D&D Custom Worlds.
There's plenty of pre-existing D&D worlds, such as Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, Greyhawk, Dark Sun; even some stranger ones such as Spelljammer.
However, my question is custom worlds. How many of you play in them? How many of you are DMs that create them?
As players, what do you look for in a custom world? Do you prefer a site that has information about the world? If so, what type of information do you want to see about a custom world that makes you feel like you know enough about it?
However, my question is custom worlds. How many of you play in them? How many of you are DMs that create them?
As players, what do you look for in a custom world? Do you prefer a site that has information about the world? If so, what type of information do you want to see about a custom world that makes you feel like you know enough about it?
0
Comments
The key to world building, in the custom style, is to have a LOOSE idea of what's going on and to feel free to borrow from existing material.
For example, you're going to want to have a pantheon. Your pantheon doesn't have to be "ready" by the time you play your first session - because you can truncate it by saying you're limiting their choices to the "region" you're playing in (Ie people here worship gods 1,2, or 3 only and a few loose cults of xyz here and there). So your work load is MUCH lighter until you get the offhand chance to expand things - which the players will ultimately like as they discover this new information for themselves. But you need have to make *some kind* of decision about how Gods/pantheons work to get yourself up and running. The big mistake people who haven't made settings before do is to try to make a HUGE robust pantheon purely from their own imagination, and that's a task that could take months, and then having not even run a single session they give up. Plus some players/characters won't really give a rip about the Gods so you may be wasting some time!
The same goes for general geography. Where cities are, what they're like, and what sort of major geographic features there are. The best thing to do there is figure out where you're playing and put ONE major geographic feature there. A tall mountain in a mountain range, a series of treacherous hills, swamps. Something for the players brain's to attach to and give them a "feel" for the place. Then you really only have to design the world in say... 100 miles from the center of your location with a loose "idea" of what may be beyond. As you figure that out you can reveal it to your players - again a lot of people really dive too deep in setting up foreign lands that the players will likely never visit, get overwhelmed, and quit before even making anything. If they ask questions you don't have answers to, just make something up and then you can either retcon it later by saying so-and-so was mistaken. You can also work this geographic feature into the lore - many peoples and cultures the world over assigned special significance to the geographic features that defined their lives the Nile, Volga, and Mississippi rivers, Mt. Olympus, the Black Forest, the Sahara, etc.
Then the same goes for lore and history. You have several archetypes to pick from when dealing with lore. The "fallen" society - you can go has hard or soft here as you want, from say, the disintegration of the Carolingian empire, the fall of Rome, or full on post-apocalyptic. The ascendant society (either new technology or new lands have been invented/taken/discovered) you can from discovery of new lands like Iceland... or North and South America in scope, or new technology like gunpowder, new ship types, or simply new essential trade goods. You can also splash religion in here as a new religion is rising or an old one is dying (Odin worship supplanting Thor worship to Christianity supplanting Roman Pantheon in scope for example). Or you can splash some mystery in there in that nobody *really* knows what has gone on prior to now and its up to players to discover it - with the exception of one legendary occurrence in the past (a very LOTR feeling can come on here) where a major battle or major event shaped the world as we know it, and everything before is just something nobody *really* knows about. Again you don't have to put a TON of thought into this and can flesh it out as you play if your players so desire.
The way we'd deal with introducing new players to the campaign world, was to write up a small sheet with *general* information, because again it's better to have their character just be a fish out of water so they can have the joy of discovering the world all over again - helps keep it fresh for the greybeards! Over time, if you play for years and years, you'll end up with an exceedingly well fleshed out world, and won't have to spend 600 hours world-building before even playing.
Particularly in the first few sessions it's good to leave yourself some options for "writing as you go" as you get a feel for the group, and then just write down a note to yourself that that thing is now permanent. If you end up hating it later you could always have some trolls come burn it down later
From there it generally depends on what sort of extraneous skills you have. If you can draw, or are good with certain mapping programs, write poetry, or make music, feel free to let what you're good at shine there as an extra bonus to players.
The real strength of the custom built world is that players' actions can have REALLY far ranging impact from campaign to campaign. For example things our characters had done in 2e, when we were 12-13 were still pertinent political realities and myth/legend by the time we were in our 20s still playing in the same world, and that creates a kind of romance of familiarity you don't really get with boxed campaign settings unless you've *always* played said setting. The other handy thing is it kind of puts players in a box, because *somebody* in the group will or has ultimately read all there is to read about xyz setting and will often rob the other players of the sense of discovery and wonderment that can come from playing D&D - and even if they're good and don't they themselves won't really have that same feeling, whereas with a homebrew you're *all* discovering the world together - DM included
It's also useful, as a DM, to assign a player or for you yourself to do this if you're an efficient typist, can write shorthand notes effectively, or have good memory to take "minutes" of what has gone on, so you can link things together down the road or set up recurring characters, or at the very least, make sure you don't accidentally contradict yourself. Then you can share these minutes later to prevent confusion and misrememberings and to update people who missed the session - or even purposefully lie
For actually starting one. I'd have a "session 0" where you could write up a sheet with the following information:
Historical/lore theme/setting. Geographical "theme" of the area. 3 important figures/major players in society. A bit about 1-2 towns or locations the players will visit early on. How Gods are thought to work by most people. What alignments you feel would fit this setting best why xyz alignments wouldn't work or would be harder to play. What sort of technological level are we at. How pervasive is magic. How are magic users treated. What races are playable and how are they treated? Are they native to the region? Then name off 1-3 "problems" in the region that will be the subject of the first series of adventures. That should be a good 2-3 pages. You can talk things out with your players and generally your objective should be to get a feel for things they care about and like - everybody is different. So if you get some person that asks tons of questions about whatever topic, you know you can make his/her game experience more fun by adding more of that sort of content in; whereas other players will just be happy to be playing D&D and will roll with whatever you give them. Then lastly, go over whatever sort of quirks you have as a DM. House rules, the making of house rules, what to do if somebody dies, etc. Also early on, don't be afraid to steal ideas from other settings, movies, books, or TV shows. In part to make your job easier. If some player complains just claim ignorance
I'll give you an example of our first ever session when we were just wee kids I remember it particularly well being as it was the first time I played D&D which became a lifelong love of mine lol.
We met first and had a chat about what the game would be like and some general rules and lore stuff - basically a session 0 as I describe above.
- Plains, in a small farming town that is especially prosperous due to a mysterious "protector" who seemingly arrives whenever evil, in the form of orc raid or famine, is about to befall the village. In fact, the locals have taken to worshiping this entity - though there are many theories as to its origins - and have even erected a limestone statue in its honor in the middle of town which acts as a kind of shrine (when the players finally discover this statue they can DEFINITELY tell the thing is not a known species of creature). A wizard of mysterious intent has been sent to this town (played by a PC who really wanted to play a wizard, you could've substituted any class here) by a relatively poor town some distance away, ruled by a lord of dubious intent and skill. Their objective: to discover the nature of this "protector" and to see if it can be contacted, bargained with to perhaps aid *his* town, or outright destroyed/defeated and to ascertain its nature, motivations, and origin in general. The first several sessions are spent simply *getting* to said farming village with the players' primary objective being to protect the lord's emissary/scholar (the wizard). You start session 1 with the players already en route in the wilderness. In time the players had to figure out the lay of the town, the various locations along the way to said town, its major players, help or harm said town to draw out the protector or ascertain if its even real, and to attempt to formulate a strategy on what to do should it appear, all the while trying to come across lore relating to said protector and the region itself.
Anyway, two rules of world building:
1) Plagiarise.
2) Copy rule 1.
I still have the maps somewhere, and I can reconstruct the notes, NPCs, etc. Not sure if I want to, though. When I've looked at running stuff lately I've been more interested in using pre-made settings like Golarion or Faerun.
Had a game where a Spacecraft had crashed on Faerûn, everybody on the ship had died but a laser weapon was found. It killed a couple of PCs before they realised how to operate it, but for revenge, they killed my dragon before "the battery ran out"...
Gus
Reason I ask - I love to play D&D - but more so, I enjoy DMing. I love building a world, forging history, creating gods, and all of that for my players to be a part of. Quite a few of my players in my most recent game, this is their first exposure to D&D. (We've been playing together now for about three years). But my game was their first exposure to D&D for three of the players. Two of them had played very casual, laid back, D&D games with me. And my wife has gamed with me in D&D for like 15 years now, off and on.
I created a site for my world, and listed out the gods, the history, some of the known lore. I even listed all the monsters from the Monster Manual with a picture from the 5e MM books, so that they could get a visual. (99% of the descriptions don't contain vital information; only the monster's general history and where they come from, where they lair, etc - information a character might know). This provides a visual for a character who may not know what a goblin or troll or oughyt looks like.
I was just curious what players look for - and what other DMs do - for those players - when playing in a custom world.
I remember when I was younger, there was no need for history, and all of that - you just rolled up a character and hoped to survive.
My favorite was a short "break" where I dm'd for our main bunch; I created a campaign wherein the land was ruled by a very short tempered lord who would throw you in prison for almost any reason - and I let the players come up with whatever crime they wanted as to why they were arrested and thrown in the dungeon. They then had to coordinate a jail-break and go on the run. Simple motivations like that
And like you, by the sounds of it, I try not to kill my players. The only time I am willing to openly kill them is if they do something that is obviously an ill advised idea. Then I let the dice, no pun intended, roll where they may - good or bad.
I don't see the point in using a different setting unless is substantially different. Simply having gods with different names, a bit of different history, and having the coastline wiggle in a different way seems like pointlessness to me, if you have the same old elves, dwarves and polytheistic cosmology.
I am not knocking ANYONE who plays in existing worlds (as a player, I loved playing in the Dragonlance setting), just to be clear.
As for the Forgotten Realms, I change anything I think helps the story - it's my Forgotten Realms, not anyone else's.
But in this thread - I mentioned, the reason I asked is - several of my players - this is their first time playing _any_ form of D&D/Pen & Paper RPG. I feel like, helping someone get immersed into the game, is providing them information that their characters would likely know. So creating lore and what not, whether it's about the world, the gods, the monsters - allows them (if they're so inclined, and wish to role play a little more) - the chance to read up on the information I've provided about the world and use that to their character's advantage. For example, if I make up a lore about a cursed land, and that the story/rumor is the only way to break it is this really difficult to find crystal in this other random mountain - then it's up to the players to have read it. If they read it and know it - it's information I allow their characters to know. If they didn't read it, and don't know it - then this is information, that their characters would not know.
I could hand them a couple of Forgotten Realms books or D&D Campaign guides and say "This is what you have to read if you really want to immerse yourself in the lore of the campaign." But that might be overbearing.
People have different playing styles, naturally. Some love to devour that information and use it as an opportunity to role play; some just want to roll the dice and hit things. I try to accomidate to both sides, by providing information about the world and delivering (I hope) fun campaigns with combat.
The other benefit to creating a custom world (not a problem in my case) is having that player who knows that world better than you do - and either calling out "That's now how it is in Forgotten Realms" or losing the immersion of the game, because you did or said something that is not correct for the Forgotten Realms world. No one knows a custom world better than you do, as the creator.
And if there are any players out there who enjoy info dumps, I have never met them. Most prefer to learn about the world through experiencing it with thier characters.
I get if you're experienced D&D player... you don't need that info, because chances are you've read through the players handbook, thumbed through the monster manual, played several games, with different people and DMs and have a general "lay of the land."
I still remember when I first played D&D (and trust me, we're talking the first edition...) - it was a bit jarring because the orcs and goblins and the like did not work or even look similar to Tolkien's version - and that's what I was expecting when I played D&D - so it was a bit jarring (same thing with trolls and other lore from Tolkien, which was my main exposure to fantasy way back when). After I got interested and bought my own D&D books, it was much easier to play in a campaign because I understood the monsters (not necessarily knew them for their weakness) - just a better understanding of where goblins live, the gods they came from, etc. I don't know. It helped me understand the game better.
It's similar to this - imagine you're playing a Pen & Paper version of a Marvel Super Heroes game (like the old one from the 80's! FASERIP!) - and the people in your group have had no exposure to comics (and back then there were no Marvel movies) - and you're telling this story, as the characters are fighting, you explain that Captain America shows up to help! Now, any hero should very well know who Captain America is. But if you drop Captain America into the game, and your players have no idea who he is or the significance - they're just going to shrug their shoulders and think it's a hero you made up, missing the opportunity to play up being in awe of his presence, or even, jealous of his popularity - whatever the case might be.
But, to agree to your point also - for example (keeping on the theme of super heroes) - you can go see Guardians of the Galaxy 2, for example and enjoy the movie for what it is. (For example, my wife loved it - even though she's not a comic book geek). I watched it, and picked up on all the extra things, and the significance of Ego (and the shot where they show him as a planet with a face), the significance of Mantis - and all those little details.
So yes, you CAN play a game and not know the low down of the smaller details - similar to seeing a movie. But at the same time, if you DO happen to know some of the finer details - you might get some additional enjoyment out of it also.
That is one good reason to create a world from scratch - so experienced players don't know too much.