RPG Design: How do you build a new world?

[RareBreed]

First phase is very broad strokes, view from 50K feet sort of thing. What I want is things made of plot hooks and awesome. I want players to hear about this without being overwhelmed, and be able to go "I want my character to be from there" or "I want to adventure there". Just enough of a framework for them to hang ideas on. Details are my enemy at this stage.

Interesting idea. It sounds like you do a lot of dynamic building based on player interest and feedback, which honestly, I hadn't even considered. I was thinking more of creating some major scaffolding first before even letting others know what the world was about. Which in hindsight, probably isn't a great idea since others may be totally uninterested and can't provide feedback.

On the other hand, I would be afraid that the vision of the world/story may become a "design by committee". So I guess it's a little bit of a toss up: should I lean in more as an entertainer/director using the players' desires as a guide for building, or more as an architect only revealing the final product (not that those two are mutually exclusive or have zero overlap)?

 

[RareBreed]

And, your mileage can vary, but I DM'ed for lots of different people in the last decades and about 80% (to more) of them will not put effort in read your gazette about your own world. Do not take for grant they will know what is the city X or where it is the first time they heard about it in game (even if you flagged to them in the session 0 as common knowledge) and they will not even remember it the second time it is mentioned, except if the first mention/interation had significant impact on their PCs. So, while you can go to minutiae details if you like it, do not expect players share the same historical-geographical desire to know as you. If you do not get satisfaction in a very detailed world, create just enough to the story works with your players.

Yeah, this is definitely something I've noticed even when using other published worlds and game systems. Players mostly are interested only in whatever has consequences for them. If it can't heal them, earn them glory, make them richer or more powerful, it's just a blip on the radar.

Just to end with a personal quirk of mine, I do not like to create worlds with decalques of real places or cultures. I avoid a past where not-Rome dominated until it was ruined or "here is not-France engaged in a not-Hundred Year Wars with a not-England". And wait for the not-Vikings or not-Golden Horde. I mean, there is absolutaly nothing wrong to use world decalques (assuming you respect the cultures you are imitating) as they are easily recognized by the players. But just not for me, specially if the "easily recognized parts" can lead to wrong assumptions, once most decalques are similiar but not identical.

So interestingly, a secondary world I have envisioned (not the one I'm currently working on, but one that is also dear to my heart), is lifted heavily from 13th-15th century Nusantara, which is the ancient word for the Indo-Malay-Filipino Thalassocratic "empire" (for lack of a better word). It's a bit of an amalgamation of the Sri Vijayan and Majapahit empires, with neighboring empires also having their analogues of South East Asian empires. For example, the Champa of Vietnam, the Ayutthaya of Thailand, Angkor of Cambodia/Laos, and the Chola of India.

I am actually part Filipino, but where my grandparents came from only relatively recently (ca 1913) became part of the Philippines. Previously, it had been part of the Sultanate of Sulu who previously controlled Sabah in Malaysia. I've often felt that there's been an incredible lack of role playing setting to any Asian setting other than Japan or China. South East Asia is a fascinating place, a kind of cross roads and admixture of India and China, with later European and for Nusantara, Arabic influences.

 

[Blue]

Interesting idea. It sounds like you do a lot of dynamic building based on player interest and feedback, which honestly, I hadn't even considered. I was thinking more of creating some major scaffolding first before even letting others know what the world was about. Which in hindsight, probably isn't a great idea since others may be totally uninterested and can't provide feedback.

On the other hand, I would be afraid that the vision of the world/story may become a "design by committee". So I guess it's a little bit of a toss up: should I lean in more as an entertainer/director using the players' desires as a guide for building, or more as an architect only revealing the final product (not that those two are mutually exclusive or have zero overlap)?

Some game systems, like Apocalypse World (and many of the PbtA games after it) take a very different view and the GM is expected to just prepare fronts - areas of danger and change - and the characters interacting with them determine what's going on. It's like leaving a blank spot on the map to be filled in later, but it's about plot.

But even with traditional DMing it's still the DM determining what hooks to put forth and such. It's just that you can weave it around the player and character interests. I often prepare several hooks each enough to run for a session, and them deciding on which of those choices gives me both direction for finishing that adventure as well as notes of what interests them for future ones. If they are more interested in rescuing the Child-Empress from her overbearing Regent than other hooks, you know where they are focusing and what to flesh out.

 

[Hand of Evil]

Don't build a world, build a setting to play in and grown the world. Yes, you can map it out but don't go into the details that you do for the area being played. What type of game and system you want your players to be in. Come up with your "hook", that thing that will get the players to come.

Think about history, why the land is like it is. What races came first. What civilizations make up the culture. How far back in time does the area go? Steal ideas from history and other places.

There are a number of World building site /books and old threads on the subject.

 

[Reynard]

Did the world evolve out of the story more, or the story out of the world? I guess another way to ask it is, did you find that your story was first in mind, and then you built up the world around that? Or while creating the world, did that give you further ideas about your story?

The broad strokes of the world were set in my mind/outline, but the details coalesced during the first draft phase. I knew that the ancient Augmented Reality Net would be the equivalent of the Ethereal Plane, for example, but the way that worked and looked came into focus when it appeared in the story.

 

[Atomoctba]

So interestingly, a secondary world I have envisioned (not the one I'm currently working on, but one that is also dear to my heart), is lifted heavily from 13th-15th century Nusantara, which is the ancient word for the Indo-Malay-Filipino Thalassocratic "empire" (for lack of a better word). It's a bit of an amalgamation of the Sri Vijayan and Majapahit empires, with neighboring empires also having their analogues of South East Asian empires. For example, the Champa of Vietnam, the Ayutthaya of Thailand, Angkor of Cambodia/Laos, and the Chola of India.

Coincidentally, just yesterday I was reading the Mythic Polynesia book for Mithras, lol.

 

[RareBreed]

Coincidentally, just yesterday I was reading the Mythic Polynesia book for Mithras, lol.

I saw this too and almost bought it, until I saw all the comments. Seems like the authors were drawing from some (possibly?) outdated and racist sources. I say "possibly" because there appears to be some claims (mostly by Maoris) of some of the information appearing in the book being racist and/or untrue.

I did briefly look at some of the criticisms, one of them from a blogger of New Zealand Maori descent. When I did a little digging, there's some contention about the claims of what happened to the Moriori people. It's been awhile since I read it the blog, but IIRC, there's a claim that it's a "myth" that the Maori people nearly made the Moriori people extinct. It reminded me a bit of the Turkish/Armenian issue, though pretty much all historians are going to side with the Armenians. I haven't done enough research to see whose claims are more valid with the Maori/Moriori peoples.

Oddly, I wanted to jog my memory and look up the comments on drivethru, but it looks like The Design Mechanism has taken Mythic Polynesia down, so it's no longer for sale. Interesting...

But back to Nusantara, GURPs has a Hot Spot PDF that covers the Sri Vijayan empire if you're curious.

 

[MNblockhead]

1. Catch the world-building bug!!!
2. Obsessively daydream about it!!
3. Start feverishly writing!
4. Update and impulse-buy cartography software.
5. Spend hours watching YouTube training videos and reading user forums..
6. Go crazy with map building...
7. Buy/subscribe to a campaign-management / world-building tool....
8. Spend hours watching YouTube training videos and reading user forums . . .
9. Go crazy with data entry -
10. Realize you suck as a cartographer but let your ego and love of your world convince you that it is worth spending a lot of money to hire a cartographer to make a professional world map you can print with a large-format printer and hang on your game room wall --
11. Realize your how large your world is and how hard it will be to create all the adventures and minor locations from scratch —-
12. Subscribe to ENWorld and scour DTRPG for plug-in content - - -
13. Get a new job that is very demanding and requires lots of travel ~
14. Realize it'll be challenging enough to find time to run the game much less find time to prep everything from scratch ~~
15. Read the Lazy Dungeon Master books and articles ~~~
16. Clutch pearls. NOT WITH MY BABY!
17. Buy a published setting and published adventure path and run that.

 

[Lanefan]

Interesting idea. It sounds like you do a lot of dynamic building based on player interest and feedback, which honestly, I hadn't even considered. I was thinking more of creating some major scaffolding first before even letting others know what the world was about. Which in hindsight, probably isn't a great idea since others may be totally uninterested and can't provide feedback.

Build the world first, then find out who's interested in playing in it.

The other - and IMO bigger - variable is which rules system you want to run. You could have the greatest setting ever but if the players don't want to play the game system you're running, you're hosed.

 

[gamerprinter]

Consider I'm in the middle of building a Wildspace system for Spelljammer supplement I will be publishing on the DM's Guild, that I'm wrapping up now. I decided I wanted 2 star systems with overlapping outer orbits, and inside a massive nebula. Last year, I published The Planet Builder supplement for Starfinder which allows the user to generate entire, scientifically viable star systems, though as a generic set of rules it's usable for any space based game. So I used those rules to generate the 2 star systems, and choosing on my own that the outer orbits overlap. The tables will generate planets and moons, describing the material it's made of, the core of the planet, the atmosphere, the weather, the amount of annual rainfall, whether there are simple and complex lifeforms, and if a sapient being, their technology, their energy source, even their politics.

I decide that I need several defined civilizations, including MezoAmerican human culture (Olmec, Aztec, Maya and Chacoan), a feudal Japanese civilization, a world of sahuagin, a colony of Drow, a Spelljamming Egyptian inspired race, and a dead planet with extinct civilization, and ruins of high technology. I've got a world of druids, and another pirates. Total is 11 inhabited planets and moons and 7 separate cultures. I then decide on megastructures and major plotlines that each culture fits within. Now this is intended to be an overview of the entire Wildspace system rather than a world by world focus as you'd expect for a setting guide. (Actually this is a custom Spelljammer ship book with full deck plans, and the Wildspace system as add-on content.)

Much of the nitty gritty, defined plots, known allies and enemies just kind of show up in my head as a focus on each world. I've got about 5 months in development of this setting, and plan to release it very soon, (this or next month). Designing setting is one of those activities I enjoy the most, and I do it all the time, and I sometimes publish those settings.

Here's a map of the binary star system with overlapping outer orbits inside the Phoenix Nebula...

While many of you will struggle developing your one world, imagine building for eleven, simultaneously!