I am currently DMing for my group of friends, its my first time ever playing DnD and also the first time for all my players. We are currently playing through LMoP... I don't really know much about the forgotten realms and my players know nothing. They want to keep hold of their current players and I would like a bit of scope for creativity and to incorporate their back stories so I'm going to devise a way of getting them to travel north to the Kingdom of "Frostfell" where my Dragonborn Paladin's exiled parents have travelled to and are asking for his assistance to deal with something (not decided on that yet)
I just feel like my map is still just a little empty.... But I'll give you a run down of my ideas for places.
Cities:
Frostfell - Capital of the region, a city that developed from a settlement that began from mining the valuable resources found in the Ice Spike Mountains range, the best weather it enjoys is late Autumn like weather, but most of the time it is wintery, large city with a harbour and a keep and I feel is going to be overseen by a Human King...
Raiton - Further south provides a link to the more southerly Kingdoms, I don't think I'll be using it for the players very often. Surrounded by plains and where the cold begins to abate a little, I'm thinking a bigger, slightly more wintery Rohan from LoTR
Towns:
Winterpoint - This is going to be a very rough and ready frontier town, its main use is still mining the minerals from the mountains but also as a protection from "The Frost" (I'll get on to that in a bit)
Harmer Tor - Serves a similar purpose to Winterpoint, however, one of the adventures I have in mind is that this is going to be one of the adventures for the characters and they will discover that this town has been massacred and overtaken by some mysterious entity. Thinking dark wizard maybe, Ice Zombies, Ice Wolfs etc.
Riverfork - Going to be the main base for the players and where they find the Paladins parents. Biggest town in the Kingdom and a bustling market town due to the trade coming from "The Rivers Fork"
Ardens Stand - A smaller town lying on the edge of a lake, based on the site of a former heroes final stand against an evil that emanated from "The Frost" thousands of years ago. Will have an adventure based around here and the lake to do with some ancient spirit.
Landmarks:
Icespike Mountains - I need a name for the main mountain as funnily enough at some point I'm having a white dragon have his lair up there who decides to terrorise Frostfell... A rough, snow covered mountain range
The Frost - An idea shamelessly stolen from "The Blight" in the WoT series or North of the Wall I guess even though that wasn't my first idea. A large icy plane where snow and fog obscures the vision, every now and again beasts come from the North hence why Winterpoint and Harmer Tor stand where they are. In Ancient times a great evil came from there but a hero named Arden stopped them at what is now called Ardens Stand
Softstep Forrest - So named as the snow that covers the forrest and the forrest floor means that it is eerily quiet when you enter the forrest. Its a very dense Pine forrest and who knows what is hidden inside (I still don't)
I just feel that the map is still a little empty, especially in between the triangle of Winterpoint, Harmer Tor and Riverfork and then Riverfork to Raiton.
I would love experienced DM's or players give me any ideas on how to expand my world and fill in some of the gaps!!
I wouldn't call myself experienced but I think the easiest way to go would be to take stuff from other published content and adapt it to your setting. Storm's King Thunder, for example, is a level 1-11 campaign that happens in the north of Faerun and that includes some advice to use it as a continuation for LMoP instead. I haven't played it nor DM it though, so you would need to search opinions and reviews from someone who did. Similarly, Icewind Dale Rime of the Frostmaiden happens in the northernmost part of the sword coast (so basically, the place you want to take your players) and might be a good source to take landmarks and possible towns from. Alternatively, A Tale of Two Dragons has advice about how to turn Dragon of Icespire Peak (a level 1-6 adventure campaign set in phandalin) into a tier 2 adventure and advice about how to connect it to LMoP; even if you don't want to keep the characters in the area some of the elements placed there might be easy to adapt to somewhere else like having a white dragon displace monsters from the mountains, natives who use dark rituals to try to drive the settlers out, etc. You would need the original adventure for it to make sense though.
If you want to go hard on the homebrewing though, I had an idea a while back of basing a campaign on the settling of Ushuaia (the southernmost part of the American continent). It was done by making a penal colony: basically, they built a prison down there and a town around it in which the families of the guards and prisoners could live. The prisoners could reduce their sentences by working, making the roads, cutting trees, etc. So you could make adventures related to how the natives or a local hag coven oppose to the settlers by summoning something like yetis or wendigos or sabotaging mines/crops/logging operations. You could make a storyline about guards abusing the prisoners and causing some to rise as vengeful spirits. You could make a prisoner escape due to that and have their family ask the players to find them and figure out why they ran before they freeze. I originally thought to tie that in with the prisoner finding evidence of precious metals in the mountains and that causing something like the gold feever, then take inspiration from The Golden Voldano by Jules Verne, though if mining is already established there it might not work as well. Or you could make stuff up, like spirits that look like women luring men to the frozen lakes to kill them, a serial killer in the woods, a hidden yeti kingdom in the mountains, etc. This could either be something that hapens in a place the human king wants to colonize or it could be the backstory of how the kingdom formed before it became a mining town.
Another alternative would be to adapt stuff from movies that take place in cold locations? Maybe have a place like Arandelle from Frozen if there was a bad ending in which Elsa's storm didn't end and she went crazy after she realized what she did or Berk from How to Train Your Dragon movie if Hiccup just left (or if the vikings then started using the dragons to raid).
You could also take advantage that it is an inhospitable region to give it a more western feel in regards to law enforcement in the smaller towns. Or you could subvert the whole "Adventurers guild" thing from modern fantasy isekai and games and make it corrupt as hell. Like a town that has issues with a forest full of werewolves or similar creatures and the adventurers not getting rid of them because their pelts are really profitable and thus they think it best not to exterminate them or a dark wizard being a former member and the guild being more interested on that not getting out.
As for landmarks... maybe a hidden valley in which it is always summer with a community that really doesn't want the rest of the north learning about it out of fear of being conquered. It could be either a natural magic phenomena or the result of dark rituals. Since the cold means that trees don't decompose then something to consider is that forests in regions like that are absolutely filled with fallen trees so they are really hard to transverse and that deforested areas have the stumps at different heights due to how high the snow was at the time they were cut. Going back to the colonization of Ushuaia, one if the big environmental issues of the province was that people introduced beavers to try and make an industry out of selling their pelts but they became a plague that redirected rivers, so maybe a plotline about nature spirits being angry or a giant dam and lake made by monster beavers. Some plains between the mountains in which the locals practice cross-country skiing (or it could be a normal means of transportation). Maybe a penguin island? They usually have one for mating seasons and if they have used it for a while then there would be so many warrens that the ground can collapse under you if you are not careful. And of course, the giant frozen lake is a classic. Or a glacier or an iceberg that is secretly a batlleship/moving base.
Your map should be empty at the beginning. And it seems like yours is coming along nicely so far.
World-building can be super fun for the DM, but many players aren’t really interested in lore dumps. I’ve heard of many, many DMs who homebrew a world only to find the players aren’t interested in much beyond the current storyline.
So do what you are doing. Start small, and expand out as needed. Create only as much as you need for the next session or two, and have a vague sense of what’s beyond. Then you avoid problems like needing there to be a town over here, but you already drew a map and actually that where the ocean is. Since you haven’t made it yet, it can be whatever you want or the story needs.
One other thing, if you want to keep the characters but leave the FR entirely (really officially leave), there’s ways to do that. A spell called dream of the blue veil will allow it. Also, there’s a new book out in a month called Journeys through the Radiant Citadel which will have other ways of moving between worlds. None of that is necessary, of course, you can just decide to add or subtract from the FR all you like, I’m just trying to give you options/ideas.
Looks like a great start. What sort of scale is this? How far are the distances between locations? Seems like you have plenty within this location to be going on with so I wouldn't worry about expanding just yet.
I'm going with there being just under 100 miles from Frostfell to Riverfork so 4 days steady riding. Roughly three days travel between Riverfork and Raiton. Winterpoint should be able to be reached from Frostfell in just over a day.
Obviously there would be roadside Inns and villages that I haven't plopped on the map for the PC's to interact with on their travels.
If you want to dissapear down the world crafting wormhole then Azgaar's a good place to start - or a bad place If you don't want to waste hours of your life...And it's tied into the town/city builder Watabou. Azgaar is really REALLY configurable so can just focus on the story and rename places to fit whilst not having to worry about filling in those blanks.
Link to my current first draft map - https://imgur.com/GrjnamI
Hello all, so a bit of backstory,
I am currently DMing for my group of friends, its my first time ever playing DnD and also the first time for all my players. We are currently playing through LMoP... I don't really know much about the forgotten realms and my players know nothing. They want to keep hold of their current players and I would like a bit of scope for creativity and to incorporate their back stories so I'm going to devise a way of getting them to travel north to the Kingdom of "Frostfell" where my Dragonborn Paladin's exiled parents have travelled to and are asking for his assistance to deal with something (not decided on that yet)
I just feel like my map is still just a little empty.... But I'll give you a run down of my ideas for places.
Cities:
Frostfell - Capital of the region, a city that developed from a settlement that began from mining the valuable resources found in the Ice Spike Mountains range, the best weather it enjoys is late Autumn like weather, but most of the time it is wintery, large city with a harbour and a keep and I feel is going to be overseen by a Human King...
Raiton - Further south provides a link to the more southerly Kingdoms, I don't think I'll be using it for the players very often. Surrounded by plains and where the cold begins to abate a little, I'm thinking a bigger, slightly more wintery Rohan from LoTR
Towns:
Winterpoint - This is going to be a very rough and ready frontier town, its main use is still mining the minerals from the mountains but also as a protection from "The Frost" (I'll get on to that in a bit)
Harmer Tor - Serves a similar purpose to Winterpoint, however, one of the adventures I have in mind is that this is going to be one of the adventures for the characters and they will discover that this town has been massacred and overtaken by some mysterious entity. Thinking dark wizard maybe, Ice Zombies, Ice Wolfs etc.
Riverfork - Going to be the main base for the players and where they find the Paladins parents. Biggest town in the Kingdom and a bustling market town due to the trade coming from "The Rivers Fork"
Ardens Stand - A smaller town lying on the edge of a lake, based on the site of a former heroes final stand against an evil that emanated from "The Frost" thousands of years ago. Will have an adventure based around here and the lake to do with some ancient spirit.
Landmarks:
Icespike Mountains - I need a name for the main mountain as funnily enough at some point I'm having a white dragon have his lair up there who decides to terrorise Frostfell... A rough, snow covered mountain range
The Frost - An idea shamelessly stolen from "The Blight" in the WoT series or North of the Wall I guess even though that wasn't my first idea. A large icy plane where snow and fog obscures the vision, every now and again beasts come from the North hence why Winterpoint and Harmer Tor stand where they are. In Ancient times a great evil came from there but a hero named Arden stopped them at what is now called Ardens Stand
Softstep Forrest - So named as the snow that covers the forrest and the forrest floor means that it is eerily quiet when you enter the forrest. Its a very dense Pine forrest and who knows what is hidden inside (I still don't)
I just feel that the map is still a little empty, especially in between the triangle of Winterpoint, Harmer Tor and Riverfork and then Riverfork to Raiton.
I would love experienced DM's or players give me any ideas on how to expand my world and fill in some of the gaps!!
I wouldn't call myself experienced but I think the easiest way to go would be to take stuff from other published content and adapt it to your setting. Storm's King Thunder, for example, is a level 1-11 campaign that happens in the north of Faerun and that includes some advice to use it as a continuation for LMoP instead. I haven't played it nor DM it though, so you would need to search opinions and reviews from someone who did. Similarly, Icewind Dale Rime of the Frostmaiden happens in the northernmost part of the sword coast (so basically, the place you want to take your players) and might be a good source to take landmarks and possible towns from. Alternatively, A Tale of Two Dragons has advice about how to turn Dragon of Icespire Peak (a level 1-6 adventure campaign set in phandalin) into a tier 2 adventure and advice about how to connect it to LMoP; even if you don't want to keep the characters in the area some of the elements placed there might be easy to adapt to somewhere else like having a white dragon displace monsters from the mountains, natives who use dark rituals to try to drive the settlers out, etc. You would need the original adventure for it to make sense though.
If you want to go hard on the homebrewing though, I had an idea a while back of basing a campaign on the settling of Ushuaia (the southernmost part of the American continent). It was done by making a penal colony: basically, they built a prison down there and a town around it in which the families of the guards and prisoners could live. The prisoners could reduce their sentences by working, making the roads, cutting trees, etc. So you could make adventures related to how the natives or a local hag coven oppose to the settlers by summoning something like yetis or wendigos or sabotaging mines/crops/logging operations. You could make a storyline about guards abusing the prisoners and causing some to rise as vengeful spirits. You could make a prisoner escape due to that and have their family ask the players to find them and figure out why they ran before they freeze. I originally thought to tie that in with the prisoner finding evidence of precious metals in the mountains and that causing something like the gold feever, then take inspiration from The Golden Voldano by Jules Verne, though if mining is already established there it might not work as well. Or you could make stuff up, like spirits that look like women luring men to the frozen lakes to kill them, a serial killer in the woods, a hidden yeti kingdom in the mountains, etc. This could either be something that hapens in a place the human king wants to colonize or it could be the backstory of how the kingdom formed before it became a mining town.
Another alternative would be to adapt stuff from movies that take place in cold locations? Maybe have a place like Arandelle from Frozen if there was a bad ending in which Elsa's storm didn't end and she went crazy after she realized what she did or Berk from How to Train Your Dragon movie if Hiccup just left (or if the vikings then started using the dragons to raid).
You could also take advantage that it is an inhospitable region to give it a more western feel in regards to law enforcement in the smaller towns. Or you could subvert the whole "Adventurers guild" thing from modern fantasy isekai and games and make it corrupt as hell. Like a town that has issues with a forest full of werewolves or similar creatures and the adventurers not getting rid of them because their pelts are really profitable and thus they think it best not to exterminate them or a dark wizard being a former member and the guild being more interested on that not getting out.
As for landmarks... maybe a hidden valley in which it is always summer with a community that really doesn't want the rest of the north learning about it out of fear of being conquered. It could be either a natural magic phenomena or the result of dark rituals. Since the cold means that trees don't decompose then something to consider is that forests in regions like that are absolutely filled with fallen trees so they are really hard to transverse and that deforested areas have the stumps at different heights due to how high the snow was at the time they were cut. Going back to the colonization of Ushuaia, one if the big environmental issues of the province was that people introduced beavers to try and make an industry out of selling their pelts but they became a plague that redirected rivers, so maybe a plotline about nature spirits being angry or a giant dam and lake made by monster beavers. Some plains between the mountains in which the locals practice cross-country skiing (or it could be a normal means of transportation). Maybe a penguin island? They usually have one for mating seasons and if they have used it for a while then there would be so many warrens that the ground can collapse under you if you are not careful. And of course, the giant frozen lake is a classic. Or a glacier or an iceberg that is secretly a batlleship/moving base.
Your map should be empty at the beginning. And it seems like yours is coming along nicely so far.
World-building can be super fun for the DM, but many players aren’t really interested in lore dumps. I’ve heard of many, many DMs who homebrew a world only to find the players aren’t interested in much beyond the current storyline.
So do what you are doing. Start small, and expand out as needed. Create only as much as you need for the next session or two, and have a vague sense of what’s beyond. Then you avoid problems like needing there to be a town over here, but you already drew a map and actually that where the ocean is. Since you haven’t made it yet, it can be whatever you want or the story needs.
One other thing, if you want to keep the characters but leave the FR entirely (really officially leave), there’s ways to do that. A spell called dream of the blue veil will allow it. Also, there’s a new book out in a month called Journeys through the Radiant Citadel which will have other ways of moving between worlds. None of that is necessary, of course, you can just decide to add or subtract from the FR all you like, I’m just trying to give you options/ideas.
Thanks for the advice guys. I've now tidied it up a little and added some POI's and created it digitally and really happy with how its come out!
Looks like a great start. What sort of scale is this? How far are the distances between locations? Seems like you have plenty within this location to be going on with so I wouldn't worry about expanding just yet.
Compulsive homebrew creator and GM!
Feel free to check out my Period Fantasy novella: Storm on the Cathe
I'm going with there being just under 100 miles from Frostfell to Riverfork so 4 days steady riding. Roughly three days travel between Riverfork and Raiton. Winterpoint should be able to be reached from Frostfell in just over a day.
Obviously there would be roadside Inns and villages that I haven't plopped on the map for the PC's to interact with on their travels.
Just my option but I would say that if you are a new DM there are definitely some big advantages of using an established setting.
-Decades of lore and a fleshed out world make it feel more alive.
-The world building is already done for you, so you can concentrate on other parts of the game
-Shared experience of a setting with a larger community
-It allows for a sandbox kind of game since locations have their own backstory/events etc that you can just look up.
-Maps already exist for everything.
-you can just add/subtract/alter anything you want to fit your story.
In the end it's just going to be a lot less time world building that you can spend making the rest of the game more polished
If you want to dissapear down the world crafting wormhole then Azgaar's a good place to start - or a bad place If you don't want to waste hours of your life...And it's tied into the town/city builder Watabou. Azgaar is really REALLY configurable so can just focus on the story and rename places to fit whilst not having to worry about filling in those blanks.
Also the wordbuilding Reddit has some interesting posts.
Edit: Also to add, if you want a proper globe then just take your mercator projection and stick it into Map to Globe.