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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sword of Spirit" data-source="post: 8643748" data-attributes="member: 6677017">Here are some of my thoughts in brief.The worlds of Skyrim, Oblivion, and Morrowind feel most real to me(1), the worlds of Daggerfall and Arena feel less real, and the worlds of the majority of other games feel least real to me(2).Here's why. Recent Elder Scrolls games give you a tip of the iceberg feel that is true--not just an illusion. There are hundreds of locations in those games you are never going to visit, but you know they are there. You know if you go there you will run into what is actually there--the game won't make up something that seems like it would make for a good story for your character at the time. Older Elder Scrolls games had some locations like that, but most of the world, while vast, was procedurally generated, so you knew the kind of stuff that would be there, and that it didn't adapt to make a story based on your character, but it feels a little hollow because of all the random generation. Many other CRPGs only present a world to the degree in which it supports the story being told about the protagonist character you are playing.A real-feeling world to me is explorable. That's the basic essence of it. In order for a world to be explorable you need features and locations that are defined outside of the context of their presentation to the players. When locations only get defined by PC contact, then there is no iceberg to be a tip of, and your experience is one of a story being told rather than a world being explored. Content can be defined by virtue of being actually fleshed out(3), or by having an algorithm that provides consistent procedural generation(4). Any highly explorable D&D world is going to include a world skeleton that gives overall definition with a mix of at least a few somewhat fleshed out locations and a procedural generation method for fleshing out others as needed. Without any fleshed-out areas, it will feel hollow and nebulous. Without any consistent procedural generation it won't be explorable, since a DM can't reasonably pre-flesh-out a world with sufficient detail to hold up to player-driven exploration.I'm highly eclectic in my role-playing. I'm the player/GM in the group who is excited to try just about any game presented to me. While there are a few particular combinations of play-style considerations that don't work well for me, in general I can enjoy most games when used in ways that aren't fighting their own systems(5). What I create and encourage others to try experiencing in D&D--high exploration campaigns--is due to the fact that D&D's decades of creative input have developed a setting uniquely suited to it. Quite frankly, you can't find another RPG that gives you a better opportunity to experience RPG exploration, and it is a shame that most modern gamers may never get to experience that because the direction for a while has been to use D&D as a story-playing experience (which any role-playing game can do, and which D&D has minimal system support for compared to many others designed for that exact style of play). I honestly feel that the deprecation of exploration in D&D is depriving players of an experience they otherwise can't have, while giving them an inferior version of an experience they can have many other ways.At this point many people are having contrary thoughts pop into their mind, dismissing this idea either because they prefer story-driven play or because they've fomed assumptions about why such an experience is impractical for most gamers to attempt.As far as playstyle preference, I don't have any desire to dissuade people from playing what they like. Just like with culinary tastes, I do encourage people to punctuate enjoying their known favorites with trying new things, since discovering new favorites can be an enriching experience. I also feel like people could better enjoy story-based play with another system, but I understand that the popularity of D&D can make it difficult to get players interested in playing in, or GMs interested in running for you a better-fitting system for a story-focused experience.As far as the assumptions, I'll briefly(6) address them for those who think they might want to try the exploration experience but just don't know how or think it isn't practical.You don't have to do a bunch of work upfront. While you can do so if you enjoy the results like me, you can set up an explorable world pretty simply, and then just develop the parts you need as you go--while still maintaining a true exploration experience. Here's how:A) Decide some basic principles and themes. What kinds of gods and/or religions exist in your world. "I want a Norse-themed, but not copied, pantheon that is ubiquitous among humans" is good enough to start. Grab D&D's simplified and gameable fantasy-historical Norse pantheon, and refer to all of the deities by a title rather than name.  You can always add names later as needed or when they come to you, as well as add new ones or combine others.What technological level aesthetic do you want? Early Middle Ages, Late Middle Ages, Rennaissance, Bronze Age, varies by region? Just tentatively set the highest and lowest levels present in your world. "Most of the world is Late Middle Ages, but there is a Bronze age continent and maybe couple Renaissance regions" is good enough.What cultural aesthetics do you want? Wuxia, Arabian Nights, Scandinavian epics? This can be as simple as "Pretty much anything could be found" or "I want everything to feel alien rather than earth-inspired" or "I want to focus on three major regions, one North African in feel, one Meso-American in feel, and one Southeast Asian in feel, and I'm probably going to avoid traditional European fantasy because I'm trying something different".What species are prominent? "I want dragons to be the originators of magic, and still be the dominant and feared casters in the world, and I want humans to be a young race that are generally in subjection to the warring elven and gnoll empires" along with something like "necromancers are feared and common" and "Monstrosities are particularly common but Aberrations are extremely rare" is a great start, or "the standard D&D assumptions are in place" is perfectly fine also.Is the world about anything? Your answer can range from "Yes, the eternal battle between life and undeath is played out on history's stage again and again..." to "Nope".B) Sketch a skeletal map. Just decide how big your planet (or other world-structure) is, and draw a basic stick-figure quality level of the continents. Label a few regions like, "Here be lots of dwarves" or "Shogunate-inspired lands".C) Think of a skeletal timeline. "The world started out with a warring Kuo-Toan empire with high technology against a Bronze Age civilization that combined most of the other species. They rose up and defeated the Kuo-Toas, and after a dark age society eventually settled into an Early to Late Middle Ages aesthetic which has been going on for a couple thousand years now with various different lands and changing borders," is good.D) Think of any D&D assumptions you need to clarify or change. For cosmology "Great Wheel Cosmology, basically straight out of 2e sources" is my personal favorite, but "There are some sort of heavenly and hellish and elemental and magical planes that feel typically D&D and I'll worry about the details later" is all you need to get started. You might need to decide that certain character classes, subclasses, species, equipment, aren't present, and maybe some new ones are.E) Find some random tables. Previous editions of D&D are your friends here, though there are some examples in 5e for encounters, events, locations, etc. You can also find plenty of free random content generators online. You will eventually want to create your own tables, but for now you can start with using existing ones and rerolling results that dont' fit the things you've predefined about your world. You should, however, use results that are compatible with those definitions, because it will assist you in world building. If the first two random encounters in a region you haven't fleshed out yet is with satyrs and a cyclops, you might decide that there is a strong Greek mythology aesthetic there, and make new locations and random tables that lean into that theme.F) Pick a place on the map. You can now zoom in and just create what you need as you go. The virtue in this little bit of upfront work (and you could literally do it in a couple hours or less if you aren't interested in changing a bunch of D&D assumptions) is that now you can keep your world consistent because everything has a framework within which to be set.This style is incompatible with the story-driven play I prefer. There is in fact no good reason you can't set your story-driven play within a consistent explorable world. Unless you are committed to making up everything on the fly as a philosophical GMing position, having this background means whenever the players go outside of expected areas, you have built in answers to what they will find (whether fleshed out or procedurally generated). This also doesn't mean you can't spontaneously create things on the fly, that are consistent with the world! If the players break through the backdoor of a building while they are fleeing from a gang (or the guards) you can spontaneously decide to describe a fun scene where they interrupt a member of the town council (who they have previously met) in a silly situation. But if you lack the inclination, or nothing is coming to you, you can also use procedural generation (ie, random tables or generators) to determine what they find in the building. This simply adds that real tip of the iceberg experience to your game.Hopefully that briefly demonstrates both why one might want to, and how one can easily get started on, running a campaign with with a truly explorable world.And as one more note, if you make that skeletal map big enough, and your other themes broad enough, there is little reason to make a new setting for each campaign(7). You can therefore reuse a large part of this material in future campaigns by setting them in the same world--whether nearby or on the opposite side of it. You can also use existing published D&D settings, but you will need to supplement recent materials with some content from at least as far back as 3e (and ideally earlier), since later D&D hasn't provided sufficient random tables for good procedural world-generation(8).(1) Ignoring the scaling enemies, ridiculously small settlements, etc.(2) I'm sure there are some other non-Elder Scrolls games that are similar, but even most open-world CRPGs and D&D CRPGs like Baldur's Gate or Neverwinter Nights fall in the bottom category.(3) See the Forgotten Realms 2e Daggerford supplement that lists every inhabitant of a particular village for an extreme example.(4) This generally means means random tables--see the 2e Monstrous Compendiums random encounters by terrain/environment for some great examples--the encounters represent the creatures that have been defined as existing in the world at the rarities that they have been defined as having, in encounter frequencies that are consistent and objective (rather than decided on the spot by the DM), and have no dependence on the level of the party.(5) For example, the system I'm creating to power my modern fantasy setting creates a story-driven experience, not an explorable world, by design. The world is an altered modern earth, so it already feels explorable based on being played by earthlings, but there are no mechanics to support exploration, because the intent is to play movie-like stories instead of explore.(6) Yes, this post is my version of brief when it comes to a subject I'm enthusiastic about like role-playing.(7) You might need one completely different of course if that's the intent.(8) Using existing settings in an exploration-enabled manner (since most were originally designed to enable that) is a whole other awesome way to go about this that allows you to make use of thousands of pages of other people's creativity at your leisure, but details of that would go beyond this post.</blockquote>

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