Monday, July 17, 2017

Building a Playable World

            This week, I managed to get my nose to the grindstone working on a big project I started back in June. This is a campaign setting for Dungeons and Dragons.

            Back when I was in the planning stages for the D&D marathon for Cystic Fibrosis, I was talking with the Dungeon Master of the weekly game I play in and the idea was floated that I could eventually start running a second game at the board game cafe. I liked the idea, but at the same time I prefer to be a player rather than a DM. At the same time, I knew that there was a waiting list and it would be great for the gaming community.

            So, naturally, I began thinking about the possibilities for games I could run. What did I want to see in a game? What would be fun for me to run, and fun for players to play? And that’s when a seed took root in my mind.

            One of the things that makes D&D such a great game is its versatility. You can do absolutely anything with it. Even in the most complex video game, there is a limit to the decisions a player can make – they can be given a great amount of freedom, and still be chained down by the limited options. In D&D, there are no limitations – yet the games frequently take on the same shape of “Here is your quest”, go to the dungeon, get the reward. There’s often plotlines and political situations woven in, but it doesn’t take advantage of D&D’s true ability to do anything. I feel that this is largely due to the players, having been trained by video games and society’s expectations, don’t necessarily understand how much freedom they have – and they don’t necessarily understand the depth of the world they’ve been thrown into.

            And so, I came up with an idea for a world that will (hopefully) open the players’ minds to all they can do: a world where the players are colonizing a “new world”. So, rather than being thrown into a world where there are kingdoms and empires and complex political structures that they know nothing about, the players will be put into a world that is as strange to the non-player-characters around them as it is to them. This puts the players at the centre of everything as a new society is established, and it gives them the freedom to do absolutely whatever they want. Do they want to help establish a settlement? Do they want to go off and explore the new world? The world is entirely open for them to choose what to do.

            Now, obviously, from a DM’s perspective, a world like that is a bit challenging to run. There needs to be plots to keep the players engaged, and in a world so free and open, it is hard to know what to prepare for the game. So, I started writing up the campaign setting – which is, essentially, a description of the world, everything in it, and guidelines for making the world easier for the DM to run. It is an immense task, but hey – I’m part of the Alliance of Worldbuilders; building worlds is what we do.

            So far, it is coming along well. I’ve outlined the world, its history, and the basics for how the game functions. The functions need a lot of work, but I’ll get them done eventually.

            This week, however, I was focusing on a very fun task: monsters. Even though this world lacks civilization (and, largely, because of that), this world is crawling with monsters. So, I combed through D&D’s monster manual and cherry picked monsters to have established societies in this world. Then I created those societies and figured out what politics they had, both within themselves and with all the others.


            It was so much fun and, let me tell you, I can’t wait until I’ve completed this setting and I get to see it in action. Who knows? I may even decide it’s good enough to publish through the Dungeon Masters’ Guild.




Click here to find the charity anthology containing a couple of my short stories.



Also, make sure you check out my wife's blog and her website.


If there's any subject you'd like to see me ramble on about, feel free to leave a comment asking me to do so.

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