Great list! I’d probably add: 1) it’s not stealing, it’s borrowing with style. You don’t have to invent 100% of everything from scratch! 2) joined at the hip with “leave yourself some gaps” is “don’t be afraid to retcon, revise, or rearrange”. Most of us only find out if our stuff “works” the first time our players find it. Of course not everything is going to be perfect out of the box, so don’t be scared to fix it.
Adding on to that, another good rule is one you can pull from how Tolkien did Middle Earth "No one knows everything about the world, and many people have wrong ideas". You can use that when you are retconning something "Oh, your old map says something different, well the map maker was wrong"
Yeah that's the best part yo take something you know and then your players see it as something else and from this "game of telephone" something new and unique arises.
My latest campaign world was inspired by Drifting Dragons (where Dragons were cooked) and Dragon Booster (Where people raced dragons) and the simple idea "What if different nations treated dragons differently?" So for me, Dragons are the story.
"Slay your darlings" don't be afraid to bin an idea that you thought was really good, but sadly just doesn't fit with the world building after you spent more time on it. You can always use it in another setting, repurpose it somewhere else in the campaign/world, or break it apart.
20 something years ago my darling was the concept of a chronomancer distrupting the history and current reality of a certain world... I have since run 13 campaigns during various eras in that world's history, and only one player team has seen this chronomancer... before he became a chronomancer. Only one campaign discovered it was even a person who unleashed the chaos they were facing. Sometimes you can just bury your darling so deep in the back story it gets to evolve along with the party(parties) before they discover it. Someday, a campaign group will bust through a door chasing the essence of this chronomancer to find it was all born from the mind of a group of people playing a game around a table in rural 90s USA... introducing characters to caricatures of thier players sounds fun as hell.
what about repurposing the idea? like instead of using it for the campaign/world that gave you the idea but repurpose it into another one so you don'thave to get rid of it but its not hindering the image you want for the project?
This also goes for when you are running the game. Don't feel like you need to force your players to explore a particular part of the world. You can always circle back around to it, or maybe move certain elements somewhere else.
That's me scratching my idea of a prestige magic academy that's floating in the air on suspended piece of land the size of a considerable city. It was supposed to be politically independed and its envoys were sent as advisors to all major political players to monitor and influence world events Aretuza-style. Sadly doesn't really fit with the rest of the world so I scratched it for now but I might downscale it and include the academy itself eventually...
"When you get the ideas from one place, it is stealing. When you get your ideas from multiple places, it's called inspiration" (Cite from German channel Orkenspalter)
Hey, greetings from the US! I am getting my home game started again thanks to an Aussie company, Ghostfire Gaming. I backed Grim Hollow last year and got my book a little less than a month ago. The shipping and time it took because of the pandemic was worth the wait. Great company, love your country.
I want to thank of great Dr. Todd he brought my boyfriend back to me. i had seen many people to get him back but nothing, Dr. Todd gave me a consultation and told me all truth, and I trusted Dr. Todd and had him do the spells for me. it took awhile because it was very very messy between us. i had to wait for each spell to do its work. but once the last spell finally was working and the other spells had worked, that is when he called. we met. then it took many more meetings. but now we are back together and i can only thank Dr.Todd, he is the greatest, i will come to Dr. Todd for life. Todd took care of me like family. contact; manifest spell cast @ gmail. com Whats App:+1 604 901 9747
Check out "World Anvil" If you use the software or not is irrelevant, though it's great software. They have tons of world building guides for different types of settings.
I’m a 51 year old getting back into tabletop rpg’s. I found work anvil and dungeon fog. B4 I even start using those tools I’m writing thoughts down. And I’ve got 10 pages of great ideas on my world I want to create. 😊
Can I suggest a book that's helpful and involves the players in the world building so they have some idea and input it to things such as coming up with new races , towns , cities , villages , deities , guilds and more . It's name isn't what you'd expect from a game at all . It's called microscope and is all about world building . www.amazon.com/Microscope-Ben-Robbins/dp/0983277907/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=microscope+rpg&qid=1612140267&sr=8-1
When I was a kid, I loved starting world building with drawing the world map. As I defined the coasts, filled in the mountains, valleys, and rivers, determined where the forests and deserts would be, I found so much inspiration about how people would interact with the land. Where people would live. Where people would fight each other.
I gained a couple of good tips out of this video, especially the one about leaving holes to fill in later! It is a collaborative storytelling game, this gives you the creativity to tell more story together! Thanks a lot :D
It's a great tip for players when they're creating their PCs too. You don't have to nail everything down before the campaign starts. Let things happen at the table.
I always listen to what my players banter about with the campaign and pick up ideas off that. Like, I have an encounter where the party fought some zombies created by a disease, but I didn't detail what the disease is or how it works. As the players investigated, they came up with a few theories on their own. I simply snatched one that worked best with the adventure and ran with it. Less work for me and it let the players feel clever that they added to the story.
I was bored with the typical races my players always chose (humans, elves, dwarves). I had this idea for a world where some powerful transmutative event in the distant past created races that were "in tune" with their local surroundings. I.E. all the humans living in the mountains became hard, resistant, and orderly; all the humans living on islands grew the tempers of ocean storms with an internal call to traveling far, etc. Did some homebrewed races, and told my players "humans, elves, and dwarves arent a thing, here are these other races; if you don't like them you can still play things like halfings, orcs, etc". They loved the new races and all chose them. I hadn't really considered if the "new" races were actually descendants from humans; what happened to the dwarves and elves; and so on, letting it just not be a consideration, figured it didnt matter. One of my players invited another of our friends to join us but neglected to tell him of the different races, and the new player showed up with a dwarf warlock whose patron sends him throughout time and space as an eternal prank. I froze on the spot, not knowing what to do; one of the players said, "Ah, a dwarf. I thought you lot were extinct!" This worked beautifully; we now have a mystery of "what happened to the dwarves and elves? and what is this mysterious word, 'human' we keep seeing written on ancient tablets?" By leaving that part of the world a "blank", it allowed for flexibility to even meta-game monkey wrenches!
@@rylandrc Sorry for the delayed response. Are you more interested in the mechanics, or the flavor? The mechanics I just used www.dandwiki.com/wiki/5e_Race_Design_Guide as a guide and www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Marasmusine_Meter_(5e_Guideline) to ensure things were relatively balanced. I think my first pass at it was "ok". For the most part I think they're reasonably balanced (with a couple exceptions), just by following those guidelines. This won't necessarily get you the most unique or interesting racial traits (using that guide basically means mixing-and-matching existing racial traits) but it's an easy way to make solid, realistic feeling races. It was especially useful to me as I dont have much experience homebrewing the stats to anything more consequential than a monster or NPC. As with anything D&D I think the focus should be a story-first approach. That isn't to say to ignore or de-emphasize the mechanics, but rather let the story be the inspiration for the mechanics. So I imagined the races, their likely societies, and so on first; then found racial traits that matched those. If you'd like more, or want to see the races I made, feel free to email me. This is my throwaway email: torako.chan0@gmail.com I'm happy to send you what I made, but I don't really want to publish it because I'm just an amateur and I'd be embarrassed to show it to the whole world. ;)
The games I run normally take place in "Forgotten Realms adjacent" settings. All the gods and lore is the same until I say otherwise. Place names are all different, though.
Im currently writing a setting for my next grand campaign, and honestly this video helped me a lot. Id like to see more worldbuilding tips. A couple from me: 1) You don't have to finish all the bits from a chapter in one sitting. For example, if I write a place today, I might work on history bits tomorrow, or a person, or a monster. When you are writing stuff from different angles, you might just see what bits you need to add in other sections to make it all make sense. 2) You have to get something down on the paper, even if its just 2 sentences and they're kind of shit. Because improving and developing an idea is far easier than doing it from scratch.
A tip I'd have (that might go with the "leave yourself some gaps") would be keeping in mind that cool setpieces you have in mind don't need to be in fixed locations. For example, when I have a neat idea for a corrupt guard, or a dungeon to explore, or a cool treasure, I don't try to railroad my players into going to whatever city/country/landmark/etc I put them in, I wait for them to decide to go to whatever location (City A, B, or C, etc) of their own accord and then put the cool thing I want to do there (so long as it makes sense, of course). It helps indirectly make the world feel more fleshed out, because my idea for corrupt city guards can apply to any location, and if they choose a location where they know the Church Of The Holy McGuffin is then there's more stuff going on in the city than initially thought.
I try to avoid the "quantum ogre effect", in which it doesn't matter the players go through the wood or over the mountains, the same ogre encounter will trigger, deeming player choice useless. Buuut that's a concept that evolves into a pseudo-railroading only in a smaller scale. Yes, players should be able to make significant choices and face major consequences; yes, some things might never be seem and lost forever, like secret rooms in dungeons or branching pathways in roads. But that doesn't mean we as DMs can't allow certain ideas to flourish in many possible ways. It's not like we're computer games or published modules with pre-written encounters to each location -- our thoughts are dynamic are reactive, so there's nothing wrong with saving some nice ideas for when and where it will be a valid point of gameplay and storytelling, as long it makes sense and appropriately fits the scene.
@@diogoamerico1029 I agree with all of it with the caveat of if the players choose the mountains to avoid an orc encounter, then its definitely railroading and to be discouraged. If I, as DM, only have a few encounters ready to go and they chose the mountains instead of the forests for reasons unrelated to the orc, then I see no harm in putting the orc encounter in the mountains as long as it still serves the purpose of the plot
@@Litchert The rule I use is "If the players know about it, it becomes a true state; if only the DM knows, it's fluid." If the players are presented with a haunted house that I was super excited to give them, but they choose to ignore it for whatever reason, then the haunted house is there and affects the world as a permanent structure and won't appear elsewhere (1 haunted house is fun, 2 is the DM trying to force the issue, and 3 is the DM failing to be subtle). The coven of witches inside that the players DIDN'T know about, though, may be repositioned elsewhere as I see fit, with appropriate retooling. This allows the players all the agency they want, but minimizes the amount of content I have to throw away.
Sly at Gen X comics....Haven't heard that name in forever. Cool guy. Kicked us out of the store early to go watch Angel. We finished our magic tournament at the Subway.
@@Taking20 Haha, no we were all Mustangs and Panthers. You know not as well celebrated. Made me smile to hear that name Sly. Didn't realize you were from the area.
This video is literally perfect since I'm writing a whole series of campaigns for my group. Your tips will definitely help a bunch. And as for a tip I could offer. I find it often helps to make a timeline. History is important to your world and will shape alot more of your world than you think. So ask yourself why a kingdom is there or why people avoid a certain area whether it's a haunted castle or an old battlefield from an ancient war. Building history and a timeline is as important as a pantheon in my opinion.
I would go so far as to say history is more important. Everyone at the table will interact with the history of the land in some way or another, only a few players will actually have anything to do with deities. In many of my campaigns the pantheon isn't even known by the general populace. In the same manner that when you attend a baptist church, they aren't going to teach you about Maori religious beliefs. People are familiar with what they are exposed to unless they have a reason to actively research other religions. D&D, by definition of "Dungeons" in the title, had some kind of fallen ancient civilization. Even a loosely structured historical timeline can help you realize the purpose of a dungeon, what populates it, what traps there would be, and what artifacts may be found within. And there have been many times that using that rough timeline to create my encounters has sparked ideas that end up becoming part of the history and filling it out more.
Thanks for the tips! I'm a new DM, and my players are going through the Starter Set. They want to continue in Faerun before switching to my custom world. After the Starter Set ends they leave literally everything up to the DM, so it can be overwhelming. I've spent entire days just trying to figure out what year we're set in, what governments are active or collapsing soon, and what adventures can feasibly happen within my world. I ended up ignoring the official timeline, and saying that various events that happened -10/+10 years from our story happen during it. I'm currently working on an adventure that is 50% Eragon, 50% Mass Effect.
I keep a Google Doc tab open at all times, and whenever I get inspired with a random image or scenario, I add it to my ongoing list of ideas. I currently have over 200 ideas, each just a bullet point with a single line. Then, when I create my world, I can figure out where to plug each idea in.
I found my experience with Powered by the Apocalypse games really helped my D&D world building and roleplaying. That system is based on a more communal input on the world and its features, so I love asking my players how they think something works, rather than laying out rules for them ahead of time. In my current game this has resulted in magic enchantment requiring the manipulation of lay-lines to add and alter magic in objects, which can also be deciphered with Arcana checks to identify an enchantment's effect, or at least its type of oagic. Sometimes your players have awesome ideas, it's good fun to see what they have to say.
@@benvoliothefirst yeah I also just say "do you guys want to do one fight that lasts 2 hours? Or do you want to fight a demon, storm a castle, kill the corrupted King and flee the kingdom as it crumbles around you in the same amount of time? “
Oh yesss pbta is *amazing* and basically my favourite system at this point. I can get away with maybe one page worth of notes per session prep (including world building) and it just flows so well
I'm a fairly new GM, a bit of 5E experience, and my players all have no 5E experience, and spur of the moment I said, "How about I set the campaign in an Egypt-like place?" I have been slaving away ever since trying to get this thing built up. ;) I've relied on a LOT of advice and assistance from videos like this and various Discord channels full of helpful people. Thank you all for your help!
@@ianoneill8392 I have, thank you! There don't seem to be all that many Egypt-based products out there. I've found 1 module (which was more of an Arabic Egyptian rather than ancient Egyptian, but still very useful), and I just picked up Tome of Beasts from Kobold Press and am going through it looking for monsters I can snag, like the Bastet Temple Cat and various undead. :)
Yeah, it's easy to go nuts worldbuilding. Remember, your world is the backdrop and stage dressing for the play that is your campaign for the players. Sometimes that backdrop is nothing more than a painted curtain and bits of cardboard cutout and painted. It only needs to be detailed enough for your actors (the players) to buy into. 1. Keep It Simple, Stupid (KISS) - Only create enough of the world to make the initial adventures work. You and your players can always expand on the world as you're building it. 2. Start out building the Elevator Pitch for your game: Pretend you're trying to sell your world and the adventures you've created to some executive for a publisher, and you only have the one to two minutes to pitch your idea while you have them cornered in an elevator. That's what an elevator pitch is. It's useful for you, the world builder, because it will show you the parts of the world you need to focus on immediately and what can wait till in game to flesh out. 3. Lean on what's already out there. To be fair, there aren't any more original story ideas or worlds. They're all "variations of a theme." Borrow from them and figure out how to make them your own. Real world settings and mythos are easier to work with, since there is a ton of information out there already created for you AND you don't have to worry about someone yelling that you stole an idea from someone else... 4. Don't be afraid to make up stuff on the way. Keep a notebook handy. 5. Don't be afraid to let your players make up stuff on the way. Keep a notebook handy. 6. Always make the adventure the focus of your world building. Build only the parts you need to make the adventure run. You can always go back and flesh stuff out as you go.
Kobold Press Midgard is great. we're plying it at the mo. They have a great Egyptian 'southlands' based series of books, some for 5e some for pathfinder. Their concept is really good. It's so close to our worlds folklore and myths that it's easy for the players to know a lot of the world just through pulp culture. In the North: Wotan/Odin, right, got it. Sunken England/Atlantis, got it. Minotaurs in the mediterranean, yup, check. Mummies and flying carpets and pyramids, all there. Look in to it, highly recommended.
"You don't have to include everything that's written for D&D!" Me, struggling to make Gehenna and Hades somehow more interesting places for adventures in my world: "Sorry dude, I'm too deep in the rabbit hole."
I like using index cards to write down my ideas. That way each idea is kept separate from others. And really you only need an index card worth of writen material for any idea. I also like to colorize my ideas so its easier to keep them sorted (Red-Worldbuilding, Yellow-Adventures, Green-NPCs, White-Villains)
I played in a Vampire the Masquerade game where the world was complete homebrew. All new powers, clans, locations. The exciting part was each player was able to make their own clan and powers. The ironic part is it felt very much like D&D, which included having all the common D&D races.
Personally, when worldbuilding I always start with a map of the world. It gives me interesting places to fill in, a feel for the world, and something I can always look at for inspiration
I think a big thing is people forget how big a world can be... Picture this: a sci-fi game where the crew of a spaceship has engine failure (sabotage???? An imposter on the crew???? Cody acting pretty sus...). The ship falls out of hyperspce, sensors off line and power fading. They see a near by planet which visually seems life supportive. Desperately, they set course to hopefully fall on a temperate looking part of the largest discernable land mass, and brace for a crash. The crew finds themselves in a heavily forested area (I say forested, but the foliage seems more like a rapidly growing gigantic breed of grass), and without any other indicators, they start trekking north west. After encountering a verity of dangerous animal wildlife, they stumble upon an empty city... abandoned, without signs of struggle, but so devoid of intelligent life, the forest and beast are well into the process of reclaiming it, with vines growing out of high rise buildings, raised highways engulfed by tall trees on either side, and packs of hunting animals roaming the long abandoned streets. Desperate for shelter, the crew clears out and sets up in one of the ghost towers, and begins a campaign of figuring out what happened on this world.... if only they had travel SOUTH EAST and within a few day stumbled into Hong Kong, one of the largest and most advanced cities on the planet.... totally different campaign, both in 21st century China. I think that's a great example of how, even when playing with PCs who want "realistic settings" a flexible world opens up lots of possibilities.
Perfectly timed video, I'm starting a new campaign next month-ish and I'm doing all of my world building right now. How I world build? I get high, lay in bed listen to music and I wake up and it happened when I slept. Like full world, conflict, everything just boom, there. It's pretty nice lmao
One huge thing that helped is an app I have called "RPG Notes" on Android. Every day for 20 minutes I make one thing and use RPG Notes to do it. It makes keeping people, places, or things so easy to set up and have them interconnecting to each other quickly. It really was exactly what I needed.
I'm currently running a spelljammer game and one of the things I've done to help paint the backdrop is continually reminding players about the vastness of space when they are inside spheres and the alien landscapes of landing at asteroid docks and the vast races there compared to a land city.
For my first 5e long term game i created a Skyrim-lite for a game with survival elements and more wilderness than usual. I wanted to have diverse fauna and flora so i added a spore infested jungle for a swamplike terrain and a ruined city that used Control Weather to have mild weather near the arctic. Then i figured that 5e was made for Sword Coast and similar places so I swapped the game to Pathfinder 1st ed.
teensy tip ive been gelling on lately: dont feel the need to embrace fantasy names. Theyre had to remember and can bog down the parties ability to take notes and keep a session running. While ive taken it to an extreme and made a "modern" society setting so regular names make sense, i think a lot of games can benefit from having a good handful of their characters named Michael, Jeremy, Elizabeth, etc. You can always make the last name fancy, but it facilitates RP by referring to people by a name people already remember and can associate with.
One thing I've done to combat the 17 syllable fantasy name issue is using traditional Welsh names for many of my NPCs. Simple, easy to remember, but just different enough from what my players are accustomed to hearing that they don't come off like I'm introducing them to Joey, the guy that works at the gas station down the street.
"Demon crystal shatters into a hundred different shards throughout the land, and now the demons and monsters discovering them are mutating with tremendous power." Love the Inuyasha reference
One Note for the win. I run a homebrew campaign using the world of Greyhawk map. One Note has been amazing for keeping everything organized and lets me quickly reference something my players need without me slowing down the game. Great video some very good advice here.
I'm running a game in the "Warmahordes" world of Caen, I started the game in 583 A. R. within the Western Midlunds. I love that I can build around a game world that has so much written details of places, and history surrounding it. My players seem to like the setting as well.
Loved your list! I’m worldbuilding for the first time right now, and I’m happy to learn that I’m hitting a lot of these points by accident. After my party ran CoS, I wanted a much lighter tone, as well as more big monsters and more intrigue, so I decided to run a Feywild campaign - it lets me rip off the published world maps without being beholden to the rest of their world. It gives me the opportunity to lean into both exploration of the wilds and role-playing the courtly schemes. I’m also surprisingly good at planning enough to foreshadow challenges to the party while leaving myself room to be inspired later. Coming up with a name and moniker for a fey lord and leaving until much later the specifics of his stat block or personality has really let me bring the best story possible to the table in a just-in-time way.
16:40 Magic is what makes my world different, I'm thinking of a high magic setting but also one where magic is almost alive, almost intelligent and may not always do what it is intended to do. Also if magic is used differently from what it was originally conjured up to do it may rebel and cause very different side effects. This idea is from Shannara for the observant reader. I combine this with a geography pretty much stolen from the eastern kingdoms of warcraft (though the players likely won't notice unless I stick a map in their hands) and a government structure stolen from the empire of elder scrolls.
@@Dragondan1987 Well Terry Brooks who write Shannara has written some star wars novels too. Really it's the whole nature magic which was so popular in the 70s. And both the first Shannara book and the first star wars movie came out in 1977.
The one big tip about World Building is let your players contribute. My session 0s includes NPCs, places and such that players helped create like personality, races, quirks, etc. Or there are times in session I will ask their input on making a non-key NPC or place. This makes the players invested and helps relieve that creative pressure. Who knows, you players might even seed some ideas you didn’t think about.
my tip i always told newer DM's; do the worldbuilding you need as you need it. hours and hours spent on a continent your players never visit is better spent on that item or npc theyve been hunting down. this ties in a lot to leaving yourself wiggle room to go back and edit
I'm working on a massive basin forest where the trees and wildlife become bigger and more dangerous the deeper you go, to the point where at the center it would take weeks or months to climb from the top of the tree down to the bottom. It's got ancient ruins scattered throughout it, with artifacts powered by a weird blue energy that the wildlife seems to share, and no one knows what's at the bottom since no one who ever went that deep has ever returned :)
In many Sci Fi games (Star Wars, Warhammer 40K, Traveller, Stars Without Number, possibly even Star Trek), you have both a macrosetting that gives you all the general rules of the universe, and the specific sector or region you build. So the answer as to whatever people use the setting or build their own is often "both".
This is the most helpful world building tips video I’ve ever seen! I appreciate how you give ideas on how to think instead what to think. I’ve been stuck on how to start for a week and I finally got the start from this! Thank you!!!!
I have been running a sci fi Campaign that is mixed with Starwars, Mass effect, Destiny and Others in the works for 2 Months now every week first time as GM as well. I have spend over 2 months just setting it all up with lore, background, factions even some new things I have been borrow off other Books before even starting the Campaign. and right now as I speak i have 8 players working Together and working for a Faction I have named "The Alliance". They got their own Ship, some B1 battle Droids and some First order Riot troopers. I have been making my best to hope the players have fun with this Campaign even when at times it gets abit mussy but i do my best to fix the holes i left. right now the party is heading back to a ice planet (NOT Hoth) and making a deal with a small Group called "The house of Dusk". I have watch your videos for some time. Even if it normal Base D&D the Videos help out with my own campaign. Keep up the amazing work
Taniks has no house.... kneels before no banner...... he is a murderer, and veeery good at what he does. He will not hesitate to kill you.... kill him baaaaack, yes?
I've always wanted to world build for DnD and for creative writing purposes. And I've always gotten stuck in a rut obsessing over details that stopped me from continuing in the end. This is some great advice.
As someone who runs a Shadowrun 5E campaign, I will absolutely recommend that anytime you are building a new world, consult what the publisher has already done. Shadowrun is a game that is very ingrained in it's world, but there's also lots of elements that can be tweaked to fit the style of play you're looking at, and sometimes reading the supplement books can give you an idea for a brand new campaign. For example, after reading the Data Trails 5E book, I was inspired by the Xenosapient AI, which is an AI so advanced and alien to current understanding of computers that they are nearly impossible to contain. After reading more into the megacorporations of the world, I saw that the EVO Corporation often did experiments to further cybernetics and free rights for metatypes of the world, including AIs. So now my campaign is focused upon the EVO Corporation hiring a group of Shadowrunners to track down and recover a fragmented AI before it ruins the entire Matrix infrastructure of Seattle. Obviously this is very specific to Shadowrun, but D&D has plenty of old books that delve into the ecology and civilizations of all kinds of monsters that can become your BBEG.
I noticed whenever I started having fun with my worldbuilding and especially whenever I started allowing my players to add on to world themselves, either through backstory or through them mentioning things I hadn't thought of, I noticed I started doing all these thing unintentionally. Though, I still find myself falling into some of these pitfalls when I get too worked up over what a game should be instead of what I think is fun.
My group right now uses ms onenote, it really is the best thing for dms. Not only can you put all your notes on there and password protect them in a separate tab, you can have all the players put their character sheets on there and they can customize their sheets with pictures and all sorts of different ways to organize, you can even put a battle map on there and move their icons around and it will sync online so everyone can see it on their laptop. Amazing resource!
Honestly I adore these tips and I think any new DM or player should watch your videos just for the joy you dish out about role playing games. I was rather disillusioned with D&D for awhile and only got back into it a couple years back when I saw your video about the best tips and tricks for dungeon masters and ever since watching your videos I’ve been improving my DM skills and now have multiple weekly games and I’m fully back in love with D&D!!
A worldbuilding tip I will add is get and create many random dice creation charts and use them. Examples directions d12 1= N 2= NNE 3= NE 4= E 5= SE 6= SSE 7= S 8= SSW 9= SW 10= W 11= NW 12= NNW. Useful on a card for where locations are, engines appear, locations, objects or even what direction someone gets randomly thrown in! From d4,to d1000. I often use d% charts and make more as needed! From physical descriptors like hair and eye colour to distances, moods, bonds, goals, ideals, random names, prosperity levels, quality of a shop, location encounters, wild game they can hunt, pets, colours, weaknesses, secrets, trinkets, magic items, random dungeon room contents, hazards, non combat encounters, interesting magic locales and effects, minerals, gemstones, useful plants/herbs, food, meals a restaurant serves, social NPC encounters, various settlement details, treasure map details, etc! Many are available for free on r/dnd random creation charts a growing source for dms. I’d advise doing what I did printing them and putting them in a binder and continually adding more of my own writing commonly seen ones out on easy to access flash cards! Remember they are to help you, if you roll something you don’t like or that feels wrong disregard it! Re roll or pick. Sometimes a roll inspires a new idea as well. Go with the inspiration! Useful video I took notes, thanks!
It was like you knew what I needed some inspiration on right now. My party has been localized to one area of the map and they (both the players and their characters) have believed the first map I drew to be the full world because it's what their characters have known their whole lives. It was always my intention to have them discover that some of the things they're seeking lie in three other areas that are each a quarter of the map as a whole. I've had one part finished and the third is mostly barren deserts so it can completely be worked as they go but the last section has stumped me for months. Now they're beginning to tug on the story threads that would lead them into this section. It wasn't until I watched this that it really clicked with me that I don't have to have every rock and stick of this section planned out just yet. That's a huge breath of fresh air for me. Thank you.
The only thing you gotta do is to make it seem that you have a secret book you've been working on when in reality you are just confident that the windmill really is a mimic
I think a wonderful addition to tack on to this is that sometimes worldbuilding an area starts notable characters in the region's history! Say for instance, a place that used to be a slave town under the rule of a tyrannical dragon, but a band of brave adventurers (or sometimes just one), came and slayed the dragon, liberating the town! It has since grown since it's liberation and is now a common trade route stop for many. The notable characters here are the dragon in question and the hero/es that killed it, but with just those two figures, you've created a skeleton for a new town! 1) the town has a history with a dragon (will another come? have they garnered defense specifically against dragons now?) 2) town history also includes one or more heroes, which means that there may be a lineage from said heroes, or powerful items they left behind when they passed. (maybe there's another dragon in the setting that's being problematic as the players have discovered, and now they need something that's going to help take it down, etc.) 3) it's a trade town! lots of opportunities for your adventurers to buy, sell, and trade, as well as potentially house npcs with plot-related information for them if they seek it out
I don't always fully agree with Cody, but as someone who loves world building, I agree 200% with everything he days in this video. This is some VERY solid advice for those looking to build their own homebrew worlds.
When you said you were a DFW local, I got WAY more excited than I have any right to be. Like, I need to keep my eyes peeled any time I visit the local game shops now. Lol!
I struggle a lot with this - I tend to think bookishly, so I build and build and build and can never get to running a game because I'm busy build build building! Thanks so much for the great advice!
Started playing D&D a couple years ago, then got the idea to adapt a story I wrote a long time ago for a D&D campaign, and now running my first campaign in my homebrew world. It’s amazing watching the story really come to life ❤️
I’d love another world building vid! Very recently I’ve been writing a new world for Savage worlds (which is a more generalized and very flexible system). I’ve been struggling a lot because I definitely approached world building as “I have to write everything possible, including multiple nations, their histories, geographic situations, and cultures before I can even start” which burnt me out hard. Even as I tried to write as I ran the game in my “finished” areas, I don’t think I was writing very efficiently. I lost sight of what my world was originally supposed to be, and my campaign fell a little bit more into generic fantasy territory. My players were having fun for the most part, so I couldn’t really complain, but I was very unsatisfied with my work behind the scenes. This video was very very helpful for steering me in the right direction, so thank you!
The way I like to build my worlds is that I make them with the people playing the game in mind. I usually look at what they give me for their backstory and "incorporate" it into my world so that their character is not just on their character sheet but rather a living part of my world. That's my tip anyway. Keep up the good work Cody!
I can't tell you how many times I've a DM's setting have a place called "the deadlands." But to my knowledge, I seem to be the only person I know to have actually made them devoid of all life. My deadlands have been completely sucked dry of all mana, making it impossible for them to sustain life. However, they are also the only place where electricity based technology, like what offworlders would have, actually works
Speaking as a Pathfinder author who has worked on several campaign setting books, I will second all of this advice. You’ve done a wonderful job guiding GMs on how to create fascinating and engaging worlds.
I’ve been running my world for 3 years now and I’ve been starting to panic lately. “Nothing in the world makes sense! Ack! How do I fix it!?” But then I find this and read your golden rule that INSTANTLY puts my mind at ease: “make the world that compliments the gameplay style you want to have.” And suddenly I’m ok again because YES my world compliments my and my players gameplay style EXACTLY. Thank you for the ease of mind!! You basically reminded me: the point isn’t to be realistic...the MAIN point is to have fun!
I have never used per published stuff and only ever created my own world. it may not have always been the best, but it a huge part of the enjoyment I get from playing. Certain aspect have stuck around from the last 25 years others have disappeared in the very next game.
World Building is 100% something I would love to see more of. Of all the information I research each week, World Building is the heavy weight champion.
For me as a player, I love to explore and investigate, so the kind of gameplay I naturally want to promote exploration and investigation, so I'll come up with different herbs and plants that have different properties, place caves all over, unique animals, varying areas that differ greatly from each other. Relating to rule 4, for my main setting that I'm working on, I've completely reworked the way deities and alignments work and given it a new purpose. Since you mentioned town names, I made a character named Hoojiss Boojiss, and long story short, I couldn't think of a name for his hometown, I was using a chapstick as a map marker and named the town Chapice.
I learned rule two rather quickly when bring my decade old mc between different campaigns. It's also helped me to build in more plot points that have become not just her backstory, but a part of who she is as a character
The past couple years I've starting working on a world again I started like 10 years ago. I'm even starting to write my own setting book for it. Several of these tips I kind of knew, but others were good to hear. Something that has helped me is that I often treat a settlement like a character to itself. But the personality is represented by how it's built and it's people. The city or town, has backstory, flaws, bonds, and goals too. And hopefully a defining feature or two that sets it apart from others.
Your tip about making the world for the gameplay is so true in how wonderful it is. It is how I went about creating my world a couple years ago. Great video!
Before I watch ita always great to see a video like this I've been the Marshall for my friends running deadlands for 12 years now it's always awesome to brush up on some things and learn new tricks keep it up.
Cody! I have also been using OneNote for nearly 4 months now to include all of my D&D content, transferring it all over from my hard copies. I can NOT recommend it ENOUGH. Absolutely a necessity if you also play online! -- Awesome!
I just this week found myself wondering if you would make a video on world building and as always you don't disappoint! I hope we get to hear more on the subject :)
Between you and Davvy Chappy, I might not need a psychologist. Y'all have done such a good job taking on some of the struggles with being a DM beyond simply "how to roll dice better".
I like how these tips can be applied to any game system. I am in the process of reworking world of darkness, streamlining the system and using it as the engine for a post apocalyptic game
When my friends and I used to play we tore apart the d20 BESM (Big Eyes Small Mouth) game (basically an anime d20). We used the stripped down features to basically hodge podge EVERYthing we wanted in to one realm called "The Engine" which was a demi-plane. Basically raceless and classless d20 where you got so many points to build your character and you could use them to buy anything from spellcasting one level to a rogue's sneak attack the next level.
I had to do some world creation for a (half written) module I made for the Toon system a few years back. Toon's written normally from the "Tom and Jerry" perspective that each adventure was an isolated episode in a disjointed series, where there wasn't an episodic story or serial nature to the episodes. My module is more based on the 1970s and 1980s cereal cartoons, where the seasons had a story that stretched over the episode in that season. Since my story was going to be about a team of spies/secret agents fighting against a nefarious group of villains (ala James Bond or the Mission Impossible TV show), I basically took a shortcut and used the world as-is. I only needed to insert two new nations (one for the good guys and one for the bad). Since the module is a rewrite of the introductory episode "Toon Olympics", I didn't bother to flesh out the bad guy island or most of the good guy island. I only built enough of the city to identify it and where the stadium is. I gave enough backstory about both competing organizations to make the players feel like there is something for them to be a part of. And the thing they're trying to prevent the bad guys getting is a McGuffin, but it's detailed enough so they know why (if they bother to figure it out) they need to keep it out of reach of the bad actors. And the characters are only detailed enough so the GM can roleplay them and so the players have a reason to care. Everything else can be fleshed out as needed and expanded upon later. Remember, use KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) to keep yourself out of worldbuilding hell. Figure out what details you need to run the adventure and don't bother with the rest. Add on to the world as the play session dictates. You can have a player act as the secretary or notes-taker for the group to keep track of changes for you in session, and even offer (and reward) players for coming up with details for your world while you play.
I have been dming for about 5-6 years and I recently decided to try to run all my future campaigns out of one world. The way I change the setting is by going to different times of the world. My current one I’m prepping for is shortly after the beginning of the world. This campaign will be the one that will set up bloodlines of future royalties, so more of power struggles and vacuums. I think that doing this will give nods to returning players if they go to the future and recognize an abandoned city, a heroic bloodline, or similar stuff like that. Also it allows me to have a in-depth background for magic. The players will never know this background (unless they pursue knowledge that most NPCs don’t even consider) but I really enjoy how it’s beginning is shaping up to be.
My biggest tip for world building is that time management is key. Unless you have countless hours to flesh out your world, some pages will be left blank, and that's fine. But try to focus your energies on the things the players are actually interacting with. Your players wont wont be impressed that you have perfect history of the war that happened 2000 years ago, if they are walking through linear dungeons with no dressing or depth. Also don't be afraid to improvise! This is a world you are creating together after all!
here's a little tip from me: it's ok to start with the world of someone else and make it your own in time. i started with lost mines of phandelver which put our campaign pretty solidly on the swordcoast. now we're doing a slightly different thing. the same world, but no longer the same area. the other planes are still in effect, but the lands the party travels trough are all my making. slowly building your own world out of the world of another can be how you make your world. i have a couple locations that'll definitely stick around in my world, thanks to the work of the players.
The current game I have been running for just over a year now is in the Forgotten Realms. Mainly due to all the players were new so I ran them through Lost Mine and was unsure at the beginning if the game would continue each week. I have made tons of changes to the world though, especially well known npcs such as Durnan from the Yawning Portal and Glasstaff whom I made one of the main antagonists and the heroes are still sticking their nose in his nefarious business. I know changing the world so much to fit their story is a lot of work, but it allows me to write my own story which I enjoy very much. All I hope each week is that my players have fun and are intrigued by the story and the world.
I was the exact same when all my friends started and I took on the DM seat. I painstakingly crafted an entire planet and all these adventures and storylines and it was some of the most fun we ever had playing. Unfortunately that takes up a lot of time and as we got busier I found it much easier to insert modules into the existing world. So now basically every dungeon in Tales From the Yawning Portal can be found in my setting. Places equivalent to Baldur’s Gate and even Barovia are scattered around the place. But everything still takes place in my setting and it’s great. There’s still plenty of homebrew and of course I made changes to the modules to have them fit the world but I find it a really great way to experience official D&D content without having to learn an entire setting because there’s no world you understand more than your own. And in my experience that makes for the most enjoyable game experience. Also world building is way more fun than world learning 😂 But if you’ve got a busy week and you need a plot hook. Send the party off to Khundrukar or even have them come across an irresistible woodland manor and run Death House. Just change a few names and balance to party level and then when you have some more time go and build your 15 level labyrinthine dungeon infested with the entire monster manual and every trap under the sun
Rule #2 is one I absolutely agree with. I like to build out vague locations, such as cities and forests, but only write one or two sentences (three if player hails from that city) until the players show up. For example: Rauvin: A Grung town built on top of a marshland at the bottom of the Astral Peak mountain range. or Port Helgar: Southernmost port city, mainly inhabited by centaurs. Council of Druids operates from here. *Insert PC name* Hails from there
Sure wish I could get some dice, but I only have about 80% of retail price money.
I would really be grateful if i could take one fifth off from the asked price 🤤😓🥺
Bro, I know place you can get 20% off man
Shame this channel isn't called taking100
@@AA-bj5bb uh, taking one fifth off the asking price is at LEAST 20% discount, where would you get that???
@@ChrisMcClementNZ b...because it's 80% of retail price? 100-20=80?
Great list! I’d probably add:
1) it’s not stealing, it’s borrowing with style. You don’t have to invent 100% of everything from scratch!
2) joined at the hip with “leave yourself some gaps” is “don’t be afraid to retcon, revise, or rearrange”. Most of us only find out if our stuff “works” the first time our players find it. Of course not everything is going to be perfect out of the box, so don’t be scared to fix it.
Adding on to that, another good rule is one you can pull from how Tolkien did Middle Earth "No one knows everything about the world, and many people have wrong ideas". You can use that when you are retconning something "Oh, your old map says something different, well the map maker was wrong"
Yeah that's the best part yo take something you know and then your players see it as something else and from this "game of telephone" something new and unique arises.
@@DaDunge I also like 100yr old maps/books/scrolls/etc. The author may have been correct at the time, but things change....
Also, it's only cannon once you tell your players
Great additions!
1:52 "...and our games became less about the dungeon and more about the-"
Me: "DRAGON"
"story."
Me: D:
Depending on the dragon its the same thing
My latest campaign world was inspired by Drifting Dragons (where Dragons were cooked) and Dragon Booster (Where people raced dragons) and the simple idea "What if different nations treated dragons differently?" So for me, Dragons are the story.
@@CCartman69 I like the originality. 👍
same...haha
@@CCartman69 Dragon = story!
"Slay your darlings" don't be afraid to bin an idea that you thought was really good, but sadly just doesn't fit with the world building after you spent more time on it. You can always use it in another setting, repurpose it somewhere else in the campaign/world, or break it apart.
This
20 something years ago my darling was the concept of a chronomancer distrupting the history and current reality of a certain world...
I have since run 13 campaigns during various eras in that world's history, and only one player team has seen this chronomancer... before he became a chronomancer. Only one campaign discovered it was even a person who unleashed the chaos they were facing.
Sometimes you can just bury your darling so deep in the back story it gets to evolve along with the party(parties) before they discover it.
Someday, a campaign group will bust through a door chasing the essence of this chronomancer to find it was all born from the mind of a group of people playing a game around a table in rural 90s USA... introducing characters to caricatures of thier players sounds fun as hell.
what about repurposing the idea? like instead of using it for the campaign/world that gave you the idea but repurpose it into another one so you don'thave to get rid of it but its not hindering the image you want for the project?
This also goes for when you are running the game. Don't feel like you need to force your players to explore a particular part of the world. You can always circle back around to it, or maybe move certain elements somewhere else.
That's me scratching my idea of a prestige magic academy that's floating in the air on suspended piece of land the size of a considerable city. It was supposed to be politically independed and its envoys were sent as advisors to all major political players to monitor and influence world events Aretuza-style. Sadly doesn't really fit with the rest of the world so I scratched it for now but I might downscale it and include the academy itself eventually...
"When you get the ideas from one place, it is stealing. When you get your ideas from multiple places, it's called inspiration" (Cite from German channel Orkenspalter)
"Oh hey, this is a good deal on some dice!"
"shipping, +$25"
-cries in Australia-
+35 泣く
Hey, greetings from the US! I am getting my home game started again thanks to an Aussie company, Ghostfire Gaming. I backed Grim Hollow last year and got my book a little less than a month ago. The shipping and time it took because of the pandemic was worth the wait. Great company, love your country.
what your was only $25 I paid $40 :O
*somewhere in america*
"Do you hear something?"
Haha funny penal colony
Maybe the curse is the friends we made along the way
And that can actually be a curse depending on your party.
Welp... If you were to ask any of the NPC's, my Party is the friggin' curse. ;o)
It's the warlock's fault
Damn right my friends are their own curse
I'd love to hear more tips about worldbuilding.
I want to thank of great Dr. Todd he brought my boyfriend back to me. i had seen many people to get him back but nothing, Dr. Todd gave me a consultation and told me all truth, and I trusted Dr. Todd and had him do the spells for me. it took awhile because it was very very messy between us. i had to wait for each spell to do its work. but once the last spell finally was working and the other spells had worked, that is when he called. we met. then it took many more meetings. but now we are back together and i can only thank Dr.Todd, he is the greatest, i will come to Dr. Todd for life. Todd took care of me like family. contact; manifest spell cast @ gmail. com Whats App:+1 604 901 9747
Vee Lavinia are you a bot? Cos this is weirding me out.
Check out "World Anvil" If you use the software or not is irrelevant, though it's great software. They have tons of world building guides for different types of settings.
Vee Lavinia of a iiiii
Me too!!!
When I get stuck analyzing and writing, I move on to something else and more often than not, come up with a cool bridge to link the two ideas.
I do this a lot myself! Just as long as I get SOMETHING going to grease the wheels, the momentum can usually carry me from there!
Bcuz creativity is subconscious, analyzing is conscious but provides the subconscious more disparate datas to create the ideas
I’m a 51 year old getting back into tabletop rpg’s. I found work anvil and dungeon fog. B4 I even start using those tools I’m writing thoughts down. And I’ve got 10 pages of great ideas on my world I want to create. 😊
World Anvil is a great site. I was a member there when they were first getting going.
Cool for you man
Can I suggest a book that's helpful and involves the players in the world building so they have some idea and input it to things such as coming up with new races , towns , cities , villages , deities , guilds and more .
It's name isn't what you'd expect from a game at all .
It's called microscope and is all about world building .
www.amazon.com/Microscope-Ben-Robbins/dp/0983277907/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=microscope+rpg&qid=1612140267&sr=8-1
When I was a kid, I loved starting world building with drawing the world map. As I defined the coasts, filled in the mountains, valleys, and rivers, determined where the forests and deserts would be, I found so much inspiration about how people would interact with the land. Where people would live. Where people would fight each other.
I gained a couple of good tips out of this video, especially the one about leaving holes to fill in later! It is a collaborative storytelling game, this gives you the creativity to tell more story together! Thanks a lot :D
It's a great tip for players when they're creating their PCs too. You don't have to nail everything down before the campaign starts. Let things happen at the table.
@@nickwilliams8302 very true. In my opinion it's even a good way to have characters develop more!
I always listen to what my players banter about with the campaign and pick up ideas off that. Like, I have an encounter where the party fought some zombies created by a disease, but I didn't detail what the disease is or how it works. As the players investigated, they came up with a few theories on their own. I simply snatched one that worked best with the adventure and ran with it. Less work for me and it let the players feel clever that they added to the story.
I was bored with the typical races my players always chose (humans, elves, dwarves). I had this idea for a world where some powerful transmutative event in the distant past created races that were "in tune" with their local surroundings. I.E. all the humans living in the mountains became hard, resistant, and orderly; all the humans living on islands grew the tempers of ocean storms with an internal call to traveling far, etc. Did some homebrewed races, and told my players "humans, elves, and dwarves arent a thing, here are these other races; if you don't like them you can still play things like halfings, orcs, etc". They loved the new races and all chose them. I hadn't really considered if the "new" races were actually descendants from humans; what happened to the dwarves and elves; and so on, letting it just not be a consideration, figured it didnt matter.
One of my players invited another of our friends to join us but neglected to tell him of the different races, and the new player showed up with a dwarf warlock whose patron sends him throughout time and space as an eternal prank. I froze on the spot, not knowing what to do; one of the players said, "Ah, a dwarf. I thought you lot were extinct!" This worked beautifully; we now have a mystery of "what happened to the dwarves and elves? and what is this mysterious word, 'human' we keep seeing written on ancient tablets?"
By leaving that part of the world a "blank", it allowed for flexibility to even meta-game monkey wrenches!
I'm including new/altered races in my world, and I'd love to hear more about what you came up with for your custom ones
@@rylandrc Sorry for the delayed response.
Are you more interested in the mechanics, or the flavor? The mechanics I just used www.dandwiki.com/wiki/5e_Race_Design_Guide as a guide and www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Marasmusine_Meter_(5e_Guideline) to ensure things were relatively balanced.
I think my first pass at it was "ok". For the most part I think they're reasonably balanced (with a couple exceptions), just by following those guidelines. This won't necessarily get you the most unique or interesting racial traits (using that guide basically means mixing-and-matching existing racial traits) but it's an easy way to make solid, realistic feeling races. It was especially useful to me as I dont have much experience homebrewing the stats to anything more consequential than a monster or NPC.
As with anything D&D I think the focus should be a story-first approach. That isn't to say to ignore or de-emphasize the mechanics, but rather let the story be the inspiration for the mechanics. So I imagined the races, their likely societies, and so on first; then found racial traits that matched those.
If you'd like more, or want to see the races I made, feel free to email me. This is my throwaway email: torako.chan0@gmail.com
I'm happy to send you what I made, but I don't really want to publish it because I'm just an amateur and I'd be embarrassed to show it to the whole world. ;)
@@storploin3860 I'm interested in both! I'll send you an email ^^
Replacing humans with genasi?
@@liquidweird6055 not exactly... They're not elemental humans, more like subraces inspired by elements. But with a magical origin.
The games I run normally take place in "Forgotten Realms adjacent" settings. All the gods and lore is the same until I say otherwise. Place names are all different, though.
Im currently writing a setting for my next grand campaign, and honestly this video helped me a lot. Id like to see more worldbuilding tips. A couple from me:
1) You don't have to finish all the bits from a chapter in one sitting. For example, if I write a place today, I might work on history bits tomorrow, or a person, or a monster. When you are writing stuff from different angles, you might just see what bits you need to add in other sections to make it all make sense.
2) You have to get something down on the paper, even if its just 2 sentences and they're kind of shit. Because improving and developing an idea is far easier than doing it from scratch.
A tip I'd have (that might go with the "leave yourself some gaps") would be keeping in mind that cool setpieces you have in mind don't need to be in fixed locations.
For example, when I have a neat idea for a corrupt guard, or a dungeon to explore, or a cool treasure, I don't try to railroad my players into going to whatever city/country/landmark/etc I put them in, I wait for them to decide to go to whatever location (City A, B, or C, etc) of their own accord and then put the cool thing I want to do there (so long as it makes sense, of course). It helps indirectly make the world feel more fleshed out, because my idea for corrupt city guards can apply to any location, and if they choose a location where they know the Church Of The Holy McGuffin is then there's more stuff going on in the city than initially thought.
I try to avoid the "quantum ogre effect", in which it doesn't matter the players go through the wood or over the mountains, the same ogre encounter will trigger, deeming player choice useless. Buuut that's a concept that evolves into a pseudo-railroading only in a smaller scale. Yes, players should be able to make significant choices and face major consequences; yes, some things might never be seem and lost forever, like secret rooms in dungeons or branching pathways in roads. But that doesn't mean we as DMs can't allow certain ideas to flourish in many possible ways. It's not like we're computer games or published modules with pre-written encounters to each location -- our thoughts are dynamic are reactive, so there's nothing wrong with saving some nice ideas for when and where it will be a valid point of gameplay and storytelling, as long it makes sense and appropriately fits the scene.
@@diogoamerico1029 I agree with all of it with the caveat of if the players choose the mountains to avoid an orc encounter, then its definitely railroading and to be discouraged. If I, as DM, only have a few encounters ready to go and they chose the mountains instead of the forests for reasons unrelated to the orc, then I see no harm in putting the orc encounter in the mountains as long as it still serves the purpose of the plot
@@Litchert The rule I use is "If the players know about it, it becomes a true state; if only the DM knows, it's fluid."
If the players are presented with a haunted house that I was super excited to give them, but they choose to ignore it for whatever reason, then the haunted house is there and affects the world as a permanent structure and won't appear elsewhere (1 haunted house is fun, 2 is the DM trying to force the issue, and 3 is the DM failing to be subtle). The coven of witches inside that the players DIDN'T know about, though, may be repositioned elsewhere as I see fit, with appropriate retooling.
This allows the players all the agency they want, but minimizes the amount of content I have to throw away.
Sly at Gen X comics....Haven't heard that name in forever. Cool guy. Kicked us out of the store early to go watch Angel. We finished our magic tournament at the Subway.
Why hello there my possibly fellow Trinity Trojan.
@@Taking20 Haha, no we were all Mustangs and Panthers. You know not as well celebrated. Made me smile to hear that name Sly. Didn't realize you were from the area.
15:36 Bruh I know the story of Inuyasha when I hear it 🤣🤣🤣
Someone else got it!
Right? Lol
Classic, I have my kids going through it right now. Only 12 episodes in so far.
OH MY GOD - I REMEMBER SLY!!!! I STILL GO TO GEN X TO THIS DAY, THATS SUCH AN AWESOME SHOUT OUT
;-)
This video is literally perfect since I'm writing a whole series of campaigns for my group. Your tips will definitely help a bunch. And as for a tip I could offer.
I find it often helps to make a timeline. History is important to your world and will shape alot more of your world than you think. So ask yourself why a kingdom is there or why people avoid a certain area whether it's a haunted castle or an old battlefield from an ancient war. Building history and a timeline is as important as a pantheon in my opinion.
I would go so far as to say history is more important. Everyone at the table will interact with the history of the land in some way or another, only a few players will actually have anything to do with deities. In many of my campaigns the pantheon isn't even known by the general populace. In the same manner that when you attend a baptist church, they aren't going to teach you about Maori religious beliefs. People are familiar with what they are exposed to unless they have a reason to actively research other religions. D&D, by definition of "Dungeons" in the title, had some kind of fallen ancient civilization. Even a loosely structured historical timeline can help you realize the purpose of a dungeon, what populates it, what traps there would be, and what artifacts may be found within. And there have been many times that using that rough timeline to create my encounters has sparked ideas that end up becoming part of the history and filling it out more.
Great tip, James! Commiting to detailing out an actual rough timeline is exactly the kind of thing my campaign settings have been missing!
I just want to say thank you for the Stargate reference. That show deserves soooo much more love in the mainstream
It is an amazing franchise that basically gets 0 love.
17 seasons and 3 movies!
Thanks for the tips!
I'm a new DM, and my players are going through the Starter Set. They want to continue in Faerun before switching to my custom world.
After the Starter Set ends they leave literally everything up to the DM, so it can be overwhelming. I've spent entire days just trying to figure out what year we're set in, what governments are active or collapsing soon, and what adventures can feasibly happen within my world.
I ended up ignoring the official timeline, and saying that various events that happened -10/+10 years from our story happen during it.
I'm currently working on an adventure that is 50% Eragon, 50% Mass Effect.
I am a Veteran DM and I've been World Building for many years. I still got pretty good advice from that video! Awesome content sir!
I keep a Google Doc tab open at all times, and whenever I get inspired with a random image or scenario, I add it to my ongoing list of ideas. I currently have over 200 ideas, each just a bullet point with a single line. Then, when I create my world, I can figure out where to plug each idea in.
I found my experience with Powered by the Apocalypse games really helped my D&D world building and roleplaying. That system is based on a more communal input on the world and its features, so I love asking my players how they think something works, rather than laying out rules for them ahead of time.
In my current game this has resulted in magic enchantment requiring the manipulation of lay-lines to add and alter magic in objects, which can also be deciphered with Arcana checks to identify an enchantment's effect, or at least its type of oagic.
Sometimes your players have awesome ideas, it's good fun to see what they have to say.
Pbta games should be mandatory learning when getting into d&d. You can always go back. But the lessons they teach are invaluable
@@benvoliothefirst yeah I also just say "do you guys want to do one fight that lasts 2 hours? Or do you want to fight a demon, storm a castle, kill the corrupted King and flee the kingdom as it crumbles around you in the same amount of time? “
@@benvoliothefirst also, if they are new players and unsure of, or just anxious about player input then they don't HAVE to.
Oh yesss pbta is *amazing* and basically my favourite system at this point. I can get away with maybe one page worth of notes per session prep (including world building) and it just flows so well
I'm a fairly new GM, a bit of 5E experience, and my players all have no 5E experience, and spur of the moment I said, "How about I set the campaign in an Egypt-like place?" I have been slaving away ever since trying to get this thing built up. ;) I've relied on a LOT of advice and assistance from videos like this and various Discord channels full of helpful people. Thank you all for your help!
You could try checking out the Amonkhet setting from Magic for some inspiration.
@@ianoneill8392 I have, thank you! There don't seem to be all that many Egypt-based products out there. I've found 1 module (which was more of an Arabic Egyptian rather than ancient Egyptian, but still very useful), and I just picked up Tome of Beasts from Kobold Press and am going through it looking for monsters I can snag, like the Bastet Temple Cat and various undead. :)
@@ianoneill8392 If you know of or find any others, please feel free to point them out to me!
Yeah, it's easy to go nuts worldbuilding. Remember, your world is the backdrop and stage dressing for the play that is your campaign for the players. Sometimes that backdrop is nothing more than a painted curtain and bits of cardboard cutout and painted. It only needs to be detailed enough for your actors (the players) to buy into.
1. Keep It Simple, Stupid (KISS) - Only create enough of the world to make the initial adventures work. You and your players can always expand on the world as you're building it.
2. Start out building the Elevator Pitch for your game: Pretend you're trying to sell your world and the adventures you've created to some executive for a publisher, and you only have the one to two minutes to pitch your idea while you have them cornered in an elevator. That's what an elevator pitch is. It's useful for you, the world builder, because it will show you the parts of the world you need to focus on immediately and what can wait till in game to flesh out.
3. Lean on what's already out there. To be fair, there aren't any more original story ideas or worlds. They're all "variations of a theme." Borrow from them and figure out how to make them your own. Real world settings and mythos are easier to work with, since there is a ton of information out there already created for you AND you don't have to worry about someone yelling that you stole an idea from someone else...
4. Don't be afraid to make up stuff on the way. Keep a notebook handy.
5. Don't be afraid to let your players make up stuff on the way. Keep a notebook handy.
6. Always make the adventure the focus of your world building. Build only the parts you need to make the adventure run. You can always go back and flesh stuff out as you go.
Kobold Press Midgard is great. we're plying it at the mo. They have a great Egyptian 'southlands' based series of books, some for 5e some for pathfinder. Their concept is really good. It's so close to our worlds folklore and myths that it's easy for the players to know a lot of the world just through pulp culture. In the North: Wotan/Odin, right, got it. Sunken England/Atlantis, got it. Minotaurs in the mediterranean, yup, check. Mummies and flying carpets and pyramids, all there. Look in to it, highly recommended.
"You don't have to include everything that's written for D&D!"
Me, struggling to make Gehenna and Hades somehow more interesting places for adventures in my world: "Sorry dude, I'm too deep in the rabbit hole."
I like using index cards to write down my ideas. That way each idea is kept separate from others. And really you only need an index card worth of writen material for any idea. I also like to colorize my ideas so its easier to keep them sorted (Red-Worldbuilding, Yellow-Adventures, Green-NPCs, White-Villains)
So organized. I like your moxie.
I played in a Vampire the Masquerade game where the world was complete homebrew. All new powers, clans, locations. The exciting part was each player was able to make their own clan and powers. The ironic part is it felt very much like D&D, which included having all the common D&D races.
T20 : Do not worldbuild like a Noob
Official DD setting: there's this goddess of magic. No, she didn't see Karsus' folly coming
Personally, when worldbuilding I always start with a map of the world. It gives me interesting places to fill in, a feel for the world, and something I can always look at for inspiration
I think a big thing is people forget how big a world can be...
Picture this: a sci-fi game where the crew of a spaceship has engine failure (sabotage???? An imposter on the crew???? Cody acting pretty sus...). The ship falls out of hyperspce, sensors off line and power fading. They see a near by planet which visually seems life supportive. Desperately, they set course to hopefully fall on a temperate looking part of the largest discernable land mass, and brace for a crash. The crew finds themselves in a heavily forested area (I say forested, but the foliage seems more like a rapidly growing gigantic breed of grass), and without any other indicators, they start trekking north west. After encountering a verity of dangerous animal wildlife, they stumble upon an empty city... abandoned, without signs of struggle, but so devoid of intelligent life, the forest and beast are well into the process of reclaiming it, with vines growing out of high rise buildings, raised highways engulfed by tall trees on either side, and packs of hunting animals roaming the long abandoned streets. Desperate for shelter, the crew clears out and sets up in one of the ghost towers, and begins a campaign of figuring out what happened on this world.... if only they had travel SOUTH EAST and within a few day stumbled into Hong Kong, one of the largest and most advanced cities on the planet.... totally different campaign, both in 21st century China.
I think that's a great example of how, even when playing with PCs who want "realistic settings" a flexible world opens up lots of possibilities.
Perfectly timed video, I'm starting a new campaign next month-ish and I'm doing all of my world building right now.
How I world build? I get high, lay in bed listen to music and I wake up and it happened when I slept. Like full world, conflict, everything just boom, there. It's pretty nice lmao
One huge thing that helped is an app I have called "RPG Notes" on Android. Every day for 20 minutes I make one thing and use RPG Notes to do it. It makes keeping people, places, or things so easy to set up and have them interconnecting to each other quickly. It really was exactly what I needed.
I'm currently running a spelljammer game and one of the things I've done to help paint the backdrop is continually reminding players about the vastness of space when they are inside spheres and the alien landscapes of landing at asteroid docks and the vast races there compared to a land city.
This is exactly what I needed right now! Couldn't have a better timing! This was a great video, thanks
For my first 5e long term game i created a Skyrim-lite for a game with survival elements and more wilderness than usual. I wanted to have diverse fauna and flora so i added a spore infested jungle for a swamplike terrain and a ruined city that used Control Weather to have mild weather near the arctic. Then i figured that 5e was made for Sword Coast and similar places so I swapped the game to Pathfinder 1st ed.
Love the subtle Inuyasha reference thrown in😂
As a DM who’s constantly wanting to improve his craft that’s a yes to more videos about this topic
teensy tip ive been gelling on lately: dont feel the need to embrace fantasy names. Theyre had to remember and can bog down the parties ability to take notes and keep a session running. While ive taken it to an extreme and made a "modern" society setting so regular names make sense, i think a lot of games can benefit from having a good handful of their characters named Michael, Jeremy, Elizabeth, etc. You can always make the last name fancy, but it facilitates RP by referring to people by a name people already remember and can associate with.
One thing I've done to combat the 17 syllable fantasy name issue is using traditional Welsh names for many of my NPCs. Simple, easy to remember, but just different enough from what my players are accustomed to hearing that they don't come off like I'm introducing them to Joey, the guy that works at the gas station down the street.
How dare you disrespect Skimblefop. My players love him.
@@mikewilliamson6288
I usually do Welsh names or some bastardization of Czech names too.
"Demon crystal shatters into a hundred different shards throughout the land, and now the demons and monsters discovering them are mutating with tremendous power."
Love the Inuyasha reference
One Note for the win. I run a homebrew campaign using the world of Greyhawk map. One Note has been amazing for keeping everything organized and lets me quickly reference something my players need without me slowing down the game. Great video some very good advice here.
I'm running a game in the "Warmahordes" world of Caen, I started the game in 583 A. R. within the Western Midlunds. I love that I can build around a game world that has so much written details of places, and history surrounding it. My players seem to like the setting as well.
Loved your list! I’m worldbuilding for the first time right now, and I’m happy to learn that I’m hitting a lot of these points by accident. After my party ran CoS, I wanted a much lighter tone, as well as more big monsters and more intrigue, so I decided to run a Feywild campaign - it lets me rip off the published world maps without being beholden to the rest of their world. It gives me the opportunity to lean into both exploration of the wilds and role-playing the courtly schemes. I’m also surprisingly good at planning enough to foreshadow challenges to the party while leaving myself room to be inspired later. Coming up with a name and moniker for a fey lord and leaving until much later the specifics of his stat block or personality has really let me bring the best story possible to the table in a just-in-time way.
Dude. I've been running games for more than 15 years and this still helped me a ton. Thank you. Rule 3 in particular. Have a good one mate.
Glad it helped!
I'm an old hand at crafting homebrewed campaign settings, and I have to agree with you 100% on everything in this video.
16:40 Magic is what makes my world different, I'm thinking of a high magic setting but also one where magic is almost alive, almost intelligent and may not always do what it is intended to do. Also if magic is used differently from what it was originally conjured up to do it may rebel and cause very different side effects. This idea is from Shannara for the observant reader.
I combine this with a geography pretty much stolen from the eastern kingdoms of warcraft (though the players likely won't notice unless I stick a map in their hands) and a government structure stolen from the empire of elder scrolls.
I thought it was from star wars, cause it sounds a lot like the force.
@@Dragondan1987 Well Terry Brooks who write Shannara has written some star wars novels too. Really it's the whole nature magic which was so popular in the 70s. And both the first Shannara book and the first star wars movie came out in 1977.
That Person/Place/Thing rule really helped me out because I was honestly just stuck with all that was listed on that rule
You had me at the super cliche dice discount ad xD
The one big tip about World Building is let your players contribute. My session 0s includes NPCs, places and such that players helped create like personality, races, quirks, etc. Or there are times in session I will ask their input on making a non-key NPC or place. This makes the players invested and helps relieve that creative pressure. Who knows, you players might even seed some ideas you didn’t think about.
9:39 In regards to this rule, the best advice I ever recieved: "There is no win or fail, there is only MAKE." - John Cage, Ten Rules for Life
my tip i always told newer DM's; do the worldbuilding you need as you need it. hours and hours spent on a continent your players never visit is better spent on that item or npc theyve been hunting down. this ties in a lot to leaving yourself wiggle room to go back and edit
I'm working on a massive basin forest where the trees and wildlife become bigger and more dangerous the deeper you go, to the point where at the center it would take weeks or months to climb from the top of the tree down to the bottom. It's got ancient ruins scattered throughout it, with artifacts powered by a weird blue energy that the wildlife seems to share, and no one knows what's at the bottom since no one who ever went that deep has ever returned :)
In many Sci Fi games (Star Wars, Warhammer 40K, Traveller, Stars Without Number, possibly even Star Trek), you have both a macrosetting that gives you all the general rules of the universe, and the specific sector or region you build. So the answer as to whatever people use the setting or build their own is often "both".
This is the most helpful world building tips video I’ve ever seen! I appreciate how you give ideas on how to think instead what to think. I’ve been stuck on how to start for a week and I finally got the start from this! Thank you!!!!
I have been running a sci fi Campaign that is mixed with Starwars, Mass effect, Destiny and Others in the works for 2 Months now every week first time as GM as well. I have spend over 2 months just setting it all up with lore, background, factions even some new things I have been borrow off other Books before even starting the Campaign. and right now as I speak i have 8 players working Together and working for a Faction I have named "The Alliance". They got their own Ship, some B1 battle Droids and some First order Riot troopers. I have been making my best to hope the players have fun with this Campaign even when at times it gets abit mussy but i do my best to fix the holes i left. right now the party is heading back to a ice planet (NOT Hoth) and making a deal with a small Group called "The house of Dusk". I have watch your videos for some time. Even if it normal Base D&D the Videos help out with my own campaign. Keep up the amazing work
Taniks has no house.... kneels before no banner...... he is a murderer, and veeery good at what he does. He will not hesitate to kill you.... kill him baaaaack, yes?
I've always wanted to world build for DnD and for creative writing purposes. And I've always gotten stuck in a rut obsessing over details that stopped me from continuing in the end. This is some great advice.
As someone who runs a Shadowrun 5E campaign, I will absolutely recommend that anytime you are building a new world, consult what the publisher has already done. Shadowrun is a game that is very ingrained in it's world, but there's also lots of elements that can be tweaked to fit the style of play you're looking at, and sometimes reading the supplement books can give you an idea for a brand new campaign.
For example, after reading the Data Trails 5E book, I was inspired by the Xenosapient AI, which is an AI so advanced and alien to current understanding of computers that they are nearly impossible to contain. After reading more into the megacorporations of the world, I saw that the EVO Corporation often did experiments to further cybernetics and free rights for metatypes of the world, including AIs. So now my campaign is focused upon the EVO Corporation hiring a group of Shadowrunners to track down and recover a fragmented AI before it ruins the entire Matrix infrastructure of Seattle.
Obviously this is very specific to Shadowrun, but D&D has plenty of old books that delve into the ecology and civilizations of all kinds of monsters that can become your BBEG.
I noticed whenever I started having fun with my worldbuilding and especially whenever I started allowing my players to add on to world themselves, either through backstory or through them mentioning things I hadn't thought of, I noticed I started doing all these thing unintentionally. Though, I still find myself falling into some of these pitfalls when I get too worked up over what a game should be instead of what I think is fun.
My group right now uses ms onenote, it really is the best thing for dms. Not only can you put all your notes on there and password protect them in a separate tab, you can have all the players put their character sheets on there and they can customize their sheets with pictures and all sorts of different ways to organize, you can even put a battle map on there and move their icons around and it will sync online so everyone can see it on their laptop. Amazing resource!
Honestly I adore these tips and I think any new DM or player should watch your videos just for the joy you dish out about role playing games. I was rather disillusioned with D&D for awhile and only got back into it a couple years back when I saw your video about the best tips and tricks for dungeon masters and ever since watching your videos I’ve been improving my DM skills and now have multiple weekly games and I’m fully back in love with D&D!!
A worldbuilding tip I will add is get and create many random dice creation charts and use them. Examples directions d12 1= N 2= NNE 3= NE 4= E 5= SE 6= SSE 7= S 8= SSW 9= SW 10= W 11= NW 12= NNW. Useful on a card for where locations are, engines appear, locations, objects or even what direction someone gets randomly thrown in! From d4,to d1000. I often use d% charts and make more as needed! From physical descriptors like hair and eye colour to distances, moods, bonds, goals, ideals, random names, prosperity levels, quality of a shop, location encounters, wild game they can hunt, pets, colours, weaknesses, secrets, trinkets, magic items, random dungeon room contents, hazards, non combat encounters, interesting magic locales and effects, minerals, gemstones, useful plants/herbs, food, meals a restaurant serves, social NPC encounters, various settlement details, treasure map details, etc!
Many are available for free on r/dnd random creation charts a growing source for dms. I’d advise doing what I did printing them and putting them in a binder and continually adding more of my own writing commonly seen ones out on easy to access flash cards!
Remember they are to help you, if you roll something you don’t like or that feels wrong disregard it! Re roll or pick. Sometimes a roll inspires a new idea as well. Go with the inspiration!
Useful video I took notes, thanks!
It was like you knew what I needed some inspiration on right now. My party has been localized to one area of the map and they (both the players and their characters) have believed the first map I drew to be the full world because it's what their characters have known their whole lives. It was always my intention to have them discover that some of the things they're seeking lie in three other areas that are each a quarter of the map as a whole. I've had one part finished and the third is mostly barren deserts so it can completely be worked as they go but the last section has stumped me for months. Now they're beginning to tug on the story threads that would lead them into this section. It wasn't until I watched this that it really clicked with me that I don't have to have every rock and stick of this section planned out just yet. That's a huge breath of fresh air for me. Thank you.
The only thing you gotta do is to make it seem that you have a secret book you've been working on when in reality you are just confident that the windmill really is a mimic
I think a wonderful addition to tack on to this is that sometimes worldbuilding an area starts notable characters in the region's history!
Say for instance, a place that used to be a slave town under the rule of a tyrannical dragon, but a band of brave adventurers (or sometimes just one), came and slayed the dragon, liberating the town! It has since grown since it's liberation and is now a common trade route stop for many.
The notable characters here are the dragon in question and the hero/es that killed it, but with just those two figures, you've created a skeleton for a new town!
1) the town has a history with a dragon (will another come? have they garnered defense specifically against dragons now?)
2) town history also includes one or more heroes, which means that there may be a lineage from said heroes, or powerful items they left behind when they passed. (maybe there's another dragon in the setting that's being problematic as the players have discovered, and now they need something that's going to help take it down, etc.)
3) it's a trade town! lots of opportunities for your adventurers to buy, sell, and trade, as well as potentially house npcs with plot-related information for them if they seek it out
I don't always fully agree with Cody, but as someone who loves world building, I agree 200% with everything he days in this video. This is some VERY solid advice for those looking to build their own homebrew worlds.
When you said you were a DFW local, I got WAY more excited than I have any right to be. Like, I need to keep my eyes peeled any time I visit the local game shops now. Lol!
I struggle a lot with this - I tend to think bookishly, so I build and build and build and can never get to running a game because I'm busy build build building! Thanks so much for the great advice!
Started playing D&D a couple years ago, then got the idea to adapt a story I wrote a long time ago for a D&D campaign, and now running my first campaign in my homebrew world. It’s amazing watching the story really come to life ❤️
The second rule is the one i struggle with the most. Thanks for the advice!
I've been creating my own D&D world since my early 20s. And also, currently working on an anime/JRPG influenced system with some friends
I’d love another world building vid! Very recently I’ve been writing a new world for Savage worlds (which is a more generalized and very flexible system). I’ve been struggling a lot because I definitely approached world building as “I have to write everything possible, including multiple nations, their histories, geographic situations, and cultures before I can even start” which burnt me out hard. Even as I tried to write as I ran the game in my “finished” areas, I don’t think I was writing very efficiently. I lost sight of what my world was originally supposed to be, and my campaign fell a little bit more into generic fantasy territory. My players were having fun for the most part, so I couldn’t really complain, but I was very unsatisfied with my work behind the scenes. This video was very very helpful for steering me in the right direction, so thank you!
The way I like to build my worlds is that I make them with the people playing the game in mind. I usually look at what they give me for their backstory and "incorporate" it into my world so that their character is not just on their character sheet but rather a living part of my world. That's my tip anyway. Keep up the good work Cody!
I can't tell you how many times I've a DM's setting have a place called "the deadlands." But to my knowledge, I seem to be the only person I know to have actually made them devoid of all life. My deadlands have been completely sucked dry of all mana, making it impossible for them to sustain life. However, they are also the only place where electricity based technology, like what offworlders would have, actually works
Speaking as a Pathfinder author who has worked on several campaign setting books, I will second all of this advice. You’ve done a wonderful job guiding GMs on how to create fascinating and engaging worlds.
I’ve been running my world for 3 years now and I’ve been starting to panic lately. “Nothing in the world makes sense! Ack! How do I fix it!?” But then I find this and read your golden rule that INSTANTLY puts my mind at ease: “make the world that compliments the gameplay style you want to have.” And suddenly I’m ok again because YES my world compliments my and my players gameplay style EXACTLY. Thank you for the ease of mind!! You basically reminded me: the point isn’t to be realistic...the MAIN point is to have fun!
I have never used per published stuff and only ever created my own world. it may not have always been the best, but it a huge part of the enjoyment I get from playing. Certain aspect have stuck around from the last 25 years others have disappeared in the very next game.
World Building is 100% something I would love to see more of. Of all the information I research each week, World Building is the heavy weight champion.
I actually like that ad spot. The 20% off is quite significant too.
Since you asked, I always create my own settings to run. Savage Worlds, in no small part because of its flexibility, is my go-to system.
For me as a player, I love to explore and investigate, so the kind of gameplay I naturally want to promote exploration and investigation, so I'll come up with different herbs and plants that have different properties, place caves all over, unique animals, varying areas that differ greatly from each other.
Relating to rule 4, for my main setting that I'm working on, I've completely reworked the way deities and alignments work and given it a new purpose.
Since you mentioned town names, I made a character named Hoojiss Boojiss, and long story short, I couldn't think of a name for his hometown, I was using a chapstick as a map marker and named the town Chapice.
I learned rule two rather quickly when bring my decade old mc between different campaigns. It's also helped me to build in more plot points that have become not just her backstory, but a part of who she is as a character
The past couple years I've starting working on a world again I started like 10 years ago. I'm even starting to write my own setting book for it. Several of these tips I kind of knew, but others were good to hear. Something that has helped me is that I often treat a settlement like a character to itself. But the personality is represented by how it's built and it's people. The city or town, has backstory, flaws, bonds, and goals too. And hopefully a defining feature or two that sets it apart from others.
Your tip about making the world for the gameplay is so true in how wonderful it is. It is how I went about creating my world a couple years ago. Great video!
I use One Note for my campaign and it's such an amazing tool. It has made organizing SO much easier
Before I watch ita always great to see a video like this I've been the Marshall for my friends running deadlands for 12 years now it's always awesome to brush up on some things and learn new tricks keep it up.
Cody! I have also been using OneNote for nearly 4 months now to include all of my D&D content, transferring it all over from my hard copies. I can NOT recommend it ENOUGH. Absolutely a necessity if you also play online! -- Awesome!
I just this week found myself wondering if you would make a video on world building and as always you don't disappoint! I hope we get to hear more on the subject :)
Between you and Davvy Chappy, I might not need a psychologist. Y'all have done such a good job taking on some of the struggles with being a DM beyond simply "how to roll dice better".
I like how these tips can be applied to any game system. I am in the process of reworking world of darkness, streamlining the system and using it as the engine for a post apocalyptic game
When my friends and I used to play we tore apart the d20 BESM (Big Eyes Small Mouth) game (basically an anime d20). We used the stripped down features to basically hodge podge EVERYthing we wanted in to one realm called "The Engine" which was a demi-plane. Basically raceless and classless d20 where you got so many points to build your character and you could use them to buy anything from spellcasting one level to a rogue's sneak attack the next level.
I love how you can explain this plainly, but with detail. An excellent teacher! Thank you!
I had to do some world creation for a (half written) module I made for the Toon system a few years back. Toon's written normally from the "Tom and Jerry" perspective that each adventure was an isolated episode in a disjointed series, where there wasn't an episodic story or serial nature to the episodes. My module is more based on the 1970s and 1980s cereal cartoons, where the seasons had a story that stretched over the episode in that season.
Since my story was going to be about a team of spies/secret agents fighting against a nefarious group of villains (ala James Bond or the Mission Impossible TV show), I basically took a shortcut and used the world as-is. I only needed to insert two new nations (one for the good guys and one for the bad). Since the module is a rewrite of the introductory episode "Toon Olympics", I didn't bother to flesh out the bad guy island or most of the good guy island. I only built enough of the city to identify it and where the stadium is. I gave enough backstory about both competing organizations to make the players feel like there is something for them to be a part of. And the thing they're trying to prevent the bad guys getting is a McGuffin, but it's detailed enough so they know why (if they bother to figure it out) they need to keep it out of reach of the bad actors. And the characters are only detailed enough so the GM can roleplay them and so the players have a reason to care. Everything else can be fleshed out as needed and expanded upon later.
Remember, use KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) to keep yourself out of worldbuilding hell. Figure out what details you need to run the adventure and don't bother with the rest. Add on to the world as the play session dictates. You can have a player act as the secretary or notes-taker for the group to keep track of changes for you in session, and even offer (and reward) players for coming up with details for your world while you play.
Holy shit! You name-dropped Sly and GenX and my jaw hit the floor! Didn’t know you were in DFW. That was my home comic book shop for over a decade!
I have been dming for about 5-6 years and I recently decided to try to run all my future campaigns out of one world. The way I change the setting is by going to different times of the world. My current one I’m prepping for is shortly after the beginning of the world. This campaign will be the one that will set up bloodlines of future royalties, so more of power struggles and vacuums. I think that doing this will give nods to returning players if they go to the future and recognize an abandoned city, a heroic bloodline, or similar stuff like that. Also it allows me to have a in-depth background for magic. The players will never know this background (unless they pursue knowledge that most NPCs don’t even consider) but I really enjoy how it’s beginning is shaping up to be.
My biggest tip for world building is that time management is key. Unless you have countless hours to flesh out your world, some pages will be left blank, and that's fine. But try to focus your energies on the things the players are actually interacting with. Your players wont wont be impressed that you have perfect history of the war that happened 2000 years ago, if they are walking through linear dungeons with no dressing or depth. Also don't be afraid to improvise! This is a world you are creating together after all!
here's a little tip from me:
it's ok to start with the world of someone else and make it your own in time.
i started with lost mines of phandelver which put our campaign pretty solidly on the swordcoast. now we're doing a slightly different thing. the same world, but no longer the same area. the other planes are still in effect, but the lands the party travels trough are all my making. slowly building your own world out of the world of another can be how you make your world. i have a couple locations that'll definitely stick around in my world, thanks to the work of the players.
The current game I have been running for just over a year now is in the Forgotten Realms. Mainly due to all the players were new so I ran them through Lost Mine and was unsure at the beginning if the game would continue each week. I have made tons of changes to the world though, especially well known npcs such as Durnan from the Yawning Portal and Glasstaff whom I made one of the main antagonists and the heroes are still sticking their nose in his nefarious business. I know changing the world so much to fit their story is a lot of work, but it allows me to write my own story which I enjoy very much. All I hope each week is that my players have fun and are intrigued by the story and the world.
I was the exact same when all my friends started and I took on the DM seat. I painstakingly crafted an entire planet and all these adventures and storylines and it was some of the most fun we ever had playing. Unfortunately that takes up a lot of time and as we got busier I found it much easier to insert modules into the existing world. So now basically every dungeon in Tales From the Yawning Portal can be found in my setting. Places equivalent to Baldur’s Gate and even Barovia are scattered around the place. But everything still takes place in my setting and it’s great. There’s still plenty of homebrew and of course I made changes to the modules to have them fit the world but I find it a really great way to experience official D&D content without having to learn an entire setting because there’s no world you understand more than your own. And in my experience that makes for the most enjoyable game experience. Also world building is way more fun than world learning 😂 But if you’ve got a busy week and you need a plot hook. Send the party off to Khundrukar or even have them come across an irresistible woodland manor and run Death House. Just change a few names and balance to party level and then when you have some more time go and build your 15 level labyrinthine dungeon infested with the entire monster manual and every trap under the sun
Rule #2 is one I absolutely agree with. I like to build out vague locations, such as cities and forests, but only write one or two sentences (three if player hails from that city) until the players show up. For example:
Rauvin:
A Grung town built on top of a marshland at the bottom of the Astral Peak mountain range.
or
Port Helgar:
Southernmost port city, mainly inhabited by centaurs. Council of Druids operates from here. *Insert PC name* Hails from there