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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A Guide to Stereotypes in My Homebrew Setting

One of the best things you can do when you write for a tabletop game is establish your gameworld. It was something that I lovingly and painstakingly did when I first started using homebrew materials in a serious way--which was even slightly before I started running serious games. That's the thing: to run the game you want, you need the world that matches. That's why I spend so much time here on the site addressing worldbuilding. 

I openly acknowledge that much of my worldbuilding is cultural. That's partially because I am very interested in cultural affairs in real life. But it's also because in any campaign that includes serious storytelling or open space for roleplaying is going to address culture quite often. I think that portrayals of culture make the world seem distinct from ours, and they can be exciting to learn about for players. So with that in mind, I want to build a guide to stereotypes. By this, I mean that I want to explain what people generally assume about various groups within the gameworld. As in our world, stereotypes are not necessarily true, though, so don't take a stereotype that a particular race is dishonest as an actual statement from the GM that it's true. In fact, my belief in real life is that most stereotypes are false and that most people are pretty similar in the ways that matter most. So these stereotypes are simply beliefs that are held about fictional people by fictional people. 

The following is a guide to stereotypes by D&D race, class, and religion.