Write your First D&D Campaign Setting! 

The hardest part of building a new world is when players want to make characters not from the local area. It's all well and good to design a small town near a river that is populated with humans and halflings, when a player wants to be an elf, dwarf, half-orc, war forged, etc. you need to then figure out how those all work in your world as well. Things can snowball pretty rapidly from there, especially if one picks a Cleric, now you need to start thinking about what the pantheon of the world is as we'll. I can see how people go down a rabbit hole and end up spending months building a campaign setting that barely gets touched.

If you tend to over-prepare your campaigns, I recommend keeping an idea journal. If you come up with an idea you would really like to see in a game, but it doesn’t fit in the moment- write it down. But try to write it in a single, concise sentence that really nails why it’s interesting. Before the next adventure, always reference these notes to see if anything is useful for planning the next adventure.

Man...I tell you what, writing is tough. Currently still writing an ongoing 2-year campaign. Took a couple tries to get it right. But man, I still have yet to finish my darn world map lol. The lore was the trickiest bit, but once I sat down and thought about it, it just flowed naturally. Everything somehow fits; like a massive interconnected web of thoughts. I have no idea how it happened, but it just did. And it is absolutely fantastic.

Drunk Owlbears is most definitely the name of my next band.

I know it's outside what you normally do, but I would love to see the political/cultural effect of common spells. Like how WOULD Fireball change the nature of nation on nation combat? Love your videos as always. EDIT: Like one I've been thinking about was how easy Alter Self is to get and how that would shape messengers/dignitaries having a 1 hour holding period to sniff out imposters. Or how the cultural notion to remove one's hat as a sign of respect could be to also subvert those using a Hat of Disguise to deceive.

The collaborative world making is a major part of the german RPG "Idee". It is designed for attoc oneshots without having anything at the start

I rarely start the party in town. More often, I have them in the dungeon in some fashion. Usually it's along the lines of "You have been captured and have to escape." This gives the players more emphasis on what they're doing in the dungeon, since survival is the main goal instead of "go in here and get thing for coin."

All of this is clear, actionable advice, good for GMs old and new! You're pretty good at this kind of geoopolitical analysis, you should make a career out of it :)

I like the "who runs this town" bit with a picture of Asmodaus. He has his claws deep in the city I have my players adventuring in now.

Love this. Building a setting with the party before the game sounds fantastic. Playing The Quiet Year together is another great tool before a game.

How timely for my next homebrew campaign. Great stuff as always!

As always, top notch content! Thanks, Baron.

I've been watching pretty much all of your videos and I have to say your DM style is exactly what I've been looking for. I have thought up a handful of your ideas separately but you fleshed them out far better and the majority of your content is purely new and great info. Thanks, I really think you're helping me bring my storytelling up a level or two while running games

This was the simplest most straightforward, helpful video on these topics that I've seen....and I've seen a lot.

Thanks for the link "Otus' Gygax 75 Challenge"!

Great post. And great timing. Looking to start new campaigns before year's end.

Fair point! When I played DnD for the first time, what really hooked me was the reawakening of my imagination. It was like being a child again

I've already started my campaign with my players, and they've been to a couple towns and the area, so I have some of the things you mentioned created. I just need to map it out. That hexfriend thing might just be thing to help make this work! Thanks!

Is that Julia Child's The Way to Cook on your top shelf? Excellent resource and an early influence on my culinary career - never would have gotten through chiffon cakes or homemade puff pastry all those years ago. It's those days in the kitchen that had paved, err paid, my roleplaying hobby (an aside: I used to cook for boarding schools and ran several RPG groups over the year, so maybe it really is both). Great video, enjoy your approach.

Great video, great tips and great inspiration. It seems I skipped a few steps I should have made, but I'm already too far to fix that. But I can still use some of these. Thanks for the advice.

I just used this method to develop a campaign setting and I am really happy with the results. I just did a session 0 with my Call of Cthulhu group and we had a great time. I didn't share much of the creation with the players, but I deliberately chose not to develop anything too much so that we can flesh it out when the players decide to go that way. I also used the Pamphlet of Pantheons to create 16 gods and drew icons for them with my high-school-level sketching skills. They thought that was cool, so I also recommend using that zene for the world's pantheon.

Thanks mate. As always great content

Amazing advice here, I love all of the player inclusion!

I recently created a small campaign world this past week. I started with a lot of random generators like hexroll and donjon. For the map I used worldographer and hexroll, donjon, and my own ideas pretty much populated it

your content is FIRE

This is such a great channel holy heck

Your geopolitical analysis is always so informative and inspiring in terms of how the different terrain features interact. The problem is that I normally struggle with where to start when placing terrain. I think it might be interesting to see a video of the process in action.

Right on time!

Never watched you before. First thing I see is the second release of the Dark Sun boxed set. Subscribed.

The brainstorming part reminds me of Microscope, but that is more in depth.

This is the video I always wanted

here goes: @2:25~~maps. over the last 3+ decades of being the DM primarily, I finally found a great resource for maps...real world maps. 2 "for instances", about 5 years ago I needed a SW desert pretty quickly, so I went to Arizona & screen shotted from Flagstaff to Gold Canyon, using the roads & highways as primary boundaries. Gave me hiking trails, bicycle trails, & rail roads. As well as all populated stops in between. I chose the longest surviving towns, camps, & villages as proto-versions then saw what made them economically viable, changing industrial/tech locales into wizard towers & religious temples. A little research & viola, I had horse travel times from bicycles, hiking times from trails, & a host of very interesting "scenic" encounter stops. Then in 2020, also on the "pressed for time" to make an engaging encounter for a YT buddy that bicycled from Maine to North Carolina (Stealth Camping in graveyards & abandoned this abandoned that & other cool places) who also played D&D, I took the coastline of where he came from turned it upside down & gave him a sail boat to adventure in...when he realized, looking at my map, right side up for him, where he was...was _precious_ ! @3:45~~please make random encounters appropriate to the TERRAIN. & *Roll with it* =) @7:00~~Town: even though we are playing in "early Renaissance/Middle Ages" add Magic & it's really the early 1800's...look for Wild West towns for populations, shops, law, etc. Look for, especially, river side settlements for larger villages, remembering that frontier places, nearly everyone has level 1 skills, and a person over 3rd level is 1 in 1000, level 4 is one in 2000, level 5 is one in 4,000, level 6 is one in 8,000...and your group is 4 higher level people = social parity with mayors or Lt. Colonel, level 7 is one in 16,000 = practically a Warlord/Colonel, level 8 is one in 32,000 = practically a Governmore or Admiral. Unless you are in a city 3x as large, or clump of cities 5x as large, or a metropolis even *Larger*

I tend to all out medieval style maps. Much like those maps general locations are sorta right. Size on the map is determined by importance (the capital is the largest city on the map even though its really the third largest city), distances are rough, based more on travel time than actual distance. And there are decorative animals and monsters on the map, some of them have been seen in reality in the area they appear on the map.

So good!

Great advice as always. I think it's important for beginners to start small, to think simply and directly, and try not to include every race and monster in the books right away. Also good for "random" encounters is to make a list, but not always depend on a roll to decide. Choosing the encounter to fit the moment isn't wrong and can often help maintain the flow and engage the players depending on what mood or state they're in. And thanks for the link to Ray Otus. I wasn't aware of him and this looks like a good source for materials for anyone. Do you happen to know if he's related to Erol, the 1e artist extraordinaire?

Beautiful clothing choice today!

I feel like this video requires a big disclaimer - not all players will be interested in world building with the DM. Some might even resent it. I think it’s fine to invite them to join in and see if they are interested, but not all will want to.

Never thought I'd be one of "those guys", but timely advice!

Ive been writting my campaign setting for 5 years and it started of with a name and a few gods but then i decided to make a whole new map and then I started with a few ideas and now ive just been filling in spots and fleshing out existing lore. Hard lol I only feel like 1 kingdom which is the size of a continent is done and another which needs more work.

I am asked my group what they would like to see and I am so excited to start.

Awesome!

This helps me all lot i have wacthed so many videos named the same thing and did not help my at all this is a real game building changer

I shouldn't have tried to watch this right before bed, I didnt absorb most of it. Will have to watxh again tomorrow. I tried to make a small region map and it come out bigger than I intended. Having a hard time getting enough races and kingdoms in a weeks walk worth of land to feel fleshed out. Might take a smaller area and flesh it out more after I get the local kingdoms done. You're right about not needing a lot of space for some campaigns. My last campaign the players barely made it a couple villages away from the starting town.

Reminds me of one unique thing from 13th age!

I know I'm a year late to the party, but the method that I use is to just write a single, concise and vague paragraph about something that I want in the game world. After that, I read the paragraph, mark anything I found interesting, and then I write another paragraph about that thing I found interesting. Then I repeat step two: read the paragraph I just wrote, find something interesting, write a paragraph about it. Rince and repeat. In a matter of a night or so, I've managed to create an entire game world full of personalities, history, cataclysmic events, religions, nations, and even citations and quasi-academic articles. It's quite effective and it doesn't need a lot of brain power to do. However, it works a lot better for world building. For creating storylines, plots and plot hooks? Not that great. I've been a newer face on your chanel for a day or so and I love the quality on the comentary that you do on your videos, my man! Subscribed and liked. Excelent job!

of course you post this after i finish my 167 page campaign setting document

I like this video keep it going.

2d6 do not create a bell curve, they have the peak but go gradually down to both side, but there simply is no curve.

Ray Otus also has a wonderful Podcast Plundergrounds

0:46 Simple statements about the game world: Faith - Steel - Gunpowder😊

That idea for getting the players involved is inspired. I noticed a lot of comments from people who didn't understand what you said. Seems to me that that is designed to get the players invested rather than using them to create the world. Players hate telling you what they want. Getting them to accidentally clue you in... that might just work.

0:25 That map looks a lot like the one from the first campaign I played. My GM might have borrowed the overall shape. Where is it from?

How does this method of creation (starting with regions) fit with the geopolitical analysis method you mention in other videos. Shouldn't we know the larger picture first?

I don't really like random encounters, I set up plot encounters in advance and just decide what locations players can face them. So, if they divert too far from one of my plots, they will face a plot encounter anyway - and i will have a good explanation why it was there

i wish i could do this sad truth is a lot of times players expect a already made world and then complain when stuff its perfect or they cant fit their characters in coz it aint the vibe of the setting. I find a lot of players dont have the interest or drive (at least a lof of my players) to build stuff along side the DM and i struggle a lot with this :(

It occurred to me as I watched your interview on Modern Myth, that at some time in the past (maybe around 3rd edition?) the professional writers took over the design of D&D (as opposed to the original D&D which was written by a shoe repairman and a security guard) who were wargaming hobbyists. Sometime around then the game became about telling stories (just what you would expect a writer to be interested in) rather than the exploration of maps by PCs and combat with fierce creatures to obtain treasure [in a hexcrawl or a dungeon delve]. Modules began to be written as movement from plot point to plot point, rather than allowing characters to roam around in the sandbox pursuing their own ideas and motivations. It seems like this was around the time that the term "railroading" arose, and was used as a derogatory term by those of us who had grown up playing the the open world/sandbox type of campaign to describe these plot driven 'straightjackets' of adventures. The linked video is a great example of this point of view (which I agree with): ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-4c9BoqE-jeY.html. The story is what happens at [or away from] the table AFTER they game is finished for the evening. When I see you talking in the interview about the three act structure, overlaid by the Shakespearian five act structure, and then talking about the realization moment in screenplays [coming at approximately page 80], and the climax of the story, etc., etc., it is clear that you know a bit about stories and story structure. Back in 1974, when age 12 to 20 year old 'kids' were putting together their D&D worlds and building sandboxes for others to play in, they had little formal education about story structure, but they knew enough to create challenges for players to overcome, which creates the environment for conflict (which is critical to drama), and with their players having created motivated characters who were seeking fame and fortune, and were placed in such a sandbox environment, they organically created story through play. A DM is not a storyteller.

Your gonna make everyone a DM

I feel like involving players in world building is a mistake. Most players know nothing of good world building, which is why they're players. The only exception to this, is when players are interested in GMing, or have GM experience. If they've never been a GM, or have no interest in learning what makes a good GM/what makes good world building, your world is going to be nonsensical and built on whatever crazy crap is rolling around their head in the moment.

Why am I getting DMing advice from Alan Tudyk?

Sounds like something that FATE has been doing for years.

300xp

your last geopolitics video that you premiered is still MIA, idk if thats on purpose or what. I had it in my watch later list because I wasnt gonna be home for the steam and its 'hidden' or deleted.

Either I can pay my fried which studies art in school to draw the map

First

I think there is a good argument to be had that you should not let your players decide what the gameworld will be. Design by committee is bad practice. Instead you should strive to give them an experience they didn't know they wanted. Also, you need to make sure the world you are building is something you love! If you do not love what you are making, it will go stale.

Also, don’t come up with an “origin story” for your world. One of my pet peeves is “First there was chaos, then the gods came” stories. No one knows for sure how the world was created, so why spend time coming up with it? Just focus on what people believe now and what influence the current gods have right now.

What's the point? I have no friends to play with.