your experiences with collaborative world building

[Shadeydm]

I love the world building aspects of being a DM and making homebrewed sandbox style campaign settings is one of my favorite things.

One of the most disappointing things about world building is that as a DM you often end up with reams of paper filled with notes about your setting and it various nations, cities, geography, history and politics yet by the end of the campaign you end up using 10% of it and players might retain 3% if your lucky.

Part of that dynamic is just players preference like a hack n slasher probably doesn't give a rat's you know what about the history of kingdom X. Part of it is that the game is adventure centric and thats where player focus ends up.

So I reached a conclusion that a key goal in addressing all this is facilitation of player buy in. Along this line of thought I realized that nothing would probably facilitate a deeper and more genuine player buy in than getting them involved in building the world.

So I've been kicking around the idea of assigning any players interested and willing the task of designing and fleshing out one of the nations in the world.

With this in mind what are your experiences with collaborative world building. Any experiences positive or negative you've had and pitfalls to avoid or things to keep in mind based off first hand experience would be much appreciated!

Thanks (and apologies for the rambling post!)

 

[Rune]

I think the thing you have to remember if you're doing all that work for a sandbox is that you're not really doing it for your players--you're not going to end up using most of it and you're players will never discover many of the details of the parts that do get used.

Nope. It's not for the players, it's for the DM. If this kind of prep gets you inspired to run a good game (and if you have time for it), it's not wasted time.

That said, players often aren't committed enough to do meaningful collaborative world-building, but if they are, definitely take advantage of it. They are much more likely to become invested in a setting that they had a hand in creating.

To that end, I suggest providing incentive. (Actually, you might find the entire thread linked here to be useful or inspirational--particularly if you are finding it difficult to find the time to do all that world-building.)

 

[Altamont Ravenard]

That said, players often aren't committed enough to do meaningful collaborative world-building

Indeed, if they are not interested in taking the time to learn things, then they aren't going to be interested in taking the time to come up with things, a much more time-consuming enterprise.

AR

 

[Karak]

When we create worlds many times the way I have found to get player interest is to query them on their interests. Do they like creating monsters, NPC's, locations, and so forth? Then I give them a very easy to fill out form or give them some guidelines for what they want to create. Almost everyone in the game has at least 1 very specific thing they like. The thing I have to do is make sure I pay attention.

If one player likes to create weapons and goes off and creates thirty and I find that there is a very specific theme running through them, I can use that information to possible create a nation or location known for that type of weapons, or a creator for them, and then flesh out why he creates them, and how, and where. The same is true for almost any submission from a player

It does require an overall world view and focus by the GM. We bit off a ton for our Kickstarter that is generally based on this entire process and the key to success is easy contribution, keeping an eye on similarities between submission types, and a way to tag information with those similarities to be able to track them and fit them in the world. I have used a database for many years in game creation like this. You could easily do it with paper as well and don't need a computer. But an easy database helps you tag things effectively sort them, gather similarities and differences, and catalog and reference them for later fleshing out into the game world.

I often hear from my players that the reason they have been so long term in my games, 21 years for 3 of them, and maybe 20 others have been playing for 14 years or more, is because they had and continue to have input. It also helps new players, which we have more than we can handle, get involved quickly, and everyone has specific things they like to contribute. World creation can occur forever, and I think it is awesome when players get involved like this.
I find it is easier to unleash them and sort later, than to give undue restrictions. I explain the general rules of the world and say "Go"
I can not count the number of times something submitted by a player impacted the entire game world due to its freshness, or a unique idea on an already established place or thing.

One of the best aspects of getting input like this is I have never had to motivate a player ever. As long as we identify even 1 thing they like to create or are interested in, they just go crazy. I think one of the keys is I make sure creation is as easy as it possibly can be. Additionally I tag and reference every single contribution and that allows me to make sure that every contribution is felt in the game, hinted at in a cutscene, or otherwise impacting making sure that nothing is wasted. Player buy-off is almost instantly noticeable when they hear, see, or otherwise experience their creations in game. Even if it is in a very small way. Like a player walking by a shop-stall and seeing the make of weapons he had created a could weeks before, slowly making its way through the nation as it becomes more popular. I can honestly say I have never had this fail. I am sure it is possible but most players who joining one of our games knowns ahead of time what is occurring.

 

[Glyfair]

So I've been kicking around the idea of assigning any players interested and willing the task of designing and fleshing out one of the nations in the world.

In my experience, it is much better when the player automatically has a buy-in of the area you want them to flesh out. If you give an overview of the area and a player decides his player is from an area that hasn't been fleshed out, while developing his character he can develop that area.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

This isn't terribly relevant to your situation, ShadyDM, but it might be useful to someone. There's a very informal little game called Dawn of Worlds (link to PDF) in which players basically assume the roles of gods and collaboratively draw the map, people the lands, and generate the history of a fantasy world. I've never played it, but there's a fair bit of info out there of others' experiences with it.

I've wondered if something like that (maybe modified to a smaller time/geographical scale?) might be a way to grab players' interest, as an entre into a more standard game. Players would have a hand in building the world directly at a macro-level over a couple sessions; followed up by a traditional campaign at the party level, as normal.

Obviously this wouldn't work without player buy in, but one pro is that it doesn't require any additional time by them outside the normal session. And even casual players would probably go into the standard campaign with some basic intuition about the world if they're there to create it. Of course, the DM would likely have to do a lot of work to run a campaign in a world like this. On the other hand, the in-built connect that players have to the world might even inspire another player to DM a short campaign in the world.
Maybe this would be a decent approach for a round-robin DM group?

 

[Tonguez]

This isn't terribly relevant to your situation, ShadyDM, but it might be useful to someone. There's a very informal little game called Dawn of Worlds (link to PDF) in which players basically assume the roles of gods and collaboratively draw the map, people the lands, and generate the history of a fantasy world. I've never played it, but there's a fair bit of info out there of others' experiences with it.

I've wondered if something like that (maybe modified to a smaller time/geographical scale?) might be a way to grab players' interest, as an entre into a more standard game. Players would have a hand in building the world directly at a macro-level over a couple sessions; followed up by a traditional campaign at the party level, as normal. .
Maybe this would be a decent approach for a round-robin DM group?

done this and it works well for player by in. Basically spent the first session on character background with "tell me about the town and nation we are in, any organisations your are part of, important NPCs you know, what you've been doing for the past month and how you know each other"

I did a round robin with each player started with 2 Actions which they could use to create/describe something or challenge something that another player had described. They gained one new action each round, although a challenge earned bonus action points. They were also awarded bonus 'organisation' skills, cultural feats and NPC contacts as they created new things.

it was fun in small doses but did start to get complicated, and might have verged on tedious if we had carried on...

 

[Karak]

I love the world building aspects of being a DM and making homebrewed sandbox style campaign settings is one of my favorite things.

One of the most disappointing things about world building is that as a DM you often end up with reams of paper filled with notes about your setting and it various nations, cities, geography, history and politics yet by the end of the campaign you end up using 10% of it and players might retain 3% if your lucky.

Part of that dynamic is just players preference like a hack n slasher probably doesn't give a rat's you know what about the history of kingdom X. Part of it is that the game is adventure centric and thats where player focus ends up.

So I reached a conclusion that a key goal in addressing all this is facilitation of player buy in. Along this line of thought I realized that nothing would probably facilitate a deeper and more genuine player buy in than getting them involved in building the world.

So I've been kicking around the idea of assigning any players interested and willing the task of designing and fleshing out one of the nations in the world.

With this in mind what are your experiences with collaborative world building. Any experiences positive or negative you've had and pitfalls to avoid or things to keep in mind based off first hand experience would be much appreciated!

Thanks (and apologies for the rambling post!)

Shadeydm, I just had a discussion with the AfterEarth team and they have given me the go-ahead to give you some of our forms, tags, and database info to assist you if you need. That would handle some of the difficulty of referencing and comparing. We could also assist you by giving you our design document if you would like. Just offers and you don't have to take them.

 

[Karak]

Shadeydm, I got your second PM and will get you some more info tomorrow for sure.
Glad we could help.

 

[Stormonu]

I don't run much of a sandbox, but I agree with Shade. More often than not, that information is simply more useful to me as a DM that it really is to the players. It informs me game-wise for building future adventures and guiding what the characters might expect to encounter - monsters, NPCs and places.

I'll also unashamedly admit I use it as material for the stories I write (or intend to write).

I do admit though, that player agency upon affecting the game world has its advantages. I always ask for character backgrounds and then attempt to incorporate those aspects into the game - with some sort of twist to keep players on their toes, as well as make those great "Dun-dun-dun" moments.

They're usually not huge bits of story - I tend to run in worlds where most of the nations and whatnot have already been worked out, but I like to make the players feel like they have an impact or stake on the local area around them.

These incorporations are often tangential to the main story line, and I've even derailed the characters away from the main storyline to resolve issues cropping up from these "side stories".

Often, these things snowball. A small story or event in one campaign has often turned into the centerpiece of another campaign. My vampire game had a stunning one; one of the character's mentors (from a merit he took) turned out to be an ancient and severely deranged vampire held in thrall by a very disliked Tremere (blood magic vampire). When the party finally dispatched the Tremere (due to other treasonable acts on the Tremere's side), it freed the deranged vampire from his blood bonds and he vanished to Europe. The rest of the campaign continued for another six months following other story elements. The next campaign, however, set the characters in Europe, attempting to hunt down and contain the rogue vampire from the other game.

Long read, but perhaps informational[sblock]
In the last campaign I ran - set in Golarion - the elvin ranger in the group had been taken in by human (Varasian) gypsies. The campaign started at the tail end of the trio going to the local tavern in Sandpoint to get drunk and bilk the populace out of their gold (oddly enough, in that order). Instead, the elvin ranger was caught up in the events in town and missed when her "family" left the area. Later on, it turned out that her two "brothers" had been turned into ghouls by the BBEG and the two bungling (Int 6) fools were attempting to "convert" her (yes, trying to turn an elf into a ghoul). While the first attempt failed, because they were family, she didn't kill them - and they also swore they had knowledge what had happened to her real mother. Throughout the rest of the campaign, she kept bumping into them. Sometimes, they'd give her clues to what was going on (or help) and how they were tangentially involved in the bad guy's schemes. At least twice, she unwittingly set herself up for the two ghouls to nearly kill her (and a couple other members of the party).

Overall, it helped in several points - the two ghouls were foils, when they showed up, the party knew they were on the right track, and they had to keep their guard up or risk the ghouls turning on them in a moment of weakness. If the player(s) could manipulate the weak-minded ghouls they could get a hint of what to expect or where they needed to go next.

They also helped me to convey information about the BBEG's scheme that the characters might not otherwise have had the chance to find out. Being on the inside, the party could sometimes wheedle information out that helped them to understand why the needed to undertake a certain quest, or sometimes just a bit of personal enemy about the bad guys (which could be purely informational or put to tactical use).

And most importantly, they helped to tie the elvin player to the world. She had family (of a sorts) and through them, a stronger link to events in the area that had caused her mother to abandon her in the first place. Through this, I was able to relay historical campaign information to the player that they cared about, because that information helped to guide her on her search for what had happened to and where her missing mother had gone.

And none of this, of course, was in the AP I ran.
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