BORING your D&D Players? Try world building like this!
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 30 ม.ค. 2024
- Considering a homebrew DnD campaign? Thinking about creating your very first WORLD? Start here so you can avoid some major traps, as well as learn a key trick to making your world exciting, cohesive and fun for your players!
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So many links!
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• My Feywild Campaign one page example // drive.google.com/file/d/1XLt9...
• Pointy Hat Worldbuilding Video // • The Key to World Build...
• Sly Flourish One Page Campaign Guide Video // • Writing a Single Page ...
• Sly Flourish One Page Campaign Guide Blog Post // slyflourish.com/one_page_camp...
• Hamlet’s Hit Points // preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/p...
• Changeling the Lost RPG // preview.drivethrurpg.com/en/p...
• Brandes Stoddard Feywild Articles // www.tribality.com/2020/05/08/...
• Brandes Stoddard Blog // www.brandesstoddard.com/
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• Dandelion by unsplash.com/@chris_papaux
• Planet by Nasa unsplash.com/photos/photo-of-...
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You can also build lore into spells. So when a caster says the verbal components, sure they are in some funky language but if you translate that funky language perhaps the spell tonations tell little "shaka when the walls fell" kind of stories. Also the material components may also tell a story or reveal lore. Another great way to build in lore is with undead, what is the history of the undead encountered, are they wearing ancient armor from some legendary battle?
Creating your own homebrewed world? I think people think too hard about this stuff and end up puting the cart before the horse. You need to do the practical stuff that the players are actually going to interact with first, then worry about the more high minded aspects of a setting later.
So try the “clock” method. You’ll need a piece of paper and a pencil.
Find the center of the paper and write “town” there. Then starting from the 12 o’clock position write down a piece of terrain: forest, mountain, etc. Then move in a clockwise direction and write down different pieces of terrain in each hour spot so 1 o'clock, two o'clock etc. Continue around until you’ve come back to the 12 o’clock position. Then repeat this process, only replace the terrain type with an adventuring site, a castle, a ruin, another town, a dungeon etc. Once you’ve done that, continue around again with an NPC or organization, a witch, a lost king, a thieves' guild, a cult etc.
Now you’ve created a (very simplistic) map, and a who, what, and where to go along with it. So now we create the whys. Fire up your word processor and start writing up why those three things are there and how they are connected together. Once you’ve done that, fill out character names, place names, motivations etc until the world is populated with interesting places to go, interesting characters to interact with and interesting stuff for the players to find.
Bing! You have a campaign setting. Just don’t forget to re-draw your map and made it pretty.
I love your videos and hope you go far! Also as a child who grew up in Cheshire England where Delamere forest is I was especially pleased to see it mentioned (sure there maybe one elsewhere in the world I dunno but it made me connect with it - especially as a former changeling the lost storyteller!)
Thank you so much for your kind words 😊
Honestly - I thought I made up Delamere! But I did spend some time in Europe doing a study abroad when I was younger, I'm wondering if I just kind of mentally absorbed that name? 😂 And Changeling is actually a HUGE inspiration on my version of the feywild! I've haven't gotten the chance to play in a game of CtL yet, so I just read the books and yoink ideas to throw into the mix!
I made a mash up of Magic the Gathering factions, Avatar the last airbender plot themes, and Eberron. Ended up making the first adventure a 'wedding' between the black/green factions that white officiates over. Most everything is then expanded on as we play. For example, originally I didn't have warforged as a race until one of the players wanted to be one, so made the Artificers guild (a grey/colorless faction that was all about profits) and each guild faction in each nation had say 'the left arm schematics/making' of a warforged. Then the next PC made a failed merchant from that guild. Finally the third player was best friends with the princess of the Green faction. Kept it very color coded and simple for them, but then we had lots of room to make more lore for the world together.
Also gives me a default personality to work with for a person from X or Y faction. When making a sandbox, while you don't wanna 'exposition' or make a novel for your PCs as listed, its better as Stephanie says to keep it close to your chest so you have something to base it off of. Ironically, homebrew worlds take a lot more 'prep' as to not fall apart, and for me to default back to nerd lore I have learned, makes it much easier to improv as well.
I totally love all of this! Players get SO into it when you can find a way to let them play what they’re interested in. I love that you saw an opportunity to add to the story instead of subtract from your players fun! 🤩
And it sounds like you got such a handle on good world building techniques - I do a lot of similar pulling from thing that’s inspired me, things that exist, and ideas that I had that I thought were cool to “kitbash” campaigns as I call it! 😂
Thank you for the feywild page! It sparked so many new ideas for me
Sounds like you’ e got the makings of a delightfully entertaining campaign.
For me world building within an existing setting like Faerun made it a lot easier. You can fall back on maps, pantheon, countries, etc. if the customized stuff you are building is outgrown. My second campaign is in a new and unique world, and I let the progress of the game build the world. To be honest, ChatGPT saves me in sticky situations. "What are the names of the 8 provinces of this Empire? *rapid typing* Aldoria, Tyria, Noxara... I actually find I have lots of time as the players are trying to decide what to do to generate things like this. I rarely use straight up what I get from AI, but use it as more of an arrow to point me in a direction.
Oh yes, I definitely use name generators for EVERYTHING because that is definitely one of my weaknesses! And I agree- I think people shouldn’t be afraid to pull from existing things and piecemeal together what they’d like to see, not everything needs to be from scratch!
I'm very on board with the main ideas here, starting with a main idea / theme and letting things stem from that. The video could've been a bit shorter but it's criminal this only got 400 views
I made my world map first using Pangea Ultima. My goal was to loosely have any culture and trope available. I created the general political regions and an overall history, general religions, and how magic works. I then let my players help color it in.
Great world building tips. Hopefully I can remember to do some of this before my next big campaign. As for unique ones I've designed, Blood Dominion (mentioned in my "Menagerie" video) was by far my favorite, even though I didn't get to run it. It took the concept of savage races as a cohesive society, with the overarching theme of the campaign taken from an old "Chronicles of Riddick" line I heard in the previews: "It's not about Good versus Evil. It's about BAD versus Evil."
Ooooh that sounds like it would’ve been a cool setting to play in!
Starting small with worldbuilding is often a good idea. My world I've run games in for years now started with one fishing village on a small island.
I definitely agree - in my feywild campaign I started in a tiny village as well and built out as the PCs moved to other areas 😊
I made a small region and a few factions and then wait to see what they like. they didnt care about the woobie I attempted to put in their way, but the love and hate they have for the assassin they met first thing means I am going to definitely bring her back soon.
It’s really amazing to try and predict what players will be into 😂 I also love a good assassin so I can’t blame them!
I had a player write a rival into their backstory that I thought would be very casual but ended up altering certain plans to be associated with him instead because they kept blaming everything on him and his goons anyways!
Just found your channel and have watched a few of your videos. Nice job. ❤
I have subscribed ❤
Thanks for the kind words!
The feywild idea has the makings of a really cool novel there. 😁
Oh man, I play D&D because I’m far too lazy to write a whole novel 😂 I just like doing the world building part haha, I want the characters to do everything on their own!
@@StephaniePlaysGames 😂🤣 That hits too close to home.
Very very good advices, again, 😃 I use existing settings, save me tons of times, but I also use players inputs so they will go in and discovers only in case to case basic local stuff, low-level. But after 5 years at level 15 they usually in politics above their heads 😋😋 and everyone wants to kill them, or use them 🤣🤣 my first TPK was in the feywild 🤔 the party split, and got killed or charmed or just forgotten who they are... sad story for sure...🍗🍗 it was not call the feywild in those days 🤔🤔🧙♂🧙♂
Hahaha the feywild is definitely a dangerous place for splitting the party!
Instead of doing expsiiton dumps try this: Write out your full 2 page tldr lore dump. Now, break it into individual sentences. Then "give" on of each of those sentences to an NPC, or info source, in the game. Info sources can include things like tapestries that have stories woven on them, paintings, statues, murals, coats of arms, etc, etc. This way characters will learn the lore dump by interacting with stuff in the campaign.