Hey everybody, Matt Colville here. This really
will be a short video because I think we've done something like four hours
worth of video content over the last two days. I uploaded a Q&A video on Saturday
morning just to catch everybody up with how things are going and then we began the process
of the 'twitch building a campaign' thing I don't know what to call it. We streamed! We
streamed to the act of building a campaign world. We started with an
impromptu stream on Saturday night. I didn't announce it or anything, I just wanted to test
the technology and then we actually started doing it Sunday at 11 o'clock
and I think it went incredibly well and the reason I'm doing a video Monday is to give
context to those videos. I recommend you go watch them on twitch. You can watch the
archived on the YouTube channel but the problem with that is you don't get to see the
chat. I think the chat is a big component of it. The reason I did this was
basically to show you how easy and fun it can be to create your own campaign
world starting with...obviously you're not necessarily have hundreds of people in
twich chat, that was kind of crazy. I didn't expect...I think we got close to a
thousand people in the chat and I really didn't expect to have that many people
in there but my point is you can download Hexographer, I do recommend it.
I've used it a lot. I use it to make my campaign maps and I like Hexographer
for a lot of reasons one of them is: I like hexes. I fundamentally like hexes. I don't
like the Forgotten Realms maps because I look around and I'm like 'I don't
understand. Where are the countries? Where is... Where does this area start and this area
end?' Whereas with hexes we have built in provinces. 'Cause I like running game,
this is just down to taste, I like running a game that has politics. And I like knowing
who's in charge of this kingdom. Where is the edge of this Duchy? And so for me hexes are great. Plus hexes give us a great
obvious a unit of measurement. I like 24 miles per hex because a normal person
can walk three miles per hour and if you walked eight hours a day that means
you've walked 24 miles or one hex in a day. That assumes a road obviously. If
you're walking without roads it gets tougher and obviously through forests and
mountains you get even slower but you can use a hex map and roads and you can
tell: 'how long does it take to get from point A to point B' just by counting the
hexes. So I like hexes and Hexographer is great because you can just click generate a
random ass and it builds a random world for you of
any size with whatever kind of train you want a favor and then you can spend your
time modifying the map to taste I think you
know if you followed my how to create a character video that I like that are a
killer process over to roll the bones and its gonna tell us next aquifers
gonna tell us about this campaign setting so that's the point of this
video is to give you contact for the stream we did which you should watch on
Twitch and understand that I am recommending if you build your own if
you want to build your own campaign setting you can start with something
like exxon refer as they just give me a random world and then modified to text
back let's take a look at where we started and where we ended up so you get
some idea of talking about this is the actual randomly generated map index I
refer it as soon as I saw it I don't know you know I think we generated maybe
10 or 15 maps in the stream before we hit up on this one I immediately fell in
love with it because as this a great feature dominating in the middle of this
broken mountain range i didnt no way did I design that mountain range it's got a
great pass right in the middle and it's got you know if a little modification
and we have access to a notion in the lower left and we've got desert we got
forest and we have planes we have all the stuff that I think you need for a
good campaign setting I then after the twitch stream was over on Saturday night
and we generated the random map I started at monkeying around with that I
started customize it to make it look a little bit more like a world and less
like a randomly generated bunch of texts as to what we got was this this is where
we ended up you can see that I've made it look a lot more like a world created
distinct regions right so you have the slump over here and the left we have
forests down south we have a distinct desert on the right and these are the
names that the folks in twitch at came up with I an end and we there's a lot of
data about who lives there this was not me i didnt I didn't decide
that these people in the south where the band doorstep like the Mongol horseman
which i think is really cool and the veil the forests of the veil with the L the wood elves live and there's a fog
there that keeps them in mortal and there is a reason that fog keeps the
moral and this year the desert of 0 the Dragonborn lives and these guys are like not
they're not nomadic they have a city there are a culture there are civilized
culture somebody said their city would be a city of glass and I thought wow
that was fantastic i really like the idea of you know sand is the main
ingredient in class is super abundant in the desert and Dragons have a built-in
you know furnace for creating the fire necessary to Milton so I started to
think wow I think the people of 0 the dragon men of sheer maybe even have like
crystal plated crystal Thorens they make class armor and weapons and it's not
normal last its dragon fired glass and that's stronger than we have these
kingdoms in the north of the northern sanction and it was called the sanction
because the ancient organ theme granted it to the people and there's three
kingdoms up here there is however Mr Danny and Curtis those sound like good
names to me and we have these doors in the north the doors of course they're
the only doors left it used to be doors here on the broken spine why is it
called the broken spine because the founder of the ancient ordination flew
the Titans lived under the mountain and killing that Titan broke the mountain
range but created it founded the first civilization of the doors which has
thousands of years since collapsed and now it's overrun by Darin drought so
this pass here we talked about how this human civilization has a fort in the
middle of the plane's here and there's gonna be a city down here by this bay
the humans are always fighting to control this path of them access to the
bay we're about halfway done we get together again I think probably this
next Sunday at 11 a.m. Pacific Standard Time and maybe finish it was room for
about two hours at at that point I started it'll burn down my throat was
hoarse and just the process of sifting through twitch chat and monitoring and
trying to find good inspiring names was a lot more work than I thought we were
able to do it I had this idea in my head that I would be looking for all the
comments trying to find the best comment the best idea but I there are just too
many people and I realized that silly there is no best idea really all I'm
looking for is an idea that strikes my imagination and fits you know what I
think of as the rest of the world and that was actually pretty easy to do most
of what I was doing in the switch that wasn't coming up with names for stuff
that was all the users in chat most of what I was doing was explaining the
dramatic consequences of what we see in this world I was always saying okay if
this is what lives here tell me something interesting about these people
tell me something interesting about these doors tell me something interesting about the
people that live here in the desert and now that I know that what does that mean
right because I think all good drama is just a sequence of their four and then
but right we have these guys live over here therefore they need control the
past but they're constantly fighting these guys they're like the the nation
of cartas to the east has the largest army but they're not able to contribute
their soldiers to the past if they were then it would be safe in there be no
drama but they can contribute their soldiers to guard the past because
they're dealing with the influx of you aunty coming from the east because the
UN here costly warring with the Dragon of seer and they're losing so they're
going over the mountains and trying to find refuge so many cars are constantly
fighting against these new aunty and that gives you some idea of how I think
what I'm building a world really when I'm telling a story all right that was a cool idea we came
up with but what does that idea meanwhile the consequences of that idea
where does the drama and the tension come from I think most of the twitch
chat was just me saying alright who lives here because I think that you know
people are important whether their door people help people are dragging people
who lives here and now tell me something interesting about these people who once
I knew something interesting about that I could say alright well therefore watch
and if we know therefore then but these guys wanna hold the past but the steppe
nomads want to guard the volcano God but right so there's a whole bunch of drama
in here I think we made a lot of progress I think we're off to a good
start I think we have the first half of a pretty good setting and maybe we'll
get it done next week maybe it'll take two more streams I'm not sure there's a
link in the DubLi due to the high profile cases open it up and get
yourself along with the PDF of the write-up I was constantly keeping notes
and say okay who lives here tell us something about these guys get a little
bit of the history of the world we've created so far I describe the world is
not being a high fantasy high magic world but a lot of people were
responding as though it seemed to them as though this was high magic right as
an empire Dragonborn in the eastern city of glass and to me high fantasy and I
magic is mostly about like what do normal everyday people experience if
you're one of the normal citizens of the northern sanction your regular farmer
you don't use magic to you know deal with your crops you're worried about
bandits you're worried about who controls the past and your life in that
area is probably pretty similar to life anywhere in medieval Europe you know in
the dark ages and so to me that's still a loaf fantasy setting to me high fantasy means
not like I remember opening up the Forgotten Realms box set at finding out
that you'd go to or just a random town in the middle of nowhere and there'd be
a 20 second level barred living there opened in right that to me is high magic
or toll is by my code which is a fantastic setting is just one city but
the book is like a thousand pages long and weighs about 40 pounds like a
hundred bucks I love it it's a great setting but that's a place that's flying
carpets for taxi cabs right on normal citizen and told us these magic stuff
all the time so even though there is some epic stock even though there is
some high fantasy elements in the setting to me I don't think that affects
the average citizen if you're in this model horse man you spend most of your
time living life just the same way the Mongols did in the 12th century and so
to me that's not really high fantasy so I recommend watching the twitch stream
there's only two that the Jubilee do and even though it's really long you get to
see the process and all the ideas fly-by and you can see how I thought about
stuff in my rationale for picking this over that and that's it really I just
wanted to show you how much fun it can be how easy can be using a program like
X aquifer and there are other tools online for generating random worlds but
using a random word generator to fuel your imagination obviously you can begin
with your own ideas right my campaign the age of chaos did not begin with a
random acts Agra format but I've always really liked generating random worlds in
these programs are always want to kind of run something generated in a random
Orleans so we've begun that process and hopefully it stimulates your thought it
makes you think wow actually it's pretty easy to just start with a program I can
refer generate around the world and start populating and you don't need to
finish it to start playing right as soon as you've got a local area as soon as
you know something I think you're ready to get started and you should always be
I think all Dungeon Masters who create their own world are always adding to
them over time it is never a process that finishes or stops so you kinda have
to give yourself permission to start writing the game even though you have
everything worked out yet I hope you find the twitch stream interesting hope
you are inspired to create your own campaign setting I don't think it's very
difficult I think it's a lot of fun this Thursday's video we're gonna find out
what happened to the party last Thursday it was pretty epic I was incredibly
happy with how things turned out I think the players had fun will find out and
hopefully we'll see you this Sunday and the twitch stream at eleven o'clock
pacific standard time we continue making a world I'm a covalent which I'm at colville on
Twitter as always I am an independent fancy author who will help support the
channel please come by my Amazon page there's another link in the DubLi do
I've written two books I'm working on the third book one of the reasons I
wanted to do this was because I wanted to press a campaign setting so that in
future video I could show you how I would prep starting adventure like the
lost my nerve and over and that way I have now a campaign setting the lost my
friend over can live in and that way we can make characters together maybe into
it and talk about alright who are the heroes in this adventure and once I know
the campaign setting and once I know who the PCs are and where the campaign said
in their fraud then we can start the process of prepping the adventure we can
find hooks for the characters in hopes for where to put the adventure so it's
all part of the process hopefully making you more confident in her dungeon master
and world-building skills even though we have story time every week and sometimes
we talk about some heady matters I really do want this channel to be about
empowering a new Dungeon Masters as though this whole process on which was
just to show you how much fun it can be to make a world the flip side of that of
course is that I also recommend depending on how much time you have to
buy a prepackaged campaign setting sometimes that's better we'll do videos
about those grounds Planescape Dark Sun birthright the wonderland of high
fantasy there are tons of great campaign settings out there there's one I think
are you all right that's it short video I promised I'll see you guys this
thursday will do a video of another campaign diary and then Sunday morning
11 a.m. Pacific Standard Time will be back on Twitch to finish this campaign
world we've created until next time peace out
