Designing worlds for fun and... well, fun

[Thotas]

Creating my own campaign world is something I've wanted to do for a long time, with way too many false starts since I don't DM that much (until recently) and have had a few multi-year gaps in opportunity to play at all. Since I did start DMing more extensively about two years ago, it's been a subject much on my mind. I've avoided having to create one so far by running "The Vault of Larin Karr" and "City of the Spider Queen" adapted to the same valley without reference to anything outside of them. The idea is to aquaint myself with the 3.5 rules from the DM's side of the screen from low to very high level before I really get going on that project. As I get closer and closer to the start up, these are my thoughts on the matter.

Maps are all important; I'm far too visual a person to operate without one, and a good map is just too cool anyway. I've seen many recommendations that you go with either a "top-down" or a "bottom-up" approach. I didn't like either one. Next time I'll try a "meet in the middle" instead. Got two signboards, 22 x 28 inches. One has a 1 degree of latitude per cm scale, the other has a 1 degree per 15 cm scale. Map 1 will be a broadstrokes thing that has large areas with names that sound cool even if I don't know what they refer to. Map 2 will be where things start out and I describe in much more detail. Areas off M2 get developed later in ways that seem to respond to player interests.

Developing a world with player input is important 'cause, it may be your world, but they have to live in it. I've tried to get players to tell me what they want in a world, but mostly I get a nod that it sounds like a good idea, but they seldom ever get around to providing any feedback. When they do, it's more often an idea for an adventure than for the back drop for an adventure. Anyone have any ideas on how to get players to tell you where they want it to go?

 

[amethal]

I think the first question to ask yourself when building a homebrew is "Why am I doing this?"

My campaign world is a labour of love. I add bits to remote areas whenever ideas strike me, consider and discard houseules and generally tinker with it.

This is all time which could be better spent (from the perspective of the players) designing dungeons and populating cities - but generally speaking there is a limit to how much time I am prepared to spend on those activities, because that's not where my interest lies.

Arguably, the only reason I am running games there is because the world was getting completely sterile and lifeless, and actually having a bunch of players running amok has generated more ideas in a year than I had in the previous 5 years.

My players know this, and accept it.

I do know the difference between a game and a novel. There are no DMPCs, no major "cool" characters with script immunity, and no city so beloved that I'll stop the PCs setting fire to it on a whim.

If anything I don't railroad them enough for their taste - they always like to know what they are "supposed" to be doing, no matter how many times I tell them that they can take a detour to the north pole if they want, or instead spend the first ten levels exploring the small town they started in.

I'm perfectly happy to let someone else DM, or to switch play to the Forgotten Realms or Eberron, but so far nobody has requested this.

 

[fusangite]

Because of the way I design worlds, the campaign story is, in many ways implicit in the physical structure of the world itself. For this reason, probably the first question I ask myself is: what is this story/world about? I think a real weakness in RPGs is that we don't think about questions of theme in a serious way because we are focused on the minutia of storyline or specific locales.

I also lay out basic principles of how the world is structured so that when people veer off into blank areas of the map, I can deduce and improvise these fairly easily, simply by referencing the general principles on which I designed the world. A downside to the way I work, of course, is that my worlds tend to reference real-world things much more than worlds built more laboriously/creatively from the ground up. So, my world structures tend to be much more in the JRR Tolkien/GRR Martin tradition than the HP Lovecraft/Ursula Leguin tradition.