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Hi everyone
when you create the setting for a new campaign how do you involve your players? Do you have discussions in what kind of world you all would like to play? If yes, to what detail? Or do you start with what characters they wnat to play? The play style (for example political or wilderness)? Or do you create it without much input from others?
I would really like to know how youl usually go about it. What worked and what not...
Cheers
Wasp
It really comes down to the abilities and interests of your players because each one has something different to offer.
My brother is detail oriented but not artistic. I could count on him to create a hobgoblin tribe, but he had trouble weaving them into a story.
Our friend Eric is good at drawing, and his maps turned my sketches into works of art.
Dave was really good at blending otherwise random elements into a storyline.
Me? I'm a history guy.
At the gaming table each one of us created ideas which were later incorporated in our works, and the half-hour before and after a game session were gold mines of ideas.
Once I was aware of the talents and interests of a player, I could give out assignments. Encouraged by my interest in their work, they often generated materials on their own and introduced them.
And I always put them in. Sometimes heavily modified, sometimes just as they were created, but when a player submitted something I included it because I considered it our game.
I do a more limited version of this. The world itself is already created, but there are lots of blank spaces and I'm not averse to retconing things that haven't actually shown up at the table yet. So I listen to my players talk about what they think is going on, or what they discover/create, and then incorporate that into the world. So each group sees the effect of the other groups (I have multiple groups running in the same world). Often old PCs become NPCs along with the organizations they create/change. This has led to completely changed situations--
I started with one nation, believing it was alone. I knew there were others, but I had planned for them to be rivals and not to show up yet. But one group, seeing hints of other nations, decided to go out and recruit those other nations into a UN-like body and were able to pull it off. So now the four local nations are connected and the scope of future campaigns is widened tremendously. Another group took what was going to be a "crawl through the ruins of this undead/demon-infested old town looting stuff" campaign and turned it into "let's gather all these (currently mutually unfriendly) forces (including a faction of the undead) and build an organization to purge the city of the demons" campaign.
In the last decade i have mostly been building cities for urban adventures by number (mostly WoD) so degree of detail is high and fantasy superstructe is low. However I do also do this for my more wide ranging and fantastical Pathfinder stuff too.
What I do? i actually have a session zero before setting building gets really going. we talk about what kind of party the players want to have....as in what brings the party together and what are general goals (fix breaches of the masqurade, become a major political force, take down the evil empire etc) and also talk about themes, moods, etc that we want that run to deal with. Then I trot out a few sketches of cities/worlds that I have come up with and we discuss what may be a good fits.
then I go off for 2-4 months to develop the world before returning for first session.
So my worldbuilding is informed by the player wants and plans and even side comments about prefered PC ideas (favoring adding support for bloodlines or prestige classes they expressed interest in for example) and questions like (do you want there to be world ending potential in the story) leading to the non/presence of Cthulu like easter eggs. But they don't deal with any details.
In my last campaign (which recently wrapped up after a 2 year long epic campaign), I had all players be representatives of their respective cultures in a sort of league of nations style alliance. I gave a smattering of cool example nations and invited them to design their own culture.
No. I want to run a campaign based on the backgrounds my players come up with, but that would mean the players would actually have to write a background for their characters. So I don't involve my players in world creation.
Here is what my DM has done in the last (and still running) 2 years campain:
TLDR: It was not collaborative world building, but we had so much influence on the universe that we were basically building with him the state of the universe for the next campaign.
+ The world building was his. But it was not finished
+ The main NPCs were psion-like peoples. And he used it to force us to have a background, since the bad guys would frequently try to torment us with the mistakes/bad things our characters had done.
+ At the beginning of the second act of the campaign, we made a special sessions, role-play only, were we played our nemesis preparing the "conquer the world" plan. He tried to build each nemesis in opposition of our character, but then let us RP them as we wanted. We never played them again (there were our enemies for the remaining of the act, but we latter allied the surviving ones for the third act), but it made a team of recurring bad guys with strong personality.
+ We made 3 other similar RP-only session with characters other than our main characters at other points of the campaign. (Once for playing the elite force send to free us after we failed and ended up captured, once to RP the nearby kingdom being attacked by surprise by hell's army, and once to investigate a conspiracy while our main characters were negotiating peace at the Divine Concile). Each time, it leaded to 2 news NPCs that everyone liked (or liked to hate), and became recurring allied or enemies.
+ My character was the mage of the group. I am also a DM in another campain, and the DM trust me. So when there is some technical question about "how does this magical stuff work" or "what is the history of this civilization", or sometimes when doing checks to find a solution, the DM says something like "I think Dr CopperMind can make a sum-up of the situation". And I improvise the answer, filling the blank of the universe as I want.
+ We are using a system quite near to 4th edition for the skill tests, which mean that the success and the failure of an action is not that much linked to "would it realistically work". Explanations to "why does it work" or "how does it managed to work" sometimes lead to very interesting consequences on the world-building. Example: a character, acting as an envoy, succeed / fail a diplomatic test that there was no way it should have succeed / fail if this was realistic. Lets add a social norm / tradition / ... to the nation that could explain this unexpected success / failure.
+ After 1 year of campaign, our DM started another campaign in the same universe "a long time after". So we add the opportunity to describe some of the consequences of our action in their campaign. (One of the PC of the other campaign is a robot created from a template written by my character, the new capital of the empire is named after one character of our team, ...)
+ We are about to finish the campaign this summer, and the DM asked us
1) What do you want, as a player, to be the main achievement of your character
2) How would you, as a player, want this achievement to change the world in a good or bad way
3) How do you want your character to be remembered (or forgotten) in the legends
I've had a lot of success with things like this. I'll plop my players into a half-baked campaign setting, often out of necessity (there's only so much that can be done by one person, even over months/years of writing), and as they come up with things about their character that might reflect on a larger reality of the world, I work it in. As they come up with theories about how such-and-such political dynamic works, or what the major exports of such-and-such duchy HAVE to be given my description of it, I (sometimes) work it in. For example, why was one of my player's character named Zook Boddynock Namfudl, when gnomes in this campaign setting all had Scandinavian-inspired names? Turns out there were two types of gnomes (this is 3.5 D&D so that wasn't standard), and she was just not one of the predominant Old Religion gnomes. That explanation seemed fine to me, especially as Zook was a cleric to a human god, so I ended up working in that there was a major division between the (majority) Old Religion gnomes and the (minority) New Religion (i.e., human gods) gnomes. I hadn't developed gnome culture much before this point, so this player-created sectarian divide was a great way of fleshing out their culture.Quote:
Originally Posted by PhoenixPhyre
I tend to tie this in with my observation that players tend to feel more attached to things they feel a level of ownership over. So I let them fill in some small area of the campaign world to describe where their characters came from, and let them have control over what happens there (within reason).
Although as mentioned upthread, some people just like to play generic adventurers. You can ask them and offer them a chance to shape the world, but there's nothing you can do if they don't bite.
Each of us has a role.
I am the Architect (very L(e)). I focus on the realistic elements ie geography, ecology, cultural expansion and development into functional cultures.
One member is the Magician(CN). He is able to employ magic in ways that make my teeth ache and skin crawl. Just ridiculous arbitrary things. Why? "It's magic - ain't gotta 'splain ****."
One member is the Rulemaster(N). He provides technical workarounds for my obsessive orderliness and the Magician's entropophillia.
And the Tropist(N?). If what you've suggested is somehow a trope, has been done before, or is monstrously overused he'll let you know. You'll want to strangle this guy, but he is the reason the world will be fresh-to-death.
It's a team effort, and we have made some beautiful, thorough worlds.
Test your players by assigning them the task of fleshing out their backstory. Where are they from? Do people there like them? Who do they know there? Where did they train in their current career?
The ones who come back with a map of their hometown and descriptions of prominent NPCs there get to go home at some point in your campaign! You can then assign them other tasks, like designing kingdoms, trade routes, or whatever background you want but don't have time to do yourself.
I have had players help me while the game is in progress for repetitive tasks like rolling HD for monsters I plan to use later.
I have had players, when their characters have died, roleplay and roll the dice for unique monsters.
I have asked players to design buildings they would use, most notably The Green Dragon Inn with its iconic carved and painted drunk dragon reclining with a foaming mug in hand mounted on the wall behind the bar. (A player could draw...)
I let the players' involvement be their own decision. I invite them to feed me suggestions that help shape the world, and if I get anything I do my best to incorporate it. However, I'm not counting on them to help me create the world, as that's still primarily my job.
For example, I drew a map of the land surrounding my city-state and during session 0, I explained the various areas. I told them that this is just a rough idea and that they were free to come up with additions that would fit their backgrounds. All of them just went with what was already there, nobody felt the need to fill in other parts of the map.
Another example is notable places in the city. I had made a list of various important buildings and places, on which I described things like relative position in the city, its general purpose, and any interesting details. I mailed this list to my players, inviting them to give feedback and input they'd like to see. One player replied saying he'd like to see an orphanage and a 'place to get high'; I created the orphanage, but told him I'm not making a drug den - instead I gave him a place run by Halflings where he could sit and smoke pipeweed, which he was perfectly content with. The other players had no suggestions and were fine with what was given.
So in short, I love getting inspiration from my players and work their ideas/requests in my setting, but if I don't receive any then I'll get the job done myself.
Very intensive world building, but my last group used Dawn of Worlds.
We had a big white board that we used to create the map so that changes were easy to implement. Then I drew a final map on poster board.
I don't. In the past I kept asking players what they would like to play and what they would love to see in the campaign and over all the years nobody ever had any wishes whatsoever. It was always "we play whatever you prepare for us". So I just went on to prepare everything I think I can do in advance in the months before putting together a new group.
What makes it challenging is to make players aware that this isn't Generic Fantasyland where all generic stereotypes apply. I try to accomodate them by trying to add new elements to the setting that are functionally similar to whatever they say they want during character creation and once play has started.
I'm currently planning a campaign and I'm going to start by doing the general stuff (continents, cultures, species, etc.) by myself. Once II do that (and find players) I'm planning to ask my players what sorts of adventures and locations they're interested in and use that to flesh the world out a bit.
I tend to be the main worldbuilder amongst my group. There's another one like me, but outside of one setting we sort of co-wrote, I make my settings and he makes his.
So I spend a lot of time crafting settings. I study climate and geography, I study game-theory, and I deep dive into relevant media to get a "FEEL" for what I want. Then I present the world to my players, provide them a setting guide + PHB, and we have our session zero. During this, I give control over to the players. If they decide they want the Elves of this setting to have a Tree-God because it lets them roleplay a Nature Cleric, fine. If they want to add Half-Vampires (assuming I can whip something up), also good. As long as they don't reverse a couple of "CORE" setting concepts I lay out, they can do whatever. Most of the time they just ask for clarifications and small addendums to make their characters a little more fun and fit the setting. Or, make the setting fit them.
I have the opposite. I have players who come up with character concepts, sometimes extremely specific ones, and then it's hell to talk them down from it. My last player sat down and said "So, I want to play a sorcerer who is the incarnation of the concept of winter. He'll have ice magic and summon wolves." AT which point I replied "Uh, I told you the campaign is Greek mythology inspired, right? And you all agreed that sounded like fun?" at which point the second player said "Oh. I wanted to play a dragonborn diplomat from fantasy China with Kung Fu moves".Quote:
Originally Posted by Yora
Which ended up with a lot of rewriting. Now I've learned to let the players make the character first, then make the world. Not ask them for input, then write the world with that input, because it's about 50-50 if they'll make something that doesn't remotely fit in what they themselves said sounded cool.
It's my experience that players are very bad at telling you what they want when asked directly.Quote:
Originally Posted by Yora
This is similar to how consumers are bad at predicting their own buying habits.
The techniques which poll makers use to elicit opinions from consumers can be used to get good information from players -- but this is not trivial, and I wouldn't expect every DM to have the inclination (nor ability) to put this into practice. It's interesting, though, so if you do have the inclination then give it a try.
-- -- --
You can try to read character-building decisions as player intent, but that can be tricky, because every element has so many different possible meanings.
As an example, let's say a player wants to play a Tiefling. Does this mean:
- The player wants Tieflings to be common.
- The player wants Tieflings to be rare (so the player can feel special), yet discriminated against (so the player can act out vengeance against fictional bigots).
- The player wants Tieflings to be rare (so the player can feel special), yet not particularly discriminated against, perhaps because Planecape is nearby and extra-planar oddities as a whole are not uncommon. The player wants to visit Planescape-type destinations.
- The player wants to have a PC of type Outsider (native) with +2 Dexterity and +2 Hide, nothing more.
- The player wants to be Annah from Planescape: Torment.
- The player liked the picture in the book.
One, more than one, or none of those might be the correct answer.
Accommodating the player might mean having NPCs treat the character poorly, or it might mean not doing that.
Humans are difficult creatures.
Which is why voluntary submissions work so well.
Players are seldom professional content designers. Assigning them tasks is unlikely to produce positive results unless you know their interests and abilities. Expecting them to adhere to assumed themes in characted design is also likely to fail unless you establish guidelines. The very worst thing you can do is ask, "What do you want?" Because what they want in the first half hour after the question is asked is very different from what they want the next day after thinking about it.
I find that allowing them to create what they want to create then encouraging them by including their submission in a meaningful way works well. For example, if a player creates a hobgoblin culture, don't place if in an obscure corner of the map; have them encounter the hobgoblins in game. This will encourage your players to make further submissions which will allow you to gauge their interests.
Once you know what they want to do, you can guide them to produce what you need. For example, the guy who submitted the example hobgoblins might be enticed to create an orc tribe of a barbarian halfling culture, of other similar content. The idea is to discover their strengths then play to them.