D&D 5E Advice on Setting Creation

[Mercurius]

There are two basic approaches, I think, with regards to this, with accompanying assumptions and schools of thinking. One is world-building and the other setting design. While the two aren't mutually exclusive, they do have rather different goals and practices involve. The latter is about designing a setting solely for the purpose of gaming (or writing) in, while the former is building a world as its own thing - for the pure pleasure of it - that may or may not be used in an actual game session or story.

Most people incorporate elements of both, although I have found that there is a tendency among 'setting design purists' to scoff at world-builders, because of the tendency to get lost in minutiae. This is exemplified in a well-known essay by author M John Harrison, who described world-building as "dull...technically unnecessary...[and]...the great clomping foot of nerdism." Harrison, despite the (rather funny) vitriol, had an important point: that most world-building is unnecessary to the actual story (or game) and can be both endlessing distracting from the real work of writing (or campaign design), but also can have a negative influence on the story (or game) if it leads to over-indulgence in exposition.

But if you want to build a world for its own sake and use it for gaming (or writing), then the minutiae is a part of the process. Just make sure you're clear about your goal, which can shift. You might find yourself starting with the sole purpose of campaign design, but then love the process of world-building that it becomes a hobby in and of itself. If that is the case, enjoy--but you might need to bifurcate your process a bit. Sprinkle in elements of the world-building into your game to provide context and depth, but don't deluge your players.

Either way, I like @Lanefan 's suggestion of starting with a map. It gives you an entrance point and, better yet, a visual one. And don't think too hard about it at first--just draw and see what happens. Let the world build itself.

I could go on and on about this subject, but will try to draw this to a close with two specific recommendations for each paradigm.

For world-building, I think it is useful to play with the idea that you aren't building the world, but discovering it and recording what you are discovering. Imagine that you have a magical wormhole into an actually existing world and you get to send an astral eye around to explore. What do you see? How does the world tell its own story? This perspective is useful because it lends itself to a kind of internal consistency and vitality that sometimes gets lost in a more 'constructional' approach. Make sure you have a notebook or whatever ideas come to you. Write them down. Let the world evolve organically.

For campaign setting design, start small and build outward. Look at other starting locations (e.g. Phandalin) and then create your own starting location. For D&D, I'd recommend a village or small town with wilderness around - the old classic. Make sure you have a forest or two, mountains, hills, marshes, maybe some moors, and then place various locations of interest: ruins, megaliths, an abandoned town, etc. Think about people that live in the area--both NPCs in the town, but also the different tribes and humanoids and where they live. In other words, create a lot of detail, but for a very small area. Imagine the world beyond the region, but only sketch it out in broad-strokes: is there a nearby kingdom or large city? Where's the ocean? Etc.

As I said, these two approaches aren't mutually exclusive and, in my view, go best together. Your campaign setting will have more depth if you do the background world-building, and your world-building will have an anchor of focus if you do the setting design. Most of all: enjoy!

 

[Mercurius]

One more thing to add to the setting design approach. You only need to be a step or two ahead of the players. You can take your time with the larger world, and let the process be (again) organic. But as far as the actual game is concerned, a level of detail is only necessary in the region the PCs are exploring. You do have to account for them going "off the map," but not by much. If they say, "We want to go to Bigtown 100 miles away," you can put role-play those 100 miles over a session or two and then design Bigtown between sessions. If you don't have time or get stuck, just grab a city from another world and rename it. Neverwinter becomes Bigtown. (OK, not 'Bigtown' as that's a silly name, but you take my meaning).

 

[DaLich]

I’m going to sales pitch here. Check out my channel at YouTube.com/allthingslich

I’ve gone over campaigns, worldbuilding, adventure design, and planning quite a bit. Spend some time browsing and I’m confident you’ll find something useful.

Now for practical - do this, step by step sort of stuff:
1. Find players. Don’t commit or promise anything (a setting,etc.) other than, “I‘ll DM. Do you guys want to play?”
Finding players put you on track to answer the single most important question - “what sort of world/style/game do your players want to play in?” Dark and gritty? Heavy skirmish level combat? War-sized combat, demon invasions, WoW cinematic stuff? Intrigue, heavy Ravnica guild politics stuff?

If you can’t embrace the idea that the game should be about your players, you shouldn’t be the DM. If you want your world, your way, write a book - that way no one can come in and muck up your places or characters.

2. Make the game about the players. See #1

3. Plan 1 session at a time. Let’s say you play for 6hrs. Focus on what will get you through 6hrs of play. A good fight might soak up 1hr. Ok, what’s next? A mystery and investigative/skill stuff might soak up 20 mins. PC introductions and a quick blurb on the current state of the place takes up what? 30 mins? Regardless of what you fill it with, by thinking in blocks to fill up the session, you’re on the right track.

4. The great Elmore Leonard said something along the lines of, “don’t write the stuff that people skip.” So don’t plan the stuff that PCs skip. Starting out, it is important to detail the food they are eating, the cost of shield repair, the type of wood the inn is built of and the rumor of the dark thing in the woods that’s stealing cattle. It is not at all important to detail the events that led to the assassination of King Gorlan Griffonbane. Nor do you need the 3,000 years of history that speak of the gods influence on the volcano that is way up in the north.

Are your PCs in the north? Then who cares about the volcano? Is your PC cleric having a hard time with domains and faith and determining a spell casting focus? If not, who cares about your 19 pages of pantheon. Is your group sent to investigate the kings assassination? If not, who cares about your king and flowchart of his lineage and the 19 pages of civil war that have resulted from the fractured kingdom and throne.

I’ve rambled enough. I know you like to plan, and this well and good, but plan what will happen during the session, not what might happen 4 sessions down the road. By sticking with tonight’s session, you allow the PCs actions and the worlds reaction to those actions to create your next session.

Worldbuilding and Campaign building are the same. As is anything else in life. 1 minute, 1 hour, 1 day at a time. There is no such thing as planning a great campaign. You RUN great sessions. Stack them one on top of the other for 2 years, and you have a great campaign.

 

[Mercurius]

Worldbuilding and Campaign building are the same. As is anything else in life. 1 minute, 1 hour, 1 day at a time. There is no such thing as planning a great campaign. You RUN great sessions. Stack them one on top of the other for 2 years, and you have a great campaign.

Lots of good advice in your post, including this paragraph, but I disagree with the bolded part. See my post a couple before yours where I differentiate between world-building and campaign setting design. You are, as far as I can tell, taking the approach of "setting design trumps all," which makes sense to a certain point. But I'll re-iterate two points from my longer post:

1) World-building is rewarding for its own sake. There is absolutely nothing wrong with spending hours upon hours building the world, even if it never comes into a session. I imagine you wouldn't disagree with this at face value, as long as the DM doesn't neglect the needs of the game, but your post also implies that unless world-building directly impacts the current session, there's no point to it (e.g. "who cares..."). Well, the DM might care, and the players also might care, considering...

2) World-building deepens the campaign setting and improves play experience (if done well and not flooded over the players all the time). It brings the setting alive. If the world-building is paper-thin, there's a greater risk that the players will realize that the 'saloon' is just a painted cardboard set-piece with no depth, which breaks immersion. This can partially be ameliorated by skillful DMing, but it doesn't hurt to do some of the work up-front.

Again, I'm not saying detail every little corner of the world before beginning. I'm saying, create a detailed starting area with plenty of flavorful hooks, locations, and NPCs to interact with, and continue world-building behind the scenes, to deepen the world.

Now if a specific DM doesn't enjoy world-building, you can still take the build-as-you-go approach, or you can do what a lot of folks do, which is use a pre-published setting. I've mostly been a DM over the years, but when I'm a player I'd much rather the DM use a pre-published setting than a paper-thin hombrew that they're creating ad hoc, if those are the only choices. Of course, even better is a homebrew setting that the DM has spent a lot of time on as a passion project.

As you say, though, a lot depends upon the specific group of players. Some just want to show up and kill things. Some, like myself, enjoy getting to know the world, discovering lore, history, etc.

In the end, there are many ways to go about this, including build-as-you-play. But I do take issue with the attitude of "don't bother world-building unless it shows up in game play." As I've explicated in several posts, there are a variety of good refutations of this perspective. It really comes down to execution.

 

[Lanefan]

I’m going to sales pitch here. Check out my channel at YouTube.com/allthingslich

I’ve gone over campaigns, worldbuilding, adventure design, and planning quite a bit. Spend some time browsing and I’m confident you’ll find something useful.

Now for practical - do this, step by step sort of stuff:
1. Find players. Don’t commit or promise anything (a setting,etc.) other than, “I‘ll DM. Do you guys want to play?”
Finding players put you on track to answer the single most important question - “what sort of world/style/game do your players want to play in?” Dark and gritty? Heavy skirmish level combat? War-sized combat, demon invasions, WoW cinematic stuff? Intrigue, heavy Ravnica guild politics stuff?

I'll disagree with all of this.

Decide what type of campaign you're intending to run first, then pitch it as such. "Guys, I've got a campaign in mind - Greek-based culture to start with, could be marine-based or political or standard dungeons, wherever it ends up going or you end up taking it. Anything goes for alignment. Standard 1e races and classes but your starting characters have to be Human. Slow advancement. <evil voice> Prepare to die."

Doing it that way means you're more likely to get players who are interested in what you want to run, thus avoiding the risk of running something you don't care about (a DM who doesn't care about her game usually sees it end quickly, and not well)

If you can’t embrace the idea that the game should be about your players, you shouldn’t be the DM. If you want your world, your way, write a book - that way no one can come in and muck up your places or characters.

>shrug< Guess I've been doing it wrong since 1984, then.

The setting is mine to design. It's up to the players what they then do with it...or to it.

Plan 1 session at a time. Let’s say you play for 6hrs. Focus on what will get you through 6hrs of play. A good fight might soak up 1hr. Ok, what’s next? A mystery and investigative/skill stuff might soak up 20 mins. PC introductions and a quick blurb on the current state of the place takes up what? 30 mins? Regardless of what you fill it with, by thinking in blocks to fill up the session, you’re on the right track.

4. The great Elmore Leonard said something along the lines of, “don’t write the stuff that people skip.” So don’t plan the stuff that PCs skip. Starting out, it is important to detail the food they are eating, the cost of shield repair, the type of wood the inn is built of and the rumor of the dark thing in the woods that’s stealing cattle. It is not at all important to detail the events that led to the assassination of King Gorlan Griffonbane. Nor do you need the 3,000 years of history that speak of the gods influence on the volcano that is way up in the north.

Again I disagree. You need ALL of that, as even though you might never use it there's a reasonable chance that you might, and in order to fit it in seamlessly you want to be able to reference it at any time it ever becomes relevant.

For example, if you've got an adventure in mind that somehow touches on King Gorlon's assassination you'd better be ready for when (not if) the PCs do some historical research as to what happened. Doesn't have to be much - two or three lines of scratch notes will probably do.

The absolute last thing you want is to come up with some neat element later (e.g. the gods' influence on the northern volcano) and then have to retcon that yes the PCs would have heard about this two years ago when they specifically asked about what's of interest up north.

Did I mention, retcons like this are the absolute worst form of DMing evil.

And this wants to be done before players are even a consideration. Doesn't have to be in massive detail on paper, just reminders for yourself that this element is out there and what makes it tick. Even just a note somewhere "[names of specific deities] put Everfire volcano where it is to bury Demon Lord 2500 years ago" should be enough to remind you what you had in mind.

Are your PCs in the north? Then who cares about the volcano? Is your PC cleric having a hard time with domains and faith and determining a spell casting focus? If not, who cares about your 19 pages of pantheon. Is your group sent to investigate the kings assassination? If not, who cares about your king and flowchart of his lineage and the 19 pages of civil war that have resulted from the fractured kingdom and throne.

Who cares? You-as-DM care. You'll need those pantheons for working out NPC Clerics and opposition deities or divine forces. You'll need the civil war notes as soon as the party start travelling and trying to cross borders that might not have been there a year ago. You'll need the volcano if you want to reference it somewhere else e.g. in a prophecy. You'll need the royal lineage as soon as your party find some coins and want to know how old they are by whose head is on them.

Need I go on?

I’ve rambled enough. I know you like to plan, and this well and good, but plan what will happen during the session, not what might happen 4 sessions down the road. By sticking with tonight’s session, you allow the PCs actions and the worlds reaction to those actions to create your next session.

4 sessions down the road?

Hell, I plan for where they might be hundreds of sessions down the road! But none of it;'s carved in stone, those plans get adjusted over time as things develop. I do it this way because adjusting is much easier than starting from nothing, and once play begins your prep time will want to go into that week's session as opposed to background stuff.

Worldbuilding and Campaign building are the same. As is anything else in life. 1 minute, 1 hour, 1 day at a time. There is no such thing as planning a great campaign. You RUN great sessions. Stack them one on top of the other for 2 years, and you have a great campaign.

And in order to run those great sessions there needs to be a solid foundation of a setting underneath them before any of them are run.

I'm not sure if this would work for everyone but my recommendation would be to decide roughly how long you expect the campaign to run overall (e.g. 1/2 a year, or a year, or 5 years) and then spend AT LEAST ten percent of that length of time in preplanning, setting design, and rules tweaking before inviting anyone to play.

 

[DaLich]

As to Lanefan and Mercurius, thank you for your replies to my words. In total, we'll just agree to disagree. This was the driving force behind my words.

What I have found is that many of these sources have GREAT ideas and advice. Unfortunately what they don't do very well is define the exact steps to creating a setting and what items I absolutely need to create before the game begins. It could also be that I have so much information and differing methods that it is getting in my way of actually moving forward.

The back and forth between two (or three) old folks that have been at it for 30+ years is of no value to the OP. I won't derail the thread further so as said, we'll just agree to disagree, especially Lanefan.

Back to Ramlatus:
First off, I apologize for not saying that my way isn't the right way, best way, or only way. No one's is. Each group must figure out what fits their table best - especially you, which is why it is paramount to find the players first. Sure you can have some semblance of the style of game you'd like to run, but give players as much input into the world you are playing as you are. On that note -

IT IS about your players. Anyone that says otherwise is in my opinion, doing it wrong. There is a massive difference between writing a fantasy novel and being a game master. There is a massive difference between writing a setting for your own pleasure and as a creative outlet and being a game master. There is a massive difference between writing an adventure/campaign/setting for your table and intending to write it as a published piece. Creatively, if you can't toss your "baby" to the side because a player wants to do their thing first, then you have issues of confidence and selfishness - AT THE TABLE. The same is not said for your worldbuilding, setting, adventure, novel, other creative efforts.

While those that disagreed with me have accurate and valid points, the order is muddled. What was offered is exactly what you don't need AT THE MOMENT. You were given additional advice and great ideas. You were given loads of information - again, all valid and accurate. You do want to write the history, create a world map, create backstory, detail the gods, kingdoms, factions, and groups. You do want 10,000 years of history - or maybe you don't. Point is, you do want all of the stuff you mentioned, but that's stuff for the back of the book.

Assuming the writing is equal in quality, a 300 page setting book has more to offer than an 80 page one. Write your 300 page book. It's a more fleshed out setting. My initial post was simply to say for now, at this time, ignore the 1st 270 pages of that book. Write the 1st 30 pages only. If you can't get through those 1st 30 pages, in order, you have no business writing the other 270 pages - not at that time.

That is how you stay out of the great idea/great advice realm wormhole. That is how you stay out of the back and forth, who is right, who is wrong, tons of information but lack of, "what do I do next?" loop of questions.

Start smaller than you think. Shrink your dreams. Put a barrier on your ambition. Plan 6 hours at a time.

As a creative individual, one of the most difficult things to do is detach yourself from your "baby". Your grand idea, and the setting that will change the hobby forever. That naughty word stews in your mind for 15 years and remains as just an idea. Unfinished ideas are worth close to nothing in this world. It's the step by step and figure out what's on page 1 that'll get you there.

 

[GlassJaw]

DaLich said:


I’ve gone over campaigns, worldbuilding, adventure design, and planning quite a bit. Spend some time browsing and I’m confident you’ll find something useful.

Now for practical - do this, step by step sort of stuff:
1. Find players. Don’t commit or promise anything (a setting,etc.) other than, “I‘ll DM. Do you guys want to play?”
Finding players put you on track to answer the single most important question - “what sort of world/style/game do your players want to play in?” Dark and gritty? Heavy skirmish level combat? War-sized combat, demon invasions, WoW cinematic stuff? Intrigue, heavy Ravnica guild politics stuff?

I'll disagree with all of this.

Decide what type of campaign you're intending to run first, then pitch it as such. "Guys, I've got a campaign in mind - Greek-based culture to start with, could be marine-based or political or standard dungeons, wherever it ends up going or you end up taking it. Anything goes for alignment. Standard 1e races and classes but your starting characters have to be Human. Slow advancement. <evil voice> Prepare to die."

Doing it that way means you're more likely to get players who are interested in what you want to run, thus avoiding the risk of running something you don't care about (a DM who doesn't care about her game usually sees it end quickly, and not well)


If you can’t embrace the idea that the game should be about your players, you shouldn’t be the DM. If you want your world, your way, write a book - that way no one can come in and muck up your places or characters.

shrug< Guess I've been doing it wrong since 1984, then.

The setting is mine to design. It's up to the players what they then do with it...or to it.

To be a voice of (some) reason, I honestly think everyone is generally on the same page, just wording it slightly differently.

I don't think anyone is advocating you force your setting/campaign on a group of players. At the same time, the DM should run what he wants to run, because if he doesn't, the campaign won't be fun for anyone.

Now the degree to which the campaign is collaborative varies from group to group of course. I like the idea of the DM pitching his campaign concept to the group and going from there. Even better if the DM has a few ideas and works with the group to decide what they want.

As far as world-building vs campaign-building go, it's helpful to note that while world-building is important, it's not what is going to translate to "fun" at the table. It certainly can be fun for the DM - and a DM should do it if they enjoy it. But it's not a requirement for running a successful and fun campaign.

I think that's a trap new DMs fall into. They are tough lessons to learn: whether it's frustration after spending tons of hours on creating things that never sees the light of day because players aren't on board or feeling overwhelmed that you have to create everything before starting a campaign.

Knowing what to focus on is sometimes more important than the content itself.

 

[DaLich]

To be a voice of (some) reason, I honestly think everyone is generally on the same page, just wording it slightly differently.

I agree.

Knowing what to focus on is sometimes more important than the content itself.

Very well said. That's an elegant statement that is a huge reason for my statements of, "one session at a time", and "plan for 6hrs."

There are so many moving parts in something the scale of an entire setting so I try and narrow the focus - sort of the key to getting things done, though not always as fun. He needs some meat with salt and pepper to bring to the table. Too much spice and the flavor gets muddled.

 

[Laurefindel]

Long posts are too long so in a nutshell: I prefer the Zoom-in and Enhance approach.

It needs to start with a general concept; that one thing that bring the whole setting together. At this point it can be vague, plagiarised, or taken from a creative exercise (e.g. An Eastern-Europe feel. Dark Sun, but in a forest. A a world with none of the PHB races). Remember it's a setting; not necessarily a whole world/galaxy/universe.

Then zoom-in and enhance. Take an aspect of that concept and elaborate.

Then zoom-in and enhance. Take that aspect and deconstruct it in concrete elements in the game

Then zoom-in and enhance. Take one element and make a rough sketch of what that means for players

Then go back to the big picture, and zoom-in and enhance...

 

[Quickleaf]

@Ramlatus Building off the excellent advice that's already been shared, I can add that the more you can inhabit your world through the eyes of its people, the more it will come alive for your players.

One way I do that is by composing lists of Five Things a <Kingdom Inhabitant Name> Would Know (e.g. Five Things a Suleistarni Would Know).

Another way I do that is with bits of short fiction – usually but not always in first person – to capture how a certain person experiences a place in the world.