Creating a setting for a tabletop roleplaying game is a lot of work. Regardless of whether it is supposed to be the backdrop for an entire campaign or a temporary location your players find themselves, it takes a lot of work to get it ready. I have had a lot of experience creating worlds, given that it was always my favorite part of writing stories and running D&D games, and I’ve learned a lot of lessons about how to do it effectively and quickly. Not every setting can be created quickly, of course, some things just take time to work out, but I have a few tips and principles I stick to that help me create something I can use without making it so rigid that there’s no room to improvise and adapt as your players (or characters, for written stories) explore.
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I Got To Play D&D In Person For The First Time In Over Two Years
Thanks to a friend coming into town for the first time in a few years, I was able to run my Sunday night Dungeons and Dragons game in-person for the first time. There is the unfortunate caveat that the game was 4/5ths in person, since one of the players was still remote, but that’s a setup I’ve dealt with many times in the past (it was the default for my pre-pandemic Sunday night game for pretty much the entire time I’ve had a Sunday night game). This time, though, the guy who was usually the remote player got to be there in-person! It was a fun change of pace, even if I had to basically dismantle my computer and office in order to get the whole setup working since most of my notes, resources, and tools are digital these days.
Continue readingOpen-World Situation Building In Dungeons & Dragons
After nearly two months, I got to run my Sunday night Dungeons and Dragons campaign again. After side-sessions, many missed sessions, and a whole lot of tumult in everyone’s life, we were able to gather again and return to the dark fantasy and mild horror stylings of the world I’d spent over a year slowly developing. I had fun, my players had fun, there was a lot of lucky rolls, the player characters survived a lot of nasty damage, there were some clutch reactions and actions, and only one player character died in a boss battle they were absolutely unprepared for! That’s the danger of open-world scenarios, you know. You can accidentally wander into the desecrated temple to the not-evil gods right as a priest of what is essentially malicious entropy completes a ritual that temporarily grants him a huge deal of power in a side-realm. All without any of the information that contextualizes any of that so even when you do win, you’re not sure if it matters or not, or even how to do anything as a result.
Continue readingPotential Timeline Hijinks Aren’t a Risk, They’re an Opportunity
I’ve been recycling a Dungeons and Dragons campaign that, in its first run, dramatically changed during the time it was transitioning from the “early introduction to the mechanics, world, and general themes” phase to the “initial major plot threads and character story incorporation” phase. Because of some players withdrawing due to pandemic-related stress and removing a player due to violating table rules and interpersonal conflicts, the scope of the campaign had to be drastically reduced since two of the early-plot-essential player characters were no longer in the campaign. And while I could find a way to make it work without them, the players left weren’t as interested in continuing those story arcs the way they’d been going. So I made some major changes, moved their campaign around in time, and changed how a lot of the story was being told. As a result, I had an entire campaign’s worth of world prep, plot notes/ideas, and cool magic items just sitting around.
Continue readingAdaptation Versus Adoption Across TTRPG Genres
I had the idea for a superhero themed D&D game. The idea originated in an idea on how I could adapt the Monk class and the various subclasses, but many of the various other classes and abilities could be represented as super powers if you give them the right flavor. I’ve been stewing over it in my mind for a while, mostly just as a fun thing to think about when I’m not doing anything else, but I haven’t done any concrete work to develop the idea beyond the conceptual stage. See, as someone who is tangential to many circles on Twitter, I usually get a pretty good grasp of the drama that has taken center-stage at any given moment without getting embroiled in it myself. One of the big, long-running pieces of drama is that games other than D&D exist but the popularity of D&D tends to eclipse them in such a way that, when people want to play non-fantasy games, they tend to work on adapting D&D rather than finding a game that was explicitly made for the type of genre they want to play.
Continue readingDrowning In D&D Rules
One of the things I appreciate about Dungeons and Dragons Fifth Edition over any previous edition of D&D is the simplicity of their rules regarding underwater adventuring. Trying to fight something underwater? It’s either impossible or you’re bad at it. Unless you’re used to being underwater due to exposure or training, have magical aid, or are a type of person who just lives under water. In previous versions, there were a lot of rules about the types of actions that you can take under water, how shooting things works, how to attack things when the attacker or the attackee is out of the water and the other one is in it, and then all the fiddly little compounding numbers that come out of those declarations and determinations.
Continue readingPlaying an Interesting Villain at the Table
I don’t know if this is a feature of everyone’s twitter experience or just mine because of the particular intersections of my interests, but I feel like someone starts a discussion at least once a month about how to play, write, or depict interesting villains. Or how a specific type of villainy can make for a more interesting story than heroics. Or how a different specific type of villainy could actually be the most ruthless and most difficult to fight against. It is always interesting to read through these discussions and then the counter arguments people frequently make that villains don’t always need a sympathetic reason to be acting villainously, but there’s one specific argument that always catches my attention and interest.
Continue readingWithholding Information At The Table
There is a seductive delight in knowning something someone else does not and wishes to. As studies of behavior on the internet have taught us, most people’s motivation for engaging with people on the internet outside of their social circles is to feel superior to other people. Is it any wonder that some people find it difficult to share information that they alone lay claim to? Is it any wonder that some people fall prey to the delight of withholding information someone else wants in order to drive some tension and drama into what might otherwise be a calm, peaceful moment? Even I am not immune to the allure of gently taunting someone with knowledge I have the power to share or withhold.
Continue readingThe Horror Game Is Off To a Great Start!
After approximately a month and a half, I got to return to my main weekly D&D campaign and run the next session (the first full session) in the extra-universal domain I built way back in 2020 when I was bored due to only working alternate weeks. I set up a whole mystery thing I was going to unveil for a different campaign since one of my core players loved mysteries, but she wound up withdrawing from the campaign because only doing stuff online became too much for her, so I recycled it into a different D&D campaign. Now, one kidnapping and a side character later, my players have fully immersed themselves in a world of betentacled eyeball sunrises, screams instead of clock chimes to mark passing hours, and a massive mystery to solve before the constant wear of terror and nothingness grinds down their very souls.
Continue readingI Have Too Much Fun Stuff To Do
My relationship with media consumption has shifted over the last year and a half. It’s a mixture of living alone, trying to maintain healthy day-to-day habits, and the way that the pandemic has shifted a lot of content I used to consume into the streaming sphere. I had very little I used to follow as it came out, instead consuming it in bursts when I had time or wasn’t feeling well, or just needed a couch day. The pandemic changed how I rationed out my energy, my need for rest, and how I react to socializing, and that in turn changed how I consume media.
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