How to Design a Campaign Setting

Campaign settings can accomplish a variety of things when designed right. They provide a time and place for the story, they create opportunities for players to engage with the game, and they can make a story unique. But designing a campaign setting, despite these necessities, can be easy. All you need is to choose the right details and your campaign will be off on the right foot. This guide will help you consider all the necessary details and prepare you for a fun and complete game. 

In order to illustrate successful campaign setting design, I want to consider the last three campaigns that I have run as GM. The first, my most recent, is the mystery campaign. The second is a campaign I have been running with my immediate family; my mom, brother, and sister tend to the wellbeing of the common person in their campaign. And thirdly, I have my National Treasure campaign, which revolved around solving riddles and tracking artifacts to assemble a great power. Each uses my homebrew world, a place designed with player engagement in mind. Let's break down some of the details in each campaign setting to see why I included specific details. 

The mystery campaign takes place in a mid-sized city called Yamseth. Yamseth is characterized by income inequality and chaos storms which keep the average person from being able to get ahead. Yamseth is located on the spine of the world's largest mountain range, central to the continent. The guards in Yamseth are overworked and undermotivated, and they routinely press average citizens into solving crimes for them. Yamseth, as a place, is characterized by struggle. The average person's average day is harder than most people's lives in Evanoch, and that means that the players' experiences are characterized by that struggle. Readers of the mystery campaign know that the player characters feel worn down by the city and its challenges, and that they pursue the story out of requirement rather than implicit motivation. The player character experience, then, is struggle, like the city itself. This was intentional--I wanted my players to feel that the city was troubled and that they could, through concentrated effort, improve it. That's precisely what has happened; the player characters have turned empty real estate in public housing, and their work to solve the crime central to the story has often been a point of divergence for helping average people. 

Then we have my family campaign. I haven't really written about this campaign here on the site because it's a simpler game than I usually run; I have reduced the game to its more core elements for this campaign. The player characters come from a small town with few details decided other than its general location--it is located in the northwest corner of the map near Lake Playbor. It is surrounded by hamlets and thorps for the most part, other small towns seldom visited. In the first four sessions of their adventure, the player characters have journeyed to other nearby towns, dealing with an interconnected series of evildoers who wish to control the countryside. As of our most recent session, I added a new NPC who has tied together all of the evildoers; she theorizes that an artifact called the Stone of Corruption has affected the otherwise decent people the players have been combatting. The campaign as it will follow will pit the party against these corrupted figures as they seek to keep the countryside safe. As I mentioned, there is not much in the way of unique descriptors to this town, partially because I want the players to be invested in the area as a whole. They're very task-oriented--little time spent roleplaying--so the focus here is more on the way that evildoers come to their attention than about the town itself, though I plan to develop the town more as we go. 

Finally, there is the National Treasure campaign. I ran this campaign for about two years. It all began in a small town on a desert island called Ramsey, where all fantasy tropes are replaced with Wild West tropes. The party got into trouble and was run out of town. They traveled to a nearby settlement, killed its sole guard, and were again run out of town. They headed to another town, took a bounty, and moved on, only to be kicked out of the fourth town for trying to steal from passersby. Their travels in trying to track down all the artifacts finally took them across the island to a settlement of werewolves, who helped them in their fight against enemy vampires, and after many sessions tracking down side quests, the party confronted a dragon and freed the island of a dark magic. Unlike the mystery campaign, this story did not unfold in one city, but rather took place across an entire island. This meant that I was able to develop unique cities across the island, new places to inspire the players. This campaign was built to be silly, and so unlike in Yamseth, there are few details that add tragedy or seriousness to the campaign. 

So what makes these settings good design? They each respond to the main demands of each party. Yamseth is built for serious roleplayers. A sense of reality and consequence is vital to the story, or else the players will struggle to connect to the game. Yamseth must have enough potential for finely detailed story to satisfy the players. The family campaign is different; it was built with fun being defined by social experience. My mom is a first-time player, and we get more enjoyment out of her cries to light NPCs on fire than having an in-game conversation about morality. The point here is having a sandbox for interesting moments. My setting for the family campaign is pretty spare, but not once have the players done anything to connect to the setting; they want to take dramatic actions and make each other laugh. That leads me to the National Treasure campaign. These players were somewhere in the middle. They needed a somewhat grounded sandbox to play around in like my family, but they also wanted the capacity for some roleplaying and investment in the story. So I provided a setting with some grounding (real enough that the player characters could be run out of town for behaving like monsters) but lots of room for silly antics (and it would take a few articles to describe all the antics the party got up to). 

Responding to the needs of the party is important, but it isn't the only important thing. You also need your campaign setting to match the scale of the adventure. In Yamseth, the story is a murder mystery. The player characters must determine who killed Hildy Analeth, and to a lesser extent, why. The case itself ranges across the city, but it remains fairly focused. Staying within the city suits the campaign well because they have similar scopes of focus. But that doesn't work for the family campaign. The first session saw them defend their small town from a dastardly witch, and they spent most of their time outside of town itself that session. They haven't been in town for more than a few minutes since. The town is not vital to this campaign; the actions are. So we have the loosely-defined home base and then some slightly more defined satellites around the town for the players to visit. New locations are defined by the quest they will host rather than purposes on a map, and that's fine because it suits the needs of the party. And then there's the National Treasure campaign. I wanted the game to match the tone of the movies that inspired it, so it only made natural sense to have the campaign range far and wide across the land. Gathering artifacts and completing bounties require travel, and so the broad map for the campaign allowed the party to explore as they wished while still having a quest to lead them from here to there. 

Another consideration in a campaign setting is what kind of struggles exist in the area for the player characters. In the mystery campaign, the players are gathering information. Most of the discoveries the players make come from roleplayed conversations with NPCs. This matches what I want from the campaign: the players will be roleplaying primarily, with a focus on story. There has been only one moment of combat in the mystery campaign as of this writing, and that was a friendly boxing match. This suits my players, who are more invested in solving the mystery than in a traditional game of D&D. My family campaign follows this idea too: they want puzzles in the form of solving story problems. When they must find a new evildoer and stop them, they relish working out the "how" of it all--one of the highlights of our games is discovering who wants to solve the problem in what way. (Again, my mom usually suggests just lighting someone on fire.) So my setting doesn't get in the way, and I can focus on the events rather than the place. And the National Treasure campaign follows this as well. My players were almost exclusively new to D&D when I ran the campaign, so I needed to figure out what things they enjoyed. It turned out that my players loved being in combat, so I provided plenty of enemies and factions across the map (they fought dozens of vampires, a gang of outlaws, magical creatures, and the occasional guard during the adventure). They often got ahead of themselves in conversation with NPCs, so I only occasionally challenged them with roleplaying. And though they hated struggling with riddles, they loved the feeling of solving them, so I offered relatively easy riddles to progress the artifact-collecting story. A Wild West setting made sense of all this: plenty of fighting, not much in the way of charismatic conversation, and a bit of thinking outside the box all fit within the realm of the setting. 

Finally, you need something to set your setting apart. I like to have one big idea about the setting that makes it unique, or at least interesting enough for your players to invest in. With the mystery campaign, a city with income inequality isn't very unique in and of itself, but the chaos storms create a somewhat unique experience for players. Further, the chaos storms gave rise to the rich building towers that rise above the chaos storms, meaning that the setting itself has changed according to the lore we've established for it. Also, the detail about the city guard forcing citizens (especially outsiders) to investigate crimes both serves the story (forcing the party to solve the murder) and contributes to the sense of injustice in the city. The family campaign setting, as I have said, is relatively simple. But we do know certain details about the setting that make it specific to the party. The first session revealed that the town in which the player characters live is mostly inhabited by women; it is a small settlement deep in the woods with no nearby neighboring towns. The second session told us that the nearest town was being run by a spellcaster who had been lowering the intelligence of townsfolk to control them. The third session depicted that nearby town and how it had fallen prey to the spellcaster, and the fourth session followed the party as they sought to protect the nearest major city from the Stone of Corruption. All of this paints a picture of an area of wilderness that is practically defenseless to the powers of unbridled magic. The party emerges as heroes because only they have taken the initiative to protect the area from whatever threats may come. This works just fine as a setting; the party feels they are the heroes of the little person, with obligations that stretch beyond just their community. And the National Treasure campaign was set in a Wild West setting; gunslingers became folks who were quick with a hand-crossbow, hard agrarian life persisted, and bounties were a path to riches for anyone with the right skills. But it was also a land inhabited by vampires and werewolves, a place where grand conspiracies concealed great powers. It was a place where anything could happen, which suited the high antics of the party just fine. 

If you're sitting down to create a campaign setting, there are resources to making it all a little easier. If your campaign will take place in a focused setting like a single city, use this guide to create your map and develop details about the place. If your campaign will take place across a wider setting, you can use this guide to create a larger campaign setting. Mapping is more important than it seems at first glance. It lets you get a real sense of what a place looks like, gives you opportunities to make it unique, and allows you to communicate your ideas about the gameworld to your players. It doesn't have to be professional-looking; just something that represents the idea is fine. As it stands, I have carefully mapped Ramsey, home of the National Treasure campaign, but I haven't given the same treatment to the family campaign or Yamseth. Here's why: Yamseth is a roleplaying paradise, and I haven't been willing to set the city in stone yet for fear that I won't be able to add something in later on. If the party asked for a map, of course I would immediately create one, but without that impetus, I'm happy for Yamseth to remain a place that lives only in my gaming group's minds. And the family campaign is very loose--we haven't needed to orient ourselves that way yet. Importantly, both Yamseth and the family campaign are games I run via video chat software like Zoom, and I haven't had cause to design a map that wouldn't be used much in the games. But I'm adding all of Ramsey's maps below so that you can see what kinds of development to work on when your campaign setting deserves a map. 

The entire island system that is Ramsey. 

The small and idyllic town of Hart Springs, known by the rest of Ramsey as "Fools' Landing."

The puritanical town of Fairbank, where the citizens of town believe the sun won't rise if they don't sacrifice a living thing to the sun god each day. 

Hidden beneath Fairbank, Fairburrow is home to those seeking escape from Fairbank's restrictions. 

A burgeoning industrial city, Hyder Bend is perhaps the richest settlement in all of Ramsey. 

Hangman's Slab is part city, part penal colony. Those who try to escape must swim all the way to Fink's End to reach safety. 

Broken Shield is an advanced city, using technology and magic to farm in the arid desert and seeking to solve social problems with apartments and a history museum. 

Built at a bottleneck in the mountain, New Paradise is a fort-like settlement not far from the ruins of Old Paradise. 

Sunset Ridge is the hub for bounty hunters, and from its place overlooking Sunset Canyon, it attracts travelers from all over Ramsey. 

This repurposed fort is now a trading hub, prized for its ability to protect goods from the bandits that patrol the area. 

Located in a marshy bayou, Fink's End is home to those who wish to stay out of the public eye, especially escaped convicts from Hangman's Slab. 

Home to the Ruby Rangers, an outfit of bandits, this enormous military-style camp is avoided by all but the toughest adventurers. 

This secret map of Red Hawk reveals a werewolf enclave living in structures high in the trees, with hollowed out trees serving as town centers. 

The island city of Pilgrim's Glen is home to a wizard's college, a monastery, and a welcoming port to sailors from across the seas. 

Now that you have a sense of what Ramsey is like, does it make sense as a good setting for high-flying antics and shenanigans? It might, and it might not. The truth is, I designed Ramsey with a very serious story in mind; I was looking for a place where life was hard, bad times could strike at any time, and people would be independent enough to not offer much help to the player characters. This was meant to suit a story about the fabric of reality being altered. But that campaign last about three sessions and then died out. I recycled the setting for my National Treasure campaign because the aesthetics of the Wild West seemed to me to be a good pairing for the adaptation, and because it was a pretty well-defined sandbox for my players to get into trouble in. They could (and did) get kicked out of several towns and still have places to go. 

Notice that each town in Ramsey provides something different. Much like my map of the Eastweald, each settlement has a personality and something that makes it unique. Pilgrim's Glen is quite distinct from Red Hawk, and both are quite distinct from Fairburrow. There are storytelling opportunities in each of these places, and the players will be able to interact with each place in a way that changes the tone of the story and their roleplaying. You should use the above guidelines for building a setting, but even just carefully creating unique places on a map like this will serve you well. Remember that variety will help your players get engaged with the game, and have fun designing your setting--it is, after all, meant to be more fun than work for you. 

If you're having trouble coming up with ideas that you find interesting, there are ways to work through it. If you just can't come up with the idea to start with, consider borrowing one. Think about your favorite films, shows, games, book, and whatever else you care about. Which ideas appeal to you? Take them! There's no penalty for borrowing an idea. I recommend taking the base idea you find interesting and changing a few details so that you can feel like you've left your mark on it, but outright stealing an idea isn't a bad thing, necessarily. I did lift the concept of National Treasure completely from the movies because it's what my players requested. And most every iteration of every idea has seen the light of day, so don't get hung up on originality. An idea that inspires you is enough. 

If it's not the idea, but rather the execution that's vexing you, there are resources. Generally, it's good to think of your sessions as movies or short stories. The whole campaign would be a novel, and a standard session is much longer than an average tv episode. So borrow skills from screenwriting and short story writing. This guide to screenwriting will help you develop your idea from a single sentence into a whole outline of story. A screenwriter's skills will help you push in the direction of action, but if you're more of a reader than a viewer, you can use this guide to writing short stories. Keep in mind that with these approaches, your goal isn't so much to write an ending as provide the framework for your players to write the ending with their actions. So focus on developing the story's context and keep your setting in line with those goals. 

Ultimately, most GMs want to create everything about their setting as completely unique. But you don't have to. As I have said, it's more important to create a jumping-off point than a brand new idea, so be ready and willing to work with ideas you have seen before. If you have a unique take, work on it. But if you don't, figure out what will inspire you and focus on that. It's better to have some idea you care about than something unique that doesn't resonate with you. And if it strikes you as interesting and fun, your players will take note and get in on it. 

That's all for now. With these guidelines in mind, you should be able to create an appropriate campaign setting for your game, no matter what your players are invested in. Coming soon: rules for my custom magic system, an expansion for the familiar system, and a table of random events for traveling characters. Until next time, happy gaming!

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