How do I go about writing down my campaign info?

[GnomeWorks]

Read the question, fellow posters.

I have a problem. I have all this knowledge concerning my campaign world floating around in my head, and I want to write them down - but I'm not entirely sure how to. I don't know where to begin.

Anybody got any suggestions?

 

[UniversalMonster]

Modular

Just be modular.

Most people do the opposite of what I do and start big (the planet, the weather patterns, the geopolitical situation..) and work small (eventually getting around to individual npcs and towns and whatnot).

I start small and detail little things, local gods, towns, key magic items, NPCs, and eventually work bigger.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

As a published writer my first advice to anyone who wants to write is:

Write it down.

Until you write it down, its just a bunch of ideas and lots of folks have ideas. I would personally start with an outline because that helps me focus. I also don't tell people what essay I may be thinking about because I find that once I express something it becomes harder to write.

But the key thing is to get stuff down either on paper or on computer.

Good luck!

 

[GnomeWorks]

I have already thought up mostly everything I'm probably worried about, at the moment.

Thus, everything is there - just not on paper. I'm not sure how to begin writing it, or where to begin. Not so much trying to write a campaign setting from scratch, just trying to write down information on one that already exist, so that I don't have to rely on my memory for my world.

 

[Cloudgatherer]

I'm not the most experienced in such matter (been running my own campaign world for about 5 months), but I keep all my information in word documents separated by category. I have one for geography, gods, organizations, timeline, cosmology, magic, and NPCs in the world. I have a few other documents for house rules, feats, skills, new magic items, and other things that can be used across campaigns. It's a very simple format that gives the players a feel for the world. I put all the info on a website for my players to browse and keep it separated by category.

That's about all there is too it really. Just group together related ideas and start putting them down. You can always move them later (cut and paste is great, isn't it?).

 

[EOL]

I would suggest just picking one thing as a starting point, let's say it's some NPC, and start writing about him. Pretty soon you start writing about his family, so then you branch to those NPC's, well all these people have to live somewhere so next thing you know you're detailing a house and then a town. Sooner or later you going to come up with some sort of organization for compiling all this information, but if you just start somewhere then you'll start to see where you need organization. I would write first organize later though some people organize first and write later, it depends on your personality.

 

[Deadguy]

Organising the campaign

I do understand your problem, Gnomeworks. I had the same situation recently, where I had to sort out the details for an Ars Magica campaign that was floating around my head.

What I settled on was tackling it from several directions at once. I know that it sounds inefficient, but that way you are most likely to get your ideas down and sorted out, rather than just focussing on a single area. I prefer to use Word for writing, so I started creating documents with broad headings, things like

• House Rules (to accommodate those changes that you ideas may require)
• World Details (stuff like where important places are, what groups have power, etc)
• Local Details (if you know where the campaign will start then begin to fill in those local detials like geography, population, beasties, rumours, myths, etc.)
• Important NPCs (early on thse won't have any stats, just notes about what they are like and what they do)
• History (try and provide something of a backdrop of history, even in broad terms, to make the sequencing of events seem more real)
• Future Events (the seeds of adventures, and ideas for the direction the campaign might take)
• Concepts (a rather catch-all category, which I use just to jot down ideas which I can't fit elsewhere right now)

By having these various repositories, I find that my ideas can spark off one another and feed through into revised ideas, e.g. detailing a certain NPC gives me an idea for a group that he might belong to which has repercussions on the rest of the world and maybe history.

At the last, don't be afraid to change your ideas or ditch ones that don't turn out to work with the rest of the setting the way you expected it to.

On a pratical level, I print out these documents and put them in display books (the kind with the clear plastic pockets). This preserves them and also provides a convenient write-on/wipe-off surface, which I can take notes on to add to later versions (or agin abandon if I change my mind).

I hope this helps, GW.

 

[Dalenthas]

An informal outline will help, especially if you already have ideas. Come up with a new idea while writing the outline? Add it in! Stuck for what to start the outline on? Pick something, flip a coin if you have to. Or work in the order of the core books: start with races and classes, and move from there....

 

[Altalazar]

Just start writing stuff down.

You can organize later.

Or you can write down an outline and then fill it in as you have time.

I have a notebook with pages for each general region/town. I have some stuff I've typed in to a word document, but I leave lots of white space.

Then in my notebook, I jot down things as they happen during play. If they are new in town and find a blacksmith and one isn't listed, I make one up and write down what I've made up on the page for that town.

I have a ton of notes set up that way. I just flip to the page for the town and there it is.

One of these days, I'll go back and type in the information I now have on those pages, but I'll still leave blank space for more.

It isn't necessarily all that important for you to have everything written down - all you need is that which your players will directly interact with. Who is king in some neighboring nation is only vaguely important unless you have some major plotline going on.

The most important thing is to keep track of what locales have already been seen so you can find them again. That familiarity for the players also is a nice touch as it makes the world more alive. Finding the same grumpy smith (named 'Smith') each time they go to Sydney's Bluff is what the players remember - tons of world details they never interact with, even if written down in a massive volume, doesn't add much.

 

[GnomeWorks]

Thank you all for your assistance. I think that I know where to begin now, and hopefully will have everything written down in a few months. There is quite a bit of information here in my head, and some of it I can't even complete until I have a few books that aren't out yet or until I have them.

Again, thanks for all the help!