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View Full Version : DM Help How to Conduct Group Worldbuilding for a D&D Setting?



Kadzar
2015-07-04, 06:13 PM
So my D&D group has been playing 5E for a bit over half a year now, and so far we've only played modules (really just Hoard of the Dragon Queen and it's sequel), but we'd like to move to a DM created campaign in the future. I proposed an idea (an episodic game about an adventurer's guild with the option to switch out characters at the start of each adventure), so I'll be running it.

Since I don't know much about the Forgotten Realms, and because I don't want to be restrained by its lore, I asked how people would feel about a custom setting. They found the idea quite agreeable, and at some point someone suggested we should build the world as a group (or at least that the players would add in some broad details). I thought this was a good idea, since, not only does it some of the worldbuilding effort off my shoulders, but it also means players can add in things that they like and care about, and, if we switch DMs (which would work rather well with this particular format), they could run it in a world they like without having to Plane Shift the party over.

So, with the introduction out of the way, what sort of questions should I ask or what sort of tools should I use to get in a productive collaborative worldbuilding session?

JNAProductions
2015-07-04, 06:20 PM
An interesting idea is "One Truth" about the world. Each player says a statement about the world and that is true.

For instance-"All mages know how to wear armor." This would give mages armor proficiency.

Or-"Dragons and elves are longstanding friends." This wouldn't have much mechanical effect, but would affect roleplaying a lot.

Assuming your players are more interested in roleplay than crunch, it should help make the foundation for an interesting world.

Note: This isn't my idea. I don't remember where on this forum I read it, but it was somewhere here on GitP.

Algeh
2015-07-04, 06:58 PM
I'd suggest establishing overall tone and type of setting early on - is this going to be a fantasy world with fairly typical D&D monsters, lots of little kingdoms, and room for big heroics, or is it going to deviate from that in some way? Are there assumptions from "generic D&D" the group would like to throw out the window? (Common magic items, monsters wandering around everywhere, half-dragons in bewildering combinations, whatever.) If your world has a specific overall theme or idea behind it, get that out of the way (it doesn't need to).

After that, try to build out just the setting around the starting town and Adventurer's Guild a little bit as a group. Maybe have everyone build a business or two in the town and some key NPCs for it - a tavern, a guild hall for one of the other professions, a magic item shop if you're planning to have them, typical places the PCs will look for or expect to have exist in the town (this may expose further assumptions on your players's parts). Then run your first, reasonably short, episodic adventure. Then, in the downtime between adventures, have another worldbuilding session where you add a little more as a group and are open to retconning out things that turned out not to work well. Do this between each adventure, with things getting more resistant to being written out as they've been there longer (unless they are really starting to make everyone irritated or ruin the game). If you have specific "downtime" for worldbuilding between adventures like this, there's less pressure to get it right the first time and you can use more trial and error. After a few iterations, you'll probably have a setting everyone is fairly happy with.

Basically, don't feel like you need to do it all at once before you even start playing. Have specific breaks between adventures when you can agree to "undo" setting details that turned out to not work well, since you're all new to this and that gives you more freedom to try things and see how you like them.

Silus
2015-07-04, 11:26 PM
Don't be afraid to veto ideas if they don't fit. If you're going for a High Fantasy, High Magic setting, then firearms might not be appropriate for example. But, at the same time, be flexible and consider the options the others present and see if they could work in the setting.

Rallicus
2015-07-05, 08:58 PM
If you're willing to devote a whole session to it, Dawn of Worlds (http://www.clanwebsite.org/games/rpg/Dawn_of_Worlds_game_1_0Final.pdf) is a great way to create fictional worlds.

Darth Ultron
2015-07-05, 09:39 PM
Well, if your really going for a collaborative setting....Then you would want each player, and you the player-DM, to each write out some bare bones of a setting(races, gods, lands, magic, special stuff). Then each person will submit a written copy of their ideas, and everyone will vote. Once you get all the votes, you start to divide up the work. For example each person can make one race or one land. It will take a while, but you will eventually get a collaborative setting.

Saladman
2015-07-06, 02:50 PM
If you're willing to devote a whole session to it, Dawn of Worlds (http://www.clanwebsite.org/games/rpg/Dawn_of_Worlds_game_1_0Final.pdf) is a great way to create fictional worlds.

It is my great ambition to run a sandbox game starting with a Dawn of Worlds session. So far we've just been doing other stuff, so I haven't got there.

Reltzik
2015-07-07, 12:59 PM
So my D&D group has been playing 5E for a bit over half a year now, and so far we've only played modules (really just Hoard of the Dragon Queen and it's sequel), but we'd like to move to a DM created campaign in the future. I proposed an idea (an episodic game about an adventurer's guild with the option to switch out characters at the start of each adventure), so I'll be running it.

Since I don't know much about the Forgotten Realms, and because I don't want to be restrained by its lore, I asked how people would feel about a custom setting. They found the idea quite agreeable, and at some point someone suggested we should build the world as a group (or at least that the players would add in some broad details). I thought this was a good idea, since, not only does it some of the worldbuilding effort off my shoulders, but it also means players can add in things that they like and care about, and, if we switch DMs (which would work rather well with this particular format), they could run it in a world they like without having to Plane Shift the party over.

So, with the introduction out of the way, what sort of questions should I ask or what sort of tools should I use to get in a productive collaborative worldbuilding session?

One set of rules to try might be this:

Go in a circle around the table, with each person saying something new about the setting. What they say should be small and specific -- they should talk at the nation-scale at most, rather than the world as a whole. So "airships exist" is okay, but "the entire world is volcanically active" is not. The latter makes the world one huge gimmick.

The next person in the circle adds to this concept. "Airships exist" might spark "they're primarily utilized by dwarves, who don't like traveling by sea or horseback". Whoever follows that up might suggest something about dwarven beliefs regarding the sea, or how there are multiple dwarven societies and only a few of them use airships or have trouble with horseback riding, or might keep the focus on airships and how they operate on magical levitation rather than physical buoyancy. But each addition must relate to the concept immediately prior. No backtracking five steps.

DON'T do any of the following:

1) Don't disagree with anything that's said. You're trying to brainstorm ideas, not squelch them. If someone wants ninjas, then there are ninjas.
2) Don't ask questions. If something's vague, clarify it with your own contribution the next time it comes around to you. If two things contradict, on your next turn, present a way to resolve a contradiction. (If one person says that ninjas wear all black, having forgotten that someone else said that ninjas wear peasant clothes to blend in with the population, don't disagree with the guy saying they wear all black. Say that the black garb is ceremonial wear and the peasant clothes are for when they're working jobs that need it, or say that the peasants of that nation are required by law to wear black.)

Keep going around in circles, taking notes as you go. As your group gets used to the format, you might abandon the circle for a less rigid approach of queuing up or just speaking up.

After a few hours of this (trust me, the time will fly once you get into the swing of it), you'll have LOTS of specific concepts. Now the time comes to really start squaring the circle. Switch gears from brainstorming to organizing. Conflate and relate ideas. The nation that animates the dead for everyday utility might also be the Egyptian-themed nation with a Djinn as its ruler, and the nation of airship-building dwarves might be their neighbors. At this point start critically reviewing things for common sense, maybe modifying them to fit, but don't throw anything out. If someone said "the wish spell doesn't exist", and someone else said that such-and-such nation has a ruler capable of casting wish and uses it to this or that effect, perhaps you resolve this by saying that the wish spell is new to the setting. It's a complete game-changer that arose only in the past few years and all the neighboring nations are crazy-alarmed by it. Feel free to go back and change the stuff from this stage, but not the first stage.

Somewhere along the line, start using circles with connecting lines to keep track of which nations or regions border with which. With some massaging, this will turn into your setting map.

Eventually you'll start throwing out some of the first-stage, original, brainstormed elements as impossible to fit in with everything else, but wait until the last ditch to do that.

EDIT-ADDITION: A final stage, which you might want to do yourself as GM or involve the group as a whole in, is to go over each part of the setting with a mindset of filling in the gaps. Almost all nations will have internal power struggles and complex histories, and many of those won't have been brainstormed. Almost all regions will have their own peculiar encounter tables and ecologies. So on.

SECOND-EDIT-ADDITION: Forgot to add something. In stage I, after a few times around the circle plus one person, hit reset and break the rule of continuing with the existing thread. Instead, toss out something completely new and start working off that instead.

elliott20
2015-07-07, 04:56 PM
One set of rules to try might be this:

Go in a circle around the table, with each person saying something new about the setting. What they say should be small and specific -- they should talk at the nation-scale at most, rather than the world as a whole. So "airships exist" is okay, but "the entire world is volcanically active" is not. The latter makes the world one huge gimmick.

The next person in the circle adds to this concept. "Airships exist" might spark "they're primarily utilized by dwarves, who don't like traveling by sea or horseback". Whoever follows that up might suggest something about dwarven beliefs regarding the sea, or how there are multiple dwarven societies and only a few of them use airships or have trouble with horseback riding, or might keep the focus on airships and how they operate on magical levitation rather than physical buoyancy. But each addition must relate to the concept immediately prior. No backtracking five steps.

DON'T do any of the following:

1) Don't disagree with anything that's said. You're trying to brainstorm ideas, not squelch them. If someone wants ninjas, then there are ninjas.
2) Don't ask questions. If something's vague, clarify it with your own contribution the next time it comes around to you. If two things contradict, on your next turn, present a way to resolve a contradiction. (If one person says that ninjas wear all black, having forgotten that someone else said that ninjas wear peasant clothes to blend in with the population, don't disagree with the guy saying they wear all black. Say that the black garb is ceremonial wear and the peasant clothes are for when they're working jobs that need it, or say that the peasants of that nation are required by law to wear black.)

Keep going around in circles, taking notes as you go. As your group gets used to the format, you might abandon the circle for a less rigid approach of queuing up or just speaking up.

After a few hours of this (trust me, the time will fly once you get into the swing of it), you'll have LOTS of specific concepts. Now the time comes to really start squaring the circle. Switch gears from brainstorming to organizing. Conflate and relate ideas. The nation that animates the dead for everyday utility might also be the Egyptian-themed nation with a Djinn as its ruler, and the nation of airship-building dwarves might be their neighbors. At this point start critically reviewing things for common sense, maybe modifying them to fit, but don't throw anything out. If someone said "the wish spell doesn't exist", and someone else said that such-and-such nation has a ruler capable of casting wish and uses it to this or that effect, perhaps you resolve this by saying that the wish spell is new to the setting. It's a complete game-changer that arose only in the past few years and all the neighboring nations are crazy-alarmed by it. Feel free to go back and change the stuff from this stage, but not the first stage.

Somewhere along the line, start using circles with connecting lines to keep track of which nations or regions border with which. With some massaging, this will turn into your setting map.

Eventually you'll start throwing out some of the first-stage, original, brainstormed elements as impossible to fit in with everything else, but wait until the last ditch to do that.

EDIT-ADDITION: A final stage, which you might want to do yourself as GM or involve the group as a whole in, is to go over each part of the setting with a mindset of filling in the gaps. Almost all nations will have internal power struggles and complex histories, and many of those won't have been brainstormed. Almost all regions will have their own peculiar encounter tables and ecologies. So on.
This is pretty solid advice.

I would add a bit more on this.

Bottom line here: what you want to end up with at the end are the following:

Geographical locations
Important NPCs
Set Pieces
Internal consistent rules
Characters for players to play with
Natural character arcs to pursue

To this end, I generally use the following:

1. theme: this could be anything. It could be a message, a tag line, a genre, or really anything to tie it all together. Think "main ingredient" here.
2. scope: how big / small do you want this game to be focused? your theme will inform this, obviously, but is it about a nation? a state? a village? a small group of people inside a bar?
3. major rules of the setting. Think theme like items, but be specific towards narrative limitations / cause-consequence. i.e. for sword and sorcery, a potential rule might be "magic is always mysterious and unknowable instead of scientific and explicit", which limits what kind of characters you can mechanically play
From there, you should generally have a pretty good framework as to what you'll be playing.
4. Set Pieces: this is mostly because there really isn't a GOOD time to introduce this. Here is where you list major features like landmarks, geographies, mcguffins, groups, character archetypes, etc. These are ways to basically say, "this is an important part of the game and should be used to generate actual details of the game". If you want to do something that deals with different social groups, this is the place to stick it in.
5. Representations of these items. i.e. for a group, you might want to have a person that players interact with who basically acts as the face of the organization. For a city, you might have a location where the majority of the action takes place. It's basically taking step 4 and zeroing in on how the players will interact with it.
6. character archetypes for the players: this is actually a pretty important step that a lot of players don't consciously think about but does anyway by talking about class/race combos. What is important here though, is talking about narrative archetype as opposed to the specific class/race combo. i.e. the leader, the repentant, the pilgrim, etc. Doing this will help the players make sure they don't overlap on each other and end up crowding the same story arc / party role.
7. Look over all you have so far, and make mechanical adjustments for rules.
8. Generate characters

To aid in this, I've done step 1-4 using Tarot cards. i.e. deal out 4-8 cards to each player, and at each phase ask them to put a card down as part of the brainstorm. This process I find tend to be really good at helping players focus their creative energy on the theme.

To show this in action, here's an example of something I might do.

1. theme
Let's say I feel like playing something about knights, so I throw that out there, "knights". Another player might suggest closing it in a little and say, "crusades" while another might say "arthurian myth". Another player wants something a bit more political and might say, "feuding faction / political intrigue". Let's pretend for a second that we take all of those.
2. scope
Let's pretend we want to play a pretty short campaign. (5-6 sessions at most) In deference to this, we suggest something that is tightly packed in. So the scope of the game is focused on the Royal Court in one kingdom. The scope is pretty huge, but it's nominally focused on one area, with the focus being mostly on the characters.
3. major rules
This being Arthurian, one player suggested that magic be treated not as a pyrotechnics show, but as a subtle, supernatural happenings. At the same time, we also wanted to make sure that the game focuses on honor and it's ramification. So we might one like "honor is the primary measure of a character's worth". Whether this will lead to mechanical changes is a later discussion.
4. set pieces
This being arthurian and the crusades and about politics, the following set pieces might be suggested:
The legendary sword / heirloom that designate one's right to rule
The palace
The Fisher King
The Black Knight
The Sage
The Errant Knight
The Blood Knight
The Peasant
The Bard
The Monster (one of the players in my game argued that this one actually overlaps with the black knight)
The Chalice
The Lake
The Peasants
The Bastard Son
The Nobles
The Queen / Courtesan
The Clergy
The Bishop

Steps are then taken to merge the overlapping ones. i.e. the bishop was merged with the clergy, the monster was merged with the black knight, etc

5. Representations
The palace, while suitable, seemed rather vague, so my players suggested "the round table" as where the majority of the politicking happens. Another player suggested the Courtesan's bedroom, suggesting that sex / intimacy may be part of the game too. And then for each of the group like the nobles, the peasants, etc, a more specific character is suggested. (sometimes, you'll also notice that your set pieces are sufficient as they are, in which case you can skip this step.

6. as you can see from the set piece list, a number of these would make great player characters. i.e. the blood knight, the errant knight, etc. Because of the rules we set up before about magic, we felt that the sage might be best left an NPC for this run. So that was dropped from a viable character list. Each player grabs a character archetype that interests them.

7. We had to adjust the mechanics a little to accommodate the game. i.e. we instituted a new stat called "honor", and defined some rules around what we believe is "honorable". (i.e. doing good might be honorable, but it is MORE honorable when such a deed was announced and accomplished publicly)

8. Based on everything we understood here, the players can now generate characters to fit the character archetypes.