So now
that I’ve discussed starting from scratch, it is time to look into what a game
master can do if ideas are not particularly forthcoming. Maybe you have an idea
of the cosmology, but when you get down to populating settlements and adventure
sites, you find yourself hitting constant blocks. Perhaps it is coming up with religious
or political institutions that is not your forte. Luckily for us, we exist in a
unique time when there is a lot of information we can pull from in order to
complete our own homebrew worlds. Don’t worry about things being too
derivative, because you can always reflavor anything in order to better suit
the mood of you campaign setting.
Beg, Borrow, Steal
As any
good teacher will tell you, sometimes you just have to borrow what works from
others in order to get the job done. This goes doubly so for role-playing
games. From early on, Dungeons and Dragons published books adapting real world
deities and religions into something that works in the game world. Turning to Deities and Demigods in order to flesh
out your campaign setting is simply working smarter not harder. Whether you are
going to wholesale import a pantheon into your setting, or just pick and choose
gods from several pantheons, this can give you a tremendous starting point.
Likewise,
you should feel encouraged to plumb published settings for ideas for your game.
If you want gnomes that operate like the Tinker Gnomes of Krynn, you should not
feel like you have make the race yourself, just steal the stat block from a Dragonlance setting book. The same goes
likewise for providing monsters for your setting. While a given sourcebook will
certainly not have everything you are looking for (otherwise you would probably
be using that setting instead), there are bound to be useful bits scattered
throughout the text. The most important thing to remember is that it is your
setting, so you should be free to create the environment of your choice.
The
same goes for inputting published adventures into your campaign. You want to
run T1-4, but center it in your homebrew world? Do it. This can be as easy as
just putting the whole kit and caboodle in your game, or as involved as redoing
some of the encounters in order to make sure it better suits your setting. Just
do not let the pressure of feeling like you have to have a one-hundred percent
original world get you overthinking things. There’s nothing new under the sun,
so there is nothing wrong with contenting yourself with adapting things to your
setting and giving them your own flourish.
As long as you can create a narrative driven
reason for having Beholder star empires a la Spelljammer and using beastmen from Primeval Thule instead of orcs, you should do it. Don’t feel like
you need to use any idea as it is presented either. By adding a little
different flavor, you can successfully throw off players who may have the same
books from which you are pulling ideas. There is, after all, nothing better
than watching players lose it over a monster that looks like one iconic monster
(or something completely different) but is mechanically identical to a different
one. This is also a great way of throwing off the veteran gamer who seems to
know how to defeat every monster you throw his/her way. The important thing is
two keep in mind these two questions: 1) what do I want this monster to be
capable of, and 2) what do I want it to look/act like? You’d be surprised how
easy it is to fill in the blanks when you keep these questions central to your
thinking.
I get by with a
little help from my friends
The
final piece of advice I can really give on campaign world design is to,
whenever possible, delegate responsibility. Being the game master is a
difficult and time consuming job anyway, so it never hurts to spread the
responsibility a bit. Allow your players to contribute to the design and
culture of the world. Not only will they feel more invested, they will be more
likely to act in character because they fundamentally understand the conceits of
their character’s culture.
It is usually helpful to provide some
parameters for your players in order to make sure you all stay on the same
page. For instance, it would really hard to explain the barbarian who comes
from a mammoth hunting people of the northern wastes if there are neither
mammoths nor a northern waste in the setting. By this token, make sure that the
physical geography of your setting is fully set before allowing your players to
take the reins of creative control.
In
regard to the map, this is another task that can be easily completed in a
cooperative manner. I am going to steal an idea from my buddy Harms for this
next bit. Provide a blank map for the players. Have each player come up with
one feature (physical or political) and put it on the map. Pass the map around
so that everyone (including the game master) has an opportunity to add one
feature. Next, have everyone write down some cultural or physical details about
the feature placed by the person to their left. Finally, the person to the left
of that should write down some relationship the feature has to other features
in the world or a point of interest/adventure hook for the feature. In under an
hour you can have a fully playable setting.
Strong on his mountain (er…at his desk),
PJ
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