Crafting a World
What follows is a bit of a follow-up to or is complimentary with my advice about regional adventure design and area travel, but as it relates to creating a world setting. I should have written this up and posted it years ago, but I’ve now used this process with multiple groups and refined it over multiple iterations. This method always creates something interesting–more interesting than I could have come up with myself–but more importantly than that, it consistently turns out something the players themselves are personally invested and interested in.
The usual process of world design involves the DM creating a big, complex, storied world full of lore, but most of this lore will never be seen or interacted with by the players. All this creativity and energy goes to waste since the only person who ever sees it, experiences it, or enjoys it is the DM himself when he writes it. And while there is nothing wrong with that, the issue for me is that we create these wondrous things to share with our friends, and therefore the greater loss is that we never do.
Oftentimes this sharing doesn’t happen because our players are simply not interested in our favored babies amongst the complex and interesting setting elements we’ve crafted; for example, they just don’t care about that elven city you painstakingly detailed or the carefully entwined lineage of noble families whose actions led to the ruin of the last kingdom; or worse, they just forget about all of it between game sessions because they have no real skin in the game when it comes to remembering anything about these pieces of setting lore.
That’s important: players should feel invested in in the campaign world’s lore. To that end, what I do when I start a game with a new set of players is run a kind of Session Zero where the main focus is instead on the setting. Let your players know not to make characters before the game, you will be doing it together as part of session zero. Also let them know a couple days before your game night to come up with two adjectives–they do not have to be complicated or interesting or weird. (Some of them will be.)
This is how the settings of Finalem and Benevolence were crafted for my last two campaigns, and how things came to be: like a haunted jungle full of dinosaur-riding pixies, an island kingdom of immense tower-cities built by xenophobic humans ruled by wizards, warforged monks living in mountain temples under assault by their crazed former creators, a misty sea ravaged by pirates whose secret island base moves and is rumored to be guarded by something terrible, a fanatical cult of paladins whose kingdom is holding back invading demon hordes, a wise but foul-tempered swamp ogre people would cautiously go to for advice, half-elves who are such only because they weren’t born in the elven homeland (and are not thus immortal), and all sorts of other things. Or how, during the campaign, the players decided there are two orcish nations: a group of highland hunters in the south and a group in the far northern mountains about whom not much is known.
Once everyone has gathered for game night, explain that you’re all collectively going to create the world you’re about to adventure in using: a large sheet of paper or a whiteboard (if you can), some pencils, pens, or markers (depending), and imagination.
- Label the four edges of the paper/whiteboard with the compass directions: N, S, E, W.
- Ask someone to pick a direction (N, S, E, W) and tell you one of their adjectives.
- Write that adjective by that direction on your paper or board.
- Ask the person next to that person to name a feature in that area.
[This can be a natural feature like mountains or a forest or a lake, or a man-made feature like a village or city structure, or even something the area is known for like specific goods, a group, or a person.] - Write the feature next to the adjective. Draw it if you wish.
[For example, next to “North”, you might now have “Blue City” or “Archaic Mountains” or “Furious Monks” or “Benevolent Farmland” or “Shiny Seas” or “Demonic Desert” or “Nervous Kingdom”.] - Ask the person who just gave you the feature to pick one of the remaining directions and tell you one of their adjectives, and repeat as above (write it down, ask the person next to them for a feature, etc.) until all the cardinal directions have one adjective + feature.
- Once the four cardinal directions each have an adjective and feature, the next person can pick any direction they like (I’ve had players yell “center!” and “northeast!” and “right there!” That’s OK!) as the location to write their adjective.
- Repeat until every player has provided two adjectives and two features.
[If you only have three or four players, it may be helpful to do one more spin around the table.]
Here’s how this process usually looks in practice:
GM: “Blue, you picked West. What’s your adjective?”
Blue: “I’m just going to go with ‘blue’.”
GM: “Cool.” [writes ‘blue’ next to ‘W’ on far left of map] “Ruined, what kind of blue thing is over here in the West?”
Ruined: “Oh. What? I see. Um…mountains?”
GM: “Yep.” [writes ‘mountains’ under ‘blue’] “OK. You’re up, Ruined. Direction and adjective.”
Ruined: “Um, North! And ‘ruined’.”
GM: “Interesting.” [writes ‘ruined’ near ‘N’ on the top of map] “Archaic, what sort of thing is here in the North?”
…
Now you should have a large area marked up with a bunch of words. Now, we make a world out of it.
- Ask the person who created the adjective + feature to briefly describe or explain that setting element.
[Use the leading questions technique: “Is it just a name of the place?”, “Is there a reason it’s called that?”, etc. If they are stuck, you should ask the group to help interpret the meaning and you may make suggestions, but the person whose turn it is gets final say.] - Ask a couple more questions about the thing to flesh it out with a little more detail. Anyone can contribute.
[Some example questions you might ask: “What is the area like around it?”, “Who is in charge there?”, “Is it dangerous?”, “What do other people say about it?”, “How did it get that way?”, “Are there myths or local legends associated with it?”] - Draw the feature while they talk. You can use small or elaborate icon(s) as you desire. Also fill in surrounding areas slowly with landforms. Occasionally add your own small feature.
[If you have a friend who is really good at drawing, let them at it!] - Repeat until the group has detailed all the adjectives + features.
It is very likely by the second or third feature everyone will start jumping in with ideas, including how it might relate to the other items on the board–this is good! This is what you want to happen. You will, however, need to wrangle this controlled chaos and keep everyone on track, providing cohesion and guidance. Some basic advice to keep things flowing here:
Don’t over-develop. Do not linger until a concept is fully detailed: get some basics for each item and then immediately move on. As the group bounces ideas off one another over the course of developing each area, connections will be made, blanks will fill themselves in, things will be erased and edited, and things that weren’t created before will be added.
Don’t let one person dominate conversation. Including (especially) you. Get everyone involved; ask for opinions.
Don’t feel locked-in to exact or literal meanings for adjectives.
[One player offered up ‘microscopic’ as their adjective. This was interpreted instead as “very tiny”, and then it turned into “pixies.”]
Items on the map will change or be added later in Session Zero, which could that change the entire direction of development for an area (this is where a whiteboard is handy: easy to erase and change!). This is expected and good.
The whole map should never be filled in through this process. This is intentional and necessary to create fruitful voids. Blank areas or undeveloped areas often end up fleshed out in play–if they aren’t, it’s not a problem because they just weren’t important to this game! Fill in the map as the players discuss what’s there.
Nonsensical word combinations will be resolved by the power of the group’s imagination…
[In our most recent game, we had Hyper-moralist and Spongy(!??). This turned into a cult of paladins holding back demon hordes next to persecuted tieflings living in a cloud forest made of mushrooms.]
…but it is OK if players “swap” adjectives in a location, because sometimes two pieces just work better together.
[We had Psychotic Monks and Ecclesiastical Raiders in one area. The group decided to switch the adjectives around by deciding that psychotic raiders were assaulting ancient mountain temples kept by warforged monks!]
Suggest tweaks and alternatives in your role as moderator of the session. Try to say ‘yes’ more than ‘no’ even where something doesn’t fit the type of game you’re aiming for. (I had someone use their feature turn to say “Waffle House” and then describe a waffle house. I countered with “What if the noble house of Wa’Afel holds lands there?”)
[It is inevitable that you will have a ‘problem player’ who just can’t seem to or doesn’t want to get on the same page with everyone else, which is another spot where this technique comes in handy: they’re still contributing! But it is often also helpful or necessary to have a brief conversation with them that you’re trying to keep to certain expectations for the game, and while what they’re proposing sounds like a fun idea, you don’t want to wrestle it into the setting for this game. Try to maintain good, two-way communication.]
You should contribute, too! As the players are discussing ideas, you might start saying things like “I think there might be a forest here?” and add a small feature. You might put little details where the players haven’t put anything: these are your additions to the map, your features. But ask for input from the other players, so they have some ownership of it, too, or leave it vague and undeveloped.
[For example, for one game I added a small ruin in the haunted jungle and just said, “There’s some stone ruins here, covered by vines and half-buried.” One of the players later used that detail when we started making characters, saying that there used to be a huge, advanced empire where the jungle was now. Now the mystery of these ruins and that empire has been slowly developing during the campaign, and the players can’t wait to finally explore the jungle!]
[As another example, while my players discussed the paladin cult, I drew a large canyon on the board and said “I think the cult is so hyper-moral and hyper-vigilant because they are containing a horde of demons coming out of this hell-rift.” The players decided the demons didn’t mean to be evil, they were just the world’s greatest amoral hedonists, and so I suggested the demons were led by the Succubus Queen and we added “The Throne of the Succubus Queen” to the map. Which then led to a discussion of history of the tieflings and the cult, and fleshed out some important history of two neighboring regions.]
You might want to have someone else writing down the ideas everyone comes up with so you have a record of all the details that were generated. It could be you, but you should try to stay engaged with the process. Another option is to have a recorder running (there are many phone apps that work, and some even produce a transcript, though these can be imperfect). This can also be cleaned up and distributed to the players as a kind of setting bible.
Here’s how this part looks in practice:
GM: “OK, Blue, the Blue Mountains in the West here…that seems pretty obvious. There’s mountains here and it’s the name of the mountain range?”
Blue: “Makes sense.”
GM: “What else? Is there a reason they’re called the ‘Blue Mountains’? Is it just because they look blue or is it something else?”
Blue: “Uh, maybe there’s a weird blue stone there that gets mined?”
Furious: “What if they’re blue because they’re giant sheets of ice?”
Ruined: “No, no. I like the stone idea better. What if the dwarves there mine and trade this blue, uh, mineral, and they protect it and it’s super-secret.”
Blue: “Yeah, I prefer the stone idea. But dwarven miners are overdone. What if they’re…uh…”
Ruined: “Orcs!”
Furious: “Pixies!”
Archaic: “Pirates!”
Ruined: “How are they pirates? They’re in the mountains.”
GM: “Hold up everyone! Blue?”
Blue: “Orcs. Let’s go with orcs.”
Archaic: “It’s fjords. The mountains rise up out of these rivers. They’re orcish river pirates.”
Ruined: “Oh, like Vikings. They raid and they trade.”
Blue: “Winner! And they paint themselves blue!”
GM: “What if Furious’ idea about ice relates to the mineral in some way?”
Blue: [looks thoughtful, shrugs]
Furious: “Uh, I don’t see how.”
GM: “That’s OK. Sometimes things just don’t hit. Cool: we’ve got orcish river pirate miners up in these fjords. Maybe kind of Viking-y and dwarf-y? And maybe some weird, valuable mineral.” [drawing some triangles for mountains and squiggles for rivers] “Let’s move to another part of the map. Ruined, you’re up.”
Start making characters when you have finished the above. The beauty of the above process is character creation is usually where additional things are added or changed and setting details really start coming to life. Players often pick characters from places on the map where they contributed details. Let them contribute more and further develop the area through the lens of their character.
You can ask them for specifics of the region as their character knows it, or about their experiences.
[“You’re playing a bugbear. OK! Where are your people from? What are they like?”]
I have more than once had players enter a game with a solid idea of what kind of character they’re going to play, from which they can not be persuaded, and by the end of this process are writing up an entirely different character idea because something the group developed really excited them.
This process creates immediate and lasting buy-in to the game setting by the players, because the game will now be about stuff the group has collectively collaborated to create. Players will continue to tie things their characters are doing back to ideas the group discussed and created for the setting, and will have an on-going interest in the setting and its details.
[Iterations of the warforged monks idea determined that the raiders were the original creators of the warforged, but had become unstable and vicious. The player of the warforged character decided he was trying to figure out how to cure the raiders, and after a few sessions had developed the idea that groups of raiders were internally stable, but became feral cannibals with anyone not part of their own raider group.]
When you are finished, you should have a messy map full of words and scribbles. There are numerous options to turn this into a beautiful map, from asking one of the players or a friend who is artistically gifted to turn it into something nice, to doing it on your own using a program like Campaign Cartographer or a web-based solution like Inkarnate.