Dumb and Wrong, D20: II

I kinda wanted something light after last week, because some people might not even be done reading it. I did want to say a few more things about Thundarr before we begin, though. I watched a documentary I'll link below, and I gotta admit, I've got to eat a little crow. First off, Ookla the Mok was inspired by Enkidu from the Epic of Gilgamesh, who was described as a wild man. He represents the world's bestial nature, with Thundarr representing brawn and Princess Ariel representing intellect or sorcery. This means that Ookla has a much more well thought out genesis than Chewbacca, whom I'm pretty sure exists solely because George Lucas thinks dogs are pretty. Second, when they hired concept and background artists to begin the show, who was one of the dudes they hired? Jack God Damn Kirby.

Here it is, the documentary Lords of Light. 

The more research I do, the more dumb shit I run into. It's inevitable. Really, this series is just all the dumb shit I thought was dumb enough to actually mention. So take that thought, and imagine how much crap didn't make the cut. I love Pathfinder and even Dungeons and Dragons, but a mix of legacy design, churned-out splat books and lazy developers can make for a lot of crap. 

Alter Self

I'm leaving this here as penance. I wrote a whole big thing on Alter Self not having any bonus to disguise checks. Well, turns out the spell doesn't mention any bonus to disguise checks in its description, because it doesn't have to. All spells in the Polymorph subschool give a +20 bonus to disguise checks. The subschool listing also clarifies some things I was wrong on, such as a monster who has an ability(like resistances) granting a lesser version if the spell restricts it. Instead of not being a viable target I mean. Anyway, let this be a lesson: Do your research. Be accurate with the rules, because this time -I- was dumb and wrong.

The Vargouille

I have a pet peeve in gaming. One that's only come up a little bit in the blog so far. Nobody ever wants to look stupid, okay? GMs who are constantly trying to "knock the PCs down a peg" to "bring them back to reality" or worse, cause comedy at their expense piss me off. The GM's job is to help the players feel cool and accomplished. To challenge the characters mentally, emotionally and physically. It isn't to "keep them in check" and make them look like Don Fucking Knotts at every turn. If you disagree with me, pack your shit up because I don't think you're going to be running very many successful games. 

Anyway. 

The Vargouille is a CR2 monster that's basically a nasty looking batlike head that flies around. It's got a poison, it's got a shriek attack, and I'd say it's an okay monster for low levels. I'd say that except for one thing. It's got a kiss attack. You've got to be helpless before they can do it so it's not LIKELY to come up, but it's possible. This is how Vargouilles procreate: It turns you into one. Over the course of  several hours, a victim who failed his fortitude save is transformed. First, he loses his hair. Then, his ears grow into batlike wings. Tentacles sprout on the chin and scalp. Teeth become long pointed fangs. Finally, the victim's head breaks free of the body(which immediately dies) and becomes a Vargouille. I want to point out the description I just laid on you is more or less word for word from the PF Bestiary. Basically your head slowly turns into a dumb looking monster, pops right the fuck off your neck, and flies the fuck away.

Ha. ha ha ha. HAAHahahaha. HA. HA. FUCKING. HA. 

Why does this exist, exactly? I'm not doing a stitch of research but I can tell you it goes back at least to second edition Dungeons and Dragons. If it goes that far, it was probably invented by some asshole who wanted desperately to make his players look as dumb as possible. That sort of shit was more prevalent in our past. I've personally known at least a half dozen people I can see orchestrating this encounter JUST so this dumb dumbassed transformation happens. Focusing attacks on one person, then immediately going for multiple kiss attacks when they drop. It's over and done with within 4D6 hours too, so it's SUPER easy to deny a player the Remove Disease spell they need, even though the transformation is paused by sunlight.

And for the record, if you're one of those people, you know it. Because I've likely already told you off.

While editing this for typos and bad sentences, I noticed that Vargouille has kind of a French thing going on at the end of the word, so I looked up the pronunciation. It's pronounced "Var-GWEEL". So basically, it even sounds stupid as hell. Fuck me, I pine for the days of the fucking Modrons to take me away from this stupid fucking thing. 

The Shoggoth (As in the one in the Pathfinder Bestiary)

Yeah you can tell I was thumbing through the PF Bestiary, shut up. Some of you know about my ire for Call of Cthulhu, the role playing game. For the rest of you...we'll get to it, I promise. Very quickly, though, I'm okay with Lovecraft's content(the literary content, not his opinions on black people) just not where they intersect with gaming in general, and Pen and Paper in specific.

The reason on display here is pretty simple. It really cheapens these monsters to put stats to them. Even if a Shoggoth is CR19. Even if it's got special madness inducing attacks.  It shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what makes Lovecraft awesome to even really draw the picture they did, of a lame-looking grimy green ball with tentacles and mouths. I mean, I get it, though. Lovecraft is public domain and popular as all hell. You put the popular thing in your game and your non-euclidean milkshake brings all the nerd boys to your yard. 

Setting Creation 102: Terra Prime Showcase

This was going to be a midweek update, but I realized it was going to be a lot of reading. Like, super a lot of reading and I'm sorry. The nature of an example showcase means you're gonna have to read the whole Terra Prime setting, and THEN come back to read my developer commentary. There's not really a way around it, since I want to keep this all to one post. In addition, I wanted to make sure everyone knows that our 100 series on Setting Creation isn't going to have any sort of strict schedule, unlike Villains which all came out about the same time. Settings are a lot more deep than a single villain is, and thus advice is going to take longer to express properly.

So without further adieu, you now have to go to Pastebin to read the Terra Prime basic setting info. This is because that, until I'm a hundred percent finished with the setting, this pastebin link will always have the current version. It's much easier than having to continually post new links to the packet.

http://pastebin.com/wiNaW3ht

Hi. You back yet? Yeah, I wrote way more than I intended and it's not even done. I left out major country info(there's a LOT to write, way more than I put in the packet), only closely defined one continent, and haven't done organizations... but this is good enough to start. You could run a game with just this. I'm gonna go section by section and discuss reasons and inspirations.

Preamble: History and Basic Stuff

My primary inspiration for Terra Prime is an old 80s cartoon called Thundarr the Barbarian. It's not very good, honestly. It was pretty obviously derivative of everything around it, with a character obviously ripped right from Star Wars(Ookla the Mok? More like Ookbacca the mock Wookie) and the main character, Thundarr himself, being a pretty stock He-Man slash Conan barbarian type. Still, it's got some good ideas.

One of the show's primary tropes is that the trio will run across some ruin of the past, and Princess Ariel will explain it. Thundarr will make a really poor attempt at saying the word like he's a complete idiot(SUB.....WAY?), and they'll generally move on. Completely separated from the stock characters Thundarr uses, I love this little moment. While I'm building a fantasy game, I think it's cool for the ancient ruins and dungeons to be vestiges of the modern world instead of just places that are old. The goal is for the game to play exactly the same, though. With Thundarr as a base you could easily go into an outright sci-fi game and be more faithful to the show, but I think it's more approachable if the ruins of the "modern" world are used as a backdrop to a fantasy game.

This also gives me the right to pull things from other D20 books. Aethera when it's done, D20 Modern, Pathfinder's own cybernetics book, and Star Wars D20 can all have little tidbits and pieces of equipment to slide to the players. It's possible for a place or thing to be preserved, or even thriving. With 500 or more years since the apocalypse AND magic being introduced into the world, a GM could even be justified introducing some sort of blaster pistol or other wild technology. I like this kind of freedom.

As for Geography, I am wantonly cheating. I am not the best with map generation, and Terra Prime means I can pull real world maps into Gimp and alter them to my satisfaction. Parts of the world are wildly different geography, such as the American Southwest desert now extending as far as the southern tip of British Columbia or the rainforest reclaiming virtually all of South America. These changes can be reflected easily by manipulating a current map of Earth. I am shit with maps, and this is a positive side-effect of my setting choice.

The Apocalypse

The flashpoint of the apocalyptic event being a dimensional accident is half inspired by Rift, and half inspired by Lovecraft. I always liked the idea that our world is only boring because no outsiders or dimensional travelers have ever come here, like one little thing would call attention to us and blow the lid off everything. So in Terra Prime, that's basically what happened. A portal to the Abyss was accidentally opened, and our non-magic world basically has no way of dealing with it. Things go down hill from there: Celestials show up and see Earth simply as another battlefield, and Infernals show up to troll everyone. I'll go more into the various outsiders in their own sections.

I also wanted to give Mankind the last laugh to cement that this world isn't under anyone's thumb. Just like we had no response to magical beings, neither did these magical beings have a response to advanced science: The atomic bomb. Every nuke being launched also means a GM never has to bring these up in their game if he doesn't want to: He can simply say they're all gone, used in the war. That's a minor theme in this setting, actually: The GM shouldn't ever feel forced to drop artifacts from the past into the PC's hands. It's listed as "five hundred years, or more" so the GM can declare it's been way longer if he wants. I feel that NEVER bringing up the world's past would be a disservice to the setting, but they ought to have the freedom to do so.

The World Today

This section is super simple. It's only there to assure a reader that this is a more typical setting than they might think from reading the background. There's orcs and wizards and catoblepases and flesh golems. The setting is fantasy with a minor apocalyptic backdrop. This is also to express again that this isn't a setting under the militant thumb of outsiders. They're still kicking around, but Terra Prime isn't the valuable battlefield it was before.

 The Citadels

These are pretty straightforward so I'm also going to go into some of the basic theory behind the outsiders and their influence. The citadels in general are pretty obviously the major, super-important places of the world. Major world players live inside. ANYTHING could be inside. It could be a super high level dungeon. It could be the final battlefield of the players protecting the world from another resurgence of war. They represent a lot of potential as well as show marks of the old world without having to resort to places literally being preserved everywhere. Even despite that, I DO use that trope twice. Separation will be by outsider, not individual citadel.

There's really two directions you can go with demons. The main characteristic is that they're uncaring. Here we see that taken to two logical extremes: In New York, an entire city is frozen in abyssal obsidian just to make a battlefield and defensible position against their tower. I always imagine the tower slamming down like a giant nail into the middle of Central Park and radiating evil magic outward. In Japan, the chained palace represents the OTHER side of not giving a shit: Relentlessly torturing people with their whims. Things having more than one meaning and having to keep a "public face" up in Japanese culture is taken to an extreme by the demons mocking it.

As for celestials, I really, REALLY didn't want to associate them with Christianity too much. I didn't want them to be saviors, since in a lot of other Dungeons and Dragons settings, they take a very long view of the battle between good and evil. So, they show up in response to Demons attacking Earth and their primary concern is defeating the demons...with preservation of human life being an honest but secondary goal. Rumors of manipulation come from these Celestials NOT being the same as those who were mentioned in the Bible, not from any real effort to manipulate. They'd never even heard of Jesus Christ. The Celestials kept this quiet because they reasoned that it would cause more strife than it was worth. As for the Overgrown Cathedral itself, I wanted a "Garden of Eden, but you're being watched." vibe. In addition to that...yeah, it's pretty obvious that it's the White House, isn't it?

The Devils in my setting are a lot more coquettish and trollish than usual. They showed up to profit from the war, and their propensity for Nazi symbolism was not only an easy association with real evil, but it also serves as a clue that Devils had been clued in to Earth for a lot longer than the disaster.  It was a deliberate effort to mock humanity by offering themselves as saviors while wearing Nazi trappings and using the Swastika as a symbol. Their use of Alpenfestung(a real place) as their major stronghold is a metaphor that suggests their true motives are very far away from what they're really saying because of its literal remote nature. I also can't help but love the idea of devils wearing sort of a uniform and aesthetic, like Erinyes wearing tight SS uniforms and looking like Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS or lemures appearing as ill-fated, half melted foot soldiers wearing gas masks.

Inevitables and the Brilliant Vaults. Yeah, I wanted there to be some influence of the past, and at least one place the players could go to see it all in action. The Inevitables are inspired by Brainiac and his ruthless goal of cataloging everything in the universe without care for its actual content. Their "mediocre programming" is also inspired by The Borg as well as old computers. Basically, some things don't make sense because they're preserving absolutely everything inside their 'borders' without intelligent thought. Their programming only goes so far, and the vast majority of the clockworks aren't actually very intelligent. There are cars seeing routine maintenance without thought to anyone ever driving them(or even a thought to where you'd get any gasoline), and vaults full of god knows what to entice the players into a dungeon dive that feels one half like a classic casino heist. Real Inevitables would have to be converted up from 3.X, but that's okay: There's only really three of them, and none of them are going to show up very often.

Civilization

Newark is pretty obviously inspired by the current coastal people of Maine and other areas. I like the idea that each area of the world is sort of...those people who always lived there, but boiled down and condensed. I also love the idea that there's a whole people out there who are really no-nonsense about monsters. The logical progression of that means they're known for being excellent hunters, since if you're not scared of them...you'd probably hunt them for their hide. THIS means that they may not trust magic very much and it may not be a very big pursuit in their country. This is a good example of that "building upon" thing I was talking about earlier.

The Pale Mountains. Normally I want the names to be kind of similar to or reminiscent of the past, but here there's a pretty obvious "new" genesis of a name. Goblinoid races would naturally gravitate toward mountainous and rocky areas, and the Appalachian mountains are perfect for that. It makes the area very dangerous in addition to simply not being a joy to travel by itself, so it's a perfect reason that North America is split into three distinct countries.  I also wanted some distinctly wild, lawless areas to the world, so this and Death Valley serve that purpose.

Augustine is obviously named for Saint Augustine, for no good reason other than maybe whoever officially founded the country was from that city. Augustine is mostly the American South, so applying my "boiled down" philosophy I could've gone two different directions: I could have gone negative and made them harshly xenophobic slave-holders. I didn't like that idea. So I went with the positive traits of being Southern and made them gregarious, brave farmers and aggressively diplomatic. This is a pretty good "Shire" style area for a low level game to start in: Lush, mostly farmlands, people are generally nice, and monsters are gonna be dotted around the landscape instead of being a huge issue.

Another reason I didn't go with negative traits is that I wanted a big dictatorship right in the middle, somewhere a GM could run a game more focused on cities and dealing with the Government. So, La Republica exists. The idea is that influence slowly pushed up from Mexico, so the state has major trappings and flavor from that country. The fact that they use necromancers and revere symbols of the dead is a pretty obvious reference to Day of the Dead, and even their leader is a reference to Day of the Dead symbolism herself. I love the idea of a whole country being run by a Lich who's not THAT evil but also remembers the Three Fingered War. You could interpret her iron fist as a strong desire to prevent something like that happening.

So now that it's obvious that I kinda wanted to present a lot of different areas to run a game in. I didn't want it to seem like Disneyland, but I think I failed a tiny bit in that. Death Valley is a lawless area full of raiders and treasure hunters that you could run a more "Wild West" style game in. I love the idea of raiders being failed treasure hunters who end up walking around Las Vegas, seeing the ads and clothing displays and things and going off to emulate them. So you can see dudes who've built fantasy style pastiche, like dudes who look like greasers riding horses, with smoked glass "sunglasses", pompadour hairstyles and leather armor looking suspiciously like biker jackets. Another tribe might be cribbing all of their style from old advertisements of Cirque du Soleil and their leftover, preserved costumes. If you can make that sound cool, that is.

~~~~~

So, final thoughts. I don't know how helpful this really was, but sometimes I understand something a lot better after seeing the creator's point of view and inspirations. There's also a lot I've left out of Terra Prime: I haven't done a single organization, any custom race templates or suggestions...I could really expand on each country and give a ton of info...and in the future I likely will. As I do so hopefully I can line it up with discussing each of these things in tandem. But I'm shit at organization so, y'know. Don't hold your breath too badly.

Problem Players: The Gwenpool

"None of this is really happening. There is a man...at a typewriter..."

I didn't have a topic for this week. Our setting example document really isn't ready yet and I didn't want to give you guys a half-ass starter for something that's supposed to be a setting that's ready to go. Let that be a lesson to you: Setting creation can be a lot of fun, but it's hard! Even ol' Mousetrap, chained to his desk as he is, still can't get it done on time.

Anyway. I was gonna let this week pass actually. We're not on a strict schedule! So I'm sitting here between bouts of kicking Apothecary Hummel around catching up on my comic books. I took several off my "pull" list last time. They were going downhill pretty severely and I decided to give them one last issue. Actually, I always wondered what the etiquette is on that. If you put something on your pull list...can you later decide to put it back if you don't want it? I mean, if I read issue seven and it turns out to have robot butt rocket gags in it(I'm talking about you, Harley Quinn), is it on my ass if issue eight comes out and I forgot to tell them I'm disgusted to my very core?

I'm getting off track. I read one last issue of Gwenpool. Gwen Poole(yes, really) is a parody character spun off from Howard the Duck(which is some damn good satire, don't judge it by that movie) who is like a teenage girl version of Deadpool. There is one major difference aside from that between the two characters. Deadpool only seems to understand he's a character in a comic book, and his comments can be attributed to his strange sense of humor and a level of intuition and cleverness nobody around him really knows he has. Gwen Poole is literally from our universe, so she literally understands she's a character in a comic book.

I won't comment yet on how dumb it is to be so blunt with the concept. Anyway, aside from constant joking about the comic book format, she also has the encyclopedic knowledge of comic books that people seem to think I've got. She constantly comments on the "tropes" of comic books and how they're written. She also bases major decisions on this information. It gets her into major trouble.  In one of the first issues, her and a new hacker friend she made encounter MODOK. She busts into hysterical laughter because MODOK is regarded as a huge joke. In response, MODOK disintegrates her friend. Dead. Because "designed only for killing" is in the fucking name. Later she blurts out Thor's real name in a fight with her and nearly gets her skull crushed, because while Odinson would've laughed that shit off, Carol Danvers doesn't play the fuck around. In the final issue I read, she makes a complex plan to keep the cops busy(and unable to arrest her) while she lures a group of alien arms smugglers to Times Square so she can blow them up. When Batroc the Leaper(yes really) calls her plan reckless because it robs New York of its emergency services for several hours, she defends her plan by explaining that the Military, CIA, FBI, and Police are all completely worthless in comic books anyway, and it won't matter that they're kept occupied because heroes already do everything. I should also say that this ridiculous explosions-and-mayhem-in-Times-Square plan is after the person hiring her had stressed that his interests are peace and order.

Maybe some of you already know where I'm going with this. Gwenpool is "genre savvy" but in the worst way. Gwen constantly makes decisions based on the conventions of the genre(comic books) and even when proved wrong(such as with MODOK's murder of Cecil) she continues to do so. That's actually why I stopped reading the comic: She staunchly refuses to learn from her actions or adapt to her environment. She believes herself completely invincible(because she's a main character), believes all of her plans to be foolproof (because this is her comic) and even tries to murder a teen aged antagonist in cold blood because he's "not important to the story". She faces consequences every time and not one time in eight issues has reflected it in her actions. Aside from Woe is Me bitching, I mean.

This is something that can happen when you go soft on someone who enjoys being "clever" or who sees pen and paper games as inherently antagonistic, as "Us vs. the GM". Other times people get so wrapped up in what they think is fun or cool or "in character" that they ignore all consequences. Even when you haven't gone soft on them at all(like Gwenpool) some people continue to make decisions based on manipulating the conventions of the genre or system, or make ridiculous plans simply because he knows the GM has to let him succeed eventually.

To the Players: Come on, dude. I hate it when people use "come on" as their whole argument but come the fuck on. Don't do stuff like this. You know you're doing it. Don't act like the GM has to let you succeed or has to keep you safe because you're integral to the plot. Don't refuse to react to outside stimulus. I advocated "We don't have all god damn day" planning previously, but don't act like the GM's gonna let you succeed just because it'd take too long to go back to the drawing board. I understand we're all cognizant of playing a game, but your character shouldn't be acting like it. Stabbing someone isn't okay just because you know everyone regenerates HP at one per day per level. It's okay to keep the rules of something in mind, ESPECIALLY if it's a capability of yours, but try to keep the idea of manipulating genre conventions out of your decisions. Act within the genre to improve the tone and feel of the game, don't use it as protection.

To the GMs: Yeah, get back here. There's plenty of ways a GM can do this too. Let's get this out of the way first: don't let people get away with murder, regardless of anything else. Don't ruin your plot and tank the game, but don't protect them from every awful decision they make just because you need them. For a Pen and Paper game to have impact, actions must have consequences. You might have to roll with the punches and change your plot sometimes. That's life. Well, that's gaming, anyway.

Back to habits and genre conventions. Remember these are backdrop. Flavor. World. They're not a constraint to lay on someone or a method to control how your game goes. In addition to that, don't think it's okay to lay whatever outcome you want on the players just because you've given them a "gamey" reward like XP, Karma, gold or nuyen. Negative outcomes will be felt regardless of the "reward" you've given out. Always keep in mind how their characters would feel if they were real people in the situation you're crafting, because that feel will translate partially to the player. So will the potential feelings of being robbed, seeing a 'bad ending' or being gypped. The XP or gold they've received isn't necessarily going to sway them back into happiness. In fact, if you want them to feel bad, take this to mean that there's no reason to deny them rewards. If the players did their best and lost because you need them to lose, then it's pretty shitty to deny the gamey rewards of the encounter. Overall, players get immersed. Period. Don't count on them NOT being so.

So that's a lot to get out of a shitty comic, huh? Basically I guess we're just talking about cleverness again, but in a slightly different light. Remember that if someone is being a problem, talking with them is the only thing that's going to work. After the first few times he doesn't react to consequences, I'm sure you'll know that you've got to talk to them. We all enjoy the game aspect of this, but know where it stops: just shy of in-character actions.

Setting Creation 101: Basics

Hi. So we're doing classroom numbering again, but this time I have no idea how far these ones are going to go. YOU WERE WARNED! World building and creating a setting are two different things, so you'll forgive me if I try to avoid using the term "world building" and fail a few times. World building is the act of fleshing out the setting you've got, which is something everyone's got to do. These are the details that don't REALLY matter but enrich the game with immersion and cool fluff. What WE'RE discussing is the big old grandaddy of that thing: building a setting from scratch. Today I'm just going to go over some very basic stuff then expand on minutiae or specifics later. Unlike our discussion on villains, this one isn't going to have a ton of structure, just some numbers and labels so we can organize this a little.


A: Question why you want to create your own setting in the first place. 


Yeah sorry, I have to start with this. Before we do ANYTHING, you need to understand that this is a lot of work. Ask yourself what your personal setting brings over a prepackaged or pre-existing setting. Think of what quirk or twist your world will have that would make a complete stranger want to use this setting over another. More on that later. If all you've got to answer this is that you want to flex your creativity and collaborate with your group to make something new, then I support you a hundred percent. You just need to know that this is a long, hard road and half-assing this process can make for a really bland game. There is nothing wrong with using a prepackaged setting. Adapting a television, movie or video game setting or altering the course of history is also on the table and, though that's work, it's still less than building something from the ground up.


B: Get some inspiration from somewhere. 


C: Figure out a spark of creativity or twist for your world. 


These two are too related to discuss separately, but one doesn't necessarily require the other. Obviously, you've got to pull inspiration from somewhere. This could be wanting to do your own version of a setting from a TV show, book or movie that would be too hard to adapt directly. Or, maybe one of those things are super neat but really doesn't have enough meat in it to flesh out a whole world. Obviously you could have also just...had an idea for a setting all your own or simply begun this process because you wanted to do this. That's fine, but ask these questions of yourself anyway. This is the first step of you putting your setting above others. As for suggesting sources of inspiration, do not discount ANYTHING. 80s kid's shows turned adult or twisted a little bit can be awesome settings. Concept albums like Queensryche's "Operation: Mindcrime", Frank Zappa's "Joe's Garage", or Rush's "2112" can be immense inspiration for a piece of your world, or even the world itself. Video games are obvious inspiration, but also look into the stories of canceled games like The Brutal Ballad of Fangus Klot. Inspiration is everywhere, tune your mind to find it.

There's also the idea of taking something more typical and adding a twist to it. Even small changes to a world can have huge repercussions, and a lot of your work can be done by following those consequences logically. For me, this is the most fun part of making a world and I highly suggest you do something to shake things up so your world looks less like a typical setting. I've seen a world that simply made elves the dominant species instead of humans, and even if that were the only difference it has over a stock fantasy setting(it's not) that would be an immense difference. Instead of being seen as insular or xenophobic, Elves RULE. They're everywhere. Humans are seen as adaptable and friendly at best...and overly gregarious and pushy at worst. Elves aren't seen as willowy and slender...humans are seen as broad or even fat. Other settings like Eberron simply turn the idea of racial stereotypes on their head, with its nature-loving orcs and tribal halflings. I could go on, but the point is that, for our purposes, the "norm" exists purely for you to fuck with it. Just don't go overboard, or else the setting may prove hard to remember for some players. As usual, your group may vary.


D: Geography


Okay first off, a discussion of maps is coming later. At this stage you don't necessarily need to sit down and make one. You DO, however, need to consider how your world is built. This goes hand in hand with placing kingdoms and cities of course, but thinking about just the lay of the land and its weather can help with that. A normal world has varied biomes, but keep in mind that you don't have to do that. For one, the existence of magic and the planes can easily throw a monkey wrench into everyday nature. For two, even if that's not the reason, people very rarely question it when climates and geography is wrong. Star Trek is notorious for its planets that have one weather type, one climate, and one people, and nobody seems to care much about that. Your world will very likely be more varied than Star Trek. However, don't be afraid to get a little crazy. Humans have thrived in strange places since history began, and a challenging climate can be an interesting backdrop to a story. This is also when you can start placing interesting natural formations like floating islands, massive volcanoes, tar pits or other things. This can give you a spark of creativity later on when you're defining special areas of secret and mystery, dungeons, ancient ruins, wizard towers, or even just freaky places people live. Basically, what I'm saying that even Mount Doom might have started as JRR Tolkien saying "I think I'll put a volcano over there.".

You should also think of how the world is divided and what biomes go where. Sketching out a map can really help here to visualize the world, but don't think you've got to do the final map now. Just put a simple, sketchy one together so you know the climates and thus where people are going to congregate and settle. Also keep in mind that people who settled in what's a stupid place to live now(Las Vegas) may have either done that for different reasons, or are simply STILL living there long after it's BECOME a shitty place to live.


E: Kingdoms and Cities


If you don't already have an idea for the tone and feel of your various kingdoms, there's two helpful tactics to get the brain-juice flowing. The first is to take some of your geography and just go "Okay, a huge amount of people live right here. Why, and how did the area shape them?" and if you don't like that, you can always try again with a different kingdom size or race. Actually, that's the OTHER hint: Pick some of your setting's prominent races, and decide where and how they might settle. You're gonna have to do that anyway, and nobody's going to fault your setting for having some big racially segregated areas. I can't think of a setting that DOESN'T have those. You can even kind of randomize your thought process using both trick at once. A huge kingdom of elves lives in these plains. How and Why? A small band of mixed orcs and goblins live near this active volcano. How'd that shape them? As I've said in the past, a lot of the time all you need for an idea is a seed. The rest can be built upon it: layered, pushed and pulled until you're happy.

With some little tricks out of the way, I just want to caution you against overpopulating or underpopulating your world. Both of these are bad. Too few areas of civilization and your game's gonna feel like a video game(Welcome to Midgard, literally the only city for millions of miles) and too much and there's a TON to remember. If you want your world to feel dominated by cities and dense populations, it's probably better for you to simply make the existing kingdoms larger instead of adding more of them. I don't have some sort of magic number to tell you since every group is different, but in my experience you want around five distinct major kingdoms/countries, with several of them being distinct groups of the setting's dominant race. Ideally you want to show cultural diversity in your world, instead of saying " all humans are like this, all elves are like this, all dwarves are like this...". Tons of settings do this, and you want to shake it up a little bit just to make it feel more like a world. Even something simple like some splinter groups not living near the "racial capital" or maybe two wildly different racial kingdoms goes a long way. You can accomplish this sort of thing with fluff notes on how people are in certain areas. What I'm saying, basically, is that there's GOING to be some kingdoms, countries or places that only get a few lines of explanation. This is good. This is what we're going for. It fleshes out the world without providing too much to remember, and puts emphasis on the larger, more populated areas. Don't think I'm cautioning you against putting a ton of rich lore, cities or areas into your game. No, I'm just saying too many major, important things in your setting can potentially lead to fatigue. A fatigued player checks out entirely and avoids as much detail from your world as possible. It's helpful if you can "sum up" what the kingdoms are like in a few sentences. That way, you can hook some interest and a player might read further then incorporate your setting strongly into his character's backstory or personality. That's sort of like your setting getting a gold star.


F: Organizations


We're getting a little long in the tooth here so I'm just going to make a few comments. Organizations like churches or guilds are where you can get a TON of enrichment going on. Organizations aren't necessarily tied to countries, areas or kingdoms and thus can serve as omnipresent plot hooks or presences. I mean, the Red Wizards might be from Thay, but you'd be hard pressed to find a major city in Faerun that doesn't have a building with at least a half-dozen members. In fucking FACT, those jerks once made it into some official basic source, so you'd even find the Red Wizards of Thay in fucking Greyhawk. But I digress. In addition, I've met very few people who ever get fatigued reading about organizations. For some reason these are seen as more...bite-sized and player centric than larger political constructs. You can include a ton of these without anyone ever really getting tired of them. Just be sure to organize the ones tied to countries or regions into that region's description. You want to minimize confusion in your setting document.

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So that's it for now. Did I say a lot? I think I did. Am I even close to finished? Fuck me, no. No, this is so fucking much that you can expect to see a lot of topics on this. Some on these things I've discussed, and some on OTHER concepts I've either forgot or omitted for length. In fact, you can also expect me to do some building along with you guys to help show what the hell I'm talking about. I'll put out setting documents, then discuss where the ideas came from and why details were defined the way they were.  A little duckie suggested I do an entire "Let's build a campaign" series where we take EVERYTHING I've discussed and apply it to a game. While we're not even remotely close to doing that...we CAN do it with a setting.