D&D 5E How do You Detail your Settings?

[doctorbadwolf]

I always start by thinking about the kind of world, genre, and setting, it is, and what non-humans are most prominent in the region we will start in. Then I just spend a lot of time thinking about things like what sort of wonders exist, what magic is commonplace vs rare, who the gods are, what the most prominent faiths are, etc.

My worlds never ever have universal human pantheons like in FR, but are more like Eberron, with different faiths that see the divine very differently, and generally cross any lines of race. “The elf gods” is a very unlikely thing to exist in my games. So, I have to spend a decent amount of time thinking about faith.

Then i I generally decide what basic themes and quicks the starting town and “kingdom” will have, figure out some factions and locations, and then the rest of world building starts when players meet what exists of the world and start making characters.

“What are Goliaths like here?” Generally sparks my imagination and I come up with some notes on local Goliaths, and ask what they would want from playing a Goliath. What do they like and dislike about the standard presentation, etc. In one world, Goliaths and Firbolgs are one people, are deeply connected to the land, and believe that their Dawn Callers literally cause the sun to rise every day (and a fun bit of secret lore is that they’re right.) We comepletely ignore the whole “leave the wounded to die” aspect of the Volo writeup, but their sense of fair play is intact, bc a player’s preference lead that way.

From there, I’ll have random ideas like “humans are new to this region of the world, and are thus a minority”, and, “once rival clans of halflings and kobolds in the mountainous islands to the south formed a federation decades ago that now includes a few Goliath tribes, and about 20 years ago they invented airships. This nation is called The Cloudlaw. Most airships still come from them.”

Someone wants a new take on Dragonborn? Okay, they’re seminomadic fisherfolk, tortles are dragon-turtle Dragonborn, and they have a Polynesian inspired culture.

Deep gnomes? Lose rocky terrain stuff and gain swim speed and ability to hold breath for twice as long. They’re nomadic divers who live in sea caves.

NPCs, new locations, etc, get improvised as they come up, most times.

 

[jasper]

Use to be middle. Ex My world is based on Greyhawk but I have parts of Judges Guild adventure section, and some forgotten realms sections.
Now days I don't worry about because I don't homebrew.

 

[Oofta]

I have a general outline and add details as necessary. So I have a broad outline, with fewer and fewer details the further away from the campaign the area is.


Note that "further" isn't necessarily geographical, it depends on PC level, campaign expected direction and proximity to current decisions. So if I'm running a city campaign, I may make note of who the movers and shakers are but that varies greatly depending on level. At lower level, I need more info about street gangs and only a general idea of rulers of the city who at best will generally only be part of the background.


Other regions that the PCs are aware of have at least a quick one or two line blurb, but if the PCs never visit Nelshat capital of the jungle kingdoms I'm not going to add any more detail. In fact, if the campaign looks like it's ever going in that direction I may change quite a bit about the city. Give the region a "real" name not just the colloquial reference by foreigners. The rumors of the city being run by Yuan-ti may be just rumors spread by trade adversaries, etc.


If someone is from a different area or region I welcome proposals and recommendations, but we normally handle that offline since I need to make sure I keep things consistent. I also don't like "kitchen sink" campaigns so I limit racial options.


So bottom up with an outline and focus only on things that actually matter to the PCs. If I ever improvise something I make sure to make a note in my wiki whether or not it's PC knowledge or not.

 

[ccs]

Something else??

In my PF group we just use the PF world largely as-is. It's what most of the group enjoys & as we rotate DMs it's convenient to have 1 common world*.
*Yes, we could have that if we hmebrewed a world. But several of the members, though they'll DM, don't have any interest crafting a world.

For the 5e game I DM?
I have a general map of a continent. It looks suspiciously like North America.... This is filled with a hodge podge of "Things I like/have stolen from other sources", stuff I've made up, stuff a friend from way back added, & whatever details the players come up with.
The map is not drawn in any particular scale.

 

[Fanaelialae]

I start with a top down "sketch" to get a feel for the world's peculiarities. This will often include a starter map that's little more than an outline of the relevant landmasses.

Then I work bottom up to ground the details in the setting.

 

[Urriak]

I don't do top-level stuff unless the PC's may need to know it. I put more focus into stuff that they'll see in front of them.

So in my current setting (Greyhawk Noire, a 1920s-tech version of Greyhawk), I detail the city, who lives there, a little information on who runs the city, and some info on the immediate surrounding locations.

I don't need to write up the whole history of the city and how it got to this stage, or what the 2nd most popular god is, the names of individual towns outside the city. These details get filled in later as the PCs encounter them, but they don't care until thy do so I don't focus much on it.

 

[Blue]

First pass - building before campaign
Focused on two things:
1. What unique things that I want to explore in this campaign that I specifically want the setting to support me. For example, one campaign I wanted to play with local gods and ascension.
2. High level, very broad strokes that are full of hooks and awesome - things to get players interested in a place/region, and give them an idea that it exists. This is to tempt the characters into them at character creation, as well as provide a minimal sketch of other things out there so the world seems larger.

Detail is the enemy of what I'm going for here.

Second pass
Session 0 with players will work out a lot of what the players are interested in the game, where there characters are from, what type of movers and shakers and foes they each are looking for to complete each character.

From here, there are two parallel world building directions, both of which last for the full length of the campaign

DM pass
Detail out area needed for next session or so if not already detailed out. If already detailed out, change things a little to keep it living. (New rumors, other changes, etc.)

Player Pass
Players detail out things from their character if they want. DM final approval. Geography, mythology, pantheons, culture and customs, whatever.

 

[Lanefan]

I tend to start with a regional map - maybe covering the real-world equivalent area of about the combined states of Washington and Oregon - and on that map make sure I can account for where each of the kindred races might be found or, if they don't fit in, come up with an explanation for why they're not there.

This map will have some 'civilized' areas and some wild areas (where adventuring can happen), and the civilized areas will be broken down into a few kingdoms or nation-states or other political divisions. In tandem with this I'll decide what real-world cultures (if any) these kingdoms will be vaguely based on.

Then I'll zoom in and detail what I expect will be the starting area, a few adventure sites, and so forth; and also zoom out to a continental scale to show what other realms/cultures/landforms etc. might be out there and where they are.

From here I'll look at history - now these things are on the map, how might they have come to be there - and as this can go all the way back to the creation of the game-world universe I can also deal with pantheons and astronomy in this phase. I'll also mkae sure I throw some story hooks into the more recent history that either I or the players can potentially mine later for ideas.

Based on all this I can then start throwing in some key people and organizations:
- major NPCs that even if the PCs never interact with them, they'll have heard of: local and national rulers or sovereigns, famous villains and-or heroes, etc.
- significant temples, guilds, companies, unions, whatever - things the PCs are likely to bump into at some point
- NPCs that might (or might not) become important down the road: key information sources, heads of guilds, etc.

And then if I have the time and willingness I'll go back to the maps and start thinking about climate patterns, trade routes, etc.

And through all of this there's always loads of blank space left in, that can be filled in during the campaign with ideas I and-or the players haven't had yet or that come up through play. (one of my players sometimes takes on the motto "Where the map is blank, I'll go" just to force me to fill it in)

 

[Jer]

When I have adult players that I trust, I do bottom-up for the most part, with as much active player collaboration as I can get. I plan very little before the first session - just an elevator pitch for the campaign and what we need for the first adventure - and see what comes out of character creation. Typically by the end of character creation we have a few major NPCs, an idea of what at least one religion is like, and a feel for how a few of the nonhuman races and humans interact.

When I'm teaching other people how to play (which is more and more common as my kid has hit the magic age where all of their friends want to learn to play D&D), I tend to use a published setting so that I can tell the players more about the world up front, so they can concentrate more on how their character relates to the world. If they come up with something for their character that doesn't fit with what is published, then we change it, but in general that doesn't come up as often as you'd think - the kids are feeling out the game and so are more likely to find the information about their class/race/background in the books to be interesting and fun, instead of boring and overplayed like some of the jaded adults I play with (I also use FR and Mystara for these games - both kitchen sink worlds that can handle whatever typical D&D shenanigans you want to set there, so even if they pull something from another source - like a favorite fantasy novel series - it's pretty easy to work it in).

Either way the rule that I stick to is only build as much as necessary to play the game. If the gods aren't going to be a big part of the game, then we just assume there are gods and as they become important we'll fill in the details. I spent far too long in my younger days building up setting material that nobody ever read or cared about but me - nowadays my time is too valuable for that If I want to do something like that I'll work on a book, but if it's just for my game I'll spend that time working on adventures that will be used at the table instead.

 

[Stormonu]

Between campaigns, I’ll sometimes throw together a world, starting with a big picture and moving inwards.

when I’m actually running a game, I’ll generally start small (local village) and work outwards - though I’ll at least have an idea what campaign world I’m setting it in (usually Greyhawk these days, sometimes Forgotten Realms, or if I’m feeling cheeky, my own Campaign world of Amberos or Crimson Empire.

(If anyone’s interested, my campaign world can be found here - https://www.scribd.com/document/8706988/Amberos-All-Countries )