I'm an infant when it comes to D&D, but I'm no stranger to forum rp's. Recently I have dove into D&D and thought it would be fun to play out my ideas as a DM. Now this wouldn't be me trying to run a game while playing as a pc, but rather, me creating plots and ideas that I wish other people did. However, I'm a baby lost in the woods when it comes to the game lol. So here's a few things on my mind that are eating away at me. I appreciate any advice regarding them.
1. I'm not sure how deep to go with the lore of the world I am building. For instance in a non D&D game I created kingdoms with their own flavor of government and cultural standards. Across a world wide map with mountain ranges, plains, and other landmarks that are important to the world's history. And it fell flat on its face with 99% of it not ever seeing the light of day. However I don't want to create a setting that is barren and lacking anything that distinguishes it from any other medieval fantasy setting. So I wanted to approach the setting by starting with a small regional approach. You might think of this as starting with the shire or perhaps the rolling plains of Rohan. With Edoras and one town ravaged by orcs to introduce the players to the conflict.
But in the game I am planning on running, I'll have the setting take place in a city with the adventurer guild as its base. And in the surrounding regions the aristocrats are fighting over territory. Usually their wars are decided by a decisive battle before land is ceded and fighting, followed by a period of rest to recoup their losses and fight again. In a real sense, the nobility treat their lands like chessboards. This then will lead them to monsters and other tribes like orks being uprooted over and over again. Which leads to problems with necromancy and conflict with tribal peoples raiding lands.
Now in my mind this will establish the setting in around 2-3 pages, but I'm worried it's not simple enough and will just be glossed over.
2. Do I make a central villain or just make newer stronger ones to match my player's status. Meaning like at first they fight wolves. Then they fight orks being controlled by a wizard. Who is then controlled by a council, controlled by a demon. Is that putting too much investment in a threat that won't even come out and laugh at my players for months down the line? Should I just wing it and have a bunch of stronger and stronger villains all come about and just allow my players to conquer the land according to their levels?
3. How important is the passage of time? I saw some interesting rules regarding time because it also includes something called life expenses? Like living in abject poverty puts you around people that will try to jump you for your equipment, it costs like 7 cp. Whereas living it up like a G costs costs 10 gp per night. I just wanted to know if that's something is commonly played out in campaigns. Because I do like the idea of making a time related chart to track the changing of the seasons, but at the same time I don't know if I have to be anal about the passage of time lol.
4.Making maps. I love making maps and will definitely use inkarnate once I get my 1.0 lol. But sometimes I don't know how many maps I need. Like should I make a bunch maps of the city my game would be centered around: Marketplace, dock, guild building, entrances, ghettos....or should I use just one overarching map with different markers. This is how I went about it with my last game.Granted it wasn't for D&D. https://i.imgur.com/3TNbfrf.png
That's it for now. I'm only on chapter 8 of the basic rules for 5e. But I'm planning this shiz out regardless because it's so deep and fun just as a learning experience.
Wow! I'm actually building a world right now with an idea towards an open world, although I'm skipping the court intrigue stuff--I suck at that and I'm doing a doomed, twisted world concept.
So many things I want to say, but no idea where to start, so I'll just say what I'm doing. Note: I am not some super experienced DM...
First, quick answers:
1) If you go into tons of detail, your players are going to miss most of it. I prefer setting up my story areas with time mostly frozen until the players approach. Saves me time and headache. Only need to worry about the big stuff like how a war would affect it. I also heavily incorporate a plug and play style with my general quest lines. If they don't encounter something there, I'll reuse it somewhere else with small tweaks. You may not like the lack of detail, but your players won't know the difference, especially with prep time.
With that in mind, you can still build everything to the smallest detail with the mind of reusing the setting later in another campaign or making a book of it. You can reuse and tweak it over decades. You can even have another group of characters, NPC or PC, complete those quests (or simulate the results with dice) in the same campaign. If you really want your players to encounter it, you can run a few one-shots where your players use some new characters. This can be done as a "break" in the main story (Meanwhile...) or later on after the campaign is over.
Heck, depending on your group, your players may never leave the starting area--especially if you start in a large city. Entire campaigns have taken place in a city. And sometimes, your group is just weird! I had a friend who's game almost turned into Tavern Simulator...
2) I believe you should mix in some weak enemies with the strong. Not every threat is world-ending. You can have a main villian who does things in the background (or is frozen until it becomes relevant) while the players are encountering mini-bosses out in the world.
Or, sometimes bandits are just bandits. Just because the players are high level doesn't mean everything they encounter levels up with them. Ask the players if they want to do the whole encounter (if it's easy) or just simulate the results with a few rolls to see how well they did. That will allow you to mix in some reality with the game and save time for more relevant things. Nothing I hate more than players who slaughter dragons getting wiped against basic bandits because their dice have died. Sure, it happens sometimes, but I think the players should be allowed to feel powerful if they encounter weaker enemies--some of the threats that used to be scary aren't now. I also gloss over some encounters as the players progress. "You encounter some bandits (or wolves, goblins, etc.) on the road, but you easily dispatch them."
3) This one depends on you and how much workload you're willing to take on. I simplify it. As I said above, I keep regions "frozen" until the players get near with small adjustments for Earth-shattering events.
As for normal time, I wing it for the current time and track days passed. Only tracking major events. I plan to use a simplified 10-day calendar with 30-day months to help track seasons and such.
I don't keep close track of day to day expenses unless players are staying at an inn. Some player characters may have some skills that allow them to conduct business or do oddjobs during downtime. I just let it even out or have them roll for success during a week, but most of my players don't want to bother anyways, so we gloss over it. Makes my life easier!
I figure in the wild, the players are going to spend some time taking care of basic necessities and maybe scrounging some food through hunting or foraging, if available. I occasionally let them roll to determine if they'll have to use rations or not. I only worry about that if they are in a very rough area like a desert or wasteland.
4) I love making maps, but I'm too picky to put much time into it. Mine were hand drawn, but I've recently started using Wonderdraft. Depending how much detail you want, I'd make a general world map in the off chance your players really take to exploring, and a more detailed regional map for where you expect them to spend most of their time. Most players wouldn't have access to a detailed city map (or the world, really) so for cities you can make a very rough map of where things should be and wing it, with notes on where things would likely be. The Trade Ward has access to most of the shops, for instance, docks have more warehouses, etc. Of course, it depends on how crazy you want to get. It can be very awesome to have a detailed map of a city that can be passed around or sit in the middle of the table for those players whose Theater of the Mind is poorly funded--like me.
Make your starting area more detailed, and flesh out the rest as you learn about your players' style. Some of your dungeons can be plug and play with small tweaks, especially if your group doesn't encounter everything. If my players don't complete a dungeon, maybe someone comes in later to complete the part they didn't get to, while I take that part and chuck it into another dungeon. Heck, the old dungeon can be recycled if something moves into the now safe area...
As for my world:
My players are starting in a small survivalist town, literally right up against a city frozen in time. There's a higher than average amount of adventurers, with most being level 1 or 2 due to story reasons that reduced their power (if they're not new a adventurer) due to the event that doomed the world. My players will create their characters with basic knowledge of the region around them and some knowledge of what it used to be.
They will also have basic knowledge on many of the creatures they're likely to encounter in that area. Or at least, what they should be--insert evil laugh! After all, nursery rhymes would likely exist to help people survive. Likes ones that speak of trolls being vulnerable to fire and acid, plus their regeneration. I plan on taking advantage of the basic knowledge to surprise the characters. I can make homebrew tweaks to creatures that they don't expect and easily explain it away due to the changes the world is undergoing without going into extreme detail.
I PLAN (not sure how detailed) to create biomes on my world map with lists for likely flora, fauna, and encounters (level relevant and otherwise) that they will encounter. Some of my players will want to pick flowers and such for alchemy or poisons. Most of the stuff I will just wing it. Not likely to encounter the same shrub multiple times...
Wow! I'm actually building a world right now with an idea towards an open world, although I'm skipping the court intrigue stuff--I suck at that and I'm doing a doomed, twisted world concept.
Man that sounds like my type of game. xD I don't know why, my professor would call it morbid nosey person, but I enjoy exploring that kind of unravelling of society/the world. Reminds me of the elves from LOTR or the arch angels from diablo 2.
If you go into tons of detail, your players are going to miss most of it. I prefer setting up my story areas with time mostly frozen until the players approach. Saves me time and headache. Only need to worry about the big stuff like how a war would affect it. I also heavily incorporate a plug and play style with my general quest lines. If they don't encounter something there, I'll reuse it somewhere else with small tweaks. You may not like the lack of detail, but your players won't know the difference, especially with prep time.
Heck, depending on your group, your players may never leave the starting area--especially if you start in a large city. Entire campaigns have taken place in a city. And sometimes, your group is just weird! I had a friend who's game almost turned into Tavern Simulator...
God I wish I didn't delete some of my earlier maps lol. I could have repurposed them for future stuff. But I see, I kind of like that approach. Have something in mind that can affect the way things are in the gameworld,but keep it out of sight and out of mind until it becomes relevant. Would a possible example of this be with perhaps having the players do a bunch of quests and reach like level 3, only to find out food prices and weapon prices are all going up due to blockades? And then at level 6+(if it gets there), use that earlier development to introduce the wider world?
That sounds just like something someone else told me, although it was less wierd. I asked him about tiers and compared it to the plot of diablo. 1. fighting a demon under a city 2. fighting demons in the world 3. Fighting demons across planes 4. fighting for the existence of the world
but he said the entire campaign from 1-20 can exist under the city in point one. lol the tavern situation sounds fun though :3
This one depends on you and how much workload you're willing to take on. I simplify it. As I said above, I keep regions "frozen" until the players get near with small adjustments for Earth-shattering events.
As for normal time, I wing it for the current time and track days passed. Only tracking major events. I plan to use a simplified 10-day calendar with 30-day months to help track seasons and such.
I don't keep close track of day to day expenses unless players are staying at an inn. Some player characters may have some skills that allow them to conduct business or do oddjobs during downtime. I just let it even out or have them roll for success during a week, but most of my players don't want to bother anyways, so we gloss over it. Makes my life easier!
I figure in the wild, the players are going to spend some time taking care of basic necessities and maybe scrounging some food through hunting or foraging, if available. I occasionally let them roll to determine if they'll have to use rations or not. I only worry about that if they are in a very rough area like a desert or wasteland
The time issue is probably just a product of my anxiety and excitedness. I want to try and play a game(or run one in this case) as close as possible to vanilla rules and as such am reading everything at least once. I don't want to be caught off gaurd and have a player disappointed that I didn't know my shiz, but also don't want to deprive them of a mechanic if they want it. The only reason I even considered time was because exhuastion actually leads to death. Just as doing long jumps can lead you to falling in a river if you don't meet the strength and athletics check xD. So if I'm gonna make people adhere to checks, I wanted to also include exhuastion that might lead to some drama. Although as you said it's only going to count if we actively travel across the desert in an rp fashion and not just skip ahead to the dungeon in question.
But I'll keep that in mind. I think the only time I'll use exhuastion is either in a drastic situation like a siege or if the journey to destination is intended to be dramatic. Like in LOTR with going over caradas.
I love making maps, but I'm too picky to put much time into it. Mine were hand drawn, but I've recently started using Wonderdraft. Depending how much detail you want, I'd make a general world map in the off chance your players really take to exploring, and a more detailed regional map for where you expect them to spend most of their time. Most players wouldn't have access to a detailed city map (or the world, really) so for cities you can make a very rough map of where things should be and wing it, with notes on where things would likely be.
The Trade Ward has access to most of the shops, for instance, docks have more warehouses, etc. Of course, it depends on how crazy you want to get. It can be very awesome to have a detailed map of a city that can be passed around or sit in the middle of the table for those players whose Theater of the Mind is poorly funded--like me.
You just saved me many hours of grief and worry. I will prep a regional, world, and city map...but make the wider maps skeletons at first. But I never realized that I could have a map as detailed as paris,but the players dont have this map themselves! xD
Also...my uhh theatre of the mind and artistic abilities are lacking,but I love the concept of maps. As a forum rp'er I understand the joys of making everything entirely from words. But sometimes I just want a dang map of the area I'm supposed to be exploring
Make your starting area more detailed, and flesh out the rest as you learn about your players' style. Some of your dungeons can be plug and play with small tweaks, especially if your group doesn't encounter everything. If my players don't complete a dungeon, maybe someone comes in later to complete the part they didn't get to, while I take that part and chuck it into another dungeon. Heck, the old dungeon can be recycled if something moves into the now safe area...
What cha mean by plug and play? I only ask because the last time I tried making a dwarven carvern beset by corruption...it was a 5 hour endeavor. xD Do you mean having elements that are common in dungeons like traps, secret doors, and monsters that are common in dungeons but not necessarily unique to that one setting?
My players are starting in a small survivalist town, literally right up against a city frozen in time. There's a higher than average amount of adventurers, with most being level 1 or 2 due to story reasons that reduced their power (if they're not new a adventurer) due to the event that doomed the world. My players will create their characters with basic knowledge of the region around them and some knowledge of what it used to be.
They will also have basic knowledge on many of the creatures they're likely to encounter in that area. Or at least, what they should be--insert evil laugh! After all, nursery rhymes would likely exist to help people survive. Likes ones that speak of trolls being vulnerable to fire and acid, plus their regeneration. I plan on taking advantage of the basic knowledge to surprise the characters. I can make homebrew tweaks to creatures that they don't expect and easily explain it away due to the changes the world is undergoing without going into extreme detail.
I PLAN (not sure how detailed) to create biomes on my world map with lists for likely flora, fauna, and encounters (level relevant and otherwise) that they will encounter. Some of my players will want to pick flowers and such for alchemy or poisons. Most of the stuff I will just wing it. Not likely to encounter the same shrub multiple times...
I just want to steal some of these concepts and make them my own(I will have my players experienced with the region :3) but I'll stand on my own ideas and see how they do. This sounds real fun lol. The idea of the reduced magic and power level of adventurers is really fantastic too. It feels organic and not as a limiter. Now I'm not trying to disparage anyone or seem like I have baggage,but a lot of times restrictions feel overbearing in unstructured forum rp's. People take low fantasy as, " You can only cast a fireball if your heart rate raises to 200 beats per minute and goes on cd for a week", rather than making it a place where you can do extraordinary things while still being mortal. Enough about my experiences
I just wanted to say good luck and amazing idea you have there! These ideas really took my tempest of a mind and calmed it down to a ocean breeze. :3
Recently I have dove into D&D and thought it would be fun to play out my ideas as a DM.
Welcome to the game and to this side of the GM screen. We have cookies.
My advice is.. stopo thinking about it and just do it. Get a bunch of people and run a game. You'll do good stuff and you'll make some mistakes and you'll learn lots, and hopefully have fun anyway. The only way to get better is to do it. :-)
Recently I have dove into D&D and thought it would be fun to play out my ideas as a DM.
Welcome to the game and to this side of the GM screen. We have cookies.
My advice is.. stopo thinking about it and just do it. Get a bunch of people and run a game. You'll do good stuff and you'll make some mistakes and you'll learn lots, and hopefully have fun anyway. The only way to get better is to do it. :-)
I'm an infant when it comes to D&D, but I'm no stranger to forum rp's. Recently I have dove into D&D and thought it would be fun to play out my ideas as a DM. Now this wouldn't be me trying to run a game while playing as a pc, but rather, me creating plots and ideas that I wish other people did. However, I'm a baby lost in the woods when it comes to the game lol. So here's a few things on my mind that are eating away at me. I appreciate any advice regarding them.
1. I'm not sure how deep to go with the lore of the world I am building. For instance in a non D&D game I created kingdoms with their own flavor of government and cultural standards. Across a world wide map with mountain ranges, plains, and other landmarks that are important to the world's history. And it fell flat on its face with 99% of it not ever seeing the light of day. However I don't want to create a setting that is barren and lacking anything that distinguishes it from any other medieval fantasy setting. So I wanted to approach the setting by starting with a small regional approach. You might think of this as starting with the shire or perhaps the rolling plains of Rohan. With Edoras and one town ravaged by orcs to introduce the players to the conflict.
But in the game I am planning on running, I'll have the setting take place in a city with the adventurer guild as its base. And in the surrounding regions the aristocrats are fighting over territory. Usually their wars are decided by a decisive battle before land is ceded and fighting, followed by a period of rest to recoup their losses and fight again. In a real sense, the nobility treat their lands like chessboards. This then will lead them to monsters and other tribes like orks being uprooted over and over again. Which leads to problems with necromancy and conflict with tribal peoples raiding lands.
Now in my mind this will establish the setting in around 2-3 pages, but I'm worried it's not simple enough and will just be glossed over.
There are two extremes of approaching this, I'd say.
One is to detail out a bunch of information about the world, write out history and areas and towns. If you do this, expect the players to never encounter or learn about 75% to 99% of this background lore. The lore is to help you make the world consistent - you should NOT just give the players a big infodump.The players should only learn this background as it comes up in the course of them interacting with the world.
For example, you might know that a particular village has gone back and forth between two lords in the First [something] war, Second Something War, and Third Something War... and as a result of this, the people in that area don't give a damn about which lord rules them, they figure they're all the same. On the other hand, ten miles away might be a second village that has always been under the control of Lord 1 throughout all of them. The players don't have to be given an exposition about the various wars - they'll just notice that in the first village, nobody's going to care much about whether they're on a mission for Lord 1 or Lord 2 or whatever as long as they pay their tab, whereas in the second village if they prove they're with Lord 1 they'll be well-regarded.
It's like an author writing background for their big epic. I don't remember which big fantasy author it was, but one of the successful ones, when interviewed, said that he has about 9 pages of "background" notes for every page of text in the books. There's lots of information that informs the world and helps keep it consistent, that doesn't need to be shown or told.
The other extreme is to invent things as they're needed. The players start in a village, and don't need to know anything outside the fact that the village is having trouble with orcs. As they go further afield, you'll need to write or invent more - but there's no need to fill in information about a neighboring kingdom until the players actually decide to go there.
In D&D planning, you can go pretty far in both extremes, from making things up as you go to plotting everything out. The players don't even need to know the difference - you're not giving them pages and pages of backstory even if you have it, they only learn things via interacting with the world in both cases.
The main thing is - remember is that if you're writing out lots of setting detail, the reason you're doing it is to help you react to things the players are doing. Do as much of that background building as you need for the game to run smoothly, and don't feel like you have to do more. (Well, that or you just find it fun! If it's the case that you just love making intricate worlds, go wild, write all the setting you like!)
2. Do I make a central villain or just make newer stronger ones to match my player's status. Meaning like at first they fight wolves. Then they fight orks being controlled by a wizard. Who is then controlled by a council, controlled by a demon. Is that putting too much investment in a threat that won't even come out and laugh at my players for months down the line? Should I just wing it and have a bunch of stronger and stronger villains all come about and just allow my players to conquer the land according to their levels?
One suggestion is to have ripple effects from one major villain, that percolate down to lower-level challenges. For example, maybe a dragon is starting to settle in a nearby mountain. Well, that has one effect - he sets fire to a forest, displacing a wolf pack which then attacks the village herd. Low-level mission: protect sheep from wolves! Dragon might have another effect - he digs up a hoard of gold that had been sealed off in a dark dungeon, releasing the undead that had been guarding it! Mid-level mission: track down the source of the undead that have been plaguing the town. Dragon might have a third effect - he steals all the king's gold, meaning that the king no longer has the resources to pay his army to hold off the orcs. Another campaign arc - repel an orc invasion of a weakened kingdom. And then maybe after that, they're finally strong enough to just go and stab the %#@$@% dragon.
To the players, it'll just look like they graduate from weaker to stronger threats as they get stronger. First they save the village, then they save the town, then they save the kingdom, then they defeat a dragon. Each arc can be self-contained. But as they go they'll notice the connections.
3. How important is the passage of time? I saw some interesting rules regarding time because it also includes something called life expenses? Like living in abject poverty puts you around people that will try to jump you for your equipment, it costs like 7 cp. Whereas living it up like a G costs costs 10 gp per night. I just wanted to know if that's something is commonly played out in campaigns. Because I do like the idea of making a time related chart to track the changing of the seasons, but at the same time I don't know if I have to be anal about the passage of time lol.
Only track it if it matters to you. I personally found in one portion of the campaign, it was helpful for me to track time so I could see what the villains would be doing at different points. I didn't tell my players about that.
4.Making maps. I love making maps and will definitely use inkarnate once I get my 1.0 lol. But sometimes I don't know how many maps I need. Like should I make a bunch maps of the city my game would be centered around: Marketplace, dock, guild building, entrances, ghettos....or should I use just one overarching map with different markers. This is how I went about it with my last game.Granted it wasn't for D&D. https://i.imgur.com/3TNbfrf.png
That's it for now. I'm only on chapter 8 of the basic rules for 5e. But I'm planning this shiz out regardless because it's so deep and fun just as a learning experience.
I made one big map of the area that the campaign would be in, so I could judge distances and see how long travel would take. I also made a map of the main town the players started in and returned to, a few times. For individual encounters I would find a close-enough map somewhere online, I subscribed to a patreon of a guy who did maps since I liked having good ones and had no artistic talent myself.
Overall, I think my advice would be that you only NEED to plan out things that the players will directly see, and you can plan them out as late as you want, up to just making the plan when the players encounter things mid-session. You should probably do a bit more advance planning than that, but remember that the reason to do it is to HELP you tell the players what they see, hear, or encounter; not everything you plan out needs to be shown to the players, and you don't need to plan out things that won't affect the players in any way.
1) As deep as you need to go. FTL's comments are pretty good about this.
2) I like a central villain who is initially working behind the scenes, and then the PCs learn more about as they take out the villain's underlings.
3) As important as you need it to be, and the group wants it to be. And it can also depend on what is going on. Sometimes you need to track each day / hours at a time because that is what the plot demands (a rescue or other time sensitive mission). Other times its just "4 months are going to pass, what do you do during that time for downtime". In games I play in, we don't worry too much about living expenses.
4) Maps can definitely help. I would say one big one for the city overall and then smaller ones to scale with 5' squares for common locations they will visit or where combat will be taking place.
I'm an infant when it comes to D&D, but I'm no stranger to forum rp's. Recently I have dove into D&D and thought it would be fun to play out my ideas as a DM. Now this wouldn't be me trying to run a game while playing as a pc, but rather, me creating plots and ideas that I wish other people did. However, I'm a baby lost in the woods when it comes to the game lol. So here's a few things on my mind that are eating away at me. I appreciate any advice regarding them.
1. I'm not sure how deep to go with the lore of the world I am building. For instance in a non D&D game I created kingdoms with their own flavor of government and cultural standards. Across a world wide map with mountain ranges, plains, and other landmarks that are important to the world's history. And it fell flat on its face with 99% of it not ever seeing the light of day. However I don't want to create a setting that is barren and lacking anything that distinguishes it from any other medieval fantasy setting. So I wanted to approach the setting by starting with a small regional approach. You might think of this as starting with the shire or perhaps the rolling plains of Rohan. With Edoras and one town ravaged by orcs to introduce the players to the conflict.
But in the game I am planning on running, I'll have the setting take place in a city with the adventurer guild as its base. And in the surrounding regions the aristocrats are fighting over territory. Usually their wars are decided by a decisive battle before land is ceded and fighting, followed by a period of rest to recoup their losses and fight again. In a real sense, the nobility treat their lands like chessboards. This then will lead them to monsters and other tribes like orks being uprooted over and over again. Which leads to problems with necromancy and conflict with tribal peoples raiding lands.
Now in my mind this will establish the setting in around 2-3 pages, but I'm worried it's not simple enough and will just be glossed over.
2. Do I make a central villain or just make newer stronger ones to match my player's status. Meaning like at first they fight wolves. Then they fight orks being controlled by a wizard. Who is then controlled by a council, controlled by a demon. Is that putting too much investment in a threat that won't even come out and laugh at my players for months down the line? Should I just wing it and have a bunch of stronger and stronger villains all come about and just allow my players to conquer the land according to their levels?
3. How important is the passage of time? I saw some interesting rules regarding time because it also includes something called life expenses? Like living in abject poverty puts you around people that will try to jump you for your equipment, it costs like 7 cp. Whereas living it up like a G costs costs 10 gp per night. I just wanted to know if that's something is commonly played out in campaigns. Because I do like the idea of making a time related chart to track the changing of the seasons, but at the same time I don't know if I have to be anal about the passage of time lol.
4.Making maps. I love making maps and will definitely use inkarnate once I get my 1.0 lol. But sometimes I don't know how many maps I need. Like should I make a bunch maps of the city my game would be centered around: Marketplace, dock, guild building, entrances, ghettos....or should I use just one overarching map with different markers. This is how I went about it with my last game.Granted it wasn't for D&D. https://i.imgur.com/3TNbfrf.png
That's it for now. I'm only on chapter 8 of the basic rules for 5e. But I'm planning this shiz out regardless because it's so deep and fun just as a learning experience.
Wow! I'm actually building a world right now with an idea towards an open world, although I'm skipping the court intrigue stuff--I suck at that and I'm doing a doomed, twisted world concept.
So many things I want to say, but no idea where to start, so I'll just say what I'm doing. Note: I am not some super experienced DM...
First, quick answers:
1) If you go into tons of detail, your players are going to miss most of it. I prefer setting up my story areas with time mostly frozen until the players approach. Saves me time and headache. Only need to worry about the big stuff like how a war would affect it. I also heavily incorporate a plug and play style with my general quest lines. If they don't encounter something there, I'll reuse it somewhere else with small tweaks. You may not like the lack of detail, but your players won't know the difference, especially with prep time.
With that in mind, you can still build everything to the smallest detail with the mind of reusing the setting later in another campaign or making a book of it. You can reuse and tweak it over decades. You can even have another group of characters, NPC or PC, complete those quests (or simulate the results with dice) in the same campaign. If you really want your players to encounter it, you can run a few one-shots where your players use some new characters. This can be done as a "break" in the main story (Meanwhile...) or later on after the campaign is over.
Heck, depending on your group, your players may never leave the starting area--especially if you start in a large city. Entire campaigns have taken place in a city. And sometimes, your group is just weird! I had a friend who's game almost turned into Tavern Simulator...
2) I believe you should mix in some weak enemies with the strong. Not every threat is world-ending. You can have a main villian who does things in the background (or is frozen until it becomes relevant) while the players are encountering mini-bosses out in the world.
Or, sometimes bandits are just bandits. Just because the players are high level doesn't mean everything they encounter levels up with them. Ask the players if they want to do the whole encounter (if it's easy) or just simulate the results with a few rolls to see how well they did. That will allow you to mix in some reality with the game and save time for more relevant things. Nothing I hate more than players who slaughter dragons getting wiped against basic bandits because their dice have died. Sure, it happens sometimes, but I think the players should be allowed to feel powerful if they encounter weaker enemies--some of the threats that used to be scary aren't now. I also gloss over some encounters as the players progress. "You encounter some bandits (or wolves, goblins, etc.) on the road, but you easily dispatch them."
3) This one depends on you and how much workload you're willing to take on. I simplify it. As I said above, I keep regions "frozen" until the players get near with small adjustments for Earth-shattering events.
As for normal time, I wing it for the current time and track days passed. Only tracking major events. I plan to use a simplified 10-day calendar with 30-day months to help track seasons and such.
I don't keep close track of day to day expenses unless players are staying at an inn. Some player characters may have some skills that allow them to conduct business or do oddjobs during downtime. I just let it even out or have them roll for success during a week, but most of my players don't want to bother anyways, so we gloss over it. Makes my life easier!
I figure in the wild, the players are going to spend some time taking care of basic necessities and maybe scrounging some food through hunting or foraging, if available. I occasionally let them roll to determine if they'll have to use rations or not. I only worry about that if they are in a very rough area like a desert or wasteland.
4) I love making maps, but I'm too picky to put much time into it. Mine were hand drawn, but I've recently started using Wonderdraft. Depending how much detail you want, I'd make a general world map in the off chance your players really take to exploring, and a more detailed regional map for where you expect them to spend most of their time. Most players wouldn't have access to a detailed city map (or the world, really) so for cities you can make a very rough map of where things should be and wing it, with notes on where things would likely be. The Trade Ward has access to most of the shops, for instance, docks have more warehouses, etc. Of course, it depends on how crazy you want to get. It can be very awesome to have a detailed map of a city that can be passed around or sit in the middle of the table for those players whose Theater of the Mind is poorly funded--like me.
Make your starting area more detailed, and flesh out the rest as you learn about your players' style. Some of your dungeons can be plug and play with small tweaks, especially if your group doesn't encounter everything. If my players don't complete a dungeon, maybe someone comes in later to complete the part they didn't get to, while I take that part and chuck it into another dungeon. Heck, the old dungeon can be recycled if something moves into the now safe area...
As for my world:
My players are starting in a small survivalist town, literally right up against a city frozen in time. There's a higher than average amount of adventurers, with most being level 1 or 2 due to story reasons that reduced their power (if they're not new a adventurer) due to the event that doomed the world. My players will create their characters with basic knowledge of the region around them and some knowledge of what it used to be.
They will also have basic knowledge on many of the creatures they're likely to encounter in that area. Or at least, what they should be--insert evil laugh! After all, nursery rhymes would likely exist to help people survive. Likes ones that speak of trolls being vulnerable to fire and acid, plus their regeneration. I plan on taking advantage of the basic knowledge to surprise the characters. I can make homebrew tweaks to creatures that they don't expect and easily explain it away due to the changes the world is undergoing without going into extreme detail.
I PLAN (not sure how detailed) to create biomes on my world map with lists for likely flora, fauna, and encounters (level relevant and otherwise) that they will encounter. Some of my players will want to pick flowers and such for alchemy or poisons. Most of the stuff I will just wing it. Not likely to encounter the same shrub multiple times...
Edited for clarity and Brain not go...
Man that sounds like my type of game. xD I don't know why, my professor would call it morbid nosey person, but I enjoy exploring that kind of unravelling of society/the world. Reminds me of the elves from LOTR or the arch angels from diablo 2.
God I wish I didn't delete some of my earlier maps lol. I could have repurposed them for future stuff. But I see, I kind of like that approach. Have something in mind that can affect the way things are in the gameworld,but keep it out of sight and out of mind until it becomes relevant. Would a possible example of this be with perhaps having the players do a bunch of quests and reach like level 3, only to find out food prices and weapon prices are all going up due to blockades? And then at level 6+(if it gets there), use that earlier development to introduce the wider world?
That sounds just like something someone else told me, although it was less wierd. I asked him about tiers and compared it to the plot of diablo.
1. fighting a demon under a city
2. fighting demons in the world
3. Fighting demons across planes
4. fighting for the existence of the world
but he said the entire campaign from 1-20 can exist under the city in point one. lol the tavern situation sounds fun though :3
The time issue is probably just a product of my anxiety and excitedness. I want to try and play a game(or run one in this case) as close as possible to vanilla rules and as such am reading everything at least once. I don't want to be caught off gaurd and have a player disappointed that I didn't know my shiz, but also don't want to deprive them of a mechanic if they want it. The only reason I even considered time was because exhuastion actually leads to death. Just as doing long jumps can lead you to falling in a river if you don't meet the strength and athletics check xD. So if I'm gonna make people adhere to checks, I wanted to also include exhuastion that might lead to some drama. Although as you said it's only going to count if we actively travel across the desert in an rp fashion and not just skip ahead to the dungeon in question.
But I'll keep that in mind. I think the only time I'll use exhuastion is either in a drastic situation like a siege or if the journey to destination is intended to be dramatic. Like in LOTR with going over caradas.
You just saved me many hours of grief and worry. I will prep a regional, world, and city map...but make the wider maps skeletons at first. But I never realized that I could have a map as detailed as paris,but the players dont have this map themselves! xD
Also...my uhh theatre of the mind and artistic abilities are lacking,but I love the concept of maps. As a forum rp'er I understand the joys of making everything entirely from words. But sometimes I just want a dang map of the area I'm supposed to be exploring
What cha mean by plug and play? I only ask because the last time I tried making a dwarven carvern beset by corruption...it was a 5 hour endeavor. xD Do you mean having elements that are common in dungeons like traps, secret doors, and monsters that are common in dungeons but not necessarily unique to that one setting?
I just want to steal some of these concepts and make them my own(I will have my players experienced with the region :3) but I'll stand on my own ideas and see how they do. This sounds real fun lol. The idea of the reduced magic and power level of adventurers is really fantastic too. It feels organic and not as a limiter. Now I'm not trying to disparage anyone or seem like I have baggage,but a lot of times restrictions feel overbearing in unstructured forum rp's. People take low fantasy as, " You can only cast a fireball if your heart rate raises to 200 beats per minute and goes on cd for a week", rather than making it a place where you can do extraordinary things while still being mortal. Enough about my experiences
I just wanted to say good luck and amazing idea you have there! These ideas really took my tempest of a mind and calmed it down to a ocean breeze. :3
Welcome to the game and to this side of the GM screen. We have cookies.
My advice is.. stopo thinking about it and just do it. Get a bunch of people and run a game. You'll do good stuff and you'll make some mistakes and you'll learn lots, and hopefully have fun anyway. The only way to get better is to do it. :-)
I do like cookies and winging it. :3
There are two extremes of approaching this, I'd say.
One is to detail out a bunch of information about the world, write out history and areas and towns. If you do this, expect the players to never encounter or learn about 75% to 99% of this background lore. The lore is to help you make the world consistent - you should NOT just give the players a big infodump.The players should only learn this background as it comes up in the course of them interacting with the world.
For example, you might know that a particular village has gone back and forth between two lords in the First [something] war, Second Something War, and Third Something War... and as a result of this, the people in that area don't give a damn about which lord rules them, they figure they're all the same. On the other hand, ten miles away might be a second village that has always been under the control of Lord 1 throughout all of them. The players don't have to be given an exposition about the various wars - they'll just notice that in the first village, nobody's going to care much about whether they're on a mission for Lord 1 or Lord 2 or whatever as long as they pay their tab, whereas in the second village if they prove they're with Lord 1 they'll be well-regarded.
It's like an author writing background for their big epic. I don't remember which big fantasy author it was, but one of the successful ones, when interviewed, said that he has about 9 pages of "background" notes for every page of text in the books. There's lots of information that informs the world and helps keep it consistent, that doesn't need to be shown or told.
The other extreme is to invent things as they're needed. The players start in a village, and don't need to know anything outside the fact that the village is having trouble with orcs. As they go further afield, you'll need to write or invent more - but there's no need to fill in information about a neighboring kingdom until the players actually decide to go there.
In D&D planning, you can go pretty far in both extremes, from making things up as you go to plotting everything out. The players don't even need to know the difference - you're not giving them pages and pages of backstory even if you have it, they only learn things via interacting with the world in both cases.
The main thing is - remember is that if you're writing out lots of setting detail, the reason you're doing it is to help you react to things the players are doing. Do as much of that background building as you need for the game to run smoothly, and don't feel like you have to do more. (Well, that or you just find it fun! If it's the case that you just love making intricate worlds, go wild, write all the setting you like!)
One suggestion is to have ripple effects from one major villain, that percolate down to lower-level challenges. For example, maybe a dragon is starting to settle in a nearby mountain. Well, that has one effect - he sets fire to a forest, displacing a wolf pack which then attacks the village herd. Low-level mission: protect sheep from wolves! Dragon might have another effect - he digs up a hoard of gold that had been sealed off in a dark dungeon, releasing the undead that had been guarding it! Mid-level mission: track down the source of the undead that have been plaguing the town. Dragon might have a third effect - he steals all the king's gold, meaning that the king no longer has the resources to pay his army to hold off the orcs. Another campaign arc - repel an orc invasion of a weakened kingdom. And then maybe after that, they're finally strong enough to just go and stab the %#@$@% dragon.
To the players, it'll just look like they graduate from weaker to stronger threats as they get stronger. First they save the village, then they save the town, then they save the kingdom, then they defeat a dragon. Each arc can be self-contained. But as they go they'll notice the connections.
Only track it if it matters to you. I personally found in one portion of the campaign, it was helpful for me to track time so I could see what the villains would be doing at different points. I didn't tell my players about that.
I made one big map of the area that the campaign would be in, so I could judge distances and see how long travel would take. I also made a map of the main town the players started in and returned to, a few times. For individual encounters I would find a close-enough map somewhere online, I subscribed to a patreon of a guy who did maps since I liked having good ones and had no artistic talent myself.
Overall, I think my advice would be that you only NEED to plan out things that the players will directly see, and you can plan them out as late as you want, up to just making the plan when the players encounter things mid-session. You should probably do a bit more advance planning than that, but remember that the reason to do it is to HELP you tell the players what they see, hear, or encounter; not everything you plan out needs to be shown to the players, and you don't need to plan out things that won't affect the players in any way.
1) As deep as you need to go. FTL's comments are pretty good about this.
2) I like a central villain who is initially working behind the scenes, and then the PCs learn more about as they take out the villain's underlings.
3) As important as you need it to be, and the group wants it to be. And it can also depend on what is going on. Sometimes you need to track each day / hours at a time because that is what the plot demands (a rescue or other time sensitive mission). Other times its just "4 months are going to pass, what do you do during that time for downtime". In games I play in, we don't worry too much about living expenses.
4) Maps can definitely help. I would say one big one for the city overall and then smaller ones to scale with 5' squares for common locations they will visit or where combat will be taking place.
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