Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mark" data-source="post: 182774" data-attributes="member: 5">I'd recommend a couple of books...The Creators by Daniel J Boorstin - Help me to build a "world perspective" into my campaigns and...The Dictionary of Imaginary Places compiled by Alberto Manguel and Gianni Guadalupi - Helps me to jump start my imagination while setting up encounter.While the former examines ideas and how they shape real world, the latter is a compilation of fantasy locations.  Part of what made Tolkein and Howard come to life for me weren't how rooted the settings were in reality but rather how solidly the fantastical was explained through the emotional eyes of the characters.  It felt as if these people existed and just so happen to exist in a world that wasn't real.When I put together a setting location I try to approach it from the perspective of an individual's reactions (how they would feel and what would they think) to that environment.I find that there are as many ways to tweak the rules and guidelines for creating a setting as there are alternative games to play (maybe more <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /> ).  Ask one role-playing historian how their money system works in their D&D game, and they'll explain that it could only exist as...  While another will tell you that to be true to a medieval system of government or society you can't use the same numbers in the DMG for creating your environment, you must actually use a system that...  All of that, while important to explore, isn't at the top of my priority list for creating a setting that "feels" like Tolkein, Howard or, in essence, "real".More important to me is to understand how an individual in my ficticious society would motivate themselves to achieve the things they desire.  I'd strongly urge that anyone using any historical basis for developing a campaign examine all materials with an individual's perspective in the fore-front of their mind.  Definitely do as much work as you can, or want, to lay down the systems by which society as a whole functions but focus on how a single person navigates those systems so that they can be presented during game play by the non-player characters that become the player character's conduit to that world.A coin is only a concept until you actually need one in your pocket. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

Verification