Questions tagged [world-building]
For questions about world-building, the process of creating a complete, coherent and convincing world to use as a setting for RPG adventures.
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What's the up side of aquatic campaigns in Pathfinder?
Everything I've found about aquatic campaigns would suggest that they are inherently more difficult than traditional campaigns, for the GM and player both.
The Rules Difficulties
For one thing, ...
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How do I safely break stereotypes in my games?
In the LARP system I play, there are some stereotypes heavily in-grained into the player base. For instance, goblins are squeaky-voiced, hyperactive, and (often) violent humanoids.
These sorts of ...
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Fortifying & Defending a shop in a city
When they're not adventuring, the PCs in my campaign own a magic item shop in a very large city. They have a staff, inventory, marketing, and in general it operates like you'd expect an item shop to ...
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How do I make Locations important?
This is a two-part question about Locations in Fiasco:
How do I make Locations important to the story? In every Fiasco game that I have played so far, the story has been driven by the Needs of the ...
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Incorporating smell, taste, and weather underwater
Related to this question and this question.
I am interested in building up the atmosphere of my aquatic campaign, and to do so, I would like to incorporate all the players' senses. But I am at a loss ...
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Resources for designing aquatic campaigns
General world building information is easy to come by, but I have trouble finding information about underwater environments in AD&D 2e. While I am open to non-AD&D resources, I would prefer ...
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Underground as an engaging environment? [closed]
The fantasy underground, the underworld, the caves, the depths ... that's a whole new world below the surface ...
... or, at least, it should be the new, exciting world below surface. I'm mentioning ...
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How should a GM best handle a lack of canonical lore in a pre-existing world?
Occasionally, players may want to play in a setting which does not have a detailed canonical lore. Consider, for instance, many computer RPG worlds; their lore tends to be very localized, however, ...
user8248
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How can established settings contact each other, and are there rules about it?
I've actually had some of my questions answered browsing through the forums; however, I wanted to address some issues that may come of my conclusions!
First off, I haven't DM'd since the first ...
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A game where death is permanent?
I'm running a D&D 4e campaign where the underlying story arc features Orcus and his followers. It starts with a run-in with a Cult of Orcus, and gradually escalates with the party finding that the ...
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What are the best RPG bestiary books containing monsters inspired by East Asian cultures? [closed]
The setting for my current game has a mix of cultures and influences from the Far East, and I am looking for sources for monsters inspired by Chinese/East-Asian cultures, such as China, Japan, ...
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In a high magic setting, how should I introduce "unnatural" magic?
I am going to run a game of 13th Age, which is pretty high magic - the industry of the world is primarily enhanced by ritual magic (wind elemental bind to sailing ships, rituals ensuring good weather ...
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Mutant Chronicles: Luna City and Moon physics
Okay, this is in fact a bunch of related sub-questions, but I'll try and sum them up in one:
How has the physical workings of the Moon -- home to the new central hub of humanity: Luna -- changed in ...
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How do you make a new NPC likable?
The players in my campaign will soon rescue a woman who's been trapped in an awful dimension (think Jumanji, if that helps) for ten years, and bring her home. After 2 sessions, they'll realize that ...
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Effect of natural environment on the development of cultures [closed]
Let there be this quantitative question: how do the specifics of a natural environment influence the development of a newborn culture?
Please note: I'm not looking for any deus ex machinas, divine ...
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What resources should I use to create a mod for d20 Modern? [closed]
This is a tangent off of my question about Looking for a Space marine RPG similar to Starship Troopers (the Novel) where there were some good suggestions about systems to use or modify to meet my ...
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How to make players care about a community
I've built a lot of villages, some towns and a city or two but I've failed to bring them to life and make the PCs feel like they belong there (maybe not much belong but to just make them care about ...
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Evolving a region from war torn to merchant hub
Currently in my planning for my campaign I have a desert region that would make for a great way to travel, except tribes of Monkeys are at war. One side quest I have planned out has the players end ...
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Can we add trains in D&D without breaking the world
Question upfront: Is there a way I can add trains to the core world of D&D 3.5 (Greyhawk/Oerth) without “messing up” the world or its economies?
Reason:
1st: Mainly, it makes no sense to me ...
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What setting changes need to be addressed in order to convert Golarion to the E6 variant system?
For those who are confused what E6 is, please go here: E6: The Game Inside D&D
I will be running an E6 game in Golarion in a few weeks. Two main assumptions I have made in the E6 version I am ...
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What are the key considerations to creating compelling environments?
An area I am close to revealing to my players was barren rock, until I realised adding a few kinds of plants and some crystal spires (which have very good reason to be there) took the location from ...
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How do you customise swearing to a setting?
Good fantasy books often have 'custom' swearing, and they help provide a more realistic view of the world the campaign takes place in. For instance, in a book where metals are key to magic, a common ...
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Fantasy accent and dialect, or how do I speak like Tom Hanks in Cloud Atlas?
For example, inhabitants of Planescape setting say things like "chant" for news or gossip, "berk" or "cutter" for a kind of adventurer, "barmy" for crazy, etc.
I want to portray a guy from a far away ...
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In depth world building. Making connections [closed]
I was reading an article (I lost the page due to Internet failure and don't have the link) on world building and it was talking about in depth world building, the article begins by talking about ...
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Giving a setting a feeling of ancientness
I'm creating a world for my next game and I want it to feel like a very ancient world with multiple fallen empires and wars in it's history. I want to build a very detailed setting and have my players ...
user4000
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How do significantly differing male and female lifespans change my setting? [closed]
I am currently creating a dryad-themed fantasy setting and want it to feature a matriarchal society. My patriarchal-raised brain (needlessly) needs a reason for why this is so, and so I have created ...
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Looking for a nice magic system to convert to FATE [closed]
I'm playing around a lot with the FATE system at the moment (particularly with Diaspora) and I'm now looking at how I might apply it to a fantasy setting. What I'm looking for is a nice magic system ...
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How to have a realistic set of languages without making adventuring prohibitively difficult?
"Do you speak Common?" "Of course I do! Everyone speaks Common..."
My group is starting a somewhat experimental campaign. We're using a setting that is neither canon (e.g. described in a book) nor ...
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How do you keep the party on the map?
I'm running a fairly sandbox game, where the party can wander around easily from place to place. When the party visits areas I've prepared something for, they generally have a good time. When they ...
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City Services Generation [closed]
I'm looking for a way to determine typical numbers of services that would be available for a medieval city/town/village based on population which I can then project into a fantasy setting. (System is ...
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Flat or flattish earth issues [closed]
What major effects would having a flat or rather flattish earth instead of a planet on a game world? (Technological, social, physical etc.)
Mind you, I'm not looking for fully detailed scientific ...
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How would society adjust if use of fire is reserved for the elite? [closed]
This is an extraction of one of the central questions arising from my original (overly broad) question.
In a society where the use of fire has been restricted, due to religious indoctrination, to the ...
user4030
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How can I represent the use of fire being misrepresented in a campaign?
This is an extraction of one of the central questions arising from my original (overly broad) question.
I would like to know how to best represent the concept that there is a god who is, through a ...
user4030
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How to make rituals a part of everyday life
I would like to know how to make it clear that little, non-magical rituals such as a blessing before eating, drawing water, harvesting grain, starting a fire and the like are a part of everyday life, ...
user4030
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Looking for help on expanding my campaign concept while avoiding railroading
I have split this into two more specific questions:
How can I represent the use of fire being misrepresented in a campaign? and How to make rituals a part of everyday life.
Below is the broad-strokes ...
user4030
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Fantasy economy: how to design a deep, sophisticated crafting system? [closed]
I want to construct an immersive, complex and functional fantasy economy in order to inform my world-building process. I'm interested in finding a working economic model and applying that into low-...
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Dark Ages/Middle Ages marriage age? [closed]
I am trying to keep a fair degree of verisimilitude in my fantasy games (outside the obviously fantastical elements like magic and dragons). As part of that, the normal/average marriage age for ...
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What happens in adventure locations between adventures?
I'm running a sandbox with several adventure locations that have been visited, but not entirely cleared, and ones that have been left open for new residents to arrive.
I'm looking for a method for ...
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World Development - A Fresh Start
If this is not the place for this type of question, redirect me - I am new here, and apologize in advance.
So. My group is looking for something new. Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 in my own setting is our ...
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How to adapt a 3e community-building system for a larger-scale use in a 4e game?
This question is a follow up to Point buy/structured system for cooperative 4e campaign building?.
I've found a system that is quite close to what we want/need, but there's a catch: it's for 3e and ...
user2862
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Point buy/structured system for cooperative 4e campaign building?
Our group is currently building a campaign world (one nation per player) for the Pillars of the State campaign (as suggested in the DMG2 somewhere around page 170).
Today we encountered the "problem" ...
user2862
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Is there a game that places a similar amount of emphasis on the creation of worlds by player characters as the Myst series? [closed]
A major part of the premise of the Myst series is that a number of characters in the setting can 'write' worlds (mostly ones you could walk across in a few minutes). The gameplay of the series is ...
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How do I get my dresden files players involved in city creation?
I've tried to involve my players in city creation a few times through the course of the game, usually whenever they are about to finish up a story arc, but I usually all I get are just get a few ...
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Pre-modern farming: What percent of the population is in agriculture? [closed]
I'm running a premodern setting where the characters will be involved in local administration. Assuming no magic, how many farmers does it take to support one non-farmer? Any statistics/estimates ...
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As a GM, how do you establish the reality of your world? [closed]
Having a discussion with a friend about our views of GMing, I realized that we take very different approaches to what our worlds are.
My view is that when I GM, the world exists as-is before the ...
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Stats for a Sorcerer King in 4E's Dark Sun?
I am in the middle of building a campaign and part of it takes place in the Athas. I am wanting to present the party with an actual threat towards the end of their stay in the hellacious world of Dark ...
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Has anyone produced a drop-in well-reasoned economy for a fantasy game? [closed]
I've seen so many attempts to justify this or that crazy thing in various fantasy RPG economies, but they don't tend to hold water as far as I've seen. I realize that suspension of disbelief is ...
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List of (small northern US town) occupations? [closed]
Let's say I'd like to run a campaign inspired by David Lynch's Twin Peaks, and would like to learn a bit about the everyday life of such towns outside what's been presented on the show - as a first ...
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Regional Resource Management and Trade Rules [closed]
I've been looking at TSR's old Birthright setting lately, searching for an easy way to quantify trade between political entities. I'm thinking about ways for a city or region or planet to develop ...
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Looking for resource material for a dream world [closed]
I have started working on a world that is set in a dream realm. I am using it to create one-off gaming sessions that I can do in a single day and pull in any characters that are currently being used. ...
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