DM 101 - Episode 4: Worldbuilding Part One (D&D Help/Advice)

hello and welcome to DM 101 this is my new regular series where I try and help those of you who want to start getting into running games of Dungeons and Dragons or other tabletop role-playing games you want to start being a dungeon master a games master or whatever you want to call it and and this is just my kind of little series and giving you tips and tricks in happen the way that I happen to do things Who am I you might be asking if you're new to the show my name is Mark Humes I am the dungeon master for the high rollers which is a D&D stream over on twitch.tv forward slash yogscast I'll put the video link in the description below it seems to be a stream that people enjoy so come on give it a watch if you'd like to this series seems to be doing really well people seem to be appreciating sort of some of the things the topics I've been talking about it seems to be helping a few people out there so it's gonna keep going we're now gonna start getting into the real meat and bones this episode and the next few episodes are gonna be focused all on creating your own homebrew worlds we're going to talk about adventures later creating specific adventures for tabletop role-playing games but I think it's almost better to start talking about the bigger picture which is the homebrew world and then go into the you know my new show of adventures later on and that means we'll be covering things about like building encounters and custom monsters and magic items and all that stuff down the road couple of things to go over before we start first things first I am going to refer a lot to Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition the reason I do that is because it's the system I know best it's what I'm known for running it's what a lot of people come into the Hobby playing a lot of the advice though will apply to stuff like Pathfinder edge of the Empire fan of Fantasy Flight style RPGs you can use a lot of the advice and the thinking in almost any system or setting obviously some of that will vary but yeah it is primarily gonna be focused on the indie 5th edition so if I happen to say something like you know in D&D 5th edition x y&z try and find the equivalent you know in your particular system etc the other thing is I am NOT a published author I am NOT you know a famous games designer this is just my way of doing things and I by no means are trying to attend trying to tell you that this is the only way or the right way of doing things this is just the way I do it it's here to give you ideas it's here to kind of get you thinking maybe kind of spark oh I could do that that way or I've never tried it that way let me give it a go see what works for you one of my biggest things that I say in this series is Jia Ming and DMing is very much about experience and it's about finding what works for you and your group different groups want different things different GM's different teams do things in different ways so this is just my way of doing it and it might not work good for you it might work good for you words fail me today but that's it that's what I wanted to just quickly cover and this little opening bit I will put this in the timestamps below but the topics we're gonna be talking about today focus on the key idea that you're sort of your big idea or your your starting idea for that gets you set on the path of creating a homebrew world then we're going to be talking about key features or your campaigns unique selling points then we're gonna be talking about world events which i think is quite integral to the foundations of your campaign and then finally we talked a little bit about the creation myth and why that can be important in D&D campaigns and that's gonna wrap up the episode so let's just jump straight into it okay so let's begin talking about building upwards and where you should start the actual first thing I'm going to suggest is check out some of the well building seminars and talks by popular authors especially fantasy authors you can find a lot of these on YouTube one I'm gonna personally recommend not only because he is a favorite author of mine but because I think his seminars are incredibly detailed and very useful look for Brandon Sanderson's seminars on creative writing and world building most of these you can find on YouTube and they're actually where a lot of the stuff I'm going to talk about in the next few episodes comes from it's all stuff that I've learned from him or from other GM's and things like that with that out the way where do we begin for me most of my Dungeons & Dragons campaigns have begun with an idea now you might be thinking that's an idea for an epic story you know something of like yeah this is gonna happen and this is gonna happen and this is gonna happen and this is gonna happen that's not true for me often my ideas for campaigns come from much more mundane things it might be the idea of a particular villain it might be the idea of a government or a city and how its run it might be the idea of a natural phenomenon or you know a landmark here I'm trying to think of what they called a natural wonder if you and use the sieve terminology it might be something like that it might also be an event or things like that a particular war it could be something like the lightful campaign for high rollers for example the whole idea of that campaign that the starting point of that campaign came from thinking what if there was this cool magical disaster you know a magical natural disaster that occurred hmm that's kind of an interesting thought what could that be what could have happened before then and this is where those ideas for me form the best kind of like starting point as a campaign because you come up with a villain and you start my you might start asking questions like okay well what's this villain trying to accomplish if that's what that villain is trying to accomplish what kind of world do they live in what led them to want to have those ambitions more where did this villain grow up who's who were their parents why did they turn out this way if it starts with a natural event it's like well what what consequences did that have what what did people do before this new technology was discovered before this you know why is that city built there who does the city trade with who is the city been at war with if this city is wonderful because it's built on a fantastic resource people would surely come after it right well who's coming after it why who lives close enough by to me and I'll talk about this a bit later but questions and their answers that is where world building comes from when you start taking an idea and you start asking questions and answering it and you write out the answer and or maybe you put it in a little note or you start just thinking about it you start to get the ball process rolling and really that initial idea can be anything a lot of people I think make the not necessarily a mistake but they have the misconception that if you want to create a DND campaign world or a homebrew world or a fantasy fiction world you've got to have this incredibly detailed map in your head and you've got to know where everything goes and you've got to have this cool story of the beginning the middle the end and how it's all gonna play out and how it's all gonna connect and all the little twists and turns that you're gonna have along the way and honestly from my experience that is not the case that is the case for some fantasy authors but remember it writing a D&D campaign isn't writing a novel you're not writing a book you are creating a world that a bunch of other people are gonna make decisions in so the most important thing you can do is to give them a very detailed very rich world that those actions and those events that they do will matter in and to me that means you can start with pretty much anything and you don't have to have it all figured out to begin with either you can make up a lot of detail as you go you can fill out the world with extra details and cities and places and locations all of this stuff can be stuff you develop over time all it needs is an idea one thing to get that ball of questions in your head rolling once you've got that it's just a case of filling out the details once you've got that idea once you've started the ball rolling on those questions and you're coming up with more and more things you're on your way to creating that world one thing which might be worthwhile you doing while you're in that initial idea stage is start to think in a bigger scope once you've kind of got the ball rolling you're starting to ask yourself questions what I find is very useful is to come up with something called key features and the Dungeon Master's guide for foreplay at dungeons dragons fourth edition talks about this as well think about the milestones the key headers the key things which make your world different when you'll talk about those and go over some examples now okay so with the polarizing lens I've adjusted my lighting this should be easier to see I'm gonna keep using the whiteboard because I like it it makes me feel like your teacher and I think it adds it a little bit of something different to the video as well so ah we've talked a little bit about the bigger idea we've talked about the thing which might spark that particular campaign whether it's a type a certain villain or a certain faction or a certain cool event that's taken place whatever a spark to to create this campaign and sort of like that key thing which gets you going the next thing we're going to talk about is something that you as the dungeon master as the games master probably want to get into your head before you start writing out more detail before you start answering some of those questions that that initial idea might have provided before you start going into detail on some of the more fine detail questions you need to start thinking about what I call the key features or think of it like the unique selling points of your campaign now what do I mean by that well for example you know you might say okay you know I've got this idea for a villain blah blah blah blah blah but I really want this to be you know I want this to be a world where magic is scarce that is a key feature that is a unique selling point that is I kind of think you need to know before you start developing anything more there's no point you saying well I want the world to be I want magic to be very scarce and very rare and very scary and then later on you're like yeah there's this kingdom and they just they just throw out magic items because they make so good there many obviously it doesn't make sense I don't expect any minutes to do that but that's a key thing so your key features are basically sort of one line USPS unique selling points things that make your campaign /world interesting okay that's what we're really talking about here so it might be that yeah you know this could be things like you know example magic is rare and scary it's not the most original one but that's okay it's just that is a key feature of your world magic is where magic is scary it could be the gods will come on us okay things like this things that shape and define some fundamental nature's about the world itself but it can be more specific than this as well it doesn't just have to be as broad as those two options there so can be broad can be specific to give you some examples of this one I'm trying to think here so it could be trying to think so the ever on campaign setting create by Keith Baker and which of the coasts one of that's kind of unique selling points was you know magic is is readily available magic ease technology basically you know minor conveniences are replaced by magical invention they have things like lightning trains and airships and lighting and it's got this kind of almost like magic punk feel to it right that is a very broad key feature I would say that the Eberron campaign setting also has a more specific key feature which is that a cold war has brewed amongst that most powerful nations and espionage has become a key factor right that's also a unique selling point that's also a key feature but isn't that a little bit more specific I think you can even go even more granular than that you could do something like I'm trying to think here you could do something really specific as in portals to the Fae wild have opened up in every major yep that'll work mark good city right that is an incredibly specific feature to have in your world portals to the Fae world have opened up in every major city but but that key feature not only provides you with a ton of questions to answer that will help you develop the world give you additional feedback give you you know things to build detailed upon on a pond and a pond but it also gives your players something to build from there might start asking questions like what how does that you know affect this this player that I want to create how does that affect this you know you start answering questions like you start asking questions like well how does trade work is it friendly is it violent you know what's the deal who created these portals why did they appear etc etc etc these key features once you write them out once you've got you know I would say try and come up with five key features for your campaign world find ways that whenever you're creating a location whenever whenever you're creating a faction how do these key features affect whatever is you're trying to create you know if you're going to create a major major chorus a major major cracy and magically controlled government city and every city has a portal to the Fae world how is that government going to capitalize on that how are the people of that city gonna react to that if you're gonna you know does this apply to two enemy nations are the thing what you know it are there Wars does this allow people to go from one city in one place travel through the Fae world and attack another city at the heart of their city by passing all their defenses all these questions can be built around that if magic is rare and scary what are the leaders of governments going to think about magic how our local barons gonna react when the players find a magical sword in their land probably going to want it because it's either rare or they're going to want to try and get rid of it because it's so terrifying if the gods walk among us how does that affect religion you know do they turn up at their own sermons do they have temples are they treated like royalty like kings or are they kind of mistrusted quite these questions and answers that you're building up from you're kind of I original idea the key features you come up here this is what world wielding is all about well building is not going I have some wonderful story and I'm going to tell it by creating these specific things that fulfill the story that I want to tell to me well building is asking questions and the answers lead to details and more questions and then as you answer more and more of those questions and as you write them down as you figure out the details that is how you create very rich very full universe is full of information there you go with after talking about these we now know talk a little bit about world events because this kind of for me forms the other foundation of world building especially for D&D campaigns or jamming tabletop role-playing game campaigns so we just talked about the key features your unique selling points and your major idea that might spark the kind of thing to get you started on this campaign process but what's the next step well if you've got those ideas those kind of main sort of big headers that you can kind of develop things from it's time to start thinking more detail we talked a little bit about asking questions and how those answers will you know begin to shape the details of the world one thing I like to do and one of the early things I work on which helps me form the foundations of a campaign is thinking about major world events now what I'm talking about here is effectively a timeline of the biggest most important events that have shaped your world to the point that it is currently at before your actual adventures before your sessions begin unless you're playing in a campaign where the players are you know brand-new frontiersmen in a strange land that has no history or claims or staked on it which i think would be pretty rare and pretty unusual to do you are gonna have a land that has history and history is shaped by events think about our real world what are the biggest things that have shaped the way that we live today technological advancements changes in government Wars natural disasters all of these things basically lead to huge upheavals in culture geography borders you know actual people and the way that they develop these things really do matter and they can breathe that sense of life and depth into that world that a lot of people seem to like don't quite know how to you know convey in Gamze the Dungeon Master's guide for fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons I've got it here actually our good old lighting their ghosts spooky ghost the dungeon masters going for D&D 5th edition actually has a whole chapter on this it's on page 27 it begins they call it campaign events but there are tons of ideas in here for things that you could use the rise and fall of a leader or an era you've got cataclysmic disasters assaults or invasions rebellions revolutions are extinctions new organizations discoveries expansion invention omens prophecies and myths and legends all of those things are really good and I highly recommend having a read through that chapter if you've not done so already because those world events these big sort of bucket items the you know header items they will not only spark more questions that you can detail out which will add that richness of law to your world's history but they will start giving you plot hooks so down the road when you're writing adventures or magic items and everything else those little more specific things how many of these world events should you do well that really depends I wouldn't say you need to go overboard you don't need to do 3,000 years worth of you know every little major event that's happened you know you doesn't need to be real world history you're not a published author you're not you know trying to create you know a world's history of you know an encyclopedia here we are trying to do is create yourself major events that help you structure the way the world has changed what I would say is off the top of my head when I think about the sort of things I do anywhere between I would say eight maybe fifteen or sixteen major events throughout history you could do less but if you do do less I would suggest making your world quite new because it wouldn't really make sense that you would have such a long period or no let me change that if you do have less either make your world quaint new or have a good reason why history hasn't changed much an example of this that I did was before the high-rollers lightful campaign there was a you know magical comet that passed through every hundred years and it blessed the land that made it so that disease was really difficult that undead and monsters you know basically couldn't be awoken so they didn't read threaten the populace and it made the people happy it helped grow food and really that lasted I think I had it lasts for like twelve hundred years that means that really there was no cause for conflict and there were no natural disasters there were no invasions there were no wars that sort thing because everybody had what they needed that was my kind of excuse for not anything really changing which is a good way of preventing from technology of advancing too far forward kind of having people rely on certain things etc etc so there's one thing to think about in terms of just sheer numbers um just trying to think really one piece of advice I would give you though and the dmg backs me up on this is to have a major event happen just before the campaign begins so if you think your time line you've got like world's creation and then this is where the player characters start going on their adventures I would have a major event happen really close the reason for this is because having a major event so close to the campaign beginning a gives an event that your characters might want to include in their backstories they might want to have their characters you know influenced by or they can ask questions about how they dealt with it and that can help them develop their character a little bit further but it also provides a driving force for the campaign think about the Gold Rush of America when it became when it was discovered that this particular land was rich in this very valuable resource it sparked everybody to get up and go there and they built towns and they had problems with banditry and they had all these different issues going on but it kind of created this surge of activity and that's what looking for you know if you have a new tyrannical government take over the major landscapes of your campaign setting boom suddenly your characters might be what we want to be rebels we want to be trying to fight against the tyranny maybe they're agents of the tyrannical Lords who are beginning to question things all of these things provide more questions more possibilities that you can then build on later so it provides that driving onus that driving force to keep things shook up the dmg is says another thing about world events which I happen to agree with and that is that you should have something or you should have another major event take place in the middle of the campaign and in another major event happen near the end of the campaign the reason for this is if the players are just going on the same types of adventures dealing with the same types of villains it can get boring pretty quickly if you change things up if they get to the midway through the campaign and the world is suddenly invaded that creates a huge change in dynamic that can actually lead to you know a change in gameplay or game pacing etc if there's a new discovery a new technology a new God all of these things can really shake stuff up and make your world seem a bit more lively and a bit more interesting so there you go that's talking about world events related to this and then the last topic I'm talking about today is the creation myth this one's important basically on your timeline this is going to be number one I think it's particularly useful especially if you've got things like gods and magic in your campaign so we're gonna talk a little bit about that so the last thing I'm going to talk about today is the creation myth I'm sure most of you know this already but just in cases a few people don't a creation myth is the legend or tale or sometimes to some people scientifically proven or just believed in creation of the world itself so how the world was actually formed how life came to be how magic was introduced all of this stuff especially for Dungeons and Dragons campaigns can be very useful to have figured out maybe not in full detail but having a good idea of it now very much like the real world it make sense to have different creationists believe my different groups of people not only does this increase conflict but it also relates in two different fractions and different factors you know if you've got gods who actually give their power to mortals to run around and do things it makes sense that your gods might have one version of a creation myth and they say well we created the world and we gave magic and we did this you could however also say well actually the gods came to this planet and it was actually formed by the dragons and the Dragons believed that they created the world and then the gods came down and they you know invaded or you know they took responsibility for it or whatever you could have scholars and scientists and academics say well actually we think that the Dragons were here long before then and that the world was created by bla bla bla bla bla the reason to have this down the reason to think about the creation myth especially is that first world event on the timeline is because it's something which can lead to more content down the road so you can have you know religious wars break out between the gods who are arguing about who's the most powerful because so and so say they create the world and so-and-so said they created the world bla bla bla but it can also lead to you know adventure locations maybe there is a you know an ancient temple that predates the gods arrival on the planet or maybe it predates the most ancient dragon fossils that have been found who created the temple what was it created for bla bla bla bla bla those things can all give you really interesting ideas and is also something that is just good to know people want to believe that the world wasn't just create randomly that there's purposes and you know reasons behind things and in a world where yeah magic is real and the gods have a physical manifestation and powers and things like that it is definitely worth considering about it doesn't need to be particularly complicated and honestly the creation myth anythink really goes you can have people believe the most audacious crazy mental theories you can think about well you can have really reasonable ones you know to give an example of this a current new project I'm working on there is one unifying creation myth believed because the gods are very real they've spent time with mortals and they've gone yin but it is this is how it was made did this is the truth of it and that's what I wanted to do you don't have to follow these rules you don't have to make it a big you know conflict driven deal but it's worth thinking about as that first event on that world events timeline you're going to be building out that is pretty much it for this episode of DM 101 hopefully once again it has been useful to you next episode will probably talk about more world creation stuff so tune in for that thank you very much for all the support and feedback so far please remember to subscribe if you like this video don't forget to click the little bell for notifications and when a video is uploaded you can also check me out on twitch i stream pretty regularly at the moment on Mondays Tuesdays and Thursdays twitch.tv forward slash tabletop weekly you can also check me out on patreon where I post some more DND homebrew stuff as well and yeah don't forget to check out all of those places thanks very much for watching I will see you next time take care bye bye

Channel: Tabletop Weekly Archive

Views: 118,295

Keywords: boardgames, tabletop, roleplaying, wargaming, miniatures, D&D, dungeons and dragons, board games, tabletop games, Tabletop Weekly, DM Advice, How to be a Dungeon Master, Dungeon Master Advice, GM Tips, Dungeons and Dragons Help, DM 101, Dungeon Master first time, First time Dungeon Masters, DM Help, How to run Dungeons and Dragons, Worldbuilding, Building a Fantasy World, Making a D&D Campaign, How to write a D&D campaign, Mark Hulmes

Id: 1K9k3TpOYyg

Length: 29min 47sec (1787 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 09 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Ianoren]

Thanks to /u/SherlockHulmes for this helpful advice.

I know it is a long video but check out these timestamps for the parts that most interest you with some notes.

3:52 - Initial Ideas: E.g. A villain, government, natural phenomenon, natural disaster to base the campaign around. Then answering questions around these themes.

9:20 - Key Features: The Campaign's selling point and make your campaign different. E.g. Low Magic, Gods walk among us, Feywild portals opened

17:35 - World Events: Have a world defining event just before the start, in the middle and near the end of your campaign. E.g. see DMG campaign events

25:28 - Creation Myth: Formation, Life, Magic.

And the recommended series on World Build Mark mentioned in his video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SmCSBB0zp8&list=PL4cRbWulxgjTeFZyufu9_dejMR6vf_eVB

[u/silwyth77]

So happy for this series as a semi new dm !

Thanks you loads mark !