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View Full Version : Golden questions you should be able to answer if you want to create a new setting



Tzevash
2011-12-07, 08:08 AM
As title says: I need some advice because I'm going to run a new campaign in a new setting and I want to be well prepared.

And when I'm talking about questions, I mean the typical things a player can ask you to understand the setting in which you put his character.

Thank you in advance :smallredface:

Conners
2011-12-07, 08:17 AM
Well, you could try this: http://www.sfwa.org/2009/08/fantasy-worldbuilding-questions/

Tzevash
2011-12-07, 08:20 AM
Wow, there's a link just for everything. Feel so n00b. °_° :smallbiggrin:

Conners
2011-12-07, 09:01 AM
No problem. Good luck with the questionnaire (you might use this thread to discuss some of the questions, maybe?).

Yora
2011-12-07, 09:10 AM
There's also the Worldbuilding section in the Homebrew subforum, where there are lots of threads dealing with similar things.

Conners
2011-12-07, 09:16 AM
Whoops. Forgot about that.

Mnemnosyne
2011-12-07, 10:12 AM
My first question to someone who is wanting to homebrew a setting is: What makes this setting unique and different from any existing setting? Because if they can't answer that question, then I feel they should go use the existing setting that their new one is not unique and different from. I have seen a huge, huge number of homebrew settings that are, essentially, Not-Forgotten Realms. No real difference in atmosphere and flavor, but a different setting for the purpose of being different. Obviously, such settings always suffer from a lack of history and depth.

Once you have established that your setting is sufficiently different and unique from any existing setting, then you have a lot of work to do if you want to make it a robust and solid setting. Geography, history, politics. Far too many people satisfy themselves with making 1-7 kingdoms and nothing else. Where are the clandestine power groups, the heroes and the villains? Often I see homebrew settings with a monolithic 'villain empire' and no other power groups. Where are the neutral merchant costers, the freewheeling pirate associations, and the scheming loner liches that work through a handful of agents throughout the world?

Any well-developed world should have several centuries of history, and that history can't consist of a handful of global wars if it's going to make sense. Regions have history. Rarely does an event actually have global significance. Look at the Forgotten Realms. Something that seems terribly important in the Silver Marches is entirely unknown in the Vilhon Reach, events in Tethyr are of no significance to people in Rashemen, the goings-on in Thay aren't talked about in the Tashalar, and the latest happenings on the Chultan Peninsula aren't really something that's known in the Dalelands. Only a handful of events in several millenia of history are of global significance, like the Time of Troubles or the Fall of Netheril, but far too many people create a homebrew campaign setting where the only events in their entire timeline of history are either global in scope, or pertaining to a single primary city.

And make sure you have enough to give your players information to create credible characters that actually lived in the world. So often, a DM will give me so little information about his world - either because he hasn't created it, or because he's keeping it secret - that I find it entirely implausible that the character even grew up in that world, because they know nothing about the world. Which is fine if you want to play an uneducated guy from a little town that knows nothing of history, politics, geography, etc. When I want to play an 18 Int character with three or four Knowledges maxed, on the other hand...that's a problem. And even a character that's only moderately intelligent, if he grew up in the right place, will understand the political situation, for instance.

As a player, when I create a character in a setting like the Forgotten Realms, when I choose a location I can research that location and see what has happened in the last 25ish years. Or the last 50 years, or 200 years, if my character is a long-lived type. I can then figure out how those events influenced my character. The world is part of my background, because the events my character lived through shaped her life. If you cannot tell your players what events they have lived through, then they cannot help but make generic characters with generic backstories. At best, they'll make things up themselves, which may or may not conflict with other things in your setting, and may or may not have far-ranging repercussions if considered in a logical manner.

Of course, not all players will be interested in the backstory. If you have players that, well, don't really care, then GenericTown in GenericKingdom on GenericContinent works because they're not the type that look for the history.

Aux-Ash
2011-12-07, 12:16 PM
I echo Mnemnosyne's suggestions. Very good suggestions there.

Some other valid thoughts I think:

Measure history in generations, not actual years. This way you'll not only realise important things like "my characters grandfather probably fought in that war" but also that what happened a 1000 years ago (50 generations ago) probably isn't very relevant on a practical level.

Gods are a whole lot less important to religions than worshippers, clergy and rites. It is far more important to be able to answer how they live their life and how religion affect their lives than to be able to tell what personality and adventures the god has/have had.

What does normal people eat here? Where do they get that?

What is the current political climate? Who are the big players? What are they doing? Why?

Mnemnosyne
2011-12-07, 02:28 PM
I echo Mnemnosyne's suggestions. Very good suggestions there.

Some other valid thoughts I think:

Measure history in generations, not actual years. This way you'll not only realise important things like "my characters grandfather probably fought in that war" but also that what happened a 1000 years ago (50 generations ago) probably isn't very relevant on a practical level.

Gods are a whole lot less important to religions than worshippers, clergy and rites. It is far more important to be able to answer how they live their life and how religion affect their lives than to be able to tell what personality and adventures the god has/have had.

What does normal people eat here? Where do they get that?

What is the current political climate? Who are the big players? What are they doing? Why?
Keep in mind that for elves, that thousand years is a lot less generations. More like three to five. I'd say a good length of time to make a history for would be at least 1500 years. You don't have to be really precise for anything over 500 years ago, maybe not even for anything beyond 250 years ago, but for every major region of the world, figure out what general events happened each century going back a good deal of time. Get specific on important locations and such. The players may never actively ask 'When was Waterdeep founded?' but because you know, that information can become an interesting detail and can even be made relevant in a quest of some kind related to ancient artifacts.

And yeah, when you write your religions, look to 2nd Edition books for the kind of details you want. 3rd/3.5 books lack a lot of detail that's really important. Check out Faiths & Avatars, Demihuman Deities, and Powers & Pantheons. Each of those has extensive information not only on the god, but on the church, its dogma, major centers of worship, etc. At the same time, decide how active your gods really are. In some worlds, the gods won't have much of a say in things themselves at all, because they don't bother talking to the mortals much, and in other worlds the gods will be very directly involved in the running of their religion because they will be actively telling the high ranking priests exactly what they want in between random visits for tea and sex.

Tzevash
2011-12-12, 11:17 AM
First of all, I thank you for your precious suggestion.
Now, on with my personal experience:

By now, I created a general idea for the setting, and after the players told me what they would like to play, I added some details to give specific advices for the backgrounds and to find a way to unite the party: from this starting point, I intended to make the players discover the setting, adding setting content to my notes hence detailing the generic main plot I have in mind.

The world in which the party will go is structured like this (I'm summing it up to make it simple):

POLITICS: There are kingdoms and republics who strive to obtain magic minerals which can be given to a powerful magic enclave in exchange of knowledge and technology... however, the exact properties of this material are unknown, while secretly the mages are using it to literally feed magic calculators and discover equations and magic streams of power that allow the exploration of the universe. So, intrigue and wars are all around.

COSMOLOGY: The "Prime Material" is one of the many "milestones" in a long path in the universe that, like a Milky Way, unites the planets: this path is the "Cosmo Breath", and it's the mysterious source of magic and responsible of the formation of the mineral mentioned before. Positive and Negative "planes" are just parallel realities of the Prime Materials, and sometimes one can hop through these. LAW is a net, like the Weaver in World of Darkness setting, that regulates the physics and the use of magic and stabilizes reality's parameters: its agents hide among various realities, acting when CHAOS break through with magic exploitation or "critical errors" during magic travels or in a magic calculator's matrix.
There are no true gods, dominions are "concept" and "ideas", "ways of life" which can be turned to pure power with the power of faith and the beliefs in legends and epic acts in history by few individuals with a high spiritual power (clerics). Favored Souls/Oracles just manipulate a flow of power that permeates all the things.

RACES: All core races of Pathfinder plus monster races in Bestiary, I allow races from other 3.5 settings adapting them to mine and creating a background for them in this new world.

The party's background can be summed in these few steps:

- Worked as mercenaries for the army of X Kingdom (of which they know politics, cities and so on, in addition to other background notes depending on their class or their races), survived for some months working together;

- One night, their brigade gets slaughtered by another squad of their own army: they survive and flee;

- Kingdom Y gets accused of treason and of attacking an ally (addressing him as the responsible of the slaughter), Kingdom X declares war on Kingdom Y

- Party escapes away from Kingdom X's borders and arrives in an indipendent city after a month of travels. This city was not conquered yet because if one of the armies at its borders moves on and plunder the territory, the other armies would flank that army exploiting the situation to conquer its territories. Moreover, this city has an harbor: the PCs are hiding in the streets, waiting for the occasion to flee away with a ship. But every traffic is in the hands of the local lords...

TheThan
2011-12-12, 01:49 PM
Mnemnosyne has very good advise. That questionnaire is also pretty useful. But I take a different approach to building my campaign settings. I use something like this:

Questions:
1: What system are you using?
2: what genre do you want to use? (Science fiction, fantasy, historic, action/adventure, etc)
3: What do you wish to accomplish with this setting?
4: What thematic feeling do you wish to portray?
5: what makes this setting unique?
6: What makes the players interested in this setting?

these six questions give me the ability to really focus on the feeling and mood of the setting. once your able to accomplish this, then the rest is details and simply writing.

NeSS Esqa
2011-12-12, 09:28 PM
http://jrients.blogspot.com/2011/04/twenty-quick-questions-for-your.html

I've found these questions to be invaluable in terms of "What will they force me to define about my world" and "What will matter to my players".