World Building Tips

I love building settings for my DnD games and I have, over the years, developed a few tricks I use over and over to help me create a setting that comes off well at the game table.

Now when someone says 'well done setting' the first thing that leaps to my mind is Tolkien's Middle Earth. A vast world with rich history and events that is completely immersive. A perfect thing to emulate for your fantasy setting, right?

Well... not exactly.

Don't get me wrong I love Middle Earth and reading Tolkien's works and getting lost in them... but... as many important historians have said... Tolkien was never a DM. =P

So why should you try to emulate him? The answer, obviously, is you shouldn't. Sitting down and spending years writing prose describing your world to the smallest detail will end up being a waste at the gaming table and thus a waste of your prep time. So writing the next great fantasy novel will have to wait for... say... novel writing. It doesn't belong at the gaming table.

Why? Well because long stretches of prose (purple or not) at the gaming table can really bog down the game and have the complete opposite effect on the players than intended: distraction instead of immersion. But there is a middle ground there where some description is needed, of course. And of course some work developing the setting. But let's stop before we hit the novel range.

So, Tolkien is out as a guideline. "What's next as a setting to use as inspiration? Ah... Well there's those settings put out specifically for D&D," you might very well be thinking, "I'll emulate those."

Wrong again.

Now, bear with me here. I only know that this process is wrong because as a DM running a game for friends there is a very different focus than that of a game company seeking to create a product for DMs to use. For one, you don't have to try and please every DM - you just have to please you. This eliminates a lot of work. Go through your favorite setting and decide, just as an exercise here, which large portions of the map you will *not* be using in your game. This encompasses locales that do not interest you or your players. All that stuff? You don't need it.

*Tears out large sections of the setting for illustration purposes. Weighs the much smaller stack of papers in his hand* There, that's a little better. At maximum you should only need to come up with this much as a general overview. So we went from thousands of pages, to hundreds of pages, down to, say, 100. Maybe a lot less depending on your interests.

Now that we have our expectations in the proper perspective let's look at the basic building block of setting development that I, myself, use: structure.

By structure I mean a few key underlying principles to create a setting which, at the game table, seems complete and cohesive. The key words here are "at the game table." For some DMs they might have a lot of the knowledge of the setting all in their head and can easily keep things straight. Others might need things written down completely in order to keep it all straight and many fall in the middle of these two extremes. Do the recording amount that makes you feel confident and comfortable behind the DM screens.

So... structure number one: A map.

These are in no particular order and each of these things can be done to completion or only partially in whatever order feels best for you in developing your setting. Me? I like to start with a map since I'm a visual guy.

First thing for a map is vague blobs representing land masses. Next do elevations - add in mountains and hills. Picture the topography in your head. Now imagine rain falling on the bare earth you have shaped. This further carves the land, creating rivers and lakes. If you want think about the tectonic plates that underly your world. Which direction are they travelling? Add volcanic activity near faults. Let the volcanoes work their magic for an age or to and see if any islands pop up or land masses change. Next, imagine the wind blowing over your world. Imagine how the weather patterns are shaped by the mountains and vice versa. Where does it rain most? Where does it rain the least? Next add your plants - forests here, deserts there, as the terrain and rainfall and temperature dictate.

It's a given that animals will exist in all areas I think so let's skip that and go to the much more interesting idea of the intelligent races and where they start on the map. Like at the beginning of playing Risk we set the pieces down: a human cradle of civilization here, the elvish migration entering the map from the edge over here, etc. Now expand on them. Where do they conflict? Begin tribal wars there. Decide who wins and how much advancement there is in each period of conflict or peace (or how much regression, if you choose). Now advance through all this until the modern day. Note the distribution of the races and of the groups they form together whether in cooperation or in isolation from other races. This becomes your setting at the table.

Now...

With this rough overview in mind take some of your favorite conflicts that you played through in your mind and give those wars or battles names - they don't have to be final names just yet, but you should at least name them something descriptive to keep them straight until a proper name for them comes to you. This will be your rough sketch of history for your setting. This is the Tolkien-like novel material that can be expanded on for a lifetime if you like.

But we're not going to indulge in that yet - we have players that want to game sometime in the next decade so let's do the minimum here and write up a basic timeline of major events in the setting's history. This is a DM aid only so use detail to a level you are comfortable with but see if you can, for the sake of brevity and behind the screens paper shuffling, keep it to one side of one page. Make sure to put dates on there. Now you have a DM setting history cheat sheet. Use this whenever you have to make an historical reference in your story. By using this often you will begin to build up an idea of the setting history in the minds of your players.

If you think you might like to go beyond just one page for the cheat sheet, fine, but then it might not be a bad idea to make the one sheet page anyway and give it to all the players as a handout. Or maybe make skill checks to see which portions the PC knows and cut out information appropriately to give each player a portion of the timeline which represents the PC's knowledge of historical events.

Now, to really add a level of depth to your world's history come up with figures of historical significance that participated in and directed the major events of the past world. If you like make notes on what magical items the person might have possessed or what tales and songs and poetry might have been created about these people's lives. Spring these bits on the players now and then to add depth to your world. These little glimpses will give a feeling of much greater unspoken richness existing in your notes behind the screen or in your head or both. It is this feeling of Player wonder an player contentedness we are shooting for. They need to be absorbed into the world just enough to appreciate the new details you add to their understanding of the world. By building these up over time you can really make your world's history immersive to the player.

Now... to detail the setting in the present. Here we stare into the abyss of the Game Company-generated setting and can see just how far we can take detailing these things. We could, if given the time, create city after city with the detail of the 1st Edition Waterdeep Boxed Set or we could outline every minor and major power group in a region like in the 4e Neverwinter Campaign Setting. But just like we don't have the time to write a trilogy of novels about our setting so too do we not have the time to create things in detail to this degree. At least not for every area of the map.

And so we need to pare this information down and how we do that is we consider the upcoming adventure.

Hopefully you're making this setting because you find the idea of creating one fun and exciting but also there is the likely reason that you want to run an adventure or maybe even a full campaign set in it someday. Use the plot points of the adventure to narrow down the regions you will need to develop in detail. Surround those areas with semi-developed areas and beyond, the bare structure areas of your imagined history from earlier in the setting creation process. Should you need to develop something new on the fly to accomodate players with a case of wanderlust your underlying structure can aid you in making up something on the fly using your history data to create a town with a bit of history to it and, therefore, some character to it as well.

The world building process can further be aided by examining your adventure and where there are certain decisions that need to be made by the players occur. Look for points in the adventure where there are only a few choices available. The areas before and perhaps after these key points are perfect for a sandbox-style section of the world which is more open and gives the players more choices. To use a classic example from an old 2nd Edition D&D book the players have to find the cure for a poison that will kill the king in seven days. The players can find the cure by visiting various wizards though they have to get the right combination of knowledge and ingredients to concoct a cure. the pinch point here is what happens if the players succeed or what happens if they fail. Succeeding may mean they learn that the poison came from a rare flower found in only one valley. Failing might mean that the PCs stay in the region that they are but that the power balance of the region changes as nobles begin warring for the crown.

As a DM it would be good to detail the sandbox area before the plot decision point and only rough out the next two possibilities. Once you play the session wherein the players decide what choice they take you can call it a night to go work on further fleshing out the foes and plot points for the next section of the adventure. This saves you having to detail two separate outcomes fully ahead of time.

Once you begin to intertwine the plot and the world it's pretty easy to keep going back and forth making adjustments to both to make a more cohesive whole.

Again the important thing here is what the players experience at the gaming table. Short, concise, and accurate descriptions of people, places, and events are the way to go for DM notes. You can always expand upon an idea if you need to on the fly but having the basics down will let you put on a good front. Details like a person's name and the manner in which you should role play the individual is a great start.

I once detailed the city of Marsember in such a way, having names for each shop in the entire city and making notes each time I had to role play a shopkeeper or the like. So that each time they stopped back the person was the same two dimensional cut out, sure, but the fact that every time they went back to the jeweler the slender man with all the eye pieces strapped to his head was always in the midst of eating something and would keep on doing so as he talked with the PCs added a little more character to what could otherwise be a pretty lifeless interaction.

It's these details - these at-the-gaming-table details - that help make the world come alive for the players. Prepare in just the right way with a good underlying structure and details to make key points of the structure come to life and your players will never spot the holes in your setting for all the detail and continuity you've built into it using these simple tricks.