How do you design your campaign setting?

[steeldragons]

Excellent post Steel. Bah! I must spread around more XP before giving it to you again. Really beautiful examples and concepts, I'd love to play in a game of yours.

Many thanks, Ben. That is quite a compliment. First of its kind, here, I believe.

Be happy to have you whenever I've state-side and get a game going.

--SD

 

[Lanefan]

Gotcha covered, Omen.

Also, one thing that seems to ring true all through this thread and that completely agrees with my own experience: every setting, every world, starts with a map.

For the last year or so one of my players has been working up to running his own campaign. He's got all sorts of design stuff done - cultures, some story ideas, adventures, rule tweaks, etc. etc. - but until recently didn't have a map. And he stalled.

I suggested that he instead start with a map - quickly churned one out as an example - then drop the things he wanted in the game onto said map and go from there. I'm not sure quite how much re-design he had to do when he tried this, but he did; and it sounds like he's about ready to rock.

Lan-"mapping is easy, as long as it's in black and white"-efan

 

[[OMENRPG]Ben]

Yes, I completely forgot! Mapping! I started out my first world with a big map that just sort of leaped from my mind onto the pages of my worldbook. Figuring out the geography and relative sizes can help determine the influences as well.

Excellent point Lanefan, a good map can go a long way in just a few minutes.

 

[steeldragons]

HERE it is! Thank gods thejc still had it.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/general-rpg-discussion/298194-its-little-things.html

It's not "world building off the bat" stuff. But when you get to that "details" part I mentioned.

Enjoy.
--SD

 

[Starfox]

When designing a world for a specific campaign:

Decide what kind of story you want to tell.

Imagine this story in different kinds of settings; try to imagine the setting that would make your story most poignant, where it would be most relevant.

Build that setting using some of the other methods discussed here, always with your intended story at the back of your head.

Don't fix things too firmly; leave white spots on the map. If you need a particular place later on, you can put it in a white spot. If a player wants a particular place to exist, probably as a part of character background, also put it there.

Don't make things too complex. If you expect a buttkicker story, there is no need to flesh out the cycles of the agricultural cult. Once the players show interest, you can always develop these things. On the other hand, some things need to be decided early on so that you have enough depth to drop hints and clues that there is more - like the old legends that prop up here and there in Lord of The Rings but are neither explained nor relevant to the story. Or the backdrop for Conan's Hyboria, which helps the reader adapt real-world prejudices to fantasy people.

Create the world fractally; that is the deeper the players dig, the more detail they find. There really are no uninteresting spots. If your players travel three days ride on the highway, they will naturally pass many adventuring spots, but they will most likely not notice so there is no need to dress them out. But if they stop for a week to heal and rest, local plots and points of interest are likely to pop up.

 

[Hand of Evil]

There are some steps I look at:

• Concept - it is not just about hack and slash but story, plot and world myth. I think about what kind of world I want my players to play in. Examples: Fantasy Steampunk, Medieval Fantasy, Grim Horror, etc.
• World Myth & House Rules - just the way things work in my campaign.
• Mapping - building the campaign area.
• Timeline & History - showing how and why things are the way they are in the campaign area. Major events mostly.
• Plots & Powers - mover and shakers and their plots. Example would be the guilds, kingdoms, nobles. Try and come up with about 10 groups and their current projects.
• Overview / Backstory - this is what I use to sell my campaign to my players.
• Character Generation -
• Start

 

[steeldragons]

I comPLETEly forgot something that may or may not prove important depending on the campaign you're undertaking and/or where the characters are and/or are expected to go/get to...

Somewhere between establishing the Populations and, possibly even included in, the "Big Bads/Big Goods", you really need to establish, the Powers that Be.

"Who's in charge?" What is the governmental set up? Who's "the law" and how is it meted out (and/or, possibly, who outranks whom in questions of "justice/punishment")? Are you in a feudal realm, a principality, a region of city-states (either "free" individual council/senate ruled or members of some empire with appointed "governors")?

If the PCs are beginning in a roughly "middle age" feudal-style realm, they obviously should be aware of who the local lord is. Who's the Baron above them (the Earl above the Baron, etc.)? They'd also, at least, be aware of the name of the overall ruler (i.e. the King or Queen). What is the common public perception of these individuals -beloved, respected, feared to death? Is there rebellion or revolution in the air?

Depending on their proximity to the lord, they might know the names and reputations of (or even be acquainted with?) the local "Sheriff" or "Captain of the Guard", heard the stories of the mysterious court mage or pious chaplain, passed by the lord's daughter (with attendant ladies and/or bodyguards) in the market...again whatever you need for the game, but always good to have some notes jotted down on this should the PCs ask (or something they would know based on their background).

Naturally, you only have to go as far as you expect the PCs to need, but a framework should be jotted down as, we all know, PCs will almost always go in directions we don't expect.

As with everything else in my list (and stated by others) begin with "broad strokes". Basic ideas of societal structure and things everyone (i.e. the PCs) knows and "work outward", in terms of both scope and refining detail, from there as needed.

Then I went region by region establishing, among other things:

• Populations: What races? Where within the region? In what numbers?
• Significant communities: How many cities, towns, villages, etc...? Directly proportional to the realm's population. One small realm might have a single large city. A sprawling territory might be dotted with farming villages and hamlets, a couple of growing "towns" and maybe one or two trade centers that would be considered a "city".
• Predominant religions: My world uses a "universal pantheon" (same gods across the whole world. Names may differ region-to-region, but it is the same deity). However certain gods are (or are not) worshiped in various areas as makes sense: You will not find a shrine to the goddess of seas and storms far inland away from a significant body of water- a large lake, river, inland sea, etc..., for example.) I've heard a few times from players, "What do you mean there's no temple of <the god I worship> here?!" The answer, usually is either a) It's a simple farming village, the 600 person population worship the gods of nature and the harvest, not law and justice." OR b) "You're on the other side of the continent [from where you started]. The inhabitants of "the Mage Lands" do not revere the patron god of swordsmen or the god of war."
• Economies: In places I use a lot, this might be as detailed as going down to the types/names of coinage they use. In others, it might just be a basic concept of the resources of the region and how people make a living. The party encountering "Joe Miner" in a realm far away from anywhere with a mining town or metal resources usually doesn't make sense. Mariner merchants from the realm of the Sea King are proooobably not going to be found in the Desert of Lost Sands OR a town a few miles up the coast, for that matter. They can supply their own seafood and sailing wares.
• The Big Bads and the Big Goods: Both "historical" and "current".Who are the known heroes (and villains), powerful wizards, significant organizations...are they renowned "in town", across the region or throughout the world? For example, most everyone/learned people of all lands know of the Redstar Knights (the order of paladins of my god of battle skill and guardianship) even if they don't have a local temple or keep. The order is known and respected (by "decent gods-faring folk"). Everyone knows there's a "nation" of mages in the east or there are "barbarian tribes" somewhere in the northern wastes...even if they've never seen/encountered one.
• History: Go back...a generation? 100 years? 1,000? Multiple millenia? Whatever you need. Doesn't have to be for the whole world! But definitely for the region your players are going to begin in. What is "common knowledge"? What's "hidden knowledge"? What might wizards, high priests or sages know -or be able to find out- about? How far back are the known/accessible histories of the people? The town? The region or, even, the world if your players get that far? Generally speaking, for my world/game, those with scholarly training (mages and clerics...possibly bards or monks) are going to know more from the get-go than other characters...The rogues probably know more about local/recent history, rumored secrets or lost treasures...Warriors of various types probably are familiar with history insofar as it concerns major (or minor/recent) wars, warlords/generals/heroes, significant individual battles, legendary weapons, etc...A troupe of fighters isn't, likely, sitting around the campfire telling tales of "the Boogey Badass Staff of Arcanity". Whatever makes sense for your world, but you should have some basic concept of what each character at your table would know about based on their background/upbringing.
• Additional details, as necessary: There was a great thread about this by @thejc (it was you, right? Unfortunately, it has been shifted outside of my "posted threads" to access. I hope someone else still has it!) How I handle this is simply as an area, be it nation or individual village, as it becomes encountered. Foodstuffs, garb, unique elements, significant NPCs, whatever it might be gets "colored in" as I need it...Granted, over the past 20-some years, I've detailed just about everywhere to some extent or the other. But (please...for me don't drive yourself nuts to have every single detail of everywhere worked out before starting a campaign! Start where the PCs will start and work your way out as necessary.

Have fun and happy world-building.
--SD

 

[Barastrondo]

So, how do you design your homebrew campaign settings?

I'm going to assume "D&D" is the specifics here, since the process of creating a D&D campaign setting is very different than doing a WoD or a Champions setting. In that case, I've got a world I've been running since college, but the world itself isn't the setting -- whatever geographical region we zoom in on is the setting. The advantage of this is that there are elements I can just transplant in, like pantheons, with perhaps some cosmetic changes to better suit the given campaign.

So, usually I get a week's to a few weeks' head start when I offer to run a game, and these days that's involved essentially polling the players. I'll write up a list of campaign ideas I find interesting and let them pick the ones they find most interesting, then we have a quick discussion to see which one is most intriguing. Last few times I've done this, the concepts that won were "political exile penal colony in a dungeon-like subterranean abandoned city," "bizarre Gormenghast-like city with no contact with the outside world," and "Renaissance Italy-inspired swashbuckler." For everything on my list, I have a few ideas already in place, usually.

The next step is one that, well, I do all the time for campaigns I'm not yet running. It's the Idea List. In a Moleskine-sized notebook I write down a big list of interesting things about a setting that I might like to include. For instance, the Renaissance-style swashbuckler has a list that goes something like:

- Intrigues between Sorcerous Houses
- Woes of the Liercan church (in a setting where arranged loveless marriages are common, is the church of the goddess of love in need of a fiery reformer?)
- Country villa/asylum for victims of curses, hushed up
- Battered, exotic & eccentric mercenaries
- Provocative, useless lady-armor as popular artistic motif
- Urban monsters: medusae, wererats, doppelgangers, ghouls
- Recent civil war: 55 years ago
- Opera houses with scoundrel entertainer/rogue guilds

...And so on. This list will be something I go back to now and again, and just the process of creating it makes it easier for me to ad-lib stuff in the setting. (Usually it fills about half a page in tiny, cramped writing before I really feel I have a lock on a place.)

From there I usually have a basic idea of a starting point -- "you are lowered into the city," "the guild-clans come together for a common problem and the PCs are nominated," "the game starts in the rustic countryside" -- and specifics of player characters informs that. That starting point is what I flesh out first. In the case of the swashbuckler, it was the rustic estate of Master Borsari, and I talked with each player for a reason that their PC was there. Starting point is the thing to get built first -- that and whatever basics players need to start the game, like names of cities they're from, the first sketchy pass at a region map, and suchlike.

And at that point, I start working on places the PCs are likely to go. This can mean different things in different campaigns. But usually the process involves prioritizing their next logical moves (the nearest Big City or the ruins a PC has developed a personal interest in). This usually involves asking myself questions like:

- What's the elevator pitch?
- What is the basic conflict going on, behind the scenes or openly?
- Who's locally in power? From a military point of view? Religious? Arcane? Criminal?
- What are the visual hooks that make this location distinct?
- What are some interesting things players might do when they're there?
- How is it laid out? (Sketchy map time!)

And so on. Heck, I've even started to develop a process for brainstorming cities, as the one group moves around between them a lot, but it really depends on the campaign model. The main thing, though, is that I'm really never done. I design settings as I go, as I have free time, and as ideas occur to me. I will answer a question on the spot and stick by the answer, or sometimes say "Let me get back to you" if it's not vital, but I never wait until a setting is "done" before I start running the game. Otherwise we'd never play.

What do you look for in published settings? - to run whole or piecemeal to your homebrew?

Inspiration, basically; I want to see what questions published settings ask, and how they decide to answer them. I prefer to make my own stuff, but the process of setting design is fascinating to me, and I love figuring out things I might need to work on by seeing what other settings prioritize.

What makes a fun campaign setting for you? - As a DM? - As a Player?

In both cases, generally I like a good amount of color (though not an overabundance of purple), an outlook sufficiently optimistic that it's clear players are intended to make a difference, and enough reason to engage with the world that it's fun to interact with local NPCs and consider yourself a member of specific communities or organizations. Is the world interesting enough that you could base an evening on carousing without it being just a lot of cliches? Does it feel as if you can actually spend an evening on carousing now and again without Horrible Ancient Evils consuming something you care for? I like a setting that has meaningful ways to make a difference, but that isn't Serious Business all the time.

What are some examples of great campaign setting design?

Some of the high points of Forgotten Realms design, like the 3rd edition FRCS. Al-Qadim for sure. A few late-2e Greyhawk books like The Scarlet Brotherhood. 4e Gloomwrought turned out really nice. And I hesitate to plug my own work as "great," but Hollowfaust in the Scarred Lands is definitely a setting built around the sort of ideas I like to see.

 

[Lanefan]

... snip some very good advice ...

In both cases, generally I like [...] an outlook sufficiently optimistic that it's clear players are intended to make a difference, and enough reason to engage with the world that it's fun to interact with local NPCs and consider yourself a member of specific communities or organizations. Is the world interesting enough that you could base an evening on carousing without it being just a lot of cliches? Does it feel as if you can actually spend an evening on carousing now and again without Horrible Ancient Evils consuming something you care for? I like a setting that has meaningful ways to make a difference, but that isn't Serious Business all the time.

I wanted to give this a shout-out as this to me is an excellent way of looking at world (and game) design. Is it possible to have fun in the world? If yes, continue.

That said, I'm not sold on the outlook always having to be optimistic. One can make a very enjoyable game out of a setting wherein the PCs main job is to make a terrible situation into merely a bad one. The Empire is crumbling and invaders are coming from all directions; by the time the PCs get done the Empire has still crumbled but a whole lot less citizens have died in the process...but have instead become refugees under the PCs' protection...

Lan-"an evening spent carousing sounds pretty good right now"-efan

 

[Barastrondo]

I wanted to give this a shout-out as this to me is an excellent way of looking at world (and game) design. Is it possible to have fun in the world? If yes, continue.

That said, I'm not sold on the outlook always having to be optimistic. One can make a very enjoyable game out of a setting wherein the PCs main job is to make a terrible situation into merely a bad one. The Empire is crumbling and invaders are coming from all directions; by the time the PCs get done the Empire has still crumbled but a whole lot less citizens have died in the process...but have instead become refugees under the PCs' protection...

That can be quite interesting, sure! And sometimes the settings are implied-pessimistic, or at least implied-cynical; the "penal colony in a dungeon" campaign didn't have a lot of leisure time and expensive taverns. It can be very engaging and challenging when your victories are measured in how little ground you give up, rather than how much ground you gain.

The general idea of optimism, though, is what I think has played a major role in why I still run D&D in the same campaign world after... it's measured in the decades now, I guess. If one group of characters earns some relatively optimistic closure, then the players perhaps feel freer to explore somewhere else next time. "Hey, remember those guys from Sundrin? Can we do a game set there next?" I have no proof that this is the key factor, but I think it plays a part.

Though it does make me think that there's a difference between designing a setting for the purpose of showcasing a conflict, or designing settings as primary and devising conflicts to showcase the setting. Dark Sun and Midnight aren't about carousing, because the settings are built to set up basic ongoing conflicts for survival. On the other hand, Al-Qadim's built to deliver an Arabian Fantasy experience, so its conflicts are designed to showcase Arabian Fantasy. That's probably something to keep in mind as part of any discussion about the setting design process.