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Shinizak
2019-07-08, 11:09 AM
Yo. So I want to run a campaign where the players are responsible for building a new world. Perhaps one that they play in.

How should I run it? What dangers should they meet? Who are their antagonists? And most importantly, where do they freaking start?

Millstone85
2019-07-08, 12:02 PM
You could have them start in some kind of limbo, primordial chaos, or young cosmos, that can easily be shaped by their will. However, anything they create takes on a life of its own, and is not so easily unmade.

For example, they can decide the world will have two suns, and so it does. Extinguishing the suns, now, that's a different matter. And later on, they might witness the beginning of a war between two races of fire elementals.

Eventually, the world will start rejecting new additions, effectively depowering the characters.

iTreeby
2019-07-08, 01:44 PM
Start them in a void and make it obvious that what they say shapes the void into a world. Maybe a voice gives them the instruction to make the univers. Maybe you secretly decide that for a certain amount of time everything they say becomes fundamental to the universe. Whatever the first noun they use might be what the world is made of, maybe the first thing that each player names becomes a primal force that clashes with the others, the players negotiate the interactions and inadvertently create permanent characteristics the primal forces emulate from then on leading to unexpected behaviors.

Basically its a really ambitious scope, I'm not sure I what rules you want to use. Maybe FATE would be a good place to start as it has good mechanics for the players having narrative agency.

Jay R
2019-07-08, 01:55 PM
You're doing it backwards. You don't have a game idea yet. "Creation myth" is not a campaign idea.

Decide what you want to run, what the PCs should be like, what powers they should have, and what challenges they will meet, and then these things will tell you if a creation myth is a reasonable background for the game you're trying to build.

MintyNinja
2019-07-16, 03:59 PM
Hi Shinizak, have you tried Dawn of Worlds? (http://www.clanwebsite.org/games/rpg/Dawn_of_Worlds_game_1_0Final.pdf) I haven't had a chance to play it with my group, but it sounds exactly like what you're looking for. Keep in mind that it's not D&D and that you may need to sprinkle in some D&D things like Dwarves or Kobolds.

SirBellias
2019-07-16, 05:34 PM
I did this, though it was more of a "fix this broken world, ye demigods," using Microscope. You have a beginning: There Was Nothing, and an ending: The Gods Fade Into Myth. The good thing about Microscope is that you do things in the order that you come up with them, which is not necessarily chronological, and all the players don't have to use the same characters (though we used their rising stars from a different game).

But yeah, hearty recommendation to look at Microscope. It's as long as you want it to be, organized, and plenty of fun for setting up worlds.

Fable Wright
2019-07-16, 05:46 PM
There are always 2: Creator and destroyer. They're often wedded together.

Your PCs are, given multiple of them, probably 3rd-4th generation Gods. Creation probably looks like a few chunks of land pulled out of the sea, with primitive mud dwellers looking to the gods with awe.

The children of the destroyer want all to return to the sea, and will destroy all they find. In fighting them, and working up to the destroyer's imprisonment (for they cannot die), their actions will cleave lakes and valleys, mountains and forests, into the earth. When it is done, the mud dwellers will have farms and temples, and tell of the deeds of their patron saviors.

Millstone85
2019-07-17, 06:03 AM
There are always 2: Creator and destroyer.Alternatively, there are 3: creator, perpetuator, and destroyer.

Creator deities set things in motion, then leave, perhaps to create other worlds. Some may "change divine class" to protect and guide their creation, or on the contrary to make sure that it doesn't outlive its purpose.

Grod_The_Giant
2019-07-17, 05:48 PM
It depends on what sort of creation myth you're looking for. Your best bet is probably some sort of "gods slaying the primordial demons and taming the chaos" sort of thing, where the physical world is sort of derived from their battles-- this mountain range is the corpse of a dragon, this moon is your father's head, etc. Epic stories of gods and demons that result in the modern world, rather than literal creation.

Bovine Colonel
2019-07-17, 07:56 PM
You could draw a few ideas from Tolkien's Silmarillion. Instead of being directly responsible for creation the players could occupy a role similar to, say, Eärendil, who by the end of the book has become the setting's Evening Star.