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<blockquote data-quote="Vraal" data-source="post: 9144010" data-attributes="member: 7037837">Glad someone mentioned Spire, I was going to as well but for a different reason.&nbsp; I can't remember where I first encountered this analogy, but I think it's a good principle of worldbuilding for this medium:&nbsp; set up your world so that it's a powder keg about to blow.&nbsp; Factions maintaining a delicate peace, tensions bubbling under the surface, conflicts about to happen, but currently it's that brief moment of calm before the storm.&nbsp; Then the player characters wander in.&nbsp; And whatever aspect of the world they decide to take an interest in, it's going to have serious consequences.&nbsp; You don't know exactly what shape the explosion is going to take, that's up to them, but you know that there will be one.&nbsp; The other benefit here is that the players feel like their actions are having a significant impact on the world itself, which I'd regard as a desirable outcome (as a slightly simple example, in my current game the players have completely removed a couple of the keyed locations from the city map through use of, uh, arson).Spire is a great example of this.&nbsp; The setting is incredibly detailed (some might say too detailed), but everything's constructed with player engagement in mind; the city's absolutely packed with fuses to light.&nbsp; Even if the action of the campaign is confined to just a single district, you've got extremely good odds that after a few sessions, much of the setting, if not all of it, will never be the same again.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Vraal, post: 9144010, member: 7037837"] Glad someone mentioned [I]Spire[/I], I was going to as well but for a different reason. I can't remember where I first encountered this analogy, but I think it's a good principle of worldbuilding for this medium: set up your world so that it's a powder keg about to blow. Factions maintaining a delicate peace, tensions bubbling under the surface, conflicts [I]about[/I] to happen, but currently it's that brief moment of calm before the storm. Then the player characters wander in. And whatever aspect of the world they decide to take an interest in, it's going to have serious consequences. You don't know exactly what shape the explosion is going to take, that's up to them, but you know that there will be one. The other benefit here is that the players feel like their actions are having a significant impact on the world itself, which I'd regard as a desirable outcome (as a slightly simple example, in my current game the players have completely removed a couple of the keyed locations from the city map through use of, uh, arson). [I]Spire[/I] is a great example of this. The setting is incredibly detailed (some might say [I]too[/I] detailed), but everything's constructed with player engagement in mind; the city's absolutely packed with fuses to light. Even if the action of the campaign is confined to just a single district, you've got extremely good odds that after a few sessions, much of the setting, if not all of it, will never be the same again. [/QUOTE]

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