That's one way to build a world...

[Vargo]

I've been thinking about running a game for some time now, just never got around to it. One of the problems is, I like to have some kind of framework behind the gameworld, instead of leaving everything completely undeveloped. I'm not talking that I need to know who each of the ten thousand people in the capitol city of the Empire are, but having an idea of where the cities are, what the geography is, trade routes, who has been at war with whom, religion, etc.

I also enjoy playing the computer game Civilization IV.

Tonight, I'm going to go home, fire up the computer, and play into the middle ages on a huge map, on the "Epic" game speed, to give plenty of time for wars to break out between the different groups. At some point, I'm going to say "this is the end" (I'll probably pick a "top end" range of technologies, as soon as one is researched, the game ends), turn on the editor, and get a snapshot of everything. Religious spread, who has what technologies, what resources each country has, city sizes and buildings, wonders, location of barbarian tribes, roads, cultural spread, etc...

Throw out the "real world" civ and wonder names, come up with some history based on wars and whatnot, and voila, instant game world!

Has anybody else done something like this before? What were your experiences?

(I'm thinking about using the "Terra" map, which puts all the players on one continent, and then leaves a completely depopulated "New World" which fills up with barbarians.)

 

[jgbrowning]

Has anybody else done something like this before? What were your experiences?

(I'm thinking about using the "Terra" map, which puts all the players on one continent, and then leaves a completely depopulated "New World" which fills up with barbarians.)

Sounds cool to me. And the word is "Pangea" not "Terra"....

joe b.

 

[Vargo]

Nope, the Pangaea map has only one continent - the Terra map actually has two, but one is completely empty of players, and is only inhabited by the barbarians.

 

[MaxKaladin]

I've thought of doing this before. It seems like a cool idea. Another thought I had for a smaller area is to play a game of Settlers of Catan and record the board at the end using that as your campaign setting.

 

[jgbrowning]

Nope, the Pangaea map has only one continent - the Terra map actually has two, but one is completely empty of players, and is only inhabited by the barbarians.

I stand corrected, sah!

joe b.

 

[Asmor]

I've thought of doing this before. It seems like a cool idea. Another thought I had for a smaller area is to play a game of Settlers of Catan and record the board at the end using that as your campaign setting.

That's an interesting idea right thar.

Could work for Carcasonne, too, although I think you'd need to take some liberties with scale unless you're okay with cities being every few miles.

 

[Friendless]

Other board games which might be useful for this would be Gheos, Trias, and Hellas.

For more specific milieux you could try Domaine, Vinci, Tikal, Rheinlander, Return of the Heroes, Nexus Ops.

You could also set a campaign in the world of Elfenland, Runebound or Wizards Kings.

You can see pictures of all of these over at boardgamegeek.com.

 

[Infernal Teddy]

I've done it with Civ II - Much fun was had, and I wish I hadn't given away the map and setting notes...

 

[Imp]

As another Civ IV junkie I gotta say this is a really cool idea and saves you from having to make up a lot of boring details out of whole cloth. What does the dwarven capital trade in? Gems, fish, and copper, there you go. How many people are in it? Well, you kind of have an answer. Where are the towns? I dunno, let's have a look. How big are they? Well, that one's a hamlet, that one's a town. The city's running two scientists? Well, let's make those into wizards.

It might be less useful for determining composition of armies because the AI tends to keep things fairly homogenous.

I wonder what the optimal settings are for such an enterprise. Huge world, fractal or Terra, maybe one less civ than suggested, maybe raging barbs? You'd want there to be a number of barb cities to denote monster havens and just give the feel of a D&D world. At too low difficulties the AI civs don't really go after each other, which hurts the whole war history thing. How low a difficulty is reasonable?

I guess you would stop at... when? The liberalism race? Or maybe just a hard cutoff at 500 AD – give some people time to put up a few wonders.

I already have a campaign world built but I really kinda want to try this just for kicks.

 

[Vargo]

I'm using a huge world, max number of AI, terra map. This leaves a huge uncharted island, and I can always designate certain areas "monster" kingdoms instead of "civilized" kingdoms - look for warlike traits, that kind of thing. After all, barbarians don't build roads or improve terrain.