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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dungeonosophy" data-source="post: 7950653" data-attributes="member: 6688049">Here's part II of what came out of the ENWorld advice session. Based on several commentators suggestions, I split off from our Shared World campaign setting which we'd co-DMed, and made my own parallel world, called the Singular World.In this write-up, my players' names are abbreviated in [brackets] for the sake of anonymity.*** Welcome, dungeoneers…to the Singular World! PART II The Singular World: Travis' Campaign SettingThe Singular World is my world. It's my campaign setting.    This is a slightly different world than the one we have been playing in for the past year. That world was the Shared World…a world which was co-authored and co-owned by myself and another DM, and expressed via a co-negotiated ruleset. Based on advice from several fellow DMs on the ENWorld Forum , I am fully retiring my role in that setting and ruleset, and do not intend to revisit it. Though it was sometimes fun and fruitful, and served as a good exercise, I wasn't able to travel in a car with two drivers, who hadn't even really agreed on a destination. The Shared World, as such, continues to exist in a retired perpetual statis. (In other words, it's dead.)    My Singular World is essentially identical to the Shared World—at this point, the only real difference is that this world is singularly mine…my own  sandbox.    Other DMs in our club are welcome/permitted to run adventures which use my map. But even so, they never actually occur in the Singular World. The Singular World only exists when I'm DMing it.    Or, other DMs  might want to develop a totally different world map. Or a different locale off the edge of the map I made. Or just take some elements from my map, and make your own variant map. These are all options.    Even if another DM uses my map as-is, when they're DMing, they're really describing a different world—a parallel world. It's not the Singular World. Even if their world looks nearly identical to mine, it is not the same world. I ask that the terms "Singular World" and "Singular Peninsula" only be used to refer to my specific timeline and world. It's my informal "trademark."    However, I would suggest a friendly agreement that each DM in our club can choose to say that some or all (or none) of the stories which another DM runs also took place in their world. And that some or all (or none) of the characters/PCs exist in their world too. But the receiving DM is totally free to edit, revise, excise, erase, re-write, re-erase, and retcon those stories and characters (with collaboration with the character's player) to fit with their own authorial vision and tone of their world. Even to the extent that a character might have different stats, different gear, a different biography, or a totally different  build, in two different worlds. Even to the extent that I could have you keep a different character sheet for the version of the character which exists in my world.    So far, of the various parallel worlds of our D&D Club, only mine has a name: the Singular World. I wonder what y'all will call your worlds when you DM? To use DC or Marvel comics dimensional terminology, where Earth 0 = DC Universe and Earth-616 = Marvel Universe, my Singular World, and your worlds, could be viewed as alternate versions, or offshoots, of the retired Shared World. Something like this:✹    Shared World-T (Travis) = The Singular World✹    Shared World-M  (when [M] DMs) = ???✹    Shared World-A (for [A], when he DMs) = ???✹    Shared World-O (when [O] DMs) = ???✹    Shared World-E (for [E], when she DMs) = ???Each of us is also free to create not just one, but multiple worlds, timelines, dimensions, and planes of adventure…our own multiverse.    I would humbly suggest that [M] take as his starting point, the "Underground Binalric" which [A]'s characters + Swishy McJackass and Fizzlesticks explored. Because that is the most clearly divergent point on the timeline which [M] has DMed so far. In that world, the Bastion of Binalric extends underground, instead of having upper stories, as it did when  Travis's original party—Gog (RIP), Norman (RIP), Sneaky (RIP), etc—explored the bastion.    That's only a suggestion. [M] might want to go in a totally different direction of worldbuilding. Our D&D Club is certainly bigger than myself, and potentially bigger than my table and campaign. [M] and I did some good co-creation of the Shared Peninsula, which is in my world called the Singular Peninsula. [M] was the primary creator of the Rime Coast (Stannasgard and Benalric), the Duchy of Berghof, the as-yet-undetailed Hold of the Sea Barons, the Briarwood, and the Hermit's Path, and also was the initiator of the  DM-less adventures set in the Village or Orlbar and Weathercote Woods, the Village of Verland, and in [M] 's one-person stories in the Village of Thornbrook and Caldarook Mansion.    We still have unfinished business in the Duchy of Berhof (module UK3) which [M] was DMing. Those events took place in the Shared World, and also in my Singular World. Yet when [M] takes UK3 up again, it will be neither of those worlds, even if it looks identical at first.    In conclusion, each DM bears total and complete authorial sovereignty. Other DMs are welcome to eventually try out the DM's chair. When you are DMing, it's your own world. When I am DMing, it's my world…the Singular World. You're invited to come play.—TravisDungeon Master of the Singular WorldMarch 26th, 2020</blockquote>

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