DM Craft: Outside-In/Inside-Out Campaign World

[Crow]

Our group plays in a homebrew campaign world, and will probably continue to do so for a long time. When I designed the setting, I took the outside-in approach. I drew a large map (six pages), put in terrain, seas, settlements, landmarks, etc..., then fleshed it all out in my head (nations, history, etc..). I figured anything that I can't remember about my setting off the top of my head probably won't be all that important to the players, so why bother. When something does come up where the player needs a specific piece of information which isn't neccessarily fleshed out, I can usually extrapolate an answer based on the history, politics, and even local stuations in the world, and have it beinternally consistent without difficulty. The world is consistent, and the world turns without them in a consistent manner. When the players discover a new location, we can mark it and put a notation on the giant map, so we aren't really that limited in flexibility either. When the players perform some world-shaking task, they see the consequences in the big picture...If they have some means of gathering the information.

Each player has a pretty good idea of who lives where, who hates who, and why. Having a bunch of locations to go to, and at least a very basic idea of where things are and how they react to one another, the players have more freedom to explore the world and can make their own adventures with little effort on my part as DM. When i do throw in a hook, they are in a better position to go after it. "That paladin said the tomb was somewhere on Merladia's frontier? Haven't they been fighting orc tribes there for generations? We'd better prepare to run into some orcs on the way."

As enjoyable as this is, and as cool as our giant laminated map is, for our next campaign, I was thinking of creating a campaign world using the Inside-Out methodology. I was wondering what philosophy other DM's most often use, and if you use Inside-Out, what your experience with it has been. What benefits does the inside-out methodology provide, and what are the downsides that you've experienced with it?

[Zincorium]

Outside-in is ideal for adventurers that are expected to be somewhat worldly, and can be expected to be familiar with at least basic geography.

Inside-out is best for games where the players are a collection of fish-out-of-water or the stereotypical 'simple country folk' (hobbits, anyone?) who can't name three towns other than their own.

In my own (recent) experience with such an inside-out campaign was a party composed of drow whose city was destroyed in a magical cataclysm, along with almost all of the underdark they knew about, and they were forced into life on the surface. The campaign developed from the rather barren lands they first found themselves in, to the nearest town that survived unscathed, and then spread from there as they developed contacts and workarounds for dealing with their new lives.

[Proven_Paradox]

I've always built my worlds outside in. I note the nations and areas I want to have, and then draw a map. I make semi-random looking lines that become borders and such on them, and then move on to geographical features to fit these borders--mountains, lakes, and rivers mostly, using what I see in real life. For example, many states and countries have borders defined by rivers or mountains, so there will probably be similar border-defining features in my worlds. I'll make names and such for said features then--for example, one of these attempts, I ended up drawing something that looked vaguely like a draconic skull (with a little island for the eye and everything! It surprised me afterwards, really) and thus, we have Drakeskull Lake. Then, I decide which of the nations and areas I mentioned before should be where, and shove them. I usually define one large city or such for each area to serve as a capital, develop them a bit, and leave the rest blank to be filled in later. I try to make an economy that seems fairly reasonable, and has each area connected in some way or another. The rest I usually either prepare to fit the campaign I'm running there or ad-lib as the players make knowledge checks.

[Chronos]

One advantage of Inside-Out is that it lets your players play a greater role in creating a world. When you build your world inside-out, one of the players can say "I hail from the frozen northlands of Hringtog", when the DM previously didn't even know that his world contained frozen northlands of Hringtog.

[Proven_Paradox]

That one would kinda go both ways though... A good DM would do that, yes, but I know of many a bad DM who would flip out and reply "THERE IS NO FROZEN LAND OF HRINGTOG STOP SCREWING WITH MY CREATION RAAAAGH!" As a player, I try to approach that kind of development very carefully, unless the DM has specifically stated that he will build our backgrounds into his world (given certain limitations, usually).

[Zeful]

I've tried both Outside-In and Inside-Out campaign worlds and neither really have worked that well. I've gotten the most done with an outside in world but I scrapped it for a 4e one.

[Farmer42]

Sometimes I like having very specific, closed worlds, where I control how the world works and what's there. That's how I built the first campaign I GMed. I established a universe (it was D20 Future) and several planets, then looked at the PCs and decided which part of the Galaxy they were going to hail from based on the concept. I talked it over with my players, so they knew where they were coming from and why and to make sure they were OK with that. I've also run games in Generihawk, where the players have a lot of control of where they're from. I like to talk to them a bit before-hand, so we don't have frozen wastes in the same place as dry deserts, but that's rarely a problem.

As a player, however, I absolutely have to know which we're using. Likewise, I like to have a primer, even just a page, to let me know about how the world works. I've had GMs not do that, and they run the game using mechanics that you're supposed to "figure out" on your own. It gets really annoying when you cast planeshift, and it doesn't work.

In conclusion, either way works, just let the players know and talk it through with them, otherwise they get pissed, and there are more of them than there are of you. Unless there isn't. Then their coup is doomed to failure.