Why? Simple. It helps fuel the imagination. Roll the dice, and one of four numbers comes up. Assign one of four potential results to each number, and our tetrahedral friend makes the choices for you - within four rolls, you should have created a basic world framework, which you can then begin furnishing.
Doesn't sound like much, does it? But four rolls of a d4 give results in any one of two hundred and fifty-six combinations. And if that's not enough to get your creative juices flowing, then a further roll boosts the number of possible world frameworks to one thousand and twenty four -and seeing as you decide what the variables for each roll are, technically there's no limit to the possibilities. This method will work with other types of dice as well, but it can get tricky thinking up six, ten, twelve or twenty different possibilities. Four is a good number.
So: let's try an example. Say I want to build a whole world from scratch? I grab my trusty dice, second, I think up four possibilities. First up: climate. Is the world hot, cold, or comfortably in between? Or does the climate vary to wild extremes at each end of the year? I'm assuming the world is a planet on the prime material plane, occupied by fairly "normal" plant and animal life, rather than being a demiplane of crystal trees and sentient mushrooms.
A one denotes a world on the prime material plane with a warm climate, meaning deserts, jungles, and small temperate zones near the "arctic" circle.
A result of two denotes a world a long way from its star, or in the grip of an ice age - most of it is frozen over, and most of the rest is tundra, except a narrow temperate band near the equator
A three makes for an average world similar to earth - a healthy mix of hot, cold and temperate spread fairly evenly across the whole thing
A four means a planet with pretty extreme weather and climate conditions - lethally cold during the winters, blisteringly hot in the summers.
Here goes... I rolled a two. Pack your parkas. But how bad is it out there? Is it fairly mild, or brass monkeys? On a scale of one to four, one being mild, and four being lethally harsh...
I rolled a 4. Baby, it's cold outside.
Now that we've established the average climate, what kind of land mass is there? Are there many large continents, with easy access between the world's realms, or does the world consist of a series of extended archipelagos of small islands? Odds says continents, evens says islands.
Roll 2: results in a 3. Our world may well be an earth-like planet in the grip of an ice age. Huge glaciers have rolled down from the far north and south polar regions, burying the old way of life and forcing the inhabitants to begin anew as nomadic Inuit types, hunting, foraging and scraping a living off the tundra.
What caused our ice age, then? Let's find out...
Let's say, it's one of the following:
1: The Ice Queen herself, Auril, for reasons of her own, or maybe a cabal of her followers, who have since been promoted high in the goddess' esteem for their supreme gift.
2: A natural event (meteor strike or an earthquake that disrupted an important undersea current).
3: A horrendously powerful creature of ice (such as a Xixecal or five).
4: A colossal planar breach to a plane of such awesome cold, that it has leeched a significant degree of the heat from the planet (presumably sited over one or even both of the poles).
Rolling for the third time... a two. Oh well. Nothing exciting there. This world is just having a bad hair day and things should clear up in a few thousand years barring some impossibly potent magical intervention.
What do civilized races have most to fear in this brave, chilly new world (besides the cold)?
1: goblinoid tribes that have adapted well to the cold, and established fierce empires.
2: white dragons
3: each other
4: invading outsiders of some description.
The fourth roll is: a 3. Okay, what's my imagination throwing at me?
I see a war-torn world, where tight-knit tribes and communities endlessly compete for the frozen resources of a frigid wasteland. Fishing on the icebarg-haunted seas brings sustenance to some, others fight to defend the limited supply of arable land, whereas other nomadic types defend their yak herds wile others seek to claim them for their meat, milk and valuable fur. The status quo is a harsh one - trust only your kin, sleep with an eye open, and never leave your village without your spear and cloak.
There are no formal organisations - no mage's guilds, no orders of paladins, few armies or governments of note, and few, or even no cities of any appreciable size. Different tribes worship different gods, and justice is harsh. the barbarian, the ranger, the druid, the bard and the sorcerer reign supreme, fighters, clerics and wizards have to work hard at their chosen discipline, eking their training and knowledge from wherever they can find it, and rogues tend to lead short lives, cast out from their tribes the moment their larcenous tendencies are discovered. Monks may reside high in the mountains, but their monasteries are just a somewhat more rigidly organised tribe, and the facilities simply don't exist to support paladins - there are no churches or knightly orders to indoctrinate them, and such noble concepts as valor, heroic sacrifice, and protection of the weak tend to be met with derision by a people accustomed to survival by their own strength, rather than that of others.
All that from a D4... not bad, eh?
Of course, it still needs a campaign, a party, a few key locations, a plot hook, some important NPCs and all the trimmings, but the groundwork is done.
I have always wanted to DM not a world, but worlds. However, the prospects for such a thing have been daunting until now. The mapping wouldn't be too bad, but it would be bad enough (staying original after the fourth world or so becomes difficult) to make it not worth my while. Then give each world it's own set of land masses and groups of beings to inhabit those continents. From there give them all cultural backgrounds. Individual systems of government, economic systems, and national histories come next. After that, consider the placement of individual rivers, lakes, mountain ranges, forests, deserts, and other natural features. Finally, where do the cities, villages, fortresses, aqueducts, roads, trade routes, holy pilgrimage walks, and every other aspect of things end up going?
Clearly, deciding things randomly would make life a little simpler for the DM who's big on details, yet can't stretch his imagination to the infinite. What I'd like to ask you now is: "is there a way to broaden the basic idea you've posted here to include the things I've listed above?" Perhaps things like random direction (flow of a river, ridge of a mountain range, location of one city/city-state/nation relative to another, etc) might be determined using a d8? This would allow for the four cardinal directions (north, south, east, and west) as well as there combination directions (northeast, southeast, northwest, southwest).
Possible Downside:
Now, the thing you'd have to watch out for when determining a world randomly is in the details - like the positioning of a city or other settlement. On some level, people will move to an area because something attracted them to it: water, trade, resources, food, whatever it may be.... In other words, there would have to be certain parts of a world that would not be determined randomly. People will move on/ be driven out if there is too much competition for a resource and perhaps I'm wrong, but no amount of random rolling will fix this fact.
Possible way to make Lemonade from Lemons:
Then again, if you take the abovementioned "illogical results" downside and make them into the fuel for creative back story, then you've created a positive from a negative. For example, say you randomly end up placing two things that have no business of being together right next to each other on a random roll. How do you explain it? Let's pretend that there is a humble peaceful nation right next to a military clan of warriors....
You could easily conclude that this is an impossible result, because the warrior nation would eventually become jealous of the peaceful nation's resources (that it got from focusing on economy, while the warriors focused on military also known as the "guns and butter" argument to economists). At some point a conflict over something would break out and the peaceful nation would be taken over. Not necessarily....
Roll randomly again:
1.) The stronger nation took over the peaceful nation in the past and everything the peaceful nation was is now under the control of the warriors.
2.) The stronger nation is about to take over the peaceful nation and is planning to do so very soon.
3.) There is a treaty between the two nations that the warriors are unwilling to break for fear of repercussions from a third party.
4.) The peaceful nation pays off the warriors to leave it in peace and raid elsewhere.
5.) The peaceful nation has actually employed the warrior nation to be it's military, so the warrior nation has an incentive to protect the peaceful nation.
6.) The peaceful nation serves as a buffer state in a cold war arms race between two different warrior nations and each sides knows that the first one to take over the peaceful nation will use up just enough resources to be vulnerable to attack (overextended supply lines, some loss of life from minimal resistance, troops focused on in one place leaving opportunities to be attacked elsewhere).
Please let me know what you think of these ideas.
Later
Truean
You do not break the board with you fist. You put your fist on the other side of the board.Focus all your energy on putting your fist on the other side of the board and, if the board is in the way of your fist, it breaks somewhere in the process. A "there is no try" philosophy you have. Used many many-sided die to make worlds have I.
There is a supplement. It has the whole, the whole, world building process defined as die rolls. I think the first roll was the shape of the planet. Your setup here is an excellent example of that, very long process, distilled into its most basic form.
From a presentation standpoint.. Italics, Bold, and Headings. How about Font & Color too! That stuff moves the eye. So some have told me, and hence I tell you.
In case there is any question at this point, I don't quote ancient Chinese secrets (and use the Yoda voice) for stuff I dislike.
I have used random generation in various aspects of my campaign, simply because I did not know where to begin. To determine who the important NPCs the party would meet in the mountain village of Korthevale, I simply rolled up the town's population and how many members of what class they had (all according the DM guide).
Out of that rolling, I got several low level LG clerics (I randomly rolled alignment too, from the NPCs section). Hey, I'll toss a temple of Heironeous into this place, considering I also got a bunch of lawful fighters and monks. But what about that one Evil lvl 4 cleric... Maybe he could worship Hextor, and be currently trying to call his comrades from other lands to help him harass/destroy their LG enemies.
Also, for NPCs ability scores, I use the Organic Characters method (page 169, DM guide) to generate them. Otherwise I would spend hours upon hours using point-buy to try to maximize their combat efficiency, often forsaking mental abilities (and I am really bad at roleplaying dumb characters, nor do I want the PCs facing dumb villains; Thus, I am torn between two extremes). however, using the organic method, I often get ability scores suitable for a worthy foe or ally, and get one or two high mental scores too.
I like the organic method. I can make a brilliant wizard, but I cannot ensure that all mages have high Dex and Con scores. Point buy, they way I would use it anyway, will make all mages built the same way, all clerics and fighters and rogues built the same way. That would really destroy the verisimilitude of my world.
In fact, I also rolled up a very powerful Minor Magic Weapon in a treasure hoard (a +2 Fire-Outsiders-Bane Greatsword). And well, I thought for a little bit, and now it is Ignaqun, the legendary sword the Isharu nation used to help back the legions of Azer conquerors for months on end until they could finally seal the Gate to the Plane of Fire that had been opened.
Random generation, at least to me, is very helpful in the brainstorming of campaign ideas. I may just use your d4 method to help me create the southern half of the continent, cause I can't decide what to put where. Thanks.
Thanks so much for this excellent article.
[Typo left in because it was a funny accident. – Regdar]
SwitchUK, you are brilliant!
From a presentation standpoint.. Italics, Bold, and Headings. How about Font & Color too! That stuff moves the eye. So some have told me, and hence I tell you.
Yeah, sorry about that...
Now, the thing you'd have to watch out for when determining a world randomly is in the details - like the positioning of a city or other settlement. On some level, people will move to an area because something attracted them to it: water, trade, resources, food, whatever it may be.... In other words, there would have to be certain parts of a world that would not be determined randomly. People will move on/ be driven out if there is too much competition for a resource and perhaps I'm wrong, but no amount of random rolling will fix this fact.
Which is where your discretion as DM comes in. I use this system as an aid for building a planet from the ground up. My campaign allows for world-hopping within the material plane, so it's useful to have a system for putting a functioning world together at short notice. It also works well for planes, btw.
Obviously, it can be taken down to a very fine detail, but in time you will, obviously, reach a few practical limits - like you say, if you go about randomly rolling city locations, you're likely to wind up with a city that's placed somewhere illogical.
If this turns up, either move the city to a more sensible spot, or even make/roll up a reason for that city being where it is. On a 1, the spot is of special holy significance. On a 2, the area is a rich source of mithral. On a 3, a standing portal leading to a planar metropolis (such as Sigil or Union) makes the region perfect for trade. On a 4, it started out as a major fort or garrison in a long-finished war, and was subsequently built up into a major settlement.
Or, perhaps, if you wind up two or more cities clustered very close together, why not average the location and merge the cities into one major metropolis?
Like I say, I view this as being more of an aid to the imagination, rather than an autonomous "make-a-world" kit. If you find yourself getting results that don't work, scrap them and try again.
"is there a way to broaden the basic idea you've posted here to include the things I've listed above?"
Absolutely. My primary reason for using a d4 is that it's often difficult to come up with more than about four variables, but sometimes, more variables are needed, so mixing in another die type is just sensible. If I wanted to position something using the dice, for example, I'd roll two d10s of different colors, split the continent map into a 10x10 grid, and use one colour to denote the X axis, and the other the Y, then finesse it by dividing the resulting square into a 10x10 grid again, rollling again, and so on until I had an appropriately fine grid reference.
For the most part, though, I tend to decide on the rough shape of a world first, and then draw up the world maps. I'd advise against trying to use the dice for that - I use AutoREALM.
Then I'll sit back and look at it and say: "hmmm, the bottleneck leading onto that peninsula could benefit from a mountain range, I think... Alright, so presumably, the peninsula itself is one big country, called Caldia... are they warlike, industrial, magical or agricultural? *roll* industrial huh? Presumably they get iron out of those mountains. Do they mine it themselves, or... *rollrollroll* Okay, so those mountains are home to the Dwarf nations, who have a standing trade agreement with Caldia..." and so on.
About 90% of the information created for a randomly generated world may well go to waste, especially if your party's likely to move on to somewhere else, in time. But it does have an influence on he rest of the world - the weapons trader in a Halashan caravan might loudly proclaim to be selling "Only the finest Caldian swords, or may Shalim make all my wives sick with the grey fever!"
Roll randomly again
Possibly the three most important words, as far as this system's concerned. Don't like a result? Scrap it, and roll again with different variables. Something doesn't make sense? Think up reasons why it might be that way, and roll again.
Anyway, I'm glad you all like my system. Cheers. Happy creation!