How to Create an In-Game Newspaper

Writing inside your gameworld can be an especially exciting find for your players. I've written before about general in-game writing, books, and character-written notes, but one of the best opportunities for in-game writing is something I haven't covered yet: newspapers. I remember that, years ago, in a campaign I played in, our DM would make in-game newspapers every in-game day that filled us in about the city, often recounted our exploits, and signaled new plot developments. It's something I have used a few times, though never on that scale, but no matter how often you introduce your characters to a newspaper, it can be a great tool for worldbuilding, immersion, and story inspiration. 

I know a lot of folks are probably thinking, "but how do I write a whole newspaper?" The good news is, you don't really have to. This process only requires writing four to six quick stories that follow the same rule I strive to follow as a GM: add the beginning of a story, but nothing more. The rest is for the party to decide. So let's brainstorm, and brainstorming is different depending on your purpose. The three commonest purposes for a newspaper are introducing a storyline, introducing a settlement, or chronicling something that the party has done. If you're introducing a storyline, you need your one main plotline, plus a few miscellaneous others; for a settlement, you want a mixture of new plotlines and characterizing details; and for a party deed, you need your one recognition story and a few miscellaneous others. In each case, most of what you need is a lot of ideas. So let's brainstorm!

I think I good breakdown for most newspapers includes the following: 

1 leading story (either your storyline or a main quest)

2 secondary stories (best served by characterizing details and sidequests)

2 tertiary details (best served by characterizing details and sidequests)

1 humorous characterizing detail

This breakdown allows you to emphasize stories with different levels of stress--you have different tiers of importance to give to stories, allowing you to up-play or down-play whatever you want. Maybe you stress the story you're interested in, or you minimize it so your players feel like they found a hidden secret. It's whatever works best for you. With all this in mind, let's start working on an example. 

I'm not currently running a campaign that could use a newspaper right now, so I'll imagine that I'm making one for a settlement that some hypothetical adventurers have decided to visit. This newspaper will be basically their introduction to the town, and so I'm looking for quests and characterizing details. Let's say that this town is a desert outpost which recently missed a shipment from their food supplier. So their main story, and essentially a quest hook, is to gather food for the starving town. Another lesser story might demand justice from the town the missed the shipment, asking for a posse of adventurers to go exact revenge. Because the town is between orcish and elven country, there might be efforts in the newspaper to stir up dissent between those two communities, or perhaps a competing story asking for help smoothing things out. On the other hand, our characterizing details should tell us more about this town. Maybe it's uncharacteristically peaceful for being in basically a warzone, so there's a record of public arrests showing that no one has been arrested in weeks. Maybe it's a fairly cultured place, so one of the stories is about a community production of a play. And for the humorous characterizing detail, we might add that a locally well-known person had recovered from an embarrassing injury, which I'll say is sitting on a cactus while drunk. So we have some ideas. 

To turn those ideas into full stories, we need to ask ourselves a few questions. What is this story supposed to be about? It should fill in details that make your other stories possible or which provide setting information. What is this place like? The story should reflect the place in some way so that it makes sense. What should the players take away from reading this? Remember that players will latch onto unimportant details with regularity, so focus your stories only on things that contribute to the direction you want to go in. 

I'll turn one of these ideas into a story with some guidance along the way. Then we'll begin to prepare the visual representation of the newspaper. Let's work with the main storyline I brainstormed above about the food shortage. What is the story supposed to be about? It needs to explain the situation and propose a solution. So the article will describe the reasons for the food shortage and call for helpful people to donate and ship food, noting a blockage in the supply chain elsewhere. What is this place like? The city can grow a bit to sustain some of its needs, but it can't supply everyone. So with the growing hunger, people have destroyed the existing crops, worsening the problem. What should the players take away from this? That the situation is dire and that payment would be offered for help. So the article will specifically state the direness and name a benefactor who is offering payment. These answers resulted in the paragraph below, our story about the food shortage. 

A terrible famine is sweeping our fair city of Nyirin. Our desert rose town has been struck by a terrible blow of fate, and a delayed cart of life-giving food has left people starving in the streets. The problem's root lies with the bad faith business deals which Nyirin has received from our sister city of Yothbalog time and time again. Their fairer skies and loamier soil gives them an advantage over us which they wield like a weapon. We are starving, and the hungry had unwittingly destroyed our crops by overharvesting. This situation requires an answer now, and Baron Cyathin has offered a cash reward to anyone who can bring food to Nyirin before the Yothbalog carts arrive. 

I've written the other articles and will fill them in as we assemble the newspaper's appearance. Start by opening Photoshop and creating a new document with a 9 inch width and a 13 inch length. It should look like this: 

Our blank canvas. 

Then we're going to add an image of parchment texture. Once the image is in Photoshop, resize it until it covers the whole canvas. It should look something like this: 

Our blank parchment.

Then add a title for your paper as well as the date (mine is in my gameworld's system rather than the Gregorian calendar) and some decoration:

Title and date added. 

 

Now it's time to add the text from the stories. It's not something that had a set way it has to be, but people generally expect different sections and columns. Have some fun deciding how big the text box are and how big you want the lettering to be. I'm going to emphasize my main story with bigger print and scale the rest down to fit. Remember to leave some space between the text boxes. I've also added a "Totally Anonymous" tag to the paper because (1) it's an interesting idea, and (2) I don't want to come up with author names. 

Text added.

Now all we need are some formatting lines, and we have a newspaper. I suggest using the box highlighting tool to highlight where you want your line to be, then use the paint tool to fill it in using the same color of ink you used. 

Lines added. 

And then you have your finished product! If you meet physically with your players, you can print it out for them; otherwise, you can share it with them digitally as a part of your world. 

The finished newspaper. 

So, you can add lots of great characterizing information on your world, build for future quests, show the consequences of player character actions, and immerse your party into your world by taking some extra time to create something like a newspaper for your players. It took me about an hour and a half to create the newspaper and the documentation here to tell you how to do it, and you won't need to create instructions, so it's really just a matter of committing to be creative and making it happen. And think about how cool it would be to regularly make newspapers in-game and then have a record of all the plot points and storylines and player accomplishments. It's absolutely within your reach, so good luck. 

That's all for now. Coming soon: why I use a combination of 3.5e and 5e, why most first-time D&D players are more Neutral than Chaotic-Neutral, and a list of interesting cities to use in your game. Until next time, happy gaming!

Why You Shouldn't Recreate the Real World's Problems in Your Gameworld (But How to Do So Responsibly)

I've seen a lot of discourse online in the last year about how many DMs faithfully translate the real world as their gameworld, and moreso about the failures of inclusion in doing so. Much of what I've read has centered on ideas about how many people live with oppression, and reliving in the game isn't exactly the escapist fantasy many people strive for. I agree with these criticisms in as far as that much goes. But I also think that there are many other important reasons to be more creative with your homebrew setting. This guide aims to explain why you shouldn't just recreate the real world in your gameworld, and it also provides tips on how to use the real world as inspiration without using it unedited. 

If you're familiar with this site, you know that I've spent a lot of time writing about my homebrew setting. At the time of this article's writing, I've penned 29 different descriptions of details of my world, from different rules for gods to a guide to cultural senses of humor and even information on what tattoos look like by culture. And if you've read any of these, it will be obvious that I've borrowed details from the real world--the senses of humor and tattoo styles are depictions of or inspired by real parts of our world. But none of them are direct taken from a real group. In other homebrew articles I've written, such as the architecture profile or the guide to cultural foods, I've taken real world ways of doing things and adopted them with small changes to my cultural groups in the gameworld. But even here, I have not decided that because dwarven architecture is fairly Gothic that they culturally resemble western Europeans in the 1800s. These examples help to illustrate that it is possible to borrow from the real world without entirely taking it. And that possibility deserves exploration. 

What a lot of fledgling DMs experience in trying to build gameworlds is a kind of overwhelming. The possibilities are endless, but you have to decide on something. It's like options paralysis, writer's block, and the frustration of not know where to begin, all at once. So the obvious idea occurs: borrow from the real world. It's worked for countless real creatives, including Tolkien, whose works are a fundamental part of D&D history. But as I said above, it needs to be partial borrowing. That leads me to my first tip: when you feel inclined to borrow, ask yourself what part of it inspires you? If you could only take a detail or two about it, what would those be? Once you can answer those questions, you know what you want to adapt. Let's use an example from a campaign I'm playing in: the DM wanted to adapt the classic D&D underground drowish city idea into their campaign, but they didn't want it to be operate like a canon drowish city. But they knew they wanted to use this idea for plot reasons, so they took it to the next step: building in details that fill in the rest. Here, you're asking yourself, how does this idea logically (or illogically) fit into the gameworld? What will make this detail more interesting? In my example, my DM added that the drow had become reformed, peaceful members of another elven society that merged with them. The underground city became a safehaven from biting cold weather and bigoted neighbors. This was a great twist that we're still investigating, and it's far more interesting than it would have been had we simply encountered a dungeon full of drow. So although it can take a while to imagine and decide on these details, it's certainly possible. It can be easy with practice and enthusiasm. And it's rewarding whenever performed. 

Another element of problems coming from adapting the real world has to do with predictability. When you draw on information that's well-known enough to be recognizably referenced to an average person, you necessarily rely on their familiarity with it for the reference to make sense. It's entirely possible to run a campaign about something very obscure and get drama out of it because people don't have a reference point for it, but a campaign that was about something in the public consciousness, there isn't going to be a lot of room for surprise. Discovering things about the world you're in can be one of the most exciting things to experience as a player, and you lose that when you adapt from the real world directly. I have heard of DMs basing campaigns on real military campaigns before, and I frankly can't imagine enjoying myself in a game with no mystery except how the dice will roll. I recognize, of course, that some people do enjoy it, but as I've written about before, I think that the height of tabletop games is role-playing. And if you want your players to engage in role-playing, you're going to want them surprised sometimes, meaning it's best to have some details of your own making to keep your players guessing. I personally strive for less than 50% of a detail about my world to be true of a real world counterpart as a rule, and I work for less than 25% when I can as a goal. I would recommend the same rules as you go about crafting your own gameworlds. 

An additional consideration with borrowing from the real world is that the real world is not understood by the general public very well. We live in a time in which nearly everyone in the world lives in a place full of lies told by those in power. Cultural stereotypes about others are not accurate by any means. And yet, by my estimation, the most common form of real world adaptation in tabletop games is in making the racial/cultural groups in the world stand-ins for real world national/cultural groups. I would say that the most recognizable case of this is with Dungeons & Dragons dwarves. I have scarcely met a player who doesn't associate a Scottish accent and German culture with dwarves. This is largely due to film adaptations of Lord of the Rings, I suppose, but it's also pretty bizarre. It's seen as somewhat harmless, but I also see lots of DMs who portray elves as very representative of Asian cultures like China and Japan. To me, that's interpreting perceived aloofness on the part of real Asian people and fictional elves as similar and therefore representative. That's a fine line with being xenophobic at best and possibly racist. Equating dwarves with specific western European powers doesn't seem much better. And that's entirely avoidable. My dwarves, for instance, appreciate a paternalistic society with privileges for the wealthy because there's a cultural belief that wealth is attainable with hard work, making them complacent with their lopsided government. I would argue that this is a representation of some real-world problems, but they also make this decision because the interference from their government is very mild, leaving them to focus on their lives as they choose. This is something of an amalgam of modern Western society, but not very representative of any specific people. The other races in my homebrew setting are all quite distinct from this--each is inspired by cultural beliefs from our world, but expressed in distinct ways. And while the dwarves are very of this world, the others except for Daltoners (imperialists inspired by imperial Westerners in real world history) are nothing like what we have in reality. This is because I've used cultural ideas to build the societies rather than specific recognizable traits. But you can see how the risk of conflating real life cultures with fictional depictions is murky territory, best avoided by a DM--especially when the alternative is a more enjoyable, engaging sharing of your own imagination. 

One final argument I'll make concerning using real life ideas for your worldbuilding: I have played a lot of tabletop games in my time--I've been playing for over half my life now, longer than any of my students have been alive. And one thing I have learned is that a DM's way of unveiling their worldbuilding tells you a lot about them as a DM. When a DM presents classic D&D materials to run as a module, it tells me they don't yet make the effort to run things without a script. When a DM presents materials that are very closely modeled on the real world, that's one step up the creativity ladder of homebrew, but it's a similar spirit. There's a lack of confidence in one's creativity to entertain one's party. On the other hand, when a DM presents very original worldbuilding, it's a sign that the DM is comfortable with the creative process. And a DM who is comfortable with the creative process is going to do more than worldbuilding well. You can also learn this information before playing with someone. Ask the DM about their world and see what they tell you. They're going to advertise what they think is most attractive about their gameworld. If it doesn't match the style of play you're looking for, then you know without playing; if it does match your playstyle, you can go in knowing what to do as a player. In any case, good worlbuilding isn't just a predictor of enjoyable gaming; it actually builds the skills that a DM needs to do well. 

So, do you still want to play a game about something controversial/too close to home/dramatic from the real world? Well, I get it. As a writer, anything and everything is out there, so accepting that something is off-limits (which I'm not arguing--merely that real life as worldbuilding has its limitations) can be really difficult. You're committed, so how do you do it safely? Consideration of your fellow players is your guideline. If you suspect that a storyline or idea might be controversial to someone, ask your players if they're okay with a storyline involving the topic you have in mind. If anyone says no or even is hesitant to answer, accept that this isn't the time for that idea. But if everyone's on-board, you have the green light to make your story ideas work. One thing I learned from a brief beginning of a campaign involving parallels to the Civil Rights Movement of the United States was that dice rolls can meaningful change the course of the history you're referencing, so that's another potential drawback to drawing from real life. Ultimately, tabletop games are a way to make things the way you want them to be--slaying monsters, exploring other lives, being heroes--and DMing should be too. 

That's all for now. Coming soon: how to make an in-game newspaper, why I use a combination of 3.5e and 5e, and why most first-time D&D players are more Neutral than Chaotic-Neutral. Until next time, happy gaming!

Common Misperceptions About History in My Homebrew Setting

In my never-ending quest to make my homebrew setting more detailed and realistic, I often set out to describe cultural phenomena. What are politics like? What are senses of humor like? What are superstitions and stereotypes like? Along these darker lines, what conspiracy theories are out there? As you can tell, I'm interested in why people are the way they are. In many ways, tabletop games are how I make sense of the real world, trying to construct something that evokes reality despite being unreal. And so, as a trained historian, I'm interested also in the ideas that people believe which are ahistorical. This happens all the time in real life--people refer back to people and ideas that do not match their beliefs. And so this is a guide to historical misconceptions in my gameworld. 

1. Ancestral Homelands

Historians don't agree much about prehistory, but it is generally held that contemporary societies exist precisely where their ancestral homelands lie. The argument goes that each race has held its own territory for the duration of time. However, this is not true, with the exception of the human groups to arrive on Evanoch's shores; Faninites are largely clustered around their arrival point on the northwest coast, and Daltoners are most plentiful in their capital of New Dalton on the eastern coast. In reality, homelands have changed, sometimes multiple times. 

These shifts can be grouped into three general categories. The first is migration. Migration was the main cause for the current state of the easternmost parts of Evanoch. The dwarves began at the center of the Kallett Mountains, not at the tip as believed today. Rather, on the plains surrounding the believed dwarven homeland were gnomes. Further up the coast were halflings near the forests, which were uninhabited by people. However, due to climatological changes, certain crops became ungrowable in their former homes. This led to massive migrations along the eastern coast, where these changes were most severe. First, the halflings moved west across the Kalletts and into central Evanoch, where their home in the Heronal Forest remains today. As this movement ended, the gnomes sought to move north and try to tame the northern forests, carving out what would become their capital of Vestry today. The dwarves, seeking a warmer climate, and knowing that the gnomes had vacated the area, moved south and recreated their previous lives where Underhar is today. 

The second category of territory shift is from war. Elves are popularly believed to have come originally from the northern volcanic islands called Lathien, and orcs are believe to have originated on the southern rocky island of Grob. The reality is switched: elves' original homeland was the rocky island to the south, while the orcs came from the volcanic islands to the north. The switch came just before recorded history, and the effect was that all evidence was destroyed, leaving little indication of the truth. After centuries of warring, both orcish and elven leadership decided to launch all-out assaults on each others' capitals. A new leader for the enemy capital, a small delegation of advisors and leaders, and almost the entire military force of each nation was sent along a circuitous route to the enemy capital. The elven and orcish capitals fell within days of each other. Most of both cities were razed. Each had to learn to live in the other's treacherous environments, and both found that in some ways, they were better-suited to life in their new homes. 

The third category is more conceptual: genetics. A few researchers have put forth the surprising but true fact that all of the races of Evanoch are actually descended from the same common ancestor. Unknown even to those researchers is the origin of this common ancestor. In fact, it was descended from a nearly feral creature that lived on the opposite side of the planet. Increasingly intelligent ancestors burrowed deep under the sea to arrive at Evanoch, some staying beneath the surface and evolving into distinct subterranean races first splitting into a smaller, nimbler ancestor and a larger, more powerful ancestor. These two ancestors further divided and evolved. The smaller ancestor became a taller version called the Drow and a smaller version called the Deepling (psychically-linked and armored beings); the larger ancestor became a stouter form called the Duergar and a stranger long-necked form called the Gant (magical and intelligent creatures). When those groups adjusted and evolved to life on the surface, there was one further notable change. Widely, these new races were less prone to violence and less naturally deadly, though they used their striking intelligence to counteract this deficiency. The Drow became the elves; the Deeplings became halflings; Duergar divided once more, now into smaller gnomes and hardy dwarves; the Gant became stronger and lost their long necks to become orcs. So, from a more distant perspective, all Evanines' true homeland is a terrifying place that the earliest people rallied together to escape. 

2. The Formation of the Continent

It was long held in folklore that the shape of Evanoch was the product of a wrestling match between the gods--its mountain peaks were said to stirred up by a bout between Kord and Gruumsh, for instance, and its valleys mined away by the greedy likes of Vecna, searching for hidden treasure. Over time, this folk belief has disappeared in most places, replaced by faith that shifting earth and erosion can explain why the continent looks the way it does. In fact, the myth is closer to the truth. The shape of Evanoch comes from fortifications for the battle between the gods that never occurred--something of a cold war between deities. In the time before humanoids lived on Evanoch, it was a stomping ground for a gods, a kind of paradise for only them. Their actions to protect it changed it forever. 

The preparations for battle happened generally in three phases. In the first phase, actions to secure the island continent were made carefully and under cover so as to be able to make movements without alerting the other gods. Initially, Erythnul began to create camps near some of the less martially-inclined deities; Hextor mimicked this strategy in opposing his twin brother Heironeous's headquarters; and not long after, Vecna established control of various libraries that contained information needed to oppose him. This set the stage of the conflict, which was only further fed by Vecna's discovery that the continent itself had magical energy. Vecna tried to keep this information secret, but Olidammara discovered the secret and spread it to everyone. With each god in full awareness that the fate of massive magical energy was up for grabs, the cold war properly began. 

The second stage of the diverted conflict involved almost unanimous fortifications from the gods. The evil gods who established footholds early as described above furthered their strongholds (Erythnul building more bases around the weaker gods, Hextor creating a massive fort around Heironeous, and Vecna attempting to broker a deal with Boccob). Many of the good-aligned deities forged an alliance to combat the presence of the evil deities. With some difficulty, the good deities established a base at the center of the continent, and they were soon surrounded by evil forces. The good deities created an emergency team--Yondalla, Pelor, and Heironeous agreed to act as healers in case battle came. Evil forces dug in around them, especially on the east side of the continent and in the ocean to the south. The gods pressed in on each other, magically and physically. From this, the center of the continent gained its mountain ranges on the eastern and southern edges. 

The third stage of the preparations for battle was the execution of a few strikes launched by both sides which caused permanent consequences, but did not result in a full-blown war. Once it was clear that the good deities and their defenses in the center of the continent were not vulnerable, Erythnul suggested appealing to the more neutral deities. This action was further polarizing to the neutral deities, who increasingly chose sides (Fharlanghn, Kord, and Obad-Hai leaning importantly to the good, while Gruumsh, Nerull, and Wee Jas tended to side with the evil gods). Under cover of darkness, Hextor killed an incarnation of Fharlanghn, and this caused a group led by Heironeous to drag Hextor to the same spot and kill him. This site is now the Kraal Desert, and little to nothing grows there. The racial deities tended to help the good gods, but only Yondalla explicitly chose a side. Olidammara helped both sides, and this nearly prevented her from being able to broker a peace. After the deaths, Olidammara (at Boccob's urging, their knowing that only Olidammara could be trusted by both sides, ironically) brought together the gods and agreed that they would leave without further action and allow the island continent to persist without their interference. The heavens were far more spacious than the island, after all. The gods agreed, and they left the continent looking as it does today. 

3. The Magic War

I've written previously about The Magic War, a massive and contemporary struggle fought over the regulation and use of magic. Today, only a generation after the war, there are already considerable misconceptions about it. The most common modern conception of the magic war is that it was a struggle fought by volunteers to end the use of magic which ended with unregulated magic. The reality is that there are three fundamental mistakes in the previous sentence. 

The first mistake is that the war was not a struggle fought by volunteers. It is true that a great many Evanines put their lives on hold and went to fight in an idealistic war. But it is also true to say that a great many of the soldiers who fought in The Magic War were not volunteers. It is estimated by informed historians that over 80% of soldiers were enlisted by either a provincial military or a group of mercenaries, meaning that more than four fifths of the people who served in the war were professional soldiers, paid for their service. Further investigation by historians reveals that the common complaint that ideological organizations were the most frequent to appear on battlefields is unfounded--in fact, the most common organizations represented on any given battlefield were city and town militaries. Contrary to the belief that individuals fought the war independently, the truth is that official local organizations dominated the war effort. 

The second mistake is that the war's central question was not just to end the use of magic. At the outset of the war, the central question of the debate that led to tensions was basically, "Should magic use be free, regulated, or abolished?" And it is true that for the first few months, this was the basis of the struggle. But quickly forgotten or covered up were the changing demands by some of the sides. While it is unequivocally true that the pro-magic side never changed their demands or terms, their opponents did not hold to the same. The regulation cause shifted from public oversight of magic use to private oversight of magic users relatively early in the war, making the regulation cause more in line with the anti-magic cause, and thereby less open to compromise with the pro-magic cause. Later in the war, the regulation camp would shift further, adopting a stance that all magic would need to be cast in the company of an official--many historians believe this to be retributive for the often bloody victories of the pro-magic camp. The anti-magic cause was even more prone to changing positions, getting so progressively aggressive that even moderate members of the army clamored for the execution of all magic users. By the war's end, the anti-magic position called for the immediate imprisonment all of known spellcasters and the execution of anyone casting a spell in the future. So it was not precisely an end to magic, but also the punishment and/or surveillance of magic users. 

The third mistake is that the war ended with unregulated magic. It is officially true that the war ended with pro-magic accepting surrender from the opposing sides, consenting to the terms that magic would be freely available as before without additional terms. However, as many spellcasters in Evanoch can tell you, it is not the actual law of the land. Because the war was ended by representatives of ideas rather than governments with standing armies, the enforcement of the freedom of magic is uneven. In major cities, it is observed, but in smaller towns and less progressive places, magic users are still moved to practice in secret, or at least out of sight. So without a governing body to execute the pro-magic victory, there is little in place to practically protect some magic users from repressive governments. 

One of the things that's most fun to me about the development of information like this is that it's unlikely to be known even by people in the gameworld. That means that I could potentially use this for something. I might build a campaign around being a historical researcher who discovers truths like these, which can be really valuable to a player. I just ran a one-person campaign with a friend and fellow DM in which he personally uncovered evidence that gnomes and dwarves come from the same ancestor, and he said it really struck him to be such a part of the world that way. I think a campaign structured around this information could be really fun. 

Or I could use it to create some real characterization and worldbuilding in-game. I might have characters talking about the world, and have a character who shares one of these ideas and gets called a conspiracy theorist. It would leave an open place for the players to jump in and ask questions and learn more and decide for themselves. Even if they just shrug off the person who shares the information, that's still a far more interesting detail to add than most things that would typically take place. 

Or I could just keep it as out-of-game lore that hold onto. You never know when it might come in handy down the line. Or perhaps just share it out-of-game with your players when the time is right, like after a campaign (players love DMing secrets most of the time). Or use this to build further lore--I could easily write another five pages about the cold war between gods or about the fateful switching of capitals between elves and orcs. I'll say it forever: worldbuilding helps you every time, whether you see the payoff now or later. 

That's all for now. Coming soon: why you don't have to recreate the real world's problems, how to make an in-game newspaper, and why I use a combination of 3.5e and 5e. Until next time, happy gaming!