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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kiznit" data-source="post: 429130" data-attributes="member: 3994">World building for lazy DMsIf laziness and procrastination are your modus operandi (I as a DM definitely fall into this category), the trick is is to THINK SMALL. You can poke around at a million websites that have their homebrews detailed down to every minor god and tavern name, and that's great, but how much of that gets seen in a game? Really? Especially at 1st level?If you've been playing FR for a while, you've probably got your gaming style down pat and worked out the house rules, and that's really the tricky part.The DMG is all you need at first. Honest. It's written by this guy named Monte Cook who everyone knows is the best DM out there, and it's written well. Build a small town using the Adventure chapter guidelines, get some help from the players to come up with some mentor-type NPCs, and you've got a start for a setting. It's a medieval world, so there's really nothing wrong with nobody in town really knowing what's over the next mountain range (yet).And you honestly DON'T have to be absolutely original. Borrow all over the place. Work the class combos. Stick with a couple of "flavor" ideas - level of magic, ruling powers, etc. You don't have to come up with your own PrCs, feats, cults, relics, master plans, if at all, until maybe later, and then maybe only at request and working with your players.Come up with some Gods, if you want to be original, but you really only need to decide what their domains are. Come up with a couple of nifty ideas about a big city nearby, where the demihumans hang out, and a nearby dungeon. Then come up with a bad guy (arguably the funnest part about DMing), stat him up like you're making a particularly nasty PC (feel free to munchkin him up a little, you want him to be a challenge) and give him some nasty plan and some nasty minions. There're NPCs all over the place online, so you don't even need to do the math.Yeah, it's a formula, but it's a good formula, and we've all been loving it for years (try to deny it!). So you meet in a tavern and get hired to go underground and kill things. Trust me, stick with this at first and this is where ideas will germinate.Players can be a great resource. If you ask everybody to write a character background, when you collect them you're going to find that you have half-a-dozen adventure ideas right there. Ask them what kind of places they want to explore, what kind of feel they want the game to have, and chances are, the setting will build itself. If you've got an e-mail list going, you'll be surprised at how much a few simple questions (and keep them simple, sometimes it's hard to take the time to fill out those 3-page questionnaires) can generate in terms of ideas and themes.Now here's the great part: Do this little chunk of labor, and I garantee some cool ideas are going to pop into your head. Cliffside city with halflings on hanggliders? Friendly local bollywogs? Eye-tyrant-ruled gladiator arenas? If you don't think you can make it fit, or it seems too complicated, work it anyway. You're the DM, absolute power and all that, and you can do anything you want, and you don't need to rule everything into the ground.The bad guy's got a twig blight familiar and rides piggyback on a dire ostrich? Go with it. The PCs have to be shrunk down because his fortress is inside an undead hollowed-out walking treant? Why not? Once you try it, you can see that it's easy to make anything work. The game has an incredible amount of leeway for imagination, and you're not accountable for coming up with a reason for everything. Sometimes it's just flavor. Nothing beats that feeling (for a DM), of seeing your players get that eye-popping "Wow" look on their face the first time you describe some crazy idea that you've just pulled out of your.. uh. subconcious.Pretty soon, your players are going to get excited, they're gonna come up with ideas, start bouncing stuff back at you, it can be a communally created world. And I think you'll find that the more you work on it, the more fun it gets to be.Pretty soon you're gonna have maps down to the last border town and the names and ranks of the kingdom's pet farm, and boasting your website underneath your sig.The nature of D&D: start small, end up creating and saving the world.</blockquote>

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