World Building: Starting a World Book

A World Book (often called a Campaign Bible) is exactly what it sounds like. A book of your world. It describes the people, places, and things in the world and provides a way to organize your thoughts. It's not something your bring to the table (usually) but rather a resource for preparing adventures. The structure of a world book should be well-defined, with sections divided by subject matter and a regular template within each section. You don't want to spend all of your planning time rummaging through disorganized notes.

A World Book can take many forms. It can be a simple notebook with pages between sections left blank to fill in later, a 3-ring binder, or even an online wiki. What medium to choose largely depends on personal preference and how much exposition and detail you want your world to contain.

Sections of a World Book

There are four major sections of a World Book: People, Places, Things, and Events. Each of these sections can have subsections, but try not to divide any deeper. Nothing needs to be written out long-form; every section can just be full of bullet-point notes. See the examples section at the end of this post for some excerpts from my own World Book.

People

There's going to be two definite subsections to People. The first is Peoples. In the Peoples section you describe each race's ethnic traits, religions, and cultural history. The second section is Important Individuals. These are the important players in your world, past and present. Describe their physical traits, achievements, and legends that may have appeared around those achievements.

Places

Primarily this section is interested with describing the regions of your world. Focus on background details like climate and geography and then start thinking about territories. At the highest level of detail a page in this section might outline a nation-state including its climate, people (referring to the People section), imports, exports, and political/military situation. This section is part of a feedback loop with your world map. The map creates natural barriers and biomes that form the basis of territories, which in turn inform where on the map you draw borders, roads, fortresses, etc.

Things

This is a bit of a catch-all, but most importantly this section describes technology. How does the complex interaction of magic and technology play out in your world? Who makes the best weapons in the world? What do the armies of the richest nations equip their soldiers with?

Events

History should be spread throughout your World Book where appropriate to help describe things. This section is for describing the world-changing events that shape the course of your world's history and influence everything that happens after.

Examples from Teredahar

Example of a detailed cultural history

The Psionic Peoples
Sometime around TR 8000 the Illithid race began expanding their domain in the deep subterranean of Tereredahar. Their conquests brought them a vast number of new peoples to consume or enslave. They already had Gith slaves since before coming to Prime. The Drow make poor slaves, but the dwarves and humans they found in their midst proved quite suitable. Modern Illithid society in The Deep and on the Astral Plane was built on the backs of legions of human and dwarven slaves.
In addition to simple slave labor, members of the Prime-native races were subjected to scientific experimentation. It was the survivors of these experiments who became the first psionics. They would come to be called Wilders. The trauma of their ordeals became a source of power then turned to rage against their captors.
Together with a force of natural-born sorcerers, the wilders staged a slave uprising and overthrew their masters. They fled deeper into The Deep to hide from reprisal and there began to study their powers and form a society. They called themselves the Deep Covenant.
With the help of the Deep Covenant more slaves where freed and more psionics joined their cause. The generation of formally-trained psionics were called Psions. In time they became the majority among the Deep Covenant. In time different ideological groups broke off from the Deep Covenant and chose to live elsewhere in The Deep and on the surface of Teredahar. They are Dal'Hellum, The Deepstalkers, and the Wind People.

Dal'Hellum

• Comprised almost entirely of Duergar (deep dwarves)
• Largest population is under Ashdar in the Upper Deep and in some mountainhomes, most notably Kor's Geode, where they overthrew the Mountain Dwarf ruler in TR 10080
• They're known to be sneaky and cunning
• They practice an ordered, logical training regimen that makes them good soldiers when they choose to act openly (which is infrequent)

Example of a Nation-State

The United Republic of Din

• Boundaries (neighbours): The Pale River (Kurudar), Balsom River (Koldar), Koldar River (Ashdar), The Dragon Ocean
• Primary inhabitants: Plains Dwarves, Hill Dwarves, Humans
• Biomes: Coastal lowlands, swamp, volcanic wash, damp coastal islands
• Climate: Temperate with humid summers and rainy winters
• Political: Elective representative republic. One of the few democracies on Teredahar.
• Largest Settlement: Dolvan Keep, a large city built around an old fortress. It is the seat of government and a major north-south trading hub, particularly for the export of refined metal ingots.
• Exports: Raw and worked metal, lumber, fish
• Imports: Food, textiles, magical goods

Example of a piece of technology

Powerstone Cannon

• A typical powerstone shell is a rough sphere, about 8" wide. Some are larger or smaller.
• Powerstone shells are very prone to breaking (and exploding) if damaged
• They handle blunt impacts ok, but if hit on a point will shatter
• Before the invetion of metal jackets for the shells, the cannon barrels had to be completely smooth to avoid breaking the shell in the barrel
• Metal jackets have led some weaponsmiths to experiment with rifled-barrel artillery pieces

At The Table: Adding Detail to Combat

Combat is a core element of D&D. The vast majority of the rules are related to adjudicating combat, and the majority of character's abilities are only really useful in combat situations. The side-effect of this is that combat is a very mechanics-heavy math break that can break player's immersion in the game as they study their character sheets, battle mat, and dice. One simple way to help hold players in the universe is by adding more description to events. Instead of simply saying "the Orc's attack misses", a GM wanting to improve immersion could say "the Orc swings wide, leaving a gash in the wall behind you" while looking across the table at the player who is being attacked. Producing these descriptions quickly without pausing or stammering requires either practice or preparation. Here are some guidelines to help you provide these on-the-fly descriptions of action:

Know the surroundings

This comes naturally when designing an encounter. Most encounters can be thought of as taking place in an arena, be it a dungeon room or square kilometer of woodlands. Whatever the area you expect your battle to take place in, be sure you know what's in it. Focus on things likely to be interacted with or stood near during battle like as walls, terrain, and anything players or enemies might use for cover.

Know the actors' defenses

To effectively add detail you'll need to know what defenses the players and enemies have. This is important so you know if you can describe an arrow glancing off a fighter's shield or being stopped in a flash of light from a wizard's Mage Armor. The easiest way to keep track of this it to have access to a copy of each of your players' character sheets, and keep track of temporary defenses (like Mage Armor) on a scratch pad.

Melee Attack Misses

Result relative to AC	Attack stopped by*	Example Outcomes
Close call -1 to -2	Armour, or Natural Armorr	The attack got past your defenses and struck your body. You were saved only by your armour "The warhammer strikes with a loud crunch, but your armour holds" "The blade glances off your armour, trailing sparks"
Blocked -2 to -5	Shield or Deflection	The attack was on-target but you kept it from hitting your body "You parry the attack with your shield" "The blade is turned aside by your magic defenses"
Miss -5 or lower**	Dex	You evaded the attack, or it went wide and hit something around you "The Golem swings his axe high and you simply duck under it" "The Orc swings wide, smashing the table next to you and scattering its contents across the floor"

Ranged Attack Misses

Result relative to AC	Attack stopped by*	Example Outcomes
Near-miss*** -1 to -3	Natural Armour or Shield	"The shot embeds itself in your shield" "Your arrow breaks against the dragon's scales"
Close -3 to -5	Armour, Deflection, or Dex	"The bolt plinks off your armour" "You sidestep the shot"
Miss -5 or lower	Object or terrain	"The arrow embeds itself in the wall behind you" "The shot goes sailing off into the night"

*If the character doesn't have this defense, pick the next one down
**Within reason, a very bad role doesn't require any player ability to evade
***I use a home-rule where projectile near-misses have a chance of hitting a randomly-chosen adjacent target.

World Building: Where to Begin

Start Small

You probably have grand ideas in your head about what your campaign world will be like: cities floating in the clouds, fierce battles, golden plains of wheat stretching to the horizon, things like that. That's good but thinking about such things before pencil hits paper is just going to give you too much to worry about too soon.

Focus on just a single location where your first few play sessions will take place. The GM guides are a great resource for setting up a single coherent location. I recommend this location be a settlement with a nearby adventure. This kind of "starting town with a haunted mine" seems cliche but there's a simple reason it turns up everywhere: It's easy for both the GM and the players. Everyone knows what to expect which means you can focus on getting used to your players and new players can get used to the game. The guidebooks will help you handle the mechanics of a town and the first adventure site, but the look and feel of the place is still up to you.

A Basic, Believable Settlement

...Just add water. Seriously, assuming your setting is using the pseudo-medieval background expected by most game systems then access to water is an essential first step in creating a town. A river or lake provides drinking water, irrigation for crops, a way to move goods, and a source of food.

...Heat/chill until ready. The next consideration is climate. Human civilization springs up in virtually every place with sunlight and access to fresh water, so this is mostly just a flavour decision. Choose carefully though, because no climate exists in a vacuum and when it comes time to zoom the map out and create surrounding areas it will be your job to make the terrain believable.

...Season to taste. Now that you know the climate of your settlement you can actually create the place. I highly recommend basing your settlement on real-world examples from similar climates. Earth has examples of people living in virtually every environment imaginable and reading about places like yours will help you get a clear mental picture of what the place looks like. Once you have that picture in your head you can shape it to fit what you have designed on the mechanical side (races, population, etc) and use that image to describe it at the table.

Conservation of Detail

Now that you have your anchor town as a dot on the map, it's going to be very lonely without some more dots. Good storytelling makes the world seem bigger than just what's on the page. Consider some of the dialogue from the first act of Star Wars: A New Hope. On Tattooine the characters throw out location names like "Anchorhead", "Toshi Station" and "Mos Eisely" in casual conversation, but only one of those places is ever visited in the main storyline. It's good to have such places just for some NPC to say they're from there, have news arrive about there, or just give the players new places to think about once they're settled in your starting village. Just don't get carried away.

Conservation of Detail is about making the areas near the players feel alive and populated without having to design everything up-front. Travel in medieval settings is usually very slow. Few people ever travel beyond the borders of their own county much less to the next nation. What this means for you is that only the area within a few miles of your settlement and adventure site needs to be fleshed out. If there are mountains in the distance, draw them, and if you want a well-known major city in the same region as the players you should know which road leads there but not necessarily where it is.

That's all that's needed to start a new campaign setting. If your players like it there will be more work to finish when they leave the first settlement & adventure site.

About

This Blog

Until I'm convinced anyone is actually reading this I'm sticking to train-of-thought first-person writing. This blog is a place for me to write down notes about my game mastering (henceforth 'GMing') methods and the answers to questions I've been asked one time too many. If this becomes worthy of any greater effort then maybe things will get more formal, but for now it's just me and Blogger.

Some topics I hope to cover are world creation and at-the-table GMing. Articles will be short, focused, and contain first-hand examples when possible. The intended reader is a new GM or player interested in GMing, with access to the necessary rulebooks and the ability to Google things.

The Author

I started playing D&D around 2000 not long after 3rd edition came out. In 2002 I started developing my own campaign setting and GMing short 1-off games for a group of friends. Later that year once my setting had matured a little I began what remains the longest-running campaign I've ever run. From 2002 to 2005 I ran a group of 6 to 8 players through an ever-evolving campaign set in my world. When 3.5E came out we immediately picked it up as a marked improvement over 3E. To date I've never run a premade module though I've played a few. I vastly prefer the personal touches of homemade settings.

After a long hiatus in university where I GM'd very little I decided to get back into it. I'd played 4E a handful of times but it wasn't for me, so I switched from D&D to Pathfinder. Since the majority of my experience was in 3.5 I found the jump to Pathfinder much more tolerable. I'm on the third year now of GM'ing for my current group, and still using a refined version of the setting I created in 2002.

Copyrights

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