Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 Zarameus Feb 02, 2015 4:47:14	Hello all! I'm quite new here, both to these forums and to D&D in general. I'll spare you my history and Jump to the matter at hand.   So I'm looking to start DMing a game, but I'm not keen on doing so in a world that's not my own. This may be biting off a bit more than I can chew at the moment, but I'd like to go about creating my own world in which to play.   While I've been making up worlds and stories for fun since I was a teenager, I'm a bit concerned about being inclusive. This may be a tricky inquiry to make, so please bare with me... I want to make sure I include a justification for all the game's features.   An example I can immediately think of is the cleric. Now, D&D has a lot of divine forces involved, and cleric subclasses seem to come from whatever god they choose to worship. I'm not usually one to include so many gods, or to have them be so prevalent - but I don't want to limit the cleric in any way. Like, if I don't have a storm god of sorts, how can I justify the presence of the storm type cleric? But if someone wants to play one, I don't want to say they can't.   And the books mention various planes and dimensions as well. Some creatures, perhaps even some abilities, seem to derive power or in some way originate from these planes - but I'm not so sure if these different planes jive with what I have in mind. Would not including them hamper anything? Would it somehow negatively affect something?   Reading this back to myself I feel as if I'm probably overthinking things a lot.   I guess I'm just a bit lost, and I do have a tenancy to overthink things, so perhaps I need some help feeling myself back in. The DM guide has some tips for building a world of your own, but it hasn't yet assuaged these particular concerns.   Should I perhaps follow the template and come up with my own pantheon of gods to be safe? Or come up with my own sorts of elemental planes so I don't leave anything out? Or am I thinking way too hard about this?   I suppose another good question would be, what's a good starting point in world building - especially if you're just getting started and want to start out small?   Thank you for reading through this jumble. I apologize if I seem a little batty - I just have trouble with my thoughts sometimes. And thank you for any possible advice!
#2 AaronOfBarbaria Feb 02, 2015 5:56:57	Start extremely small. You can build the rest of the world as your players have their characters go places and do things during the campagin.   Don't build anything until it is needed, otherwise you might end up wasting a lot of effort.   I usually start building a world with a single location. This location is where the characters will be when not out on an adventure, or at least where they will be as their campaign begins.   I only think up the most prominent religion in the area of that location and the type of clerics that religion produces (if any) - any other faiths are left for later when encountered through the campaign, or for a player to come up with as part of their character (having not already defined every possible religion in the world = letting the player introduce their own ideas and share more deeply in your setting).   Once I've got that starting point created, I'll decide on the first "adventure location" and build that up, then fill in the blanks between the two.   For example, I'll share the origin of the most recent world that I started building (which is still in progress, slowly expanding and being defined and detailed with each campaign my group plays). The steps of building the world that took place before play started: I was inspired to this campaign by Harry Potter, and by the famous D&D party The Circle of Eight, so the intial "home base" location was an academy of higher learning and wizardry at which the characters would be students. I drew a sketchy map of the campus grounds, walled up and set in the mountains, some caves behind, numerous buildings (a few towers for class rooms, libraries, offices, and such, the administrative building, a dormitory for students, a few houses for teachers to live in, a combination market, stables, and apartment building for support staff, et cetera), and the road leading away from the main gate. Deciding that the characters might need more than just the academy could reasonably provide, I decided to place a small city just down the mountain road. Decided a river ran out of the mountains from beneath the academy and through the city, and then set about naming the relevant geographical features (the mountain range, the river, the town, and the country was given a derivitive name from the mountain range). Jotted down a list of important faculty positions, the names (and magical specialities) of the faculty that fill those positions. Made up a few notable students that player characters would be familiar with, and then we started playing. That tiny area (all fits within one 6-mile hex on my campaign map) expanded over the last three years into 9 continents made of of dozens of countries, each with numerous locations detailed, and in regards to religions expanded from "there is a temple in the city by the academy dedicated to each the goddess of magic and the goddess of healing" to a full-page list containing the 7 deities commonly worshipped, and the dozens of demon princes, archdevils, and great old ones capable of granting divine magic to their faithful cultists.
#3 Ranthalan Feb 02, 2015 8:01:51	Like Aaron said, start out small.  But also start out high level and work your way deeper as needed.  For example, in my current campaign which has only had one session, I have created all the gods, but they're a no more than names, alignments and domains.  More details will be added when it becomes important.   I discuss my player's character for weeks before we start playing.  This tells me all the places I'll need to start defining first, but only small details like: where is the player's homeland in relation to the other players.  There's a big city which is important to my campaign.  One of the characters is a monk.  I didn't want to put her monestary in the city, so now I know there's a monastery near by.   Another suggestion is to start a Wiki.  This is usefull for organization for you, gives the players a place to see useful info, and it also allows players to help create the world.
#4 Zarameus Feb 02, 2015 10:57:51
#5 DarthMacho Feb 02, 2015 13:08:32	I'm not sure if I can give you any advice, but I wanted to offer you my perspective based on my recent world-building experience. I want to start off by saying that I feel EXACTLY like you do, wanting to create a world of my own, but having a quandry over how to go about it. I tried twice to build my world, first by starting small, and then when I failed, tried starting big, and then failed again. I was back to starting small again, and was heading towards failure, when I came up with an idea of how to het help with the world building, and now I'm having a LOT more success.    This is what I did: I sat down with my 4 players and created 5e characters with them, helping them fill in some things in a limited way with some of the ideas I had in my head that I couldn't put together. Once my players' 4 characters were made, I took their sheets and used them to build a part of my world that seemed to fit, and here's how...    One player chose to be a human fighter with the Folk Hero background. One of the details I plucked from his character was that he chose to be Calishite. Since I'm creating my own world, and not playing Forgotten Realms, I decided there was no harm in making a homebrewed Calimshan in my world. Being a folk hero, I created a small village outside the capital of Calimport, and his defining event was facing down a monster alone, which he decided was a green dragon, which prompted me to add a forested area on the border where this dragon may have come from to attack his village. Giving him the dragon claw trinket suggested that while he faced off with the dragon, he didn't kill it, just drove it away, thus having a potential future enemy on the horizon!   Anyway, I imagine you are getting the idea, so I'll just add a few more details on how I branched out this idea. The player that chose the dwarf cleric helped me hash out a pantheon of gods and how the divien domains work. The wood elf ranger with favored enemies of orcs, goblins, and dragons helped me fill in some other humanoid races and monsters. (Perhaps her people have encountered the same green dragon that the human has?) Finally, the gnome bard with the artisan (cook) background has given me a variety of ideas too!   It's still taking me a while to put it all together, but I'm hoping that my players will appreciate my homebrewed world when they realize how they contributed so much to building it. I hope that any of what I shared can be some help to you. If not, sorry for taking up your time. Good luck!
#6 Barky Feb 02, 2015 16:41:17	Something else you may want to try is to have "aspects" of the gods.   In other words, a particular goddess could be have one aspect that's protection-based, and another aspect that's warrior-based.   Apollo is the god of the sun but also (per Wikipedia) the god of music, poetry, art, oracles, archery, plague, medicine, sun, light & knowledge. You can fit a lot of themes and styles under just that one list of aspects.   -----   I love world building, blogging about it here if you're interested: http://community.wizards.com/user/1946801/blog.   I'm probably over-doing it, but it's because I really like doing it. The advice "start small" is very good advice, especially the first time through.
#7 Zarameus Feb 02, 2015 16:41:36	Not that I delight in your confusion, but I'm sorta glad I'm not the only one feeling overwhelmed by all this!   It's a big help to see how it evolves, and  this proves that starting small and working with your players is the way to go, especially for beginners. And the little touches like the dragon claw trinket sound like great additional details.   And I love your green dragon nemesis. I can't help but imagine this long standing rivalry with this beast, eventually leading to a Jurassic Park style climax where he unwittingly saves the party by devouring an encroaching deadly threat...   But thank you muchly for your perspective! It's great to be able to see how others go about it.
#8 Zarameus Feb 02, 2015 16:49:59	Barky wrote:
#9 abs1nth Feb 03, 2015 4:39:28	Zarameus wrote:
#10 Zarameus Feb 03, 2015 6:05:15	You know, just hearing the ease with which you mention changing the source of planar abilities is sort of a relief in itself. I suppose my worry is that by changing the lore, I'll in some way create a discrepancy with the rules or mechanics of the game. Perhaps that's just me making things too complicated for myself.   I'm still sorta torn about gods. I have an idea for one that at least encapsulates two domains and could possibly cover most if not all the others as well, but the more I think about it, it might be fun to add a few more. Maybe I'll just spend some time making a few up and seeing if I like how they fit together.   And thinking about it in terms of existing fantasy worlds is a good way to look at it. I imagine most of us, myself included, have preferences or favored genres that speak to us. Using them as sort of a jumping off point seems like s good way to start out.   Thank you all for the input and the well-wishes! I'm so appreciative for everyone's advice. Just being able to talk to people about it instead of a book is a big help.
#11 BRJN Feb 03, 2015 17:18:21	Zarameus wrote:
#12 Jedric0202 Feb 03, 2015 19:40:18	Going back to bringing your characters into the process, tell them you're building a world, give them a quick run down of some of the major themes and unique features of the world, and then ask them what characters they would most likely be interested in playing.  If no one wants to play a cleric in the first place, why try to figure out how to include every domain?  Take cues from your players and focus on the institutions and powers-that-be that their characters would be most profoundly affected by.   Or, as an alternative, you can try my current method.  I'm also building a world at the moment that I plan to put into play six months to a year from now once we finish our present foray into HotDQ and RoT. Because I'm trying to take several my players' Tolkien-esque preconceptions and flip them about, I have restricted what races and classes are available to play at the start.  By doing so, I can focus on what options are available and flesh them out ad nauseum.  In order to foster the theme of exploration in my world, I then started placing the restricted options around my world map as "unlockables." For example, monks are not an immediately playable class.  However, if I have a character who is interested in learning to become a monk, he and the other PCs can go explore the distant Empire of Scales (final name still up in the air) and try to convince a local master to teach him in the secret martial arts. I'll also be implenting some re-training rules so that my players can make the builds they want without feeling like they wasted a few levels.   Admittedly, it's not a technique everyone will feel comfortable with, so I would get your group's blessing before doing so.
(Reply to #5) Akeisha	DarthMacho wrote:
#14 Akeisha Feb 03, 2015 20:39:45	Zarameus wrote: