The Architect DM: World Building Basics
So far the Architect DM series has focused primarily on locations and building design, but today and over the next few weeks I’m going to take a look at the larger scale idea of world building and some factors that play into designing a realistic and believable world to play your games in. As with many of the design aspects I’ve talked about previously, designing a realistic world can feel like one of the most intimidating and daunting tasks to undertake but in reality if you apply principles correctly it can make your efforts easier and better at the same time.
For the most part this post will focus on the pseudo-medieval world building that goes along with most Dungeons & Dragons campaigns, but I will try to address modern, sci-fi, and other worlds as much as possible. As always I strongly encourage you to comment and ask questions if you have them, and if I see enough interest in other types of world design I will definitely do more posts in the future addressing non-D&D specific world building.
A Matter of Scale and Approach
The way I see it there are two distinct ways to design a world for your campaign, with a possible third approach that dances somewhere in the middle. The first approach is what most people think of doing when they run a D&D game which is drawing a complete world map and filling in as much information as possible, then running the game and letting the players explore that world – we’ll call this the Large Scale approach. The other is designing a specific town/city and starting the party out within it, then as they explore designing and introducing more and more of the game world to them as they explore. You can even start the party out in a more confined location such as a specific district of that town/city, a tavern within the town, or even a single room within a building inside of that town and branch outwards from there – we’ll call this the Small Scale approach.
The obvious disadvantage to Large Scale world building is that it takes an insane amount of effort from the DM beforehand, and you’re probably never going to satisfy yourself or the players with the amount of information you can put into any specific area of the world. Thus, the appeal of running something in Forgotten Realms or other campaign settings because all of the beginning work has been done for the DM. The obvious disadvantage to Small Scale world building is that if you haven’t designed or prepared a location then the players either can’t go there or will have an improvised and most likely less interesting adventure if they choose to go where the DM hasn’t planned things out yet.
The Middle Ground
The shady middle ground between these two approaches is most likely what I would suggest for any DM attempting to create a world for any RPG. The first step is to decide what the basic scale of your game will be, and I very much recommend talking to the players first. Some examples of basic scale are a game that focuses on local happenings and is based mostly around a single town and the areas close by, or a game that focuses on a kingdom and a series of villages within it, or even a game that encompasses a smaller continent and its interaction with other nearby islands and continents. All of these are acceptable scales for a game to begin with and can dictate the entire feel of the game – if you and the players decide you want to focus on kingdoms or continents then the specific details of the towns and cities are not as important and you don’t have to plan for them. [Read the rest of this article]
Savage West, Session 1: The Riverboat Poker Heist, Rio Grande Burning
This is part 3 of my Savage Worlds play report for the first session my friend Yan ran for us. Don’t miss part 1 and part 2.
Scene 3: The Rule of C4 to the rescue
So here was Jimmie Joe the Miracle Worker, stuck in jail shortly before the Riverboat and its 100 000$ stash moored off. Fortunately, his friends came to his rescue.
Judge Gloom and Jayne entered the Sheriff’s small office, one of those one room houses with a single jail cell you see in Lucky Luke albums.
Judge Gloom: I’m here to judge this man for the crime’s he’s been accused of.
Jayne: Yeah! He’s like a real judge and everything!
Sheriff: Hmmm, haven’t I seen you before?
(Group: Oh shit!)
Yan: PM’ roll to see if the info about your disbarment made it to this office.
The roll was missed.
Aside: While PM didn’t mention it here. He later commented about how his character’s performance and impact on the game world fell very much shorter than his expectation. He wanted to be a walking, breathing fear machine but each of the scenes he tried to make it come forward, it fell flat.
His “fear” wasn’t backed by anything more than his background story and we all had trouble finding a meaningful way of working that fear in the story. His 2 “edges” were fighting-related and I sense that “The Fear” felt too encompassing as a feat to Yan to be resolved with social skills vs established authority figures.
They since worked out an acceptable compromise.
Wouldn’t it be cool if that game’s GM told us a bit more about that in the comments? Hint Hint…
Sheriff: Judge Gloom… Judge Gloom, I recall seeing a letter from the…
PM: I open my bible and mention “And so He said “Let there be Light everlasting for” and I mumble something in badly mangled Mandarin and I take out my Derringer hidden in it.
Phil: What the Fu…
Maze: I draw my gun too!
Phil: Guys!!! I move to grab the cell’s blanket, it’s the only “weapon” I have!
Alex: Dynamite Chang heard the Judge’s signal and whistles the “Get the Chang out of There” code…
Phil: Ahhhh! Jimmie Joe moves at the opposite side of the Cell!
So much for an orderly rescue.
Chang blew off one of the Jail’s walls with dynamite, Gloom got shot in the face by the quick-drawing Sheriff, Jayne effectively killed the sheriff with one shot. One of the two deputy missed his shot at Jayne and then got blown up by a dynamite stick thrown by Chang. The other deputy surrendered when I pressed the cold steel of Chang’s Shotgun on the back of his neck.
The fight was done in two rounds. Fast and Furious indeed.
Jimmie Joe spent the next hour trying to save Judge Gloom from death, blowing a few Bennies in the effort (and letting the Sheriff die), lightly berating his friends from needlessly killing people (and spending such precious Dynamite).
The party got on board just in time.
Yan: Wait a minute, what do you do with all your stuff. Horses, cart?
Phil: Hmmm… Ah yes, we leave them with Jessica.
Yan: Jessica…?
Phil (Fast talking his GM): Awww man, it’s too long a story… Let’s just say that we used to have something her and I, now we don’t…. Things are… complicated. It’s probably going to be hell getting our stuff back… And I might have forgotten to mention it to my friends but trust me on this.
Yan (Very amused at all those free story hooks): Okay, Sure.
Aside: Yan called this a “Circles check without any stats” making a reference to Burning Wheel mechanic allowing players to create NPCs on the fly. He said it was one of the highlights of the game for him, like being handed a paid in advance NPC in exchange for saying Yes to a low stakes question.
I just love doing things like this. 
Scene 4: Fire in the Hole!
Once on board the ship, we each took our position. Jayne started playing… and the ultimate irony is that he started winning (Maze’s PC actually has a decent Gambling skill, second only to Chang’s). Judge was keeping an eye on the ballroom where the tournament was held. I scouted the ship for the possible location of the stash. I found a cabin on the boat’s 2nd floor guarded by 2 thugs.
Jimmie Joe: Bingo! I’m going to inform Chang.
Chang: I start a fire in the engine room furthest from the room.
Judge: I try to accuse a player of cheating to create a commotion.
Jayne: Hey you guys, I’m totally winning this thing! Great plan!
(He was… but I wasn’t going to let 100 000$ go to chance huh?)
Jimmie Joe (Running back to the 2 thugs): Quick guys, you have to help us, the engine room just exploded! We’re going to burn and sink unless we get all the strong guys to pitch in to contain the blaze! (Clatter, Clatter… success).
Yan: Okay, they follow you.
Chang went to the room under the one with the money and placed seven sticks of dynamite to collapse the ceiling.
BOOM! Ceiling falls, no one dies. A safe now rested in the debris…
Yan: How many sticks of dynamite do you have left?
Alex: Hmmm, none…
Phil: Arghhhh! Of course! I go and grab the Tournament’s organizer in the ballroom’s chaos and subtly push him, at gun point, toward the room with the safe.
Jayne: Wait, I’m winning! What’s happening?
Jimmie Joe: Okay boss, give us the combination to this safe and you live!
Boss: But I don’t have it, the captain does!
Phil: Seriously Yan? Are you trying to get killed here? I don’t believe the guy! He needs a good intimidate!
Turns out he was screwing with us. The Boss opened the safe and we stuffed as much money as we could in bags and put jewels in our pockets. When we all realized we didn’t know how to swim (as envisioned when we started the game), we commandeered a lifeboat at gunpoint (but let a pregnant women on board with us) and made it just as the boat was sinking.
PM: Phil, isin’t Jimmie Joe concerned about all those people who will die on the boa?
Phil: Nah, we have our money now, and they can always swin to the shore.
And thus, with money bills flying everywhere, we rowed to the shore with about 60 000$.
Jayne: Oh man, I was about to win, I had made it to the finals guys.
Jimmie Joe: We know you could Jayne, we know you could. It didn’t turn out like that though…
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