around at our own current culture. Millions and millions of people yearning, begging, to get on their knees and serve the powerful and elite. Lots of people *want* to be slaves. They know, deep down, they are inferior, and worthless, and they *need* the strong hand of the Master to run their lives for them. These people are born for the yoke. They are like animals, needing to be trained and supervised constantly.
What the fuck is wrong with you.
Quote from: GnomeWorks on January 04, 2024, 11:26:17 AM
Quote from: SHARK on January 04, 2024, 06:52:21 AMYes, have even more slavery. Show the slaves being crushed, trampled, and beaten down by the Masters. Naturally, many people are natural-born slaves. Just look around at our own current culture. Millions and millions of people yearning, begging, to get on their knees and serve the powerful and elite. Lots of people *want* to be slaves. They know, deep down, they are inferior, and worthless, and they *need* the strong hand of the Master to run their lives for them. These people are born for the yoke. They are like animals, needing to be trained and supervised constantly.
What the fuck is wrong with you.
Shark certainly doesn't need me to defend him, but if you don't understand where he's coming from and are somehow offended by what he said, you should probably go back to the 5e Kiddie Pool section of these boards....
Quote from: Persimmon on January 04, 2024, 01:40:53 PMShark certainly doesn't need me to defend him
And yet, here you are, running your mouth like a jackass.
Quotebut if you don't understand where he's coming from and are somehow offended by what he said, you should probably go back to the 5e Kiddie Pool section of these boards....
I'm not offended by it. I'm appalled by his attitude.
"Herr derr if you don't like the edgelord being an edgelord you're a whiny 5e crybaby"
Dude, absolutely get fucked. You have no idea what my opinions are regarding people and society, and rather than ask, you make the fucking arrogant inference that I'm a snowflake.
Shark's take on people is fucked. While I can agree with the general sentiment that most people are idiots and in need of strong leadership -- this is why I'm a monarchist and don't believe in voting -- it is absolutely not in the form of "people are animals and deserve to be enslaved." That's honestly fucking disgusting, and if you're defending that take, then there is also something seriously fucked in
your brainpan as well.
Portraying slavery as horrible, brutal, and vindictive in elf-games is fine. I get he's an edgelord and I have serious questions about Shark's mental life, and suspect I would not enjoy meeting him in person, but if you want to do that shit in your elf-games, then whatever.
Quote from: GnomeWorks on January 04, 2024, 02:58:59 PM
Quote from: Persimmon on January 04, 2024, 01:40:53 PMShark certainly doesn't need me to defend him
And yet, here you are, running your mouth like a jackass.
Quotebut if you don't understand where he's coming from and are somehow offended by what he said, you should probably go back to the 5e Kiddie Pool section of these boards....
I'm not offended by it. I'm appalled by his attitude.
"Herr derr if you don't like the edgelord being an edgelord you're a whiny 5e crybaby"
Dude, absolutely get fucked. You have no idea what my opinions are regarding people and society, and rather than ask, you make the fucking arrogant inference that I'm a snowflake.
Shark's take on people is fucked. While I can agree with the general sentiment that most people are idiots and in need of strong leadership -- this is why I'm a monarchist and don't believe in voting -- it is absolutely not in the form of "people are animals and deserve to be enslaved." That's honestly fucking disgusting, and if you're defending that take, then there is also something seriously fucked in your brainpan as well.
Portraying slavery as horrible, brutal, and vindictive in elf-games is fine. I get he's an edgelord and I have serious questions about Shark's mental life, and suspect I would not enjoy meeting him in person, but if you want to do that shit in your elf-games, then whatever.
Everything Shark said was meant to lean into the joke about slavery being a noble and just institution. It was all humor start to finish. I've seen enough of Shark to know that his real beliefs include freedom to make your own choices, even when their fucked.
Quote from: BadApple on January 04, 2024, 03:14:32 PMEverything Shark said was meant to lean into the joke about slavery being a noble and just institution. It was all humor start to finish. I've seen enough of Shark to know that his real beliefs include freedom to make your own choices, even when their fucked.
I will admit that my response to and opinion of Shark in general are biased due to a few very specific interactions I've had with him that make me leery. I also have no problem admitting that I have this bias, and that it may lead to me misinterpreting what he says.
I will not offer a retraction -- because I am dubious of your take -- but I will grant that your take is possibly a correct interpretation, and so I will back out.
Carry on.
So people were very upset over my response to their "safety concerns" and that campaign is done.
Quote from: yosemitemike on January 04, 2024, 06:23:11 PM
So people were very upset over my response to their "safety concerns" and that campaign is done.
Well, I'm sorry that you didn't get to run your game. It doesn't mean you did anything wrong, and I don't think giving in to them would have led to a functioning campaign.
What was the response from the discord admin?
Quote from: Persimmon on January 04, 2024, 01:40:53 PM
Quote from: GnomeWorks on January 04, 2024, 11:26:17 AM
Quote from: SHARK on January 04, 2024, 06:52:21 AMYes, have even more slavery. Show the slaves being crushed, trampled, and beaten down by the Masters. Naturally, many people are natural-born slaves. Just look around at our own current culture. Millions and millions of people yearning, begging, to get on their knees and serve the powerful and elite. Lots of people *want* to be slaves. They know, deep down, they are inferior, and worthless, and they *need* the strong hand of the Master to run their lives for them. These people are born for the yoke. They are like animals, needing to be trained and supervised constantly.
What the fuck is wrong with you.
Shark certainly doesn't need me to defend him, but if you don't understand where he's coming from and are somehow offended by what he said, you should probably go back to the 5e Kiddie Pool section of these boards....
Greetings!
The 5E Kiddie Pool! *Laughing*
I love it, my friend!
Some people have difficulty embracing hyperbole, sarcasm, and humour. Ahh, well. There are always some jackass morons gibbering about, right? ;D
Semper Fidelis,
SHARK
Quote from: BadApple on January 04, 2024, 03:14:32 PM
Quote from: GnomeWorks on January 04, 2024, 02:58:59 PM
Quote from: Persimmon on January 04, 2024, 01:40:53 PMShark certainly doesn't need me to defend him
And yet, here you are, running your mouth like a jackass.
Quotebut if you don't understand where he's coming from and are somehow offended by what he said, you should probably go back to the 5e Kiddie Pool section of these boards....
I'm not offended by it. I'm appalled by his attitude.
"Herr derr if you don't like the edgelord being an edgelord you're a whiny 5e crybaby"
Dude, absolutely get fucked. You have no idea what my opinions are regarding people and society, and rather than ask, you make the fucking arrogant inference that I'm a snowflake.
Shark's take on people is fucked. While I can agree with the general sentiment that most people are idiots and in need of strong leadership -- this is why I'm a monarchist and don't believe in voting -- it is absolutely not in the form of "people are animals and deserve to be enslaved." That's honestly fucking disgusting, and if you're defending that take, then there is also something seriously fucked in your brainpan as well.
Portraying slavery as horrible, brutal, and vindictive in elf-games is fine. I get he's an edgelord and I have serious questions about Shark's mental life, and suspect I would not enjoy meeting him in person, but if you want to do that shit in your elf-games, then whatever.
Everything Shark said was meant to lean into the joke about slavery being a noble and just institution. It was all humor start to finish. I've seen enough of Shark to know that his real beliefs include freedom to make your own choices, even when their fucked.
Greetings!
Excellent, my friend!
Yeah, I don't have any patience for super-sensitive crybabies. Part of me enjoys jumping on them and making them REE and cry.
Yes, I suppose I can be the mean, harsh edgelord.
I'm still not entirely certain what an "Edgelord" even is, but if people such as Gnomeworks get triggered by it, I shall graciously volunteer. ;D
Semper Fidelis,
SHARK
Quote from: Lurkndog on January 04, 2024, 08:11:40 PM
Quote from: yosemitemike on January 04, 2024, 06:23:11 PM
So people were very upset over my response to their "safety concerns" and that campaign is done.
Well, I'm sorry that you didn't get to run your game. It doesn't mean you did anything wrong, and I don't think giving in to them would have led to a functioning campaign.
What was the response from the discord admin?
That was the admin's response. Players, including the admin, were terribly upset about my response to their safety concerns. My response was that I would not be constantly rewriting the setting to account for shifting player demands. At that point, I called the whole thing a loss and deleted the game. With people like that, this sort of thing never ends. It would have been a constant hassle for the entire campaign.
So, I've never ran my "own" world. I started playing with a DM that ran Moldvay/Cook basic/expert...so we were nominally in Mystara.
But once I discovered Dragonlance, that's where I ran my games. But now that my love of Krynn has run it's course I play in Greyhawk, make it my "own" so to speak.
I'm not a Greyhawk purist. I love Sargent's Greyhawk wars stuff and so I use that.
Cheers!
Quote from: SHARK on January 04, 2024, 08:19:18 PM
Greetings!
Excellent, my friend!
Yeah, I don't have any patience for super-sensitive crybabies. Part of me enjoys jumping on them and making them REE and cry.
Yes, I suppose I can be the mean, harsh edgelord.
I'm still not entirely certain what an "Edgelord" even is, but if people such as Gnomeworks get triggered by it, I shall graciously volunteer. ;D
Semper Fidelis,
SHARK
Urban Dictionary:
Edgelord: A poster on an Internet forum, (particularly 4chan) who expresses opinions which are either strongly nihilistic, ("life has no meaning," or Tyler Durden's special snowflake speech from the film Fight Club being probably the two main examples) or contain references to Hitler, Nazism, fascism, or other taboo topics which are deliberately intended to shock or offend readers.I think another definition might work a little better.
Shitlord: A person who basks in the bitterness and misery of others.
Quote from: yosemitemike on January 04, 2024, 02:51:29 AM
I am already getting demands for thing like the removal of any depiction of slavery or to run a different setting. I am thinking about how to respond to this.
Tell the offended party that if they want slavery gone from the setting, then they must do something about it in game. Likewise marauding Orcs, rampaging giants, dragons, mostly-evil-by-default drow, and undead wizard/priests who keep their souls in phylacteries. All must be opposed and dealt with, otherwise they will overwhelm the good people and civilizations of the realm.
Quote from: Svenhelgrim on January 05, 2024, 08:17:10 AM
Quote from: yosemitemike on January 04, 2024, 02:51:29 AM
I am already getting demands for thing like the removal of any depiction of slavery or to run a different setting. I am thinking about how to respond to this.
Tell the offended party that if they want slavery gone from the setting, then they must do something about it in game. Likewise marauding Orcs, rampaging giants, dragons, mostly-evil-by-default drow, and undead wizard/priests who keep their souls in phylacteries. All must be opposed and dealt with, otherwise they will overwhelm the good people and civilizations of the realm.
I decided to just wash my hands of the whole business. It's my own fault. I should have bowed out when they start talking about consent checklists.
Yosimetemime, I just saw your update. That sucks man. I hope you can find a cool group to play with. Good luck.
Quote from: Svenhelgrim on January 05, 2024, 08:17:10 AM
Quote from: yosemitemike on January 04, 2024, 02:51:29 AM
I am already getting demands for thing like the removal of any depiction of slavery or to run a different setting. I am thinking about how to respond to this.
Tell the offended party that if they want slavery gone from the setting, then they must do something about it in game. Likewise marauding Orcs, rampaging giants, dragons, mostly-evil-by-default drow, and undead wizard/priests who keep their souls in phylacteries. All must be opposed and dealt with, otherwise they will overwhelm the good people and civilizations of the realm.
The problem with that is that fighting slavery will take over the game, and it might not ever end.
When I ran a pirate game, I realized that slavery could be a big issue, particularly with a racially mixed group of players, and I just wanted to do hero pirates on the high seas. So I laid down a ground rule at the outset that we wouldn't go there. It was off limits for player characters, and as GM I wouldn't go there. I also had a similar rule about rape.
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.