How to Use Sources of Inspiration as a GM

One of the most rewarding parts of GMing can be coming up with material that comes straight from your own mind. All of the major campaigns I have run have come from ideas that I have developed myself. But it's a great deal of work, and great ideas only come along so often for most of us. What are we to do when we want to come up with that initial idea to start a campaign or world a world? One answer is in taking inspiration from other stories and gameworlds. 

There are many ways to adapt other work into a tabletop game, and it can be a delicate art. I've written several tabletop game adaptations of movies, available at the top of the main page. I've also used stories from all across the many forms of media. And finding the right way to mesh those ideas with yours is often the greatest hurdle, and one that we usually don't even realize that we face. This guide is meant to show you how to use inspiration for the greatest effect in your game. 

When I set out to DM Listen Check, a D&D podcast I ran over a decade ago, I wanted a very open world with lots of opportunities for stories. To that end, I decided to come up with 25 quests, all of which the players could access from the right place at the right time. I wanted the city they were in, Torga, to feel like a bustling place that wouldn't grow stale. But coming up with 25 quests was a tall task for me as a fairly young DM, and I reached out for inspiration. 

One quest which I created using inspiration from movies and books was something I titled in my notes "The Heart of the Warriors." This quest followed the opening scenes of the movie The Warriors (check out the one-shot), in which gang leader Cyrus proposes to the assembled gangs of New York City that they organize and dominate the police force. In Torga, all the player characters were in a gang, and so I thought this would mesh well with my existing idea. Unlike in The Warriors, my version of Cyrus is not killed right away, and he became a major villain in the late game, largely due to the other inspiration: Heart of Darkness. Joseph Conrad's novel (which I detest, for the record) depicts a journey to find a man named Kurtz, and when he is discovered, he has gone mad with power and become barbaric. In Torga, my stand-in for Cyrus was named Kurtz, and he went from rational leader to insane terrorist over the course of the late game. 

You can see how I incorporated two very different media--an 1899 novel and a 1979 cult film--into one storyline without having to change anything about my actual world or existing work. I took the interesting elements of the things I wanted and kept only those. A pure recreation of either of the inspiration pieces would have changed the tone of the story I was trying to tell, but using only parts of both gave me one of the campaign's most gripping storylines. And for what it's worth, both The Warriors and Heart of Darkness have pretty similar tones to what I was working to create, so having that on my side was a strong boost. 

I want to show another example of what using partial ideas for inspiration can do. I have published a few lists of campaign ideas  here on this site, and essentially all of them are drawn from inspiration. I have an advantage when I'm writing my campaign materials in that I am in my office, which holds my many bookcases. I can simply look up from my computer and see whole shelves of books sitting there, waiting to inspire me. Here's an example from a list of character backstory ideas: 

1. The Hero Out of Time - You are descended from a long line of nobles who have always done right by their people. But as time has worn on, your position of power has waned, and now you are being ignored like you have never known. The time has come to leave your defunct holdings behind and either set right what took your power or make your fortune anew. You might be begrudging, hopeful, or determined about your plight. 

This description was inspired by the novel Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe. In the novel, Okonkwo is a tribal leader in charge at the time that white missionaries were beginning to arrive in Africa. Even before the missionaries arrive, he struggles with his community over his leadership, and it only gets worse after they arrive. The novel's primary point is to depict Okonkwo's failures to connect with a changing world, and it suggests that it is a tragedy that the world had to change the way it did. I took that central idea and put it into a tabletop game context: I kept Okonkwo's core characteristics and gave this character a drive to get out and be motivated in the game with the final lines in the description. Trying to adapt his entire tribal community into a game could prove unwieldy and break the tone, but keeping just the big idea serves us well. 

I've mentioned preserving tone multiple times; if you are interested in learning to adapt genres into existing tabletop games or turning a movie into a one-shot, I have discussed these ideas along lines, and they deal with the same issue. So if you remember to look for ideas on a big picture scale and take only what you need, you'll be on the right track. One of the nicest things about this form of using inspiration is that it allows you to jumpstart your imagination, but still allows you the room to add, change, and subtract as you like. 

Inspiration can even become a part of the game. Multiple times in my career as a GM, I have used music to inspire and heighten my game. If it's about inspiring mood, the linked article will tell you everything you need to know. But there's also treating music as an inspiration for characters or storylines. And that can be taken to a serious level; in Listen Check, I used my favorite artist to represent the leader of the gang that my player characters were a part of. I had established that the gang leader, Erasmus, had a severe stutter and wasn't a very confident speaker. But when he would play his lute and sing, his voice was clear and bright, and the juxtaposition of these two demeanors really helped characterize him. I also would have Erasmus play songs that matched up with what was happening in the story, so I could also use music by Ben Cooper of Radical Face and Electric President to create new ideas for storylines. 

Ultimately, though, my best advice for using inspiration is to genuinely care about the thing you're working from. A few years back, I tried to create a campaign from player suggestions, and it went pretty poorly. One player wanted to revise everything I decided as DM, another player was offended by the suggestions of another player, and one guy only said, "Final Fantasy VII" for a suggestion. I have never played a Final Fantasty game, so I did some reading about the plot and tried to write around that. But I never got excited about it, and you need to be excited as GM. If you're not, your players won't have a good time, and then what's the point?  

Keeping all these things in mind can be tricky. The siren call of perfectly adapting something you love into an experience for your players is alluring. But so often, our attempts to do a work justice end in mishandling the thing that made the original special. It's best for your own work and enjoyment as a GM that you mix together your big ideas, allow yourself to enjoy what you're working on, and always be on the lookout for the next thing that might inspire your next campaign. 

That's all for now. Coming soon: a guide to each language in my homebrew setting, the diplomatic situatio

n of major cities in my homebrew setting, and alternate rewards to loot. Until next time, happy gaming!

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Conspiracy Theories in My Homebrew Setting

If you take a look at the main page under "My Homebrew Setting" about halfway down the page, you'll see that I've written pretty extensively about my homebrew world and the people in it. And yet, there are still so many detail left unwritten, unconsidered. I know that my GMing improves when my world is clear to me--how else would I make it clear to my players? To that end, I am always looking to sharpen my sense of what my world is like. 

I was thinking about our modern world, where there is so much information everywhere around us. Many of us struggle to divide truth from fiction. And since the printing press is only in the contemporary moment in my world becoming widely available for the first time, they too will be beset by a flood of questionable theories, ideas, and explanations. With that in mind, the following is a guide to the various conspiracy theories believed by groups in my homebrew setting. 

1. The Elven Puppets

A group of younger Evanines, particularly amongst Daltoners and orcs, have begun to claim that the elven Cestalion is actually the supreme ruler of the continent because they control the actions of all the leaders of other cities. The theory goes that the incredibly old elven leader is able to use leverage from previous generations of other leaders to force them to comply with elven wishes. Many believers of this theory contend that the elven prosperity of the last millennia have been due to the flourishing of elves at the rest of the world's expense. 

This theory is considered by most to be a laughable hoax at best; the active efforts of the Daltoner and orcish governments to oppose the elves are enough evidence to the contrary for a great many Evanines. However, those who believe it are essentially unshakeable in their faith in the idea. Some contend that the strength of the belief comes from a refusal to acknowledge that other governments have handled things less ably than the elven government. There is a beginning of public debate of this issue, but few take it seriously. 

2. Mixed Burial Grounds

A group of older Evanines, particularly amongst Faninites and dwarves, have claimed that burial grounds and cemeteries which place bodies in mixed plots rather than racially-segregated plots result in unwell spirits for the buried. Across Evanoch, people have said that their recently-deceased relatives have returned as ghosts who are furious about their burials. Those who believe in this theory have pushed local governments to create segregated burial grounds to honor the dead. 

This theory is regarded cautiously by many Evanines. Most people have a powerful belief that that dead must be honored, and the notion of unwell spirits is an emotional topic. The Evanines who doubt this theory tend to be more progressive and embrace diverse communities more, and this is interpreted by believers of the theory as a secret agenda to disturb the dead while the doubters secretly bury their dead privately. The doubters also tend to believe that the ghostly excuse is something of a social reaction to increasingly integrated life. 

3. The Goblin Doppelgangers

A group of especially superstitious Evanines across all groups have argued that people across the countryside have been kidnapped by goblins and replaced by goblins disguised as the kidnapped people. The argument goes that these doppelgangers secretly serve goblin interests from inside civilization. The evidence for this theory is impossible to verify; it is said that the doppelgangers are identical in every way to the kidnapped people and can't be distinguished by even a family member. People in some position of power are the most commonly accused of being a goblin doppelganger. 

This theory is openly mocked by many Evanines, especially the more practically-minded. The idea of indistinguishable doubles is believed by most to be so outside the realm of possibility that goblins would never be capable of it--to this, believers argue that goblins only act unintelligently to make the doppelganger plan work. Public doubt in this theory has culminated in the production of a stage play called "The Goblin Conspiracy," which satirizes the theory as foolish and misguided. 

4. The Coded Messages

A group largely comprised of gnomes, half-elves, and Daltoners have publicized the theory that all written works printed on a printing press contain a hidden message which can be combined with hidden messages in other texts to unveil hidden knowledge. The contents of the hidden knowledge tends to vary from telling to telling, but the most common theme is some kind of power that could control civilization. A few believers have collected and searched hundreds of books, looking for the answers. No coherent message has been announced if discovered, but the search continues for those who believe. 

This theory is very divisive in Evanoch. Some argue that printed communication is too widely manufactured to have a standardized inclusion in some massive code; others say that there no way that intricate coded messages would be widely included, even by authors whose work suggests a code would be beyond them. All sorts of responses meet these objections, such as a close-knit community of printers who have a secret agenda separate from writers'. The group of believers is still notably large, however, in large part due to suspicion around new technologies that are still becoming accepted parts of everyday life. 

5. Hollow Star

A group of especially superstitious Evanines across all groups, but particularly amongst elves and half-elves, have countered the millennia-held belief that the planet is a sphere in an almost empty space with the argument that the planet is actually a hollow star. Part of the basis for this theory is that the ancient elven word for "star"--Izar--is in fact the same name as the planet itself. They contend that this is evidence that the planet is a star that burned almost all the way out; beyond this, they claim that the surface of the planet is actually on the inside, and the supposed light of the sun is actually the regularly ebbing and flowing light of the dying star. The nature of the night sky's stars remains a contentious issue. 

This theory is regarded by most as patently absurd. Doubters claim that the name "star" for the planet was a spiritual notion rather than a scientific one and that there is simply too much evidence for the planet's spherical shape to consider an alternative with no evidence. A fierce debate has raged in recent years over the theory, dividing especially those in smaller communities from those in larger communities; there have even been demonstrations outside of universities and astronomers' labs by proponents of the theory, claiming that they are spreading misinformation. Quite a few Evanine academics refuse to even acknowledge the theory, only leading to further division. 

6. The Dragon Circle

A group of well-informed people from all groups have begun to claim in recent generations that the numerous reported sightings of dragons over time have actually been immortal beings who held fantastic power as appointed dragons. The details of this arrangement and the identities of those suspected to be dragons varies wildly between tellings, but the concept generally holds that powerful people from across history have become dragons as part of a secretive ceremony, and that these dragons are all in contact and have shared agendas. Those who believe in this theory fear the dragons as cruel overlords who are inscrutable and strange. 

This theory is regarded in different ways. Some contend that the circumstantial evidence for the theory is compelling but ultimately unconvincing; others say that the story seems too farfetched to be plausible; others still doubt the existence of dragons altogether. The Dragon Circle has become something of a boogeyman which people either talk about in hushed whispers or joke about. What is generally agreed upon is that a number of important people have been sighted hundreds of years after their reported deaths and that dragon sightings do seem to coincide with major political happenings. Because the theory is so varied in its levels of belief, few Evanines would even consider this idea to be called a conspiracy theory. 

[For information about the real lore that this theory is based on, check out my variant rules for dragons.]

So there you have it--a range of conspiracy theories with all manner of degrees of truth and public belief. These can help me spice up a moment in-game by having an appropriate NPC discuss this theory with the players, which would really add some colorful detail to the world. It may even inspire the players to look into some of these theories, all of which could be fun jumping-off points for a campaign. This look into conspiracy theories makes my world feel more realistic; I think that suspicious thoughts about the world are a naturally-occurring part of a world, and having these gives Evanoch a more complete feeling. 

That's all for now. Coming soon: how to use your favorite media for inspiration, a guide to the languages in my homebrew setting, and a guide to diplomatic issues in my homebrew setting. Until next time, happy gaming!

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How to Develop a Random Idea into Worldbuilding and Storylines

Worldbuilding is one of the best parts of tabletop games for many GMs, and there are many benefits to digging into the details and elaborating on your world. But sometimes, trying to figure out where to start is an issue. You've got a whole world in front of you, so what needs your attention first? 

In my experience, you don't have to have everything figured out from the start. I've been GMing for over 15 years and only recently bothered to explain the major historical movements and natural world of my setting. It hadn't been a major issue, but developing those things helped me to better understand my world and run a more interesting and immersive game. If you're interested in worldbuilding from a conceptual approach in terms of things like that, check out the main page under the category "My Homebrew Setting" a little over halfway down the page. The many articles and guides there may inspire you to create a similar profile for your world. 

But many of us think not in the conceptual reality of our game, and more in terms of the practical realities of the gameworld. The standard of this kind of worldbuilding is in creating settlements and dungeons--making the physical world accessible to players. The same problem exists, though: where do you start? With a huge map as your canvas, what part gets the first worldbuilding paint? 

My solution is simple. If you have a campaign in mind, designing a campaign setting is your best strategy. But if you're just trying to expand your world, trust your gut: what would be the most interesting for you to build? It's supposed to be fun, after all. If you're still stuck, then I have good news. This article is about the simple solution to this problem: pick a random place on the map and go to town. 

I'm not joking. In order to illustrate my sincerity, I'm going to start with a random mid-sized settlement from my homebrew world; I'll pick it by using a random number generator compared to a list of 40 mid-sized settlements. Then, I will begin to write up details about what that settlement is like, and along the way, we'll discover all sorts of unique and interesting details I only found through doing this work. Let's get started. 

I got an 11, which is the town of Pliat. Here it is on my political map of my main continent on my homebrew world:

Your own worldbuilding should follow whatever your instincts tell you, and mine tell me that there's some information I've developed before that will influence what Pliat is like. The first thing I know is that Pliat is between the elven lands and the halfling lands, so the population there will reflect that. It's also near the heart of half-elven country and would bear evidence of that. And since I know a lot of the cultural and social details of my world, I can begin to piece together ideas like what foods are eaten here and what shapes buildings are in a general way. These details can help to characterize a settlement and make it distinct from the others the players encounter. In Pliat's case, most restaurants serve fish from nearby rivers and Lake Playbor as well as lots of grains and fruits and vegetables; most homes and businesses are L-shaped buildings, longhouses, or dugout underground homes. 

But that's basically all I know, and that's not much. My next instinct tells me that it would be good to develop the government, which will tell me a lot about the town and give me some ideas for possible quests. If Pliat's government is like its architecture and cuisine, then it would likely be some manner of loosely-defined council; the half-elven preference for committee and the halfling tendency towards loose government might combine that way. But to spice things up, I want to make Pliat different. I'm going to make up a form of government that I haven't heard of before to make Pliat an interesting place for players. Pliat is led by a Mayor, but the mayoral position is mandatory and changes on a weekly basis--that is to say, every citizen serves as the Mayor at some point for a week. This is intended to keep government representative and be open to new ideas, as well as inspiring civic duty. 

I could now go in two different directions: I might further develop the psychological implications of this policy, or I might write some of the history of how the policy has worked out. In my opinion, the public sentiment about it is likely to follow the historical results, so I'll start with the history of it. For narrative reasons, I want the system to be working well when the players get to Pliat. Let's say that in the earliest days of the mayoral policy, there were some bumps in the road--people unfit to lead with no example of how to do so, people acting on old grudges while in charge, occasional bribes accepted--but in the last few generations, Pliat has become a place that is more collectively run by the whole community with changing official titles, but wherein everyone generally behaves in the community's best interest. 

I mentioned narrative reasons for making Pliat pretty functional and almost idyllic. I think that one of the great tropes of tabletop games, particularly D&D, is depicting the oppressive government which demoralizes its people. It's not a bad trope, and it's certainly fun to be the hero who overthrows the unjust leader. But I think that some people also play tabletop games to be chaotic and wild in a safe space, and giving them a wonderful place where everything is okay is both a big change of pace (more memorable and unique) and an invitation to the players to interfere (a potential storyline). I have a party currently who just like making crazy things happen, and I am certain that they would destroy Pliat in tops two sessions if they went there. As I have said, breadth is important in worldbuilding, so Pliat will be something that helps me create more distinct locations in my world. 

This was general history. Let's consider a few of the temporary leaders who were notable. I need one that covers the old failures, so meet Carson Wettersley, the corrupt lumberjack who tried to sell the town to Finiel to the north and was run out of town, beginning a new era in which Mayors knew they had to fear public retribution. Then I need an early formative expert, so meet Juliet Sweep, the apothecary who introduced the idea of keeping policies of earlier Mayors and herself introduced the notion of holding town hall meetings at the beginning of each new Mayor's term to suggest new ideas for the week. I also want a colorful example that really lends some rich detail to the town, so meet Grynn Garryg, the orcish tinker who was appointed Mayor just hours after arriving in town and personally helped every member of the town in need before leaving at the end of the week. This gives me a good brief history to be able to convey to players who come to Pliat. 

I should also know about the current moment. Let's say that Georgia Illesin, a farmer, has been Mayor for two days, and she has been generally doing a good job, but some people are of the opinion that she's favoring farming projects over other industries in her decisions. If the players end up here long enough to see the next Mayor, it will be Henry Borchester, a tailor who will worry so much about pleasing everyone that he won't take much action at all. At the current moment, people are generally content with the system of government, but feel that they have been on a run of mediocre Mayors. This gives me enough information to have players show up and feel like there's a complete little community here with something interesting going on. 

I play with a wide variety of players; I have some who could indefinitely guide themselves through a sandbox world, and I have some who need some direction to get even small tasks done. As a result, I might have different needs for how much preparation for quests and storylines I need relative the group. But even with self-guiding players, it's a good idea to have at least the beginning of a few storylines so that the world seems to have its own living, breathing components. So given what I know so far, here are a few potential storylines: 

• I want a politically-related quest, so nearby town Terron is struggling to keep up diplomatic relations with Pliat due to the constantly changing leadership. Terron's governor, Yarro Nillenor, is willing to pay the party handsomely if they can convince the people of Pliat to appoint a more permanent diplomatic leader to make things easier for everyone. 
• I want a sort of culture-clash quest--something that plays with the multicultural dimension of the town, so let's say that some halflings, who chafe under the rule of changing leaders, have begun to organize along community lines, causing a rift between them and the rest of the town. One halfling elder, Darwin Rope, is offering a magical item (perhaps a Bag of Holding or a similar item which is prized by players) to anyone who can negotiate a compromise between the Mayoral position and the community organizations--Rope has already tried and failed. 
• I'll add one more, something that is also relevant to the setting; since Pliat is not directly near a water source, they depend on trade for fish (a staple for elves and half-elves), and they need occasional extra water for crops in dry seasons. Gnomish engineer Worki Serpon has proposed a large project wherein the Playbor River to the north would be split and routed south to a manufactured lake, which the city could depend on. Completing the project would require gaining public support, raising funds for the materials and labor, and protecting labor crews from bandits and monsters during construction. 

This gives me a pretty broad base to pull from--whatever my players are most interested in can become the main focus of their time in Pliat, and these quests are really only possible here in this specific settlement. That's something that matters to me a lot as a GM because I like to play multiple campaigns with my players, and I want them to get a sense of how diverse the world is. And just as importantly, I get to have a broad and varied experience too--my time in my homebrew setting has been different every time because I have been sure to give myself different settings every time. 

If I were to use Pliat as a major hub of a campaign as opposed to a stop between other locations, I would want to make a map of the city. A short stop doesn't really require a detailed map, but we should generally know what's in town. Let's say for my own reference in-game and if I do decide to make a map that Pliat is divided roughly into four quarters. The northwest and southwest quarters are primarily agricultural and are home to most Pliatian farmers, food service workers, and loggers. The southeast quarter is a trade section, mostly characterized by a large marketplace and several major thoroughfares of businesses. The northeast corner is home to public buildings like town hall and its various temples, but is also the biggest residential area in town, the site of various neighborhoods generally divided along cultural lines. Notable buildings would include the Pliat Lumber Depot, a huge lumberyard and processing facility; a large public worship house with private spaces for each faith; and the legendary High Horse Brewery, a tavern known far and wide for its generous portions and wide range of drinks. This tells me enough about the place to have a sense of what's here and what the players might encounter in their time in the city. 

There's other preparation that I might do here in Pliat to be ready to game, but I have already developed a number of resources to cut down on that work. If I need a character, I can use this list of character names and personalities to drop a fairly fully-formed character into the game. If the characters want a tavern besides High Horse Brewery, then I can offer them a range of other unique taverns complete with bartenders. Those details will allow me to portray Pliat as the complex and dynamic place that I've developed it to be. 

So now we've developed Pliat into a game-ready place with a variety of good information to keep it going. But I promised you something else in addition to the worldbuilding process; I said that we would learn something about the world in the process. It's time to make good on that promise. So what have I learned? Well, for one thing, I've changed my mental picture of this region of the map, for starters. If you had pointed to Pliat on the map before I started this article and asked me what kind of people live there, I would have though, "half-elves are sort of centered on that part of the map, so maybe half-elves and their parent races, elves and Faninites live there." I would generally have said the same about the other towns in the area; nearby settlements Gamna, Hasphatal, Terron, and Atir are all in the same general region. But by sitting down with Pliat and setting out to make it distinct, I created a version of it which is more complex than being a half-elven city like many of its neighbors. It's true that a good number of the people of Pliat are half-elves or elves, but the inclusion of halflings makes the settlement more complex and interesting. 

I learned about the region's racial population, and I also learned about the relationship between some of the settlements in the region. If you look back at the map, you'll see two small settlements right next to each other in the northeast--Zunard and Dozain. These two settlements are bound to have a complicated relationship, and I know this just by looking at the map:

But Pliat didn't have that clear indication that it would have a particular relationship with the neighboring cities. Writing the storyline for Terron's complication diplomatic relationship opened a door for me--now I know that these two settlements have a regular relationship and that it's strained. This tells me more about the region, and it even suggests other possible strained relationships. If we follow the logical conclusion of the manufactured river and lake storyline, a strained relationship with Atir is likely, as the new river would partially deplete Atir's water supply (and Truscan's to the northwest as well). 

Beyond even the implications of all this, there is still more: I set out to include an interesting idea for the politics in the region, and the worldbuilding I have done around it has informed the storyline of Pliat's leadership. Now players can see the functioning community with rotating leadership from the internal perspective (community-building and representative) and the external perspective (the city is difficult to work with for other cities). This has given us a more realistically complex presentation of the idea, and now I have an idea what tone I want to adopt when presenting the details of the city. 

I learned one final thing from the worldbuilding process around Pliat: when I needed conflict for this region, I did not reach for physical danger. This is in part because I gravitate towards roleplaying when it comes to tabletop games, which demands more abstract challenges that can allow a player to really inhabit their character. I feel that you can achieve this with combat, but I find it easier through more social interactions. That's why each of the quests here are more about talking with people than fighting. But that also tells me about this area: this is not an area where people are afraid for their safety, and the quality of life is good enough that average people could meet the needs of the community. This means that Pliat or perhaps even the larger area around it is pretty peaceful and calm, which is a good thing to know about a region. 

So we've started with just a point on the map and ended up with enough information to make Pliat a viable location for a few sessions or even the beginning of a campaign. We've also learned important things about the context in which Pliat exists and some details about the towns around it. All of that came out of just asking ourselves basic questions about what life is like here. I may or may not ever use Pliat as a location, but I won't lose the worldbuilding that came out of writing about it. 

That's all for now. Coming soon: a guide to conspiracy theories in my gameworld, how to find and use inspiration, and a guide to the various languages in my gameworld. Until next time, happy gaming!

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Why I Strive for Breadth Rather Than Uniqueness in My Homebrew Setting

In my homebrew setting, I tend to create new places and ideas based on what will give me the greatest breadth of options. When I develop locations and NPCs, I do try to create memorable and interesting ideas, but I don't generally try to create things that are completely unlike anything else. This is because a gameworld has to be able to sustain anything I need (namely new ideas) with minimal changes. Not everyone builds their worlds this way, but I feel that it has considerable benefits. Let's explore what developing a breadth of possibilities can do for your world. 

When it comes to developing setting and characters, my homebrew setting, Evanoch, has a wide range worldbuilding details. Politically speaking, none of the governments in my major cities or even secondary cities share a governmental system. Some people might argue that this is an unrealistic presentation of a world. In real life history, governments across the globe tend to share many details in most time periods; this is a huge generalization, but there was generally a period of kingdom rule in most places, followed by increasing democratic governments over time. 

But in my gameworld, having many similar governments doesn't really serve much of a purpose beyond a sense of realism. Consider this: if I come up with a story I like for my gameworld that needs a particular political system, having a few dozen kingdoms might get in the way because I wouldn't have a settlement with the government system I want. If I instead go with my route (creating diverse political systems), I can instead choose the settlement that best matches my needs for story. This is one major way that breadth can help us: it gives us a range of places and people to work with when we have new ideas. 

Years ago, I had an idea for a Western-inspired setting that still used D&D rules. This did not reference a particular political system, but it did require a specific geographical setting: it needed a desert area which was lightly populated. My map for Evanoch didn't really include this type of setting. Evanoch has a desert area, but it is not populated at all and is known for being uninhabitable, so I ran into an issue. My pre-planned world did not have the setting I needed. That presented a problem. Fortunately, there's another breadth-related strategy I used that allowed me to solve it. 

The heart of the breadth strategy includes the idea that we have room for literally everything we want to do in the gameworld. But we can't possibly prepare for all possibilities any more than we can begin to even anticipate all possibilities. The solution is simple: leaving things open for later development. When I created Evanoch, I decided that it was the most notable continent on a planet that I left otherwise very open. So when I came up with the idea for Ramsey, the western island, all I had to do was throw a new continent into an open stretch of ocean. If we're aiming for breadth, we need to allow ourselves room to continue to develop, and that means leaving some things open for later development. 

The Ramsey example is an extreme case--dropping a whole new continent into the world is a big step that most ideas won't require. But the example does show us that such a move is possible, which can be greatly helpful when needed. For less intensive needs, though, the same strategy can be implemented on a smaller scale: we can simply add a town to the map (which we have left some open spaces in for later development). When I ran the mystery campaign, I needed a town which was beset by chaos storms and which had a clearly divided social structure, so I simple picked an undeveloped part of my map and began designing the city I wanted. 

You may be saying to yourself, "how does leaving things undeveloped allow us greater breadth of possible experience?" After all, having a wide range of options and having an incomplete world are not exactly the same thing. But the fact of the matter is, unless you are publishing your homebrew materials, you will never be able to say that you have a complete picture of your world. It will always be growing and changing, it will always need new details to match your players' input, and it will need to be a place that you can work with even after you set the original details into place. So it's not that undeveloped parts of your world increase breadth, but rather that they allow you to continue to increase breadth as needed. 

I imagine that other readers still will be thinking, "But if I leave things undone, how will I know how to handle situations in the game?" That's a valid concern, but it's rooted in a misconception about the art of DMing. I have written literally hundreds of pages about my homebrew setting (almost all of which exists on this site), and I think it's fair to say that that's more than most DMs bother with. And yet after all this time and effort, there are still huge things I don't know about my world. After more than a decade of running in-depth, detailed games in my homebrew setting, I realized only in the last few weeks that I never spent any time outlining the major knowledge and research issues in the world, which is a massively important and characterizing set of information. My point is, if I run games (many of which have included knowledge and research issues) for a decade without ever formalizing that information, doesn't that communicate that we can live in gameworlds that are partially incomplete? I would argue that it does, and that means we shouldn't be afraid to leave some things for later. Future you will thank you. 

Let's get back to the heart of the breadth argument: that it gives us more potential than a completely unique world. This can be explored on a number of levels. Let's begin with an overview of Izar, the planet on which my homebrew setting exists. There are a number of continents, large and small: there is Dalton, a small island with little natural resources where one line of humans hail from; Fanin, a small forest island with peaceful humans; Ramsey, the Western-themed desert island; Cetin, a massive island with no inhabitants which Evanines would recognize; and Evanoch, which I designed to be a broad fantasy setting. These five islands allow me to access different types of stories than would be possible if all of them were more similar. 

Dalton allows me to tell stories about industrial humans with dogmatic religion and imperialist aims. Fanin allows me to tell stories about peaceful humans with tight-knit communities and humble demeanors. Already, these two islands allow me the possibility to tell vastly different stories even though both islands are home to humans which Evanines can't tell apart. Then with Ramsey, I can tell Western-style stories with a supernatural bent. Cetin is an old idea that I've never used yet; I don't run much in the way of high fantasy, but Cetin is covered with magical beasts and all sorts of mystical happenings that would feel out of place in my more grounded settings. And Evanoch itself is intentionally broad in every way I can make it. 

Let's investigate Evanoch more closely. I like a story that feels dramatically realistic but has room for the excitement of magic and deities, so I made Evanoch to be a fairly realistic place with as much variation as possible. I've done considerable work on the worldbuilding in Evanoch because it's the main setting I use for D&D. I've written about major ideas like what nature is like and what each god is like, but I've also developed things like sports and even senses of humor are like across the setting. I mention this not to brag about my worldbuilding, but to say that the actual details of each of those profiles are as different as I could conceive of making them while still fitting the setting. Take a look at any of my homebrew setting materials, and you'll see that literally every detail of the world shows how the different groups in it are distinct. 

You may be thinking, "But making the groups distinct--isn't that a form of uniqueness?" To an extent, I agree. And to that point, I am not arguing that worldbuilding should be all breadth and no uniqueness. It's a spectrum, and we want to be somewhere towards the middle. But when I worldbuild, I want to fall closer to breadth than uniqueness. Because in the end, deciding what makes an orc laugh versus what makes a halfling laugh is less about what makes them different and more about the fact that there are different senses of humor in the world. A player who makes a joke to one character and gets a big laugh but gets no response from another character with the same joke immediately discovers that your world is bigger, broader, and more detailed than they would get if all of the fantasy groups had the same sense of humor (even if it's distinct from our real life sense of humor). 

The sense of humor example shows us how characterizing the world can show shades of variation, and these are what do the bulk of the work of making the world seem real. But bigger details do the same work on two levels. Not only does knowing the architectural styles of any culture allow the same kind of sense of reality and complexity as the sense of humor example above, but it can help give the players access to information that can affect the game. For instance, the breadth of different styles of house at first tell the players that the groups are distinct and make the world more colorful, but once learned allows those same players to understand the world: seeing a hexagonal house means meeting a gnome, for instance, and players searching for a particular person's home might ease their hunt by looking for the right style of house. Now our breadth of worldbuilding also contributes to the players' ability to interface with the world, and that matters. 

So how do we go about focusing on breadth while still allowing room for unique additions? I undergo a three-step process which is really quite simple. Step one: Identify what you want to accomplish with your addition to your worldbuilding. This is a vital step, because worldbuilding should always be deliberate. We should know before writing specifically what we want to accomplish. In the Ramsey example above, I wanted a place that could support the narrative style and aesthetics of the Western. In the Cetin example, I wanted a place that could support high fantasy while still giving myself a designated space for more grounded stories. Knowing our goal allows us to move forward with the confidence that our work will honor our world while still growing it. 

Step two: Consider how to add the new material to your setting by focusing on the new addition. In the Ramsey example, I knew I wanted a Wild West setting, but that was all I had. So I did some mechanical considerations--what weapons and armor would need to change to fit the Western style?--and some worldbuilding considerations--what physical features would the setting have? The answer to this second question probably won't surprise you: I wanted breadth. Ramsey has two distinct island chains, both of which are very different. It has big cities on canyon edges, mountain forts, swamp outposts, and dense treetop fortifications. This means that I can explore essentially any classic Western story because I've developed the breadth to support it. 

Because Ramsey involved inventing an entire island, I was able to make it as one big place more or less in a vacuum. But if you were going to add a town to an existing area, you might face other challenges. You may need to ask yourself what the political situation of a region is like and whether your new town would fit into it, and you may need to consider why your new town would exist in your setting at all. It really just depends on how different your new town is from your established world. But don't give up if it's hard to place the new addition in your existing world; in real life, there is huge breadth between even similar places. Think about the difference between the major cities in the country or state you live in--doesn't it make sense that you might have a distinct settlement in the middle of a quite different area? Having grown up across the United States, I've seen places that seem, well, out of place where they are, and that only makes them more interesting. 

Step three: solidify for yourself what makes this new addition to your world different from the rest of it. Knowing an encyclopedia's worth of information about something in your gameworld is great, but until you can figure out how to convey that information, it's not very useful. So ask yourself some questions. If the players are used to the world or even just the game you're playing, you will want to communicate specifically what makes this new place/person/event special. Don't spend dozens of hours worldbuilding and then unveil your work like it's just business as usual. Highlight the colorful details so that your players understand exactly why you've given them the breadth and detail that you have. 

The ultimate goal of worldbuilding for breadth is to make the world useful to you and your players. By this, I mean that making a world with lots of different ideas is like stocking up on ammunition before a battle; it gives you the resources you need to run your game at your best. It allows you to move between different ideas, offer your players more possible adventures, and expand your creativity. It also allows your players to gravitate towards the parts of the gameworld that they enjoy, and it gives them the impression that your gameworld is as big and exciting as you've designed it to be. 

A final word on the power of designing for breadth: as someone who has DMed for more than half my life at this point, sometimes we come to prefer some parts of the experience over others. I got my start as a DM running silly antics campaigns with little narrative, and I am today much more hesitant to be a part of games that revolve around silliness and lack of direction. They're not bad games, mind you, but I've done many of them and prefer more serious roleplaying. But of course, some groups enjoy the antics and don't enjoy the serious side of things, and so I've developed certain areas of the world that are ripe for rich roleplaying and others that contain all the ingredients for silly antics. This gives me the ability to keep my world consistent and useful to me--I can stick with my world even when my players are playing practically different games. 

So in the end, a broad world is kind of like a Bag of Holding, where a highly specific world is like a fancy coinpurse. The fancy coinpurse is great and probably fits many occasions, but the Bag of Holding can handle almost anything. Personally, I would rather have the range and potential to do anything that I can imagine than trying to make my world so unique that it's unlike anyone else's. And of course, breadth and detail are not mutually exclusive--I hope that the worldbuilding that I've done here on this site shows that you can have both if you work at it. This, then, is just a reminder that a broad world presents you an open canvas, which is after all what we begin with as DMs. 

So there you have it: many of the reasons that I aim for the most diverse world I can, all of which benefit me and my players. You can enjoy the same benefits if your worldbuilding allows your to constantly expand the realm of what is possible in your game, and I hope that you can make the most of your worldbuilding by pushing the boundaries of what you include. 

That's all for now. Coming soon: how developing random details from your world can benefit your game, a list of conspiracy theories believed in my homebrew setting, and how to use inspiration from your favorite media. Until next time, happy gaming!

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Important Reminders from the Original Dungeon Masters Guide

Regular readers of this site know that I am wholly invested in homebrew materials. I have never once in my 16 years of running games in various systems used prepared material like a module--not because I don't believe they're useful, but because my joy in playing comes from creating my own materials. But I still care about the foundations that the game was built in, so years ago, I purchased a copy of the original Dungeon Masters Guide (yes, there is no apostrophe in "Masters" for whatever reason). 

I haven't really used very much of the information included in the book. The back cover boasts that it provides statistical information which had been collected for the first time in one bound volume, details like monster attacks and how to generate dungeons. But my favorite part of the book is barely a part of it at all--I especially love the foreword, which I think we might all benefit from reviewing. 

Below, I have reproduced the foreword to the original DMG in its entirety; after we have gone over it, we will inspect each of its main ideas in terms of how we run games. Here is the foreword: 

Is Dungeon Mastering an art or a science? An interesting question!

If you consider the pure creative aspect of starting from scratch, the "personal touch" of individual flair that goes into preparing and running a unique campaign, or the particular style of moderating a game adventure, then Dungeon Mastering may indeed be thought of as an art. 

If you consider the aspect of experimentation, the painstaking effort of preparation and attention to detail, and the continuing search for new ideas and approached, then Dungeon Mastering is perhaps more like a science -- not always exacting in a literal sense, but exacting in terms of what is required to do the job well. 

Esoteric questions aside, one thing is for certain -- Dungeon Mastering is, above all, a labor of love. It is demanding, time-consuming, and certainly not a task to be undertaken lightly (the sheer bulk of the book you hold in your hand will tell you that!). But, as all DM's know, the rewards are great -- an endless challenge to the imagination and intellect, an enjoyable pastime to fill many hours with fantastic and often unpredictable happenings, and an opportunity to watch a story unfold and a grand idea to grow and flourish. The imagination knows no bounds, and the possibilities of the game of ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS are just as limitless. Who can say what awaits each player, except a cornucopia of fantasy and heroic adventure? So much is waiting, indeed!

This book holds much in store for you as a DM -- it is your primary tool in constructing your own "world", or milieu. It contains a wealth of material, and combined with the others works of ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS (the MONSTER MANUAL and PLAYERS HANDBOOK) gives you all the information you need to play AD&D. But, as always, one more thing is needed -- your imagination. Use the written material as your foundation and inspiration, then explore the creative possibilities you have in your own mind to make your game something special. 

Dungeon Mastering itself is no easy undertaking, to be sure. But Dungeon Mastering well is doubly difficult. There are few gamemasters around who are so superb in their conduct of play that they could disdain the opportunity to improve themselves in some way. Fortunately, this work addresses the matter at length, and give you plenty of suggestion on all aspects of Dungeon Mastering (as well as some of the finer points) in order to help you improve your own efforts. Take heed, and always endeavor to make the game the best it can be -- and all that it can be!

This lead-off to the DMG was written by Mike Carr in 1979, and yet it reads like sage advice for DMs even today. Many of the virtues of this foreword's mindset are obvious, but let's dig in and investigate each point of what makes this foreword special. 

We begin with asking a very philosophical question: is DMing an art or a science? We could pretty endlessly debate this question, and the DMG does not take a strong stance either way on the question. This is wise, because each DM brings something different to the game. As Carr points out in these opening paragraphs, DMing is both art and science. On this site, I have addressed how to handle the game from both perspectives--planning a campaign, creating a gameworld, and developing materials in response to what players want are all forms of intricate planning that makes DMing a science, but I have also addressed more artistic ideas, such as how to make the world respond to players, how to balance plot with exploration, and how to improvise to not get stuck in plans. As much as DMs may conceive of the art and science approaches as being in conflict, they are in fact simply opposite points on a spectrum on which most of us fall somewhere in the middle. 

This is an important idea that the foreword handles with aplomb. Carr shows that both extremities of approaches to DMing have validity. But quite subtly, Carr has also managed to unite all DMs by beginning with the merits of each approach. Improvising DMs begin the book feeling respected, as do careful planners. And this opens us to considering another important point: we can learn from the opposite approach to our own. As much as I trumpet the benefits of being an artistic DM who flies by the seat of their pants, I also acknowledge that without some foundation to start with, it's very challenging to get started. That's why I do some basic planning with something like the story beat method as a framework and try to improvise the rest--it's the sweet spot for me, where some planning allows me to focus on the moment, and some improvisation allows me to be present with the players rather than sticking to a script. Even back in 1979, when DMing was only a fledgling art/science, Carr recognized the breadth of DM experience and brought DMs together. That's a huge task that we still struggle with today. 

Our next section in the foreword is something of an inspirational message. Carr reminds the reading DM that the required effort and the rewards are both incredible. DMs who have dabbled in homebrew know this lesson firsthand: until you have acclimated to the level of mental energy required to DM well, it is likely to feel a little overwhelming. Carr does not address this idea beyond explaining that it is well worth the challenge for the remarkable payoff. I agree with Carr that DMing is a huge commitment, even when performed with modules and help, but I do want to address that overwhelming feeling. That feeling comes from the belief that you are not prepared to handle what the players throw at you, and we can fight that feeling.

When you feel, as a DM, that you are not up to matching your players' actions in the game, there are two things to remember. The first is that the players do not have any idea what you are doing. That means that when you make some kind of what you would consider a mistake, the players are almost certain to not know about it. Remember that they aren't the ones who read the module or created your homebrew materials, so they have no idea whether things are going according to plan. Allow yourself to breathe and carry on without panicking, because you are the only one who knows that there's a problem. 

The other thing to keep in mind is that one of the main things that draws players to D&D and other tabletop games is that they allow the player to feel simulated agency. This is a fancy way of saying that players enjoy feeling like they're really in control of what happens. When we plan and plan endlessly, we impair the players' ability to feel as though they have the ability to make meaningful actions (at least if the players intend to do something besides what you carefully planned for, which is highly likely). I mention this idea because oftentimes, DMs get caught up in worrying about how the execution of the plan will go, but players are more worried about whether or not they're really in control of their characters. It may sound like I'm advocating for a "art over science" approach here, but I'm not; it would be similarly underwhelming for players to experience complete freedom with no structure, which would rob them of feeling like there are narrative stakes. It's just that beginning DMs tend to want to overplan, and that can get them started on the wrong foot. So don't worry about picking the art or science approaches--you want to balance them. 

The next section of the foreword is partially a reason that the DM reading should delve into the book: it contains information that will help the DM to provide players with the necessary information with maximum convenience. But it also addresses the idea of imagination quite broadly. Carr says that we should "[u]se the written material as your foundation and inspiration, then explore the creative possibilities you have in your own mind to make your game something special." This should sound pretty consistent with what we've already discussed: Carr is saying that just as we use the written materials for the science of DMing, we also need the creativity to go beyond the written materials and create our own twists on the ideas. This is something I try to keep in mind as much as possible. Even when D&D was a fledgling hobby that barely resembled the elegant systems we have in modern editions, even when D&D was an idea that most observers could not wrap their minds around, Carr was calmly explaining to beginning DMs that we were all embarking on a wildly creative, imaginative journey that had no clear predecessor. This was, quite literally, a visionary statement which remains relevant today. 

But let me underscore this point as much as I can: Carr says that we need the sweet spot I have mentioned, some way to incorporate the best of both worlds (art and science) to give our players the best experience possible. I know we have discussed this already, but Carr brings this idea back a few times even in this brief foreword, so let's give it its due by paying close attention to word choice. First, the written material in the DMG was meant to be "foundation and inspiration." That is to say, we use the information presented in the DMG as a starting point. I have studied modules in the past, and I know as well as most any DM that module materials give fairly brief approaches to what's present in a game. Particularly at the time of the DMG's publication, we are mostly talking about short paragraphs describing locations and enemies. That is to say, in order to present a reasonably entertaining game, a DM would truly have to "explore the creative possibilities you have in your own mind to make your game something special." And that word choice strikes me as even more deliberate: for your game to be "special," you have to do some of the work yourself. Again, this is not siding with the "art" approach to DMing, but reminding players that both approaches would need to be balanced for success. 

The final section of the foreword is something of an inspirational message. Any DM can benefit from trying to improve, and Carr points to the DMG itself as the tool which can benefit those DMs. But even more than that, Carr acknowledges that DMing is difficult. And while I try to present my advice here on this site in a way that makes it easier (not easy, but easier) to tackle the game's challenges, I too must acknowledge that DMing is a terribly difficult thing to be good at. Even a seasoned DM like myself has bad ideas, experiences off sessions, and misreads what my players really want. This idea matters for two reasons; let's address them in detail. 

Firstly, the difficulty of DMing means that we need to be more gentle with ourselves as DMs. I cannot say how many times I have thought a session was terrible only for my players to insist it was great; the same is true of the times my DMs have voiced doubts about the quality of an experience and I have felt it was a tremendous time. Because the task is so difficult, we are bound to judge ourselves harshly, usually against our ideal picture of how a game could have gone. And this is a big problem. I have seen talented DMs avoid running games because of self-judgment and anxiety, and I have fiddled with things that were working perfectly well (or left alone things I needed to change) because I was too judgmental of myself to recognize the real situation. So let us all remember that we should be kind to ourselves as DMs. We are taking on great stress and responsibility to bring our friends joy, and that deserves some credit just for trying. 

The second point worth mentioning here is that any of us can improve as DMs, no matter how experienced. I have been DMing for over half my life now, and my players pretty uniformly agree that I am talented at it, and I still find exciting new ideas and plans when I listen to D&D podcasts or talk with other DMs. Even reading the brief foreword of the original DMG has given us a wealth of important reminders to keep in mind, and I think that Mike Carr's ideas back then are not only still relevant today, but will continue to be important for generations to come. So let's stay humble and continue to hone our crafts, even when we get comfortable with what we are doing. 

Let's wrap up by revisiting the final line of the foreword, to "always endeavor to make the game the best it can be -- and all that it can be!" I really like this way of phrasing this idea, because it allows us to make a fine distinction which matters a lot. Carr does not say that we should always make our gameworlds or our prepared materials the best they can be. He similarly does not say that we should give our players the best experience that we can. He says that the "game" should be the best it can be. That phrasing suggests something big to me: that the end goal of D&D is not to create materials or to focus on the players 100%. Rather, the end goal is for the entire game to be the best it can. That means that your players should be happy with the narrative and their ability to affect things and the identities of their characters, but also that you as DM should be content with your planning process, your narration, and your handling of in-game decisions. 

I forget this all the time. As a person, I always choose to focus on the experience of those around me. As a teacher, I try to make my students comfortable, even when other teachers might say I'm not being firm enough. As a friend, I like to do favors and show that I'm here for people. And in D&D and other tabletop games, I think almost entirely about my players and the experiences they will have. But this mindset does not always serve me. I have run campaigns where I didn't really enjoy DMing or being a part of the game because I was so focused on my players that I forgot myself. This leads to dissatisfaction, which leads to burnout. We need to remember that our experience as the DM matters to. Imagine that a team is making a film, and the director hates the script. Is that film going to come out okay? Likely not, so make sure that you're getting something out of the situation as well. Your players will benefit from it. 

So there you have it. We've looked back on the original DMG's foreword, a brief message to the first generation of aspiring DMs, and we've found that there is a wealth of messages that can still help us today. I hope that some of these ideas resonate with you and that you are able to take your game into your own hands more than ever now to make your game the best that it can be. 

That's all for now. Coming soon: why I strive for breadth rather than uniqueness in my homebrew setting, how developing random details can help your worldbuilding, and a profile on conspiracy theories in my homebrew setting. Until next time, happy gaming!

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A Profile on Leading Research Issues in My Homebrew Setting

A great deal of the homebrew work that scares people away from creating their own materials is in the rich detail work of developing a complex living world. It's intimidating to look at a blank page and come up with all the moving parts of an entire world. My trick to getting into it is to pick an idea about life and begin to write about it in terms of my homebrew world. The great thing about this method is that each step makes the next step easier to complete. The more you know about your world, after all, the less complicated it becomes to decide on further details.

Here's an example of how this process works. About a decade ago, I put together an overall profile on my homebrew setting, Evanoch. Part of that process involved creating maps of the setting, which are included in the profile. Years later--only recently--I used those maps to create a guide to what the natural world is like: what plants and animals dominate each part of the world. And then, a short while later, I used that nature guide to figure out what the diets and cuisines of each culture of the world are like. So you can see that a step in one direction allows us to take more steps in other directions as well. 

That's why this is a profile on the most important issues being researched in my world--because it will help me to understand my world better and present it with more richness to my players, but also because this information will almost certainly allow me a window to other ideas in my world. So let's jump in and address the current research interests in Evanoch. 

Senses of Humor by Culture in My Homebrew Setting

Because I tend to run pretty roleplay-heavy games when given the choice, a lot of the worldbuilding that I do is around characterizing the cultures in my homebrew setting. Knowing things like the environment and species of the world or the major epochs of history of the setting are useful for a number of reasons, but oftentimes, roleplaying benefits from more people-oriented information, like common sayings among certain groups or references to famous people in the setting. With that idea in mind, I want to tackle a very abstract idea that nonetheless very tangibly changes social interaction: sense of humor. 

I've often heard it observed that regional, national, cultural, or other categorical identities have particular senses of humor, and I imagine that would certainly be reflected in a world where the D&D races are as distinct and colorful as they are. So in that aim, here is a guide to the senses of humor of each of the major cultures in my homebrew setting, Evanoch. 

A Guide to Famous People in My Homebrew Setting

One of the best ways to develop your world and to get new possibilities for stories is to just write about your world. Taking the time to think about each detail in turn can be incredibly rewarding. In that effort, I have discovered things about my world that I never would have conceived of without making myself sit down and think about it. So I've been doing so for most of my career as a GM. I spent days establishing this world's foundation and have spent years detailing it. I have spent a lot of time on this site doing this work--this is my eighteenth article dedicated to the ways that this world is unique. My focus this time is a detail we think about all the time but rarely use in tabletop games: famous people. 

Think about it: even if you live under a rock culturally speaking, you're likely to have at least heard certain names. The people we know in our world are often entertainers, politicians, and people who have risen to prominence through great deeds. And so it shall be in my world, Evanoch--I have compiled a list of people in these categories as well as what they are famous for. Read on for a full list of famous people in my homebrew setting.