Building a Multi Campaign World for My High School D&D Club

Ok, I have a fairly unusual request based on my googling. Does anyone have any tips or suggestions for building a whole dnd world essentially at once? The readon behind it is my high school dnd club is expanding next year and we're looking to have a homebrew world where we can have all the games run in different genres (for example next year I'm planning on running either a survivalist, or cyberpunk campaign) but being able to have a world bible and leave behind a legacy of characters and NPC's to remember past members by. I think this sort of thing is called a living campaign. I've got a few ideas but I want to hear other's thoughts before expanding a huge amount on my own.

My main advice is not to. It requires a lot of work, a high level of coordination, and puts limits on the games people can run. If somebody wants to run a high-powered "save the world" campaign, what happens if their group completely biffs it? Either something has to step in, which kills the feeling of there being anything at stake, or you have to end everybody else's campaigns.

Also, a shared world that crosses genres is even more awkward to make work.

That said, if you are going to do it:

• Don't build the world out in great detail. Instead, create a loose framework with a lot of blank spaces, and individual GMs get to claim particular blank spaces to develop
• You need a shared source of truth and history. I'd suggest a wiki, but that requires a certain amount of resources you may or may not have.
• You need some solid agreements on what a GM can do to the world.
• It's going to end up inconsistent, if not incoherent. Accept that going in.

Quote from TheMandalorian85075 >>

Ok, I have a fairly unusual request based on my googling. Does anyone have any tips or suggestions for building a whole dnd world essentially at once? The readon behind it is my high school dnd club is expanding next year and we're looking to have a homebrew world where we can have all the games run in different genres (for example next year I'm planning on running either a survivalist, or cyberpunk campaign) but being able to have a world bible and leave behind a legacy of characters and NPC's to remember past members by. I think this sort of thing is called a living campaign. I've got a few ideas but I want to hear other's thoughts before expanding a huge amount on my own.

 Good luck but I'm pretty sure all the people I know who have homebrew worlds took years building em

If you're looking for a world which can house many genres, I would first collaborate with the DM's of the group on how that works, canonically. There's no reason why a fantasy/imaginary world can't have a cyberpunk city with a fantasy walled town somewhere else (Heck, mine does!), but you need some rules and canon behind why. Why does the cyberpunk city have electricity and computers where others don't? I would make that some regional effect which makes a resonating material work only there, so that the "cyberpunk" aesthetic has magical origins, and explains why they haven't just spread everywhere. Alternatively, you could make it a multiverse style thing, where (for example) there is a border-plane which links to mechanus where the world is mirrored but technologically advanced, sort of like the feywild and shadowfell do. So the same city can be present in both worlds, with versions of the key NPCs.

Obsidian is a tool which is your friend, as would be hosting a wiki. Both will allow you to include cross reference links to a library of information, so that if someone wants people to cross the Screaming Salt-Flats, they can click on it and see where it is, what it's written like, how it works, what's there, and what adventurers have found there before.

I thoroughly recommend that the group go over what they want to run, and they keep regular meetings to maintain the canon. If you can, host a forum where DM's can plan ahead what they want to do.

The concerns over parties failing to save the end of the world is fair, and will be easily solved by agreeing the type of apocalypse you want the world to have and the results of it's coming. Don't have the world explode, have a Fimbulwinter style death of the world where the world fundamentally changes, but can still be played in. That way, if the quest to stop it fails, you have a major canon event of the world suddenly becoming snowy, or zombies rising, or metal all rusting away. Make the end of the world one huge plothook!

I also advise that you make the world bigger than you think, and leave it as blank as possible. Name some key features, like the tallest mountain, the ocean, and key islands, but make an agreement with the other DMs that if the party sees a mountain in the distance and asks what it's called, the answer is always "someone knows, but you can't recall" or "You know it, but you can't place it right now." if the mountain isn't relevant to the plot, so that another DM can name it for an adventure which requires it.

I am in the early stages of a world-building shared campaign with some DM friends of mine who all thought it would be cool to run short adventures in a shared world. Not as ambitious in the mixed genres, but our plan is to use a hex map with vague indicators of the world, and then populate each hex with an adventure, until it's full. This might be a good approach for you so that the world can build around the players. Having vague hints to terrain (EG Mountain, forest, desert...) will give the DM's prompts for their games. You can stake a claim on a hex and say "I've an idea for an adventure in a forest, I'll put it here" and then the world grows a bit when it runs. You could feasibly have a grid where each hex has a number for an article on the adventures there.

Best of luck!

I want to second jl8e‘s post.  Shared campaign worlds work best when they are consecutive, not simultaneous, or if all the events are small, one-shot kind of affairs (where you don’t have to deal with massive ripple effects).  The larger you make it, in terms of scope, players, DMs with competing visions, and figuring out where everything fits in the timeline given groups will move at different speeds, the more unstable the entire world becomes. 

If you want the benefits of potential crossover characters, I would make something of a multiverse - each world is its own contained story and setting, but characters might be able to transit between them. That way characters can bring their lived experiences with them, but the stories of each campaign will have separation.  Each individual campaign setting would leave behind its history and characters - they just would exist for subsequent campaigns in that same setting, or move to a new setting where they would exclusively exist until they leave that setting and become exclusive elsewhere.

Quote from Caerwyn_Glyndwr >>

If you want the benefits of potential crossover characters, I would make something of a multiverse - each world is its own contained story and setting, but characters might be able to transit between them. That way characters can bring their lived experiences with them, but the stories of each campaign will have separation.  Each individual campaign setting would leave behind its history and characters - they just would exist for subsequent campaigns in that same setting, or move to a new setting where they would exclusively exist until they leave that setting and become exclusive elsewhere.

 If you really want a shared world, you could structure the multiverse-style thing as some kind of central hub from which one can travel to other worlds. This also makes genre shifts more plausible, and keeps the part of the world that needs to be tightly managed small.

(I still think you're just making extra effort for yourselves for little reward, but your fun is not my fun.)

I’ll add to the others saying that trying to run multiple stories at the same time in a shared world could end in chaos, one party trying to over throw a king who has already been assassinated in another game or two countries going to war whilst they’re at peace in another kind of stuff. However if you steer clear of story campaigns you could probably run a Westmarches campaign with multiple parties exploring a shared map. It has the advantage that dungeon crawls and exploration have a much smaller impact on the world so it won’t clash and you could easily go in different directions to reduce it even more 

I'm going to somewhat disagree with people above -- I have run troupe-style games before, and it can work. However, it does not require a predefined world, except in the most general of senses -- DMs can flesh out the world in play, the same way it would work in a single player campaign. The big thing is that you need a significant amount of cooperation between the DMs:

• The setting needs to be designed in a way that you can have parallel threads going on without collisions.
• A DM needs to be able to reserve some topics as things they're currently using. However, to make the collaboration useful, they should eventually release them as general use.
• DMs need to work together; if story A will impinge on story B, DM A needs to talk to DM B and figure out if there's a way they can make this crossover interesting for both sides.

Well, this has all been hugely helpful, but I think I might expand and answer a few questions and stuff asked.

Quote from Caerwyn_Glyndwr >>

If you want the benefits of potential crossover characters, I would make something of a multiverse - each world is its own contained story and setting, but characters might be able to transit between them. That way characters can bring their lived experiences with them, but the stories of each campaign will have separation.  Each individual campaign setting would leave behind its history and characters - they just would exist for subsequent campaigns in that same setting, or move to a new setting where they would exclusively exist until they leave that setting and become exclusive elsewhere.

 One of the things myself and some others have talked about is like a world or cosmos made of different planes that have merged together in some event (think incursions from the marvel illuminati comic line or ninjago). Which could lead to some interactions such as: do the different gods of the same aspect fight or join together?

Quote from Pantagruel666 >>

I'm going to somewhat disagree with people above -- I have run troupe-style games before, and it can work. However, it does not require a predefined world, except in the most general of senses -- DMs can flesh out the world in play, the same way it would work in a single player campaign. The big thing is that you need a significant amount of cooperation between the DMs:

• The setting needs to be designed in a way that you can have parallel threads going on without collisions.
• A DM needs to be able to reserve some topics as things they're currently using. However, to make the collaboration useful, they should eventually release them as general use.
• DMs need to work together; if story A will impinge on story B, DM A needs to talk to DM B and figure out if there's a way they can make this crossover interesting for both sides.

 We were thinking something along the lines of a few different groups with different stories and by the end of the year, with those willing to participate and if the story allows it, running some big mega boss session at the end of the year, if it works well.

Quote from ThorukDuckSlayer >>

If you're looking for a world which can house many genres, I would first collaborate with the DM's of the group on how that works, canonically. There's no reason why a fantasy/imaginary world can't have a cyberpunk city with a fantasy walled town somewhere else (Heck, mine does!), but you need some rules and canon behind why. Why does the cyberpunk city have electricity and computers where others don't? I would make that some regional effect which makes a resonating material work only there, so that the "cyberpunk" aesthetic has magical origins, and explains why they haven't just spread everywhere. Alternatively, you could make it a multiverse style thing, where (for example) there is a border-plane which links to mechanus where the world is mirrored but technologically advanced, sort of like the feywild and shadowfell do. So the same city can be present in both worlds, with versions of the key NPCs.

Obsidian is a tool which is your friend, as would be hosting a wiki. Both will allow you to include cross reference links to a library of information, so that if someone wants people to cross the Screaming Salt-Flats, they can click on it and see where it is, what it's written like, how it works, what's there, and what adventurers have found there before.

I thoroughly recommend that the group go over what they want to run, and they keep regular meetings to maintain the canon. If you can, host a forum where DM's can plan ahead what they want to do.

The concerns over parties failing to save the end of the world is fair, and will be easily solved by agreeing the type of apocalypse you want the world to have and the results of it's coming. Don't have the world explode, have a Fimbulwinter style death of the world where the world fundamentally changes, but can still be played in. That way, if the quest to stop it fails, you have a major canon event of the world suddenly becoming snowy, or zombies rising, or metal all rusting away. Make the end of the world one huge plothook!

I also advise that you make the world bigger than you think, and leave it as blank as possible. Name some key features, like the tallest mountain, the ocean, and key islands, but make an agreement with the other DMs that if the party sees a mountain in the distance and asks what it's called, the answer is always "someone knows, but you can't recall" or "You know it, but you can't place it right now." if the mountain isn't relevant to the plot, so that another DM can name it for an adventure which requires it.

I am in the early stages of a world-building shared campaign with some DM friends of mine who all thought it would be cool to run short adventures in a shared world. Not as ambitious in the mixed genres, but our plan is to use a hex map with vague indicators of the world, and then populate each hex with an adventure, until it's full. This might be a good approach for you so that the world can build around the players. Having vague hints to terrain (EG Mountain, forest, desert...) will give the DM's prompts for their games. You can stake a claim on a hex and say "I've an idea for an adventure in a forest, I'll put it here" and then the world grows a bit when it runs. You could feasibly have a grid where each hex has a number for an article on the adventures there.

 

Best of luck!

 Thanks for all the ideas, from everyone but this in particular is chock full of what I was after.

Quote from CunningSmile >>

I’ll add to the others saying that trying to run multiple stories at the same time in a shared world could end in chaos, one party trying to over throw a king who has already been assassinated in another game or two countries going to war whilst they’re at peace in another kind of stuff. However if you steer clear of story campaigns you could probably run a Westmarches campaign with multiple parties exploring a shared map. It has the advantage that dungeon crawls and exploration have a much smaller impact on the world so it won’t clash and you could easily go in different directions to reduce it even more 

 We weren't really wanting to go with a westmarch campaign given a few groups might have different taste and might not want to be connected.



The main thing is really, we want to leave something behind after we leave school eventually (or for me fairly soon) we wanted a place and maybe a small book to allow our characters and maybe reflections of us to carry on adventuring and helping newcomers long after we've left. If anyone has got any more ideas for how such a monstrous task is possible or any ideas for how it could work, I'd be eternally grateful. 
Much obliged : ) : )