How do you build your campaign worlds?

[BSF]

Heh, some good reading here. Too bad I am at work. I'll mine this one for ideas later though!

My most recent attempts to design a game world are still somewhat haphazard. One thing I started with was trying to figure out why my world is different.

So, I created new gods. Then I took some of the races and replaced/modified them a bit. Then I designed a PrC or two that are specific to my new gods. Then I started thinking about the map. I started that big. I think the initial area I mapped out was roughly 800 x 1000 miles. Enough so that the players could easily see that they couldn't explore all of it and that journeys to some of the far off areas would take a little while. Then I kept bringing in new aspects as I needed them.

As far as the campaign went, I started with a brief concept and ran with it. So long as I am a few steps ahead of the players, I don't get into trouble. I just keep my mind working on story seeds and dangle the bait out there for the players. When they see something they like, I flesh it out.

For my next campaign, I am starting with a very firm concept of where the characters are. I want a firm baseline and it isn't a very glamorous starting point. I want to offer more than just gold, gems, and fancy toys for treasure. I want to offer political favor, influence, land, all sorts of things as treasure.

 

[KARNOK]

It all depends on your players. If they like to be led by the nose like mine do then there is no reason to come up with any material outside of the adventure you plan to do. You can always go with a generic pantheon based on alignments until you come up with something you like. Now if your players really like to poke and prod at the world and roam about with teleportation and such, then you have to go through all the trouble of designing the world from big points to little points. Again depending on what the players like to do you may be able to get by just by having the basic kingdoms and lands laid out with generic themes to them as you usually only need detail in the areas directly relating to the story. Final word, players don't really care about the details outside of whats going on as long you lead them to believe that there ARE things going on. Once its assumed that the world is alive with all kinds of things to do, they usually just go with the story. You can develope things as you go.

 

[Pants]

Well, I've built my various campaign worlds very differently.

I had a haphazardly built 2ed world that had some history, no real map, and just lots of stuff, most of it making no sense at all.

My first 3ed campaign started with the vaguest of ideas. The PC's were captured, experimented on, and then woke up and broke free from a strange lab. They then emerged into a fairly large city and I built things from there. One of the PC's played a Half Elven Ranger and his favored enemy was Elves (his human mother was raped by an Elvish soldier.. yadda, yadda). So, building on that idea, I made an evil Elven empire that was warring with a human empire. It pretty much became the focus of the campaign. I expanded on it quite a bit, but I eventually retired it after a year or so.

My current campaign started with me drawing a map. Thats it. As the PC's traveled to places, I'd flesh it out. The only thing I had prepared beforehand was a single city and that was it. The campaign eventually grew to have very many different lands, cultures, races, and a fairly varied history. I'm quite proud of it actually, even if it is essentially Greyhawk or FR in style.

 

[Desdichado]

I actually prefer a combination of top down and bottom up. I like to have some "high level" concepts and a generic overview of the setting from a top down approach, but I only detail stuff from a very bottom up approach to keep from overwhelming myself with tedious detail as I develop the campaign. In most respects, you actually need most of that information in order to create characters and play the game, though. I'm in favor of not creating more than I have to (or am inspired to at any given time.)

 

[kigmatzomat]

I tend to keep world and plot design separate.

I generally have two or three world ideas rattling around in the back of my head waiting to see the light of day. Some of them, while great backdrops, are too dysfunctional to handle a long-running game and only get used for pick-up games. Others are too rich in story to "waste" on hack'n slash players.

Plots tend to be somewhat reflective of the kind of players. Hack'n slash get immediate wars, strife, or monster migrations. Heavy-duty immersion RPers wind up in cities where they can get involved in the minutia of large groups. Fortunately my group enjoys a good brawl but roleplays well too, so I can be much more flexible in my plots (not to mention get to take a break by switching between combat & politics).

Plots are usually more concerned with particular details and can fit into almost any world. Also, long term plots usually involve rewriting particular details about a world to get the backstory right and set up the future events. Since I hate making changes, I usually come up with the plot first before choosing the world so I'm not hemmed in by my own decisions.

I've switched from planning one to two modules to thinking more long term. I generally have the next 3-6 story arcs/modules/plots sketched in and fill in the details when the PCs get close. It works out well when the players make a U-turn; since I decide when, not where, they meet the key figures they can't be in the wrong place. Even if they go off on a tangent it doesn't throw me for a loop.

 

[jgbrowning]

I actually prefer a combination of top down and bottom up. I like to have some "high level" concepts and a generic overview of the setting from a top down approach, but I only detail stuff from a very bottom up approach to keep from overwhelming myself with tedious detail as I develop the campaign. In most respects, you actually need most of that information in order to create characters and play the game, though. I'm in favor of not creating more than I have to (or am inspired to at any given time.)

I find this mix the best as well.

joe b.

 

[Luddite]

My last world started off as a simple map scetch with some basic political boundries. Also I kept it very small. The map was about the size of Belgium and then noted the nearby nation-states.

I quickly whipped up a simple history, and the foundation for a few "epic" events that could happen depending on what the players wanted. I think I started it off by saying to my players, "The first king will die in a few years of game time, and there will be a struggle for the throne. You will have the option of taking part in that, or doing your own thing."

That was it. Slowly over time, I added more pieces, built a cosmology. Rebuilt the cosmology. Decided to keep both cosmologies and suddendly I had the foundation for a whole Relgious schisms between the cosmologies.

But the old Dungeon craft series explains it the best. Start small with some hints of Epic-ness that the players could explore.

-The Luddite

 

[barsoomcore]

I tend to keep world and plot design separate. ... Plots are usually more concerned with particular details and can fit into almost any world.

I guess it depends on what you mean by "Plot". I think of "plot" as the actions of the NPCs who inhabit the world.

For me, world and plot are deeply linked. Think of how much our current world is what it is because of the various "plots" that it has generated -- the Catholic Church, the waves of nomadic invaders from the East, the Chinese dynasties, the Egyptian obsessions with death, blah blah blah.

So it's kind of impossible to come up with a world unless you consider the plots that have been carried out in that world. Especially so with a magical world where individuals can acquire power that is orders of magnitude greater than anyone can acquire in our world.

Plots can reshape geography in a D&D world.

Fusangite's approach sounds familiar to me -- come up with some thematic ideas and a way to fit them together, and see what story ideas get generated as a result.

 

[Nightfall]

LEGOS!! ALL MUST BOW TO LEGOS!! ​

 

[fusangite]

For me, world and plot are deeply linked. Think of how much our current world is what it is because of the various "plots" that it has generated

Fusangite's approach sounds familiar to me -- come up with some thematic ideas and a way to fit them together, and see what story ideas get generated as a result.

Hey Barsoomcore -- nice to see the two of us on the same page for a change. (Must be the result of running into you at the Brickhouse. ) For me, setting=story and vice versa. This is why once the story is told, the world is either "done" or, at least, irrevocably changed. This is why I can't comprehend people wanting to roleplay in Middle Earth.

As for Nightfall's comments, I run all my combats with Lego now but I can't figure out how to use it in world generation.