Game Design

In the last few weeks, I have focused on fairly broad ideas in this series on world building, but now I want to get a little closer to actually designing your campaign setting.  There are two words that get thrown around a lot when it comes to campaign setting genesis: micro and macro.  Lots of people, famous people, have talked about world building from these two specific points of view.  Keith Baker, and Chris Dias, two big world builders, talked about building a setting on a macro level on the Tome Show.  Lots of other people have talked about building from a micro level on various podcasts and blogs.

Just so that we are on the same page, micro world building refers to starting small, and working up.  You start with some city, or dungeon, go from there.  Macro world building refers to the idea of starting with the big general concepts that make up your world.  You start with how the world was created, large scale maps, and big over-riding concepts that you want to dominate your world.

Now that we are all fresh on these terms, I want to advise going against both of these tips and actually combine both of these techniques into a happy middle ground.  My experience with world building has been that both of these methods can result in some unhappy results if you aren’t careful.

One of the big problems that a lot of world builders face is the issue of what I like to call genesis block.  There comes a point where you just get stalled in the process of building your campaign setting.  If you are aiming to get your campaign setting written, that can be devastating.  However, one of the best ways to avoid this form of writer’s block is to jump around and keep your creation process varied and open.

In my very recent experience with building my campaign world, I started with some very macro concepts, but quickly hit a giant brick wall when it came to dealing with some world-spanning issues; primarily these issues dealt with where technological power comes from in my Steampunk/Cyberpunk inspired setting.  But, instead of staying focused on those macro issues and how I was going to resolve and make sense of them, I switched to the more micro side of things, developing equipment, spells, new rules, and a small city.  After a while, these micro elements in my setting ended up providing me with some interesting revelations about how I wanted to continue with the macro issues that had blocked me before.

You might expect that this method wouldn’t work very well if you are actively playing an actual campaign in your growing sandbox.  I would actually argue that this method works the best when you are playing in your world as you make it, as long as your players are a bit open to editing.  I had to deal with this quite a bit in my adventure that took place earlier this year.  I met with my players and broke the news that the upcoming campaign would be taking place in my developing campaign world.  The players all agreed that the game sounded fun and character generation went from there, but it quickly came to my attention that as I developed the world and changed some of the macro things about it, players were going to need to shift their character backgrounds in order to adjust.  Make sure your players are OK with that kind of editing.  I ended up using player feedback and advice for changing the world, so some of this editing turned out to be very productive, but some of the changes that came from me were not so well accepted.

As an example of this, I preface my campaign setting by having a dwarf empire long in ruins and the gods declaring war on the plane itself.  One of my players, wielding a deva cleric, knew what she was getting into at the beginning, but as we played, the god war element began to tone down considerably in order to accommodate her character better (being the object of total hostility in the world can be a bit challenging for a new player… reminds me of a certain dark elf of note).  However, the dwarf player in my campaign was constantly getting hammered as I slowly gave him more information about how his background was changing given my recent campaign setting updates.

While this is going on, I should mention, I was constantly building new gear for my players, and developing very tiny chunks of the world for them to explore.  Building this way with your players can work, even when you are playing, just be sure that you don’t step on anybody’s hard written backgrounds without their permission.  But, building at the micro level for the players and then using their input in order to flesh out more of the macro level world themes can be very educating as you quickly learn what works and what doesn’t.  The dwarf player in the example above actually ended up helping a lot with the campaign setting after we came to an agreement regarding boundaries and creative opinions.

So, don’t worry about where you are going to start building your world.  Start micro, start macro, it doesn’t matter.  It takes a lot of time and effort to build a campaign setting, so don’t forget to jump back and forth between these two methods in order to really understand your own mindset and where you want that world should realistically go.

Last time, we talked about making sure to keep it at least a little bit “old school” when it comes to world building by never leaving your handy notebook behind. Today, we are finally going to get down to the meat and potatoes of our topic and talk about getting started building your world; this first post will have more to do with the first time world builder, so some veterans may find this advice a bit to basic.

Maybe, you have already started working on your world, but maybe you haven’t. Let’s assume for a second that you haven’t really given too much thought yet to what your world’s content is going to be about. You just know that you want to make something, something to call your own. Ok. So, where do you start?

In my opinion, one of the first things that you need to think about when you start building your world is the Tone. A lot of RPG gamers often equate Tone to Genre, but I really think that Tone is something more, though the world’s Genre may of course be an important component in directing how your world’s tone is conveyed to the players and the people reading about your world. Tone refers to the overall feel of the world that you are building. Think about adjectives – scary, funny, dark, light, horrific, enlightened, etc.; adjectives, the simple ones, are a good place to start when thinking about the tone of the game world that you want to build. Genre, is a big part of the world’s tone. Many Genres carry a very specific Tone with them; for example, you would imagine that a horror game would have a scary, or unsettling, tone which is common across the world.

In all honesty, before you think about Genre, the Tone of the world should be the first thing that you think about. Do you want your world to be extremely dark and serious or do you want it to be more of a light and humorous setting? There are numerous ways that you can take the tone of your setting. And, you don’t necessarily have to narrow the tone to a single category.

When determining the Tone you want your setting to take, there is an important question that you need to ask yourself. What is the Tone of game that I enjoy playing? In all honesty, your setting is going to be yours alone; in fact, you and your players may be the only ones who ever look at it. You are going to want to select a Tone for your world that you not only like, but also understand. If you are planning to write a big, huge sandbox world, it is going to take a lot of time, and if you start to dislike the tone of your game world half way through, it may be very difficult to change (though, it may not depending on the tone of game you select). It is better to select a tone that you understand and enjoy rather than pick a tone for your world that you are interested in, but don’t really know how to right.

For example, I have always wanted to play a horror based kind of game. I had, at one point, toyed around with trying to build a horror world, but that project ended very quickly when I realized that I knew almost nothing about writing in a horror style setting. Maintaining that kind of Tone for the world would be nearly impossible for me. Currently, the game setting that I am currently working on has a much different atmosphere. I am working on something that is a bit more whimsical, that is much more towards the Super Fantasy end of the Fantasy spectrum, than typical fantasy worlds. The tone, or spirit, of this world is something that I am much more familiar with, thus, writing about it comes a lot easier and is much more enjoyable.

Don’t be afraid to experiment with the Tone of your world if you want to try something new, just be prepared that you may get tired of it more quickly than if you had selected a tone that you are more adjusted to. Next time, we will talk about world Genres and understanding the Genre of your world. Again, if you want to see my current world in progress, you can check it out at http://thedumpstat.blogspot.com. If you have any questions, or comments, feel free to comment here, or e-mail me at thedumpstat[at]yahoo[dot]com.