brian 333
2021-12-01, 07:20 AM
Early in my campaign world constsuction I had to build the next scenario or adventure in time for game night before I had time for worldbuhlding. It was difficult to keep up, and in the rush I kearned a few tricks. First: nothing is above revision!
But, working 40+ hour weeks and being under pressure to get the next session ready left little time for deep worldbuilding. I would brainstorm while performing tedious tasks at work, but my campaign world had huge blank spaces that were never explored and a lot of worldbuilding effort in other areas that was literally wasted effort because my players never went there.
But I accidentally did something brilliant without realizing I had done so. You see, over the many sessions over many years I generated a paragraph here and a snippet there of world background: world history, cultures, and mythology. No individual part is very long or detailed, but overall I have three three-ring binders of background. They were written as handouts for the players or as stories the characters heard or knew. Many of them contradict older writings, but I never tried to establish one 'correct' history because as in the real world, which version of history you hear depends largely on who your teachers are.
If I were to use these notes as a starting point, I could write a history of my world from primordial times to the latest time period recorded and end up with a 500 page campaign setting. Okay, some pages would be pictures...
You can give your world the impression of being far more detailed and developed than it is with little one paragraph handouts that are stories, sermons, and songs. Building your world's background and cosmology is time-consuming, has almost no impact on play and, once written, becomes set in stone. Building it slowly as you go as in-game history adds the illusion of depth and age to your setting and allows you greater flexibility over time. You can always blame any revisions on inaccurate or politically/theologically motivated historians.
But, working 40+ hour weeks and being under pressure to get the next session ready left little time for deep worldbuilding. I would brainstorm while performing tedious tasks at work, but my campaign world had huge blank spaces that were never explored and a lot of worldbuilding effort in other areas that was literally wasted effort because my players never went there.
But I accidentally did something brilliant without realizing I had done so. You see, over the many sessions over many years I generated a paragraph here and a snippet there of world background: world history, cultures, and mythology. No individual part is very long or detailed, but overall I have three three-ring binders of background. They were written as handouts for the players or as stories the characters heard or knew. Many of them contradict older writings, but I never tried to establish one 'correct' history because as in the real world, which version of history you hear depends largely on who your teachers are.
If I were to use these notes as a starting point, I could write a history of my world from primordial times to the latest time period recorded and end up with a 500 page campaign setting. Okay, some pages would be pictures...
You can give your world the impression of being far more detailed and developed than it is with little one paragraph handouts that are stories, sermons, and songs. Building your world's background and cosmology is time-consuming, has almost no impact on play and, once written, becomes set in stone. Building it slowly as you go as in-game history adds the illusion of depth and age to your setting and allows you greater flexibility over time. You can always blame any revisions on inaccurate or politically/theologically motivated historians.