Worldbuilding Journal 3 - Building a World From Scratch

And now, we get to the meat and potatoes question of this campaign journal; How does an average game master with an average amount of experience create their own world from the ground up?  

Let’s start with a story.  Once upon a time, there was a guy who loved Dungeons and Dragons.  This guy also happened to enjoy the occasional episode or ninety of a show called Critical Role, where a group of professional voice actors play, you guessed it, Dungeons and Dragons.   With the naïveté of a juvenile lemming, this guy thought “I can write a campaign like that!” and set about weaving a tale of intrigue and adventure.  He meticulously crafted threads of political subterfuge, personal vendettas, and world-ending conspiracy until he had what he believed was a beautiful tapestry for his players to explore and delight in!  

And yet, when he stepped back, he beheld his creation.  A tube sock.  Not even a pair of tube socks!  Just one, incomplete, lonely, misshapen tube sock.  

So what went wrong?  Honestly, I could spend weeks writing down all of the little things here and there that compounded to unravel my plans, but it all boils down to the fact that I wanted to tell a great story.  What I should have wanted was for US to DISCOVER a great story. I spent so much time thinking about how I wanted to present my narrative that I should have just written a book.  That amount of control rarely, if ever, exists in a roleplaying game, it’s just far too dynamic.  You have multiple players who all have their own motivations, their own ideas of what a good story should be.  I forgot that the players are the protagonists, not the game master.  With that hard-learned lesson in mind this next campaign, I will not be writing a story.  I will be crafting a world that has ample opportunities for my players to tell one.

So without further ado, let’s build a world!

I must confess that I have been thinking about this world for over a year, writing down my favorite ideas for characters and shops and adventures.  It can be really cathartic to brain-dump your ideas into a notebook to look at later.  Now, however, my job is to take those chaotic and unrelated ideas and shape them into a cohesive starting town.  Notice I am saying town and not city.  We need to keep this beginning area small to fully flesh out as many of its nooks and crannies as possible.  You want this town to feel like every person living here is a character to talk to, every shop is a place to explore and experience, and every street a pathway to adventure.  

I have already determined a pirate theme for this world, with a less serious feel more akin to Pirates of the Caribbean than Black Sails.  We know that we have a lot of friends who want to be involved from time to time, so I'm looking to create an atmosphere that allows people to jump in and out of the campaign, depending on availability.  We will use this central town as a hub, going on adventures for a session or two, then returning to restock and recharge before the next voyage. This setup should suit my players, but it is important to be on the same page about the feel and flavor of a world before you get too established.  You can have an amazing storybook of a world filled with intrigue but if none of your friends will play it because it’s too grim, or too silly, you will never get off the ground.  Like showing up to a screening of The Dark Knight and having them run the original 1966 Batman instead, not being on the same page about the feel of the world can be a recipe for major disappointment.

Now that I have a theme and a flavor, I can start laying the framework of the starting town. I only need the bare bones for now, as I want the meat of it to be influenced by my players' characters.  Conceptually, this town will operate like a mix between Tortuga and Mos Eisley, as not just a place of respite but a central hub for the proverbial scum and villainy of the seas.  Not just a hideout, but an oasis for those who prefer to live with one toe over the line of legality for profit and the promise of a better life.  Now we start to see a checklist forming.  It needs to be remote and private, so I’m making it an island.  It needs to be secure from larger meddling forces, so I'll add rocky outcroppings as a natural deterrent against larger war vessels.  But it also needs to be unique and exotic, so I’m making the entire surrounding area of the town a series of massive tide pools teeming with amazing flora and fauna that only exist here.  Check, check, check.  Our private, secure, exotic town now has a framework to build off of.  We have an empty terrarium waiting to be fleshed out and stocked with shops, NPCs, adventures, and unrealized glory, yo ho! 

Next time I will talk about how my players will influence the world before the campaign ever starts. Then we can dive into creating the first and most important shop in any world;  A tavern!