How to Write CAPTIVATING Lore for Your D&D Campaign 

This was the most fun I've had making a video in awhile so let me know if you want to see more like this. Also, obviously, if you don't write lore or prep your D&D campaigns, this disregard this video.

"if your lore doesn't facilitate that, then your not writing a DND game, you are writing a book" oh perfect, because that's why I'm here

"... you read the terms and conditions." I literally have the terms & conditions open for a purchase I'm making. I feel so called out.

Great video! Exactly what I needed today! My campaign is starting earlier than expected and we have our 55th session on Saturday!

If you said "world war II history for an hour"... you MIGHT be a dungeon master

I treat my Pantheon as NPCs, probably most akin to very powerful rulers. The whole impetus of my homebrew world was my dissatisfaction with religion in most fantasy worlds. Usually it seems like the gods are demonstrably real, insanely powerful, and not infallible, but they just... don't do much? Unless someone is playing a cleric/paladin? In that sort of world, sure, ignore your gods. But I think the reality of living in a world of real and imperfect deities could be very very interesting. I explained to my players that the gods would be a big part of this campaign, even if they don't personally worship them, and so far everyone's been really on board and interested, even those not playing divine classes. I don't think everyone needs to take it as far as I have and make the themes of their campaign free will, organized religion, and personal responsibility, but I strongly encourage people to try thinking about their gods as people. The conflicts they have can easily spill into the rest of your world and make for great stories.

HP loss isn't direct hit massive damage. HP loss are near misses, flesh wounds, pain and exhaustion. A fighter with 100 HP isn't 25 times tougher than a common man, he's just a lot better at avoiding deadly blows and taking HP loss is how that's represented. When you run out of HP that just represents you being at the end of your rope and having lost the ability to defend against that next killing blow, it overwhelms your ability to avoid being taken out and then you begin the survival rolls. So people, get over this idea that a character with high HP is this super tough meat shield, it's not. HP is is just the games mechanism for allowing heroic fantasy combats. That's why Fighters and Barbarians tend to have more HP, they aren't tougher than a wizard with the same scores, they're just a lot better at avoiding being killed because they have a lot more experience in doing so than any of the other classes.

Absolute gold mine of information! Thank you for uploading this :D

As for the god question, I think people should use more "local deities" cultures from the East. Like, a deity's shrine is just your neighbor. Every neighborhood got their own minor gods, as arbiters/directors of minor powers. They take minor offerings like hunted prey animals or veggies. And if you anger or ignore them, they wouldn't kill you, but they will make your life miserable through other believers/followers or some minor mischief. And of course, you can have ambitious gods and century old animosities to spice up your stories.

Wait ! I just realise that you only make 1k - 2k per videos and have only 10k followers ? What the heck. Keep it up man, you're awesome.

You must’ve never done military history with the Fat Electrician before. Easy hour and very interesting.

Love ya videos very helpful for new dms thanks. 😘

When I started my setting, I told my players if they had a god in mind, use it. Most gods in my setting are product of worship rather than the worship a product of theirs. I had 3 elder gods, with only one holding any importance in any one campaign if at all. I later developed a pantheon for NPCs, but never required players to adhere to it.

Wow fantastic Video really valuable information and great actually practicle help and the vox machina free music at tge end....nice The only thing I could say is that picture changes in the beginning are bit erraten but otherwise great video

you would love pathfinder !!!

7 campaigns a week? Holy shit. How do you even have time for that?

On players not caring about your lore - think about it. Why do YOU care about your lore? It's because you can do whatever you want with it, you can change it, you can make it affect your game, the characters and events in it are directly affecting other parts of what you're making or are going to make. It's an enjoyable thing to do on its own, and you have all the control to play with it to your heart's content. To players it's just words that they can't interact with. They're not selfish if it doesn't interest them. Making lore that affects players directly is such good advice.

I guess I have the personality of wonder bread

Wait wut ! You run seven games a week !? Damn ! 🍺

The reason that I have lore in my world is so that all the actions, living, non-living, and magical, make coherent sense. This is not to say that there is no free will in my world but it is to say that all actions take place within the framework of the world and its context. Thus there are consequences and reactions to all the PCs decisions and actions. In order for me (and them) to understand exactly what those consequences and reactions might be, and for them to ring true and therefore be believable, I have to know the history of the world.

There is a reason it is called the Lore-d of the Rings.

I just want to read YOUR lore. Does your lore bible come in your patreon?? @enterthedungeon

So i made my first DISCORD server . This may not mean anything towards it but im trying to create the backstory lore for the world...

ok but where can we read the lore 👀

Obviously the most important part of World building is the question of Old School World Building or New school world building. Are we having 5 nations that are all ethnostates that want to genocide each other Balkan style or is there multiculturalist nations of multiple races that completely ignores the fact that different looking, thinking and existing races (as in species), would 100% fight against each other big time, so you´d NEED a history set up where those aforementioned ethnostates existed but fell apart.

Appreciate the video, but i can't wrap my heads around a couple of your affirmations "Someone has already thought of your cool ideas somewhere in the internet, so just find something that separates your world from generic fantasy n° 3, don't stress about originality" So this means that to find something unique and distinctive about my world I have to not stress about originality? I maybe understood what you meant, but put like this, it seems a bit like an unsolvable conundrum

IM WONDER BREAD 😢😢😢😢😢😢

I can't really lay this at the doorstep of one video creator; but, this idea is a big part of why I'm not very likely to ever get back into the TTRPG hobby. There are so many videos that reiterate how players cannot be bothered to read and become familiar with the background story of my world, and yet expect me to familiarize myself with their backstory and incorporate it into one of my worlds. I definitely appreciate that I cannot info dump four plus decades worth of world-building on players, prior to starting one campaign; and I wouldn't want to do that anyway. My worlds are my characters; I never did have much interest in playing one being at a time, with one backstory, and one job to be performed over one lifetime. It isn't like those player backstories are something new and refreshingly different; they're largely the same tropes used over and over again, too.

How in hell do you run 7 capaign AND still have time to do a RU-vid Video

it's really amazing how many bad takes are crammed into one short video. -you, the DM, are not also playing a game. abandon your own fun! absolutely everything you do Must be in service to the players. -make a starting town. but make sure it has no culture! -gods are for suckers! they don't have any effect on the game! it's not like anybody plays divine classes. or like non-divine classes can interact with gods. or like religious beliefs affect cultures. also, your world's origin has no plot relevance. -don't waste your time writing background information. set dressing is for nerds. "things to do, not things to read." sacks of hitpoints in a void is the way to go. -start by writing characters. (not gods though. gods aren't characters.) they don't live in places, or worship anything, but they're motivated to do things by the power of Providing Plot Hooks. -create nations. create factions. don't worry about things like imports and exports, factions wouldn't care about those. they need strong, gameable motivations like being the Being Evil And Kicking Puppies faction, the Taking Over The World Just Because faction, and the Being Helpful To PCs faction. when building your nation, focus on things like demographics. just make sure you plop them down wherever, because origin myths are stupid. focus on culture, but again, make sure mythology is not involved. -in real life, nations are deeply affected by their geography. for some reason though, elves are not. just make your nations texas sharpshooter style. you definitely won't end up with a boring single blob of a continent. honestly it sounds like your players suck. refusing to engage with anything that's not the bare metal of a plot hook is boring. making you contrive an alternate lore reason for a game mechanic that takes 30 seconds to explain because they can't listen is worse. pretty much everything about this video seems like a reaction to having terrible players rather than actual actionable advice. my advice: putting your attention on an aspect of worldbuilding makes it playable because your attention is what makes it exist. a town's winemaking industry is playable, if you put your energy into writing it, because a town's winemaking industry is also made up of characters and motivations and factions and treasure. put your energy into writing things you enjoy. your friends should respect that.