D&D 5E World-Building DMs

[mestewart3]

Ah good old straw man. I have seen very few people argue against a DM running a game where he crafts his own world with its own set of rules about theme/tone/character archetypes. What people do argue against is the DM who always runs the exact same world (often tolkienesque in nature) indefinitely as his excuse not to allow concepts that they personally dislike.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

To turn the question around: would you enjoy DMing a game in which both Martin and Tolkien were running PCs ?

Good question! I have no idea what they would be like as players though, so I can't really say.

Generally, what I like in players are those who are into role-playing their character believably (and if they are the method actor type, that's even better), and who are on-board with my world (whatever it might be in that case).

I think you are taking what is typically said in the wrong way. It isn't that people are saying that a DM applying strict parameters is inherently a selfish jerk, it's that people are saying that a DM applying strict parameters that their players would rather they not apply is a selfish jerk.
...
In my view, it all boils down to whether the DM is trying to make a gaming experience suited to their players - and some DMs refusing to even entertain that the player is asking for something "oddball" without malicious intent toward the campaign.

This brings up a good point, that I think might be important enough to add to the original post (let's see if I get to it). Does it make a difference whether the world was created for your group of players, or whether you are coming into a pre-existing world, perhaps with years of development behind it, perhaps with players coming and going?

I'm generally referring to the latter (which is where the examples of authors with developed worlds came from).

I find a lot of people do not understand the relation between world, story and characters.

I agree that the worlds of most novels are created differently than what I'm talking about. Novels are intrinsically and by definition about a story. I would assert that role-playing games are not necessarily about stories (nor are they necessarily games for that matter, but that's another topic).

It seems those who potentially have issues (most of which are qualified rather than automatic) are in the situation where the DM is creating a campaign specifically with the intention of running it for a defined group to which they are a part of. From that perspective, I agree that it is pretty heavy handed to make a game that isn't going to appeal to their players.

The types of world-building I'm primarily speaking of involve world-building distinct from any group of players. Even if you wanted to, you couldn't create the world specifically around players if you aren't sure who those players are going to be and you are planning on running the world extensively (and potentially with different groups). From that angle, it doesn't make a lot of sense for me if a player were to come into my Middle-Earth or Westeron (just an example, I actually have no familiarity with Game or Thrones) and ask to play a wookie. Maybe they just don't understand what my world is about. Generally, I try to make sure players are extremely clear on what the world parameters are before beginning the game. I also send out invitations to players, and I have more potential players than I can accommodate in a particular game. For that reason, I sometimes run short theme adventures with different characters and players not connected to the main campaign. Some of them are likely to be broader in scope, but they are generally set within my world (or at least multiverse) so there still aren't going to be wookies (for example; if Spelljamming is an appropriate element, I'm sure I could make up a wookiish type of race).

I've also never personally experience a DM who didn't allow some degree of collaboration in the stage of character creation (unless there was an important thematic reason). For instance, its generally considered a desirable contribution to have your players come up with some family members (NPC creation), and defining a home village in general terms is rarely frowned upon. Having your village ravaged by gnolls, on the other hand, may or may not be appropriate based on a number of other world-specific concerns.

It seems to me, then, that there are two specific additional things going on here:

1) Confusion as to whether the world is being created now and to be used with a specific group, vs whether it is a pre-created world designed to be used for a number of potential campaigns with a number of potential players.
2) Misinterpretation of how strict a world-building DM is likely to be regarding initial character situation in the world.

 

[Imaculata]

Would you enjoy playing a character in Westeros, DMed/GMed by George R. R. Martin? A character in Middle-Earth DMed/GMed by J. R. R. Tolkien?

Yes. However, my experience with such settings is not very positive. I would need to have a lot of confidence in the DM, and he should be able to refrain from referencing events from the books at every turn, and be willing to kill off important characters that do not actually die in the books. Because otherwise, what's the point?

I don't want to play in a campaign where invincible npc Gandalf saves the day every session. And I don't want to be part of a group that is following the trail of the npc Fellowship that actually matters.

Would you ask to play a cat-person or a wookie,

...yes... yes.... A furry campaign is a little weird, and not my cup of tea. But I would ask them to play what ever races exist in the setting. As for a Wookie, that is totally fine in a Star Wars campaign. However, I have the same objections to a Star Wars setting, as to the previously mentioned settings. And I also have the same bad experiences with it. I would not want to see an invincible Darth Vader pop up. If that guy shows his ugly head, the entire group will open fire on him from all directions, and he'd better die when we do. otherwise the DM should never have introduced him in the first place.

Plus, a Star Wars setting raises the All Jedi or No Jedi dilemma.

or a kender?

NO! No Kender! Never! Kill them with fire, and screw anyone that wants to play them too! If anyone in my group ever asked me if he/she could play a Kender, I would kick them from the group so hard, they would no longer be able to say the word Kender for years without painfully being reminded of their still bruised backside.

Kender are banned from all my campaigns ever, unless they are monsters.

Would you ask them to redefine who could and could not use magic?

I don't exactly understand the question here. Do you mean as a DM, or as a player?

I often make changes to existing classes and the powers they wield within my own home brew settings. I have no problem with redefining magic and who can use them. Or maybe in my setting magic is outlawed? But I would always inform my players of such things as they are making their character.

For example, for my pirate campaign the main theme was water. So I told my players that they could play any race or class, as long as it didn't completely negate the threat of water. So no races that could naturally breath underwater, or who could fly. I wanted them to always have to deal with water, either with magic, or with equipment. And I wanted them to be reliant on their ship.
I also asked them to think in the spirit of an aquatic campaign, and pick their spells accordingly. I made some changes to some class features, so they would be more suitable in my setting, while of course consulting my players for their opinion.

 

[Emerikol]

Personally, I have no interest in playing in a world that doesn't really exist prior to the players engaging it. I prefer DMs who put in the effort to craft a world that I will find interesting to play in as a character. Now, that doesn't mean every variety of world under the sun is of interest to me but that type of world is all I care to play in or DM.

My experience is the same as yours. If you are a DM that provides a really awesome well crafted world, you will have players knocking down your door. If I've been told once I've been told a hundred times that my world seems more real than many others. I attribute it to verisimilitude. Most of these make it up as you go worlds tend to start ringing hollow at some point.

Now having said that, I'm all for variety and of course play what you like with whom you like and in the way you like. I'm not arguing for anyone to think like me. I'm just saying that I can find the players easily to play the way I love to play and for me that is all that matters.

P.S. I don't play 5e D&D. I just figured your thread was broadly applicable.

 

[GreenTengu]

The types of world-building I'm primarily speaking of involve world-building distinct from any group of players. Even if you wanted to, you couldn't create the world specifically around players if you aren't sure who those players are going to be and you are planning on running the world extensively (and potentially with different groups). From that angle, it doesn't make a lot of sense for me if a player were to come into my Middle-Earth or Westeron (just an example, I actually have no familiarity with Game or Thrones) and ask to play a wookie. Maybe they just don't understand what my world is about. Generally, I try to make sure players are extremely clear on what the world parameters are before beginning the game. I also send out invitations to players, and I have more potential players than I can accommodate in a particular game. For that reason, I sometimes run short theme adventures with different characters and players not connected to the main campaign. Some of them are likely to be broader in scope, but they are generally set within my world (or at least multiverse) so there still aren't going to be wookies (for example; if Spelljamming is an appropriate element, I'm sure I could make up a wookiish type of race).

If your world exists separate from players and when you sit down with 5 other players, no aspects of it can bend-- you don't have a roleplaying game. I don't really know what you are doing, but ideally you should be open to altering the world the moment you sit down to play the game.

No one would actually want to play Game of Thrones as a roleplaying game. I mean unless you are with a particularly perverted and sexually open group and none of you mind your characters abruptly being bumped off at any random inopportune time without any chance of a replacement... and everyone was in on this whole "betray and kill each other" concept and your DM didn't mind splitting the party again and again and again.... well, its about the worst possible concept you could float for an RPG.

As for Lord of the Rings? Only things in there that were certain before the story was written was... nothing. The world exists as it exists only because the books exist. Had Tolkien been working with someone else on the story and that person insisted that one of the protagonists be a 7' tall sasquatch thing called a "wookie" then a 7' tall sasquatch thing easily could have been in the book and it wouldn't have been any more out of place than the Hobbits, Dwarfs, Elves, Orcs, Treants, Trolls, etc. and every person who came after him and basically copied his world for their own games probably would have copied it and it would have become ubiquitous and you would think it odd for a fantasy world not to have wookies. The proof is Orcs-- Orcs were never remotely a thing before Tolkien put them in his book nor were "elves" generally depicted in the way he depicted them and how that's about the only way they are depicted. You ask anyone in the 19ths or 20th century before the Hobbit was written and their description of an Elf would likely be more akin to a Hobbit or a Pixie.

These worlds are not created independent of the characters that exist in them. They are not forged in stone and then characters that fit precisely the predetermined molds attempted to be made be they compelling or not. And it is certainly worth noting that every single example you give about a world that must exist solely in one particular way and one cannot be allowed to play something a little off kilter comes from.... books and movies, which means they were worlds that were created specifically to incorporate the characters that were thought up for them. The only reason the world seems hostile to other concepts is simply that they were not in those original stories and those original stories seemed to detail the world enough to preclude their inclusion. On the other hand, if you have a world without a story, I guarantee it is not a particularly well-made world... which is precisely why you can't come up with an example.

Now, granted, I would be willing to concede that you can certainly make a world that is human-only should certainly be human-only, but that is part of conceptual theme. Once in the world someone can play something akin to Elves, it is just stubborn, bullheadedness that insists that means something akin to Orcs or Dwarfs or Catfolk or Dragonpeople or Wookie or whatever can't exist in the world nor be protagonists without disrupting the world.

So if I sit down at the table and you hand me a sheet and say "you can be one of these three things, and here are the strengths and weaknesses, the specialties and the precise personality traits that every single one of those three things in the entire world display and so you must be one of these three peoples that don't appeal to you as one of the two flavorless undynamic classes that each is allowed to be and you must display the character I have already determined that those people have because that's what I said the world is like and I will not have you disrupting my ideal narrative with your wrong choices!"

Well, unless you are compensating me as a paid actor or as a paid play tester, I am going to play at all, I am going to do so begrudgingly at best, keeping quiet and dragging my feet.

It is one thing if one is going to do that in a video game. I understand that in a video game there needs to be a precise script and there is only so much one can do in order to go off script. But then there is also a clear rewards system, actual challenge based on my hand-eye coordination skill rather than the random side the dice happen to land on and I get instant feedback from my actions and am encouraged to react to things quickly. That aside from actually getting to SEE things rather than going off your amateur descriptions and if I screw up, I can reload from my last save and try again.

So if I am doing a table-top unscripted game, then you'd better have me hooked by being able to do something i couldn't do in a computer game and that certainly starts at character creation, but in general means valuing the creative input I and everyone else at the table contributes and incorporating it into the narrative.

 

[Phantarch]

See, that "I WANT TO PLAY WHAT I WANT AND YOU HAVE TO LET ME!" attitude comes off as extremely petulant and selfish to me. A DM has to put in 100 times the amount of work into running a campaign than a player has to put into creating and playing a character. Players should be appreciative of the work a DM has to do and realize that the DM is supposed to have fun, too. Forcing a DM to include your hairball character that has no place in his world is FAR more rude than a DM laying out the parameters of what he allows.

Even the standard rules of D&D are restrictive. There are accepted PC races, and a DM has NO obligation to let you play a half-fiend troll with laser eyes just because you want to. The rules ALLOW for a DM to make an exception if they want to, but virtually every aspect of the rules has the caveat of "Check with your DM". You can't even use feats without DM permission.

Apart from the Player/DM dynamic, there is also the Player to Player dynamic. If your character concept chafes with what the rest of the group is playing, it's rude to the other players to insist that a campaign accept your concept. I'm reminded of my childhood when my brother and cousins would go out and pretend like we were in a fantasy and play at swords and magic and such. I had one cousin who always insisted on being a robot. Even as a little kid, it was downright annoying. It didn't fit with the shared story the rest of us were trying to create, and cheapened the experience for everyone else. All fiction relies on the temporary suspension of disbelief, and jarring, out-of-place characters disrupt that suspension, and make it less enjoyable for all.

The work of both the DM and players is to find a cohesive, happy medium where everyone can immerse themselves in a world and story that works for everyone. And, generally, I think the people who are putting in the least work should be the most flexible.

 

[Mercule]

I consider myself a "world-building DM". I've used Greyhawk, and I'm currently using Eberron. I've definitely done the whole "implied setting" thing. I think I even ran Dark Sun for a few sessions. But, the vast majority of my 30+ years of gaming has been in settings I've created more or less from whole cloth (game stats not withstanding).

A lot of my "restrictions" have come from philosophic points. One of which is that too many spices spoil the soup. I don't really have anything against any (most) of the 70 flavors of elves that were presented in various 1E and 2E resources. I just didn't see much point in specifically adding aquatic, wood, wild, high, grey, valley, arctic, sand, aerial, dark, etc. elves. I used high and grey to separate the fey elves and the more common (all things are relative) elves. Gnomes filled in the role of the "little people" and I cut halflings based on them not really having a distinct racial identity or purpose -- only one PC halfling ever got played and he was easy enough to recon into a short elf. I even started paring down the list of "monstrous" humanoids to be meaningful. Orcs were a bit like neanderthal savages; they could be reasoned with, but it was hard and they were prone to use violence first. Goblinoids were as intelligent as humans and ended up looking a lot like Eberron goblinoids, except that I had one group that ended up converting to the worship of a LG deity and had a reasonable number of paladins. Gnolls were truly feral scavengers who lived off the social carrion of other races, even going to the point of worshiping dead gods (which played very nicely with Vestiges from the 3.5E Tome of Magic). Giants of various stripes still existed, but only ogres were common. The point being that each PC or monster "race" had a niche. I didn't explicitly exclude most things (halflings aside), but it would have taken some convincing to "discover" another race rather than just using one of the existing races -- really, why can't you play that halfling concept as a gnome, elf, or human; no really? I did add a few things in, though. For example I cribbed the trollborn from the 2E Vikings book to allow for a large and/or monstrous PC who was able to cast magic.

If a player had an idea for a character that really needed a different race, I would definitely have worked with them. The concept would have had to fit within parameters I was comfortable with in a game. I dislike merging sci-fi and magic, so there was no room for a character who shot laser beams or anything like that (I've softened a bit). I also really hate pun names or things that continually break the fourth wall. Those are just non-negotiable in a game I GM (or play in), not because they're inherently badwrongfun, but because I dislike the flavor enough to not want to be at the table. I don't read books with certain flavors, either (Piers Anthony does nothing for me, but I'm glad some folks enjoy them).

The above all seem like good reasons to limit options, but weren't necessarily "world-building" as much as table rules. Things like allowing gnomes but not halflings had some momentum based on history, but could have easily gone the another way.

Now, what have I learned over the years?

My grand home-brew started out as an implied setting based on BECMI and 1E rules and flavor nuggets. It was built around the players I had in junior high and high school. There was no name for the world, initially. The first couple campaigns I ran were set in a nondescript area that allowed me to run a couple modules and build my own. It took on life based on the actions of the players. My second "batch" of campaigns was similar, but eventually was placed in a different part of the same world and a different, earlier time. I discovered the synergy of being able to use shared place names, major events, and the above paring of options for a consistent experience. The best part was that each new campaign could include references to stuff from the last one, so that natural retelling of previous adventures that happens with gamers could be worked into the story. The players got to feel like their characters could make permanent, important changes to the world -- they had bragging rights to founding a kingdom, even if the next game advanced the timeline past the character's death.

This fun continued to the next group, in college. Even though there were no shared players, the fact that there were actual answers to some questions really helped things come to life. They also knew their stories would get passed on to the next group. Those stories took place in areas that bordered on the earlier areas, but didn't conflict with them.

The thing is, there are only so many "new areas" you can have before the world gets too big to be a single thing. But, if you don't add new areas, the next group doesn't have a chance to make their mark without tearing down what came before. Also, tastes change over decades of gaming. What was super cool in my teens and early twenties now looks cheesy and hackneyed; even if I still remember the games fondly, I don't always want to have the goofiness on center stage. I finally sunset my world after 20+ years about the time 3.5 came out, though it took about five years to tell that tale. Now we're doing Eberron while we get used to 5E.

I'm looking forward to building a new home-brew world and doing it around my current players. That's the best way to do it. A world can last through a few campaigns, but it doesn't work well to cling to it too tightly. The DM has a lot of say in what it looks like -- and that's totally right and proper, even necessary. But, the world needs to fit the needs of the players, too. I'm afraid I'm going to have to include halflings in my new world, since one of the guys is a fan. I'll live.

I still won't allow kender, tinker gnomes, or other comic relief races, though. And, no crashed space ships or laser guns, either. I don't want to participate in a game with those. Sometimes what's missing is as important as what's present.

 

[Shasarak]

See, that "I WANT TO PLAY WHAT I WANT AND YOU HAVE TO LET ME!" attitude comes off as extremely petulant and selfish to me. A DM has to put in 100 times the amount of work into running a campaign than a player has to put into creating and playing a character.

Yes, it does seem to be incredibly selfish until you realise that literally 100% of what a Player has control over is their character which makes what that character is the only real thing of importance to a Player.

 

[GreenTengu]

See, that "I WANT TO PLAY WHAT I WANT AND YOU HAVE TO LET ME!" attitude comes off as extremely petulant and selfish to me. A DM has to put in 100 times the amount of work into running a campaign than a player has to put into creating and playing a character. Players should be appreciative of the work a DM has to do and realize that the DM is supposed to have fun, too. Forcing a DM to include your hairball character that has no place in his world is FAR more rude than a DM laying out the parameters of what he allows.

Even the standard rules of D&D are restrictive. There are accepted PC races, and a DM has NO obligation to let you play a half-fiend troll with laser eyes just because you want to. The rules ALLOW for a DM to make an exception if they want to, but virtually every aspect of the rules has the caveat of "Check with your DM". You can't even use feats without DM permission.

Apart from the Player/DM dynamic, there is also the Player to Player dynamic. If your character concept chafes with what the rest of the group is playing, it's rude to the other players to insist that a campaign accept your concept. I'm reminded of my childhood when my brother and cousins would go out and pretend like we were in a fantasy and play at swords and magic and such. I had one cousin who always insisted on being a robot. Even as a little kid, it was downright annoying. It didn't fit with the shared story the rest of us were trying to create, and cheapened the experience for everyone else. All fiction relies on the temporary suspension of disbelief, and jarring, out-of-place characters disrupt that suspension, and make it less enjoyable for all.

The work of both the DM and players is to find a cohesive, happy medium where everyone can immerse themselves in a world and story that works for everyone. And, generally, I think the people who are putting in the least work should be the most flexible.

Even your extreme examples seem like things that could be negotiated down and compromised into something workable. A half-field troll with laser eyes is obviously an outlier and implies a lot of mechanical edges. Furthermore, this character is obviously an outlier. I think the most reasonable way to approach this would be to note that for mechanical reasons it is important characters be medium sized and they can't have fast healing. So maybe this means there is an off-shoot of Trolls that are smaller than the typical ones in the world. Tieflings already cover the concept of Half-Fiend, so that already exists in the game. Let's say we give this thing the stats of a Tiefling with the major attribute switched to Strength if it is going to be in a class that would grant the laser eyes OR make it mechanically a Dragonborn and say the "breath weapon" is coming from the eyes.

Fundamentally, the concept sounds like it is both supposed to be a very unique occurrence and something that is going to be incredibly frightening among normal civilized folk. Best ways to introduce this character would either as a "pet" of some wizard NPC or PC or, alternatively, maybe the PCs start the game captured by a wizard and he is a horrific experiment the wizard has cooked up and can escape with the PCs and post that point they will need to come up with creative ways of keeping him hidden.

The robot? Already done. It is called a "Warforged" or, just more generally, a "golem". The world concept is fantasy swords and sorcery, so instead of being operated by electronics, it is all steam-punk mechanics and/or magic.


Generally speaking if your world has people with pointy ears who live to a thousand years and never sleep yet never learn anything are "few in number" but in fact found literally everywhere in the hundreds to the point that no one is surprised to see them and have the best... everything... and are adored by literally every good-aligned creature in the world, particularly the fay... and even have their own unique class that only they can be... Oh, and despite being a super long lived, slow breeding race, have somehow evolved to have way more distinct subraces and cultures than anyone else, each of whom just happens to be super specialized for every class in the game.

Frankly, there is little that is less reasonable. And you have accepted that concept as necessary core and incorporated it into literally every single world the D&D system comes to.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

I find custom built worlds a lot more interesting and fun than kitchen-sink standard D&D and am happy to play in them and abide by whatever the restrictions are.