Hey, I just wanted to say thanks for doing all this. It's very inspiring. I played AD&D years ago have recently gotten the itch to start up again. Watching these videos is a great reminder of how compelling role-playing can be...now I just have to find some time to put all this into use!
Thank you, glad you enjoy them & thanks for the sub. There are loads of ways to use the comp to find gamers in your area, let me know if you'd like suggestions.
my current game is set mainly in a large metropolis on a plateau at the center of a vast desert. it has 3 distinct districts; the elves have beautiful hanging gardens and the buildings are domed while the dwarves prefer fountains and statues with square buildings. inside the elves lay on cushions and have tapestries while the dwarves prefer chairs and bas reliefs carved into the walls. and finally the humans live in crude tents of bone and leather both cut from sandwyrms.
also each district has different food, temples and guilds. it's almost like two cities squashed together in alot of ways, but that can make the whole much more vibrant. i definitely recommend districts to help make a city interesting and unique.
I agree about the idea of nonchalant resurrection. I made it so that the people who are resurrected have to be wary, because when they came back, they might have brought something back with them. Something that may have no qualms with slowly taking over and becoming them.
when i creat towns and citys i lay it out and use colored pencils for the diffrent typs of buildings . like i might use blue for temples , brown for homes and green for taverns and inns .i had a folder with a bunch of of diffrent sized owns with the basic writen up so if the players came acrost the town i could pull out the map and info on it . like you said it is always best to write things down so you dont forget who the players talked to and interacted with .
I like to find maps some times. I occasionally make quick sketches of them. I'm not much for drawing. There is nothing wrong with the idea. For me, I put a lot of notes for descriptions of important places or building and give high detailed descriptions to my players of those places and of the feel of the town or city. When I ran FR, I had just about every town map I could find though
@23penguins32 When you throw a tax on a player in a lot of groups, they seem shocked & it's a good thing, adds realism to the game. Figuring out who can own land, ect, is really important too. I'm really appreciate for your nice words. The fact you say this could be helpful makes me think I'm on the right track with the ideas within.I really hate when an unprepaired DM just pulls a tavern or inn name out of no where & then doesn't even write it down. Next time it's like it was never there.
I look for city maps from other fantasy lands, and modify it in a picture editing software, like photoshop. Particularly with forgotten realms maps they are decently well done. That way I can give people a map that looks some what good. Using photoshop and similar software allows me to color whole districts or write out what they are. like the red shaded district is the millitary district and so forth.
@thespiritcoyote I think adventurers should be extremely rare, to the point that even the adventurers might not call themselves that & people they meet will likely think they are fools if they explain the mindlessly dangerous activities they embark upon on a regular basis. Both macro to micro or micro to macro can be used for any approach in world building whichever make the builder more comfortable.
Excellent world builder vid as always. I have only one complaint. You left out the most important building in town! The brothel. Where else can adventurers go for freaky, fantasy, jiggery pokery? Dwarf on elf, elf on gnome, hobbit on ent with a couple orcs watching. All that stuff.
I like to spend about a year prepping a game before I run it. So I prep for hundreds of hours for the upcoming game while I'm running the current one. I like to have the pcs created about 8 months before the game. The game I'm currently working on is detailed to an amazing level and yes, I have a map which I'll soon be getting professionally redone. I usually like to have 1,000 or so npcs created before I start a game, often more & the majority of the world.
@deadblaster1 Ah thank you, I actually am writing an RPG right now. I'm guessing I'll need at least another year to finish it but it's coming along well for sure. Thanks a lot I do appreciate the kind words.
@TabletopTitan And that's why you want to have those towns really built well, with lots of interesting people for them to interact with. People who'll grow with the game & develop lots of plots of their own. I find so many DMs, especially early on forget to put enough time & focus on the town. I've never been a big fan of dungeons, my group isn't either so I might do 2 in a year long campaign & they won't be more than 3 sessions. Are towns your players favorite part of the game?
so. much. work. just crazy brother. i hope you charge them admission lol i love making worlds and npc's and do put work into my settings but nothing like that. last game had 50 npc's detailed, and not in the kind of detail you do i'm sure, and 5 regions with 15 factions total. right now we're probably up to 100-200 npc's total but everything else is about the same in terms of regions and factions.
Thank you, I appreciate that. If you'd like to look at my GMing skill in action, check out the Within the Ring of Fire videos. Those are playtest from the game I'm working on for publication later this year.
@thespiritcoyote You certainly make a good point there, they are people that have likely killed may times & would set the average farm ill at easy. Especially once it is well understood by that small village that the party (if they are higher level) could eradicate them given a reason.
@thespiritcoyote It is likely that most adventures would be seen as odd in the majority of fantasy campaign worlds; however, I tend to view the idea of adventurers as extremely rare, so most npcs will never have had any experience with them. Of course there are #ers of other campaign styles that the players could partake in, such as bounty hunters, clergy members, sages, wizards, members of a political guild or other possibilities which obviously change the perceptions as well as the gameplay
@Samwise7RPG I've bought from them before. I've found them to be on the high side, usually. Thanks for the price info. I'll be interested to hear more about this. There are several D&D books that have a lot of details on cities, a few of them are pretty good.
@MusicMan53100 I have a book on Cryptids, I picked up recently. Yes, all those are great resources for world building which will help you to make a much more believable well detailed world.
Yeah, that would be good to know. To be honest, the time issue is the hardest one to figure out...three kids and a crazy work schedule kinda kill any free time I have. But if you could give me some pointers on where to find other players that would be great. I'm Oakville, Ontario Canada. If I can ever find the time I'll look em up!
@Samwise7RPG Ah, it's taking him a while? I look forward to hearing a review of it. If he doesn't get to it, you'll have to. How much are copies of it going for now? Might be worth picking up. So the info in it works for any fantasy game?
If you would like to learn how to make maps look like pieces of fantastic art, a website called "the cartographer's guild" has some amazing examples, and tutorials... some of the artists there will also work commissions, if you are too pressed for time... I went there and surfed around the tutorials, and it improved my map making skills considerably... Also check out Butch Curry's channel he has some tutorials called "fantasy cartography for adobe photoshop" they are really good
@herkles1 I need to get a copy of that program & learn how to use it. I want to create a really quality world map & think that is the way to go about it. I'm going to vote this comment up, this is a good piece of advise for anyone looking to do this.
@Onionkid99 LOL, yes, I should have made mention of that one. I do have a goddess in my campaign world to deal with that part of culture. From sacred priestess whores to common street walkers. Hobbit on Ent, that sounds painful but it could be funny all the same. On the topic of half-races I've been doing a lot of work on that for my world. Coming up with different combos & having no half-humans (with the exception of nymph, & dragon).
Yeah, it can be hard to find the time between work & family. Here are some places to start, meetup com , white-wolf com , facebook com . Now I would also suggest you check your phone book for local hobby stores, might be able to find some players that way. I know there are a lot of gamers in your country, so you should be able to find someone.
How much detail do you put into creating and gathering maps? Obviously you have some type of world map (or do you?) How much of this (and other aspects of the campaign) do you flesh out before you start the first gaming session?
@woodwwad Practically nothing. It would just depend on how trustworthy the Necromancer is. Which finding a trustworthy Necromancer would be like finding a needle in a hay stack. But you never know, someone else may be able to do the spell, but they would be even harder to find than a Necromancer, the risks would be less for your character to comeback trying to kill you. But would be greater that the NPC and PC's would be found, and sentenced to death. Making it that much harder to raise the dead
i spend about an hour between each game writing more into the setting as well, but i really wonder if there is a huge amount of difference in the presentation. would the pc's notice? i guess it depends on your pc's. mine probably wouldn't. as a gm you really can't put it huge effort if your players aren't going to. it's just not fair to yourself. if my players were better i would probably put in more work. still... you should look into charging admission lol :P
@Onionkid99 I don't have exactly elves in my game, something like them called Freyaen but largely different as I wanted to make some major changes to them & didn't want the baggage of that name. They cannot breed with humans, the god who made the 76 human clans did knew humans were supreme & did not want them breeding with other races. I know some don't like the halfbreeds but I'm okay with them. I also think taking them away from humans adds another difference to my game, which I like.
Tavern and Inn names are easy, make a list of 100 adjectives and verbs and a list of 100 nouns. Then pick ot roll randomly. Dancing Cow, Amorous Pig, Broken Jug, Lame Snake. The players aren't going to think of them as being dumb, since there are already plenty of places in the real world with silly names like that.
we have a strong game here in kitchener boss but it might be a little far for you lol i did find alot of gamers at meetup.com there's a group called kw gamers which helped me alot, hopefully they have one for hamilton for you
@KorumEmrys Those sound like a bunch of dumb asses. Not that I haven't seen massive amount of trash players. As I say, TOO THE GROUND WITH THOSE FOOLS!
