So I made a world map and want to show it to the players before character making and let them make backstories for their characters or plan to all be dwarves reclaiming their homeland (just an example) but I'm not sure if I should write a campaign for each hook or should I just write a little bit of backstory for each one and really let them create the world along the way? I would really appreciate constructive criticism and really want help before I start a session 0.
Maybe ask them about what characters they want to be and their backstories and try to place them somewhere in the world map to make it fitting for a way to bring them together. Don't need to show them the entire world map either, you could just show them where they start.
As someone who habitually "makes maps first" my rule of thumb is "Yep, look at my pretty map! Now tell me about your character and I will tell you where in it you're allowed to be from, usually giving 2-3 options. And those options will be relevant to the overarching plot, but I will NOT tell my PCs this, merely MAYBE give them a bit of background knowledge that foreshadows things in ways they'll later go "oooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" about.
Im just slowly adding locations as the players venture. Not overly fleshing out locations on the map. I will even place unnamed location markers here and there just to have something relatively close just in case the group decides to wonder off in that direction for some reason. It gives me a bit of freedom to add locations depending on what the players are doing in between sessions.
Unless you have a specific "entry point" for the players in your world, then you might want to come up with a short list of what each major place (kingdom, etc.) is and what makes it special or unique compared to everywhere else. This doesn't have to be complicated: ~3 bullet points for each.
In particular, you may want to have an idea of what the major conflicts are in the world, or what might be motivating each kingdom/ruler when dealing with the others. This will help give weight and meaningfulness to the decisions made by NPCs. After all, the game world existed before the players stepped into it, and those NPCs are not sitting around waiting for the players to do something so they can respond.
Of course, this assumes your entire game world is on the table. It's okay to have your game take place in one part of the larger world. What the larger game world does for you at that point is allow you to tease the existence of other events happening in the world, bring in NPCs who hail from foreign lands, etc.
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So I made a world map and want to show it to the players before character making and let them make backstories for their characters or plan to all be dwarves reclaiming their homeland (just an example) but I'm not sure if I should write a campaign for each hook or should I just write a little bit of backstory for each one and really let them create the world along the way? I would really appreciate constructive criticism and really want help before I start a session 0.
Maybe ask them about what characters they want to be and their backstories and try to place them somewhere in the world map to make it fitting for a way to bring them together. Don't need to show them the entire world map either, you could just show them where they start.
As someone who habitually "makes maps first" my rule of thumb is "Yep, look at my pretty map! Now tell me about your character and I will tell you where in it you're allowed to be from, usually giving 2-3 options. And those options will be relevant to the overarching plot, but I will NOT tell my PCs this, merely MAYBE give them a bit of background knowledge that foreshadows things in ways they'll later go "oooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO" about.
Im just slowly adding locations as the players venture. Not overly fleshing out locations on the map. I will even place unnamed location markers here and there just to have something relatively close just in case the group decides to wonder off in that direction for some reason. It gives me a bit of freedom to add locations depending on what the players are doing in between sessions.
Unless you have a specific "entry point" for the players in your world, then you might want to come up with a short list of what each major place (kingdom, etc.) is and what makes it special or unique compared to everywhere else. This doesn't have to be complicated: ~3 bullet points for each.
In particular, you may want to have an idea of what the major conflicts are in the world, or what might be motivating each kingdom/ruler when dealing with the others. This will help give weight and meaningfulness to the decisions made by NPCs. After all, the game world existed before the players stepped into it, and those NPCs are not sitting around waiting for the players to do something so they can respond.
Of course, this assumes your entire game world is on the table. It's okay to have your game take place in one part of the larger world. What the larger game world does for you at that point is allow you to tease the existence of other events happening in the world, bring in NPCs who hail from foreign lands, etc.