Game Master's Corner: Top-Down Campaign Creation

Sooner or later, I think every game master worth their salt decides to set aside published campaign worlds and create one of their own.  Anyone who tries immediately discovers that they have taken up a remarkably daunting task.  The classic advice in many game manuals is to begin small, perhaps with a rural village which happens to have an abandoned castle or some such nearby.  All the characters can thus begin as old friends, knowing the same things and having essentially the same background.  Then the GM can expand the game world as needed, filling the details in as the game and the characters require.

Intuitively, this seems like a very reasonable approach; however, it predisposes the campaign world to a certain degree of sameness and familiarity.  By leaving the larger world more or less undeveloped, the GM preserves flexibility at the expense of immersive details and 'flavor'.  Immersive details are the little bits of knowledge which help create a sense of being a part of the game world.  Flavor is a rather ineffable quality which, once established, determines if something 'feels right'. 

The approach I favor is to work from the top down, beginning with the major items such as what PC races there are, how they get along, what kind of environment and society they live in.  If any races live together or in close proximity to one another, note that.  Once you know how the races relate, then group them into nations.  If you have any specific details about these nations in mind, note them now.

Next, decide what enemies you want to use.  Evil nations, demonic cults, barbaric races such as goblins and orcs, whatever sounds good.  If you want to use monster groups (such as orc tribes) as enemies, keep different monster types grouped by hit dice or CR (whichever you use).  This grouping will come in to play later.

Begin a third list for environmental features you want your world to have.  A list for Earth might include the Grand Canyon, the Amazon rain forest, the Great Barrier Reef, Mt. Fuji – you get the idea.  Not every feature needs to be known to the players, though; there should be some rewards for exploration, after all!

Now you're ready to start mapping.

Even if you plan on using a software product like Fractal Terrains to do the grunt work of mapping for you, the first stage is a very manual one.  Get a blank sheet of paper and place the nation the characters (or the majority of the characters) will hail from in the center.  Sketch in any physical or environmental features around it in as well.  From there, place the other nations, enemy groups, and physical features on the map, using any notes about geography and environment as guides.  Don't be afraid to change or rethink something that doesn't quite fit.  This portion is very abstract; if you were looking at North & South America, for example, three blobs labeled "USA", "Canada", and "Mexico" would be grouped together with blobs labeled "ocean" on the east & west sides of all three.

What you are going to wind up with is a map abstract that shows you the basic layout of the campaign area.  When you create your actual world map, this abstract will help you avoid doing things like placing the Varglesnarf Forest on the northern continent when your notes clearly say that the Varglesnarf Forest has an ocean on its northern border and is separated from the Ancient Empire of Southern Foozledoom by the Mountains of Suffering.

How you draw your actual world map is up to you.  I use Campaign Cartographer in conjunction with Fractal Terrains, myself.  Fractal Terrains can generate an entire world map, customized to your specifications, in a matter of seconds.  When you get a result you like, you can export it to Campaign Cartographer as a full-color topographic map, ready to be detailed.

Once you've placed the major cities and landmarks from your initial lists, take some time and look over the regions you left empty.  What kind of area is it?  Who lives there?  What sort of things would be neat to find there?  What products might come from such a place?  Write down anything you come up with on a fourth list.  If there are regions you want to wait to develop, that's fine too.  Just mark it "Terra Incognita" and keep going.

Even though your players will begin the game knowing only a small portion of your campaign world, the world itself is still a very large place.  The NPCs who populate the starting area have histories.  They have been places, heard stories, seen wonders.  For example, perhaps the fighters in the party learned basic fighting skills from "Wilhelm, a grizzled veteran who bears the scars of a long-ago war."  That's a good, usable description, but with a quick look at your world map and history notes, that NPC becomes "Sergeant Wilhelm, a veteran who served in the 2nd Legion 'Bloodhammer Brigade'.  He lost his left arm to a Vergathi halberd during the battle of Whitewillow, but the 2nd held firm until reinforcements arrived."

You can use simple objects to introduce exotic lands the players might want to visit one day.  Let's say that when you were filling in your world map, you noted a desert region and decided that it would be a good spot for an Arabian culture such as the Al-Qadim campaign setting.  You could say, "Hey, there's a fantastic Arabian culture on the other side of the world", or you could describe the exotic carpet on the floor of midwife Heather's tea room; full of bright colors and complex designs, bordered with letters in an unknown tongue, worked in thread (they say) made of real gold!  A treasure from a distant land where birds talk, horses can go weeks without water, and humble carpets - just like this one – can fly!

Every culture has unique rituals, customs, taboos, holidays, and social norms; the more of this sort of thing that the players are exposed to, the better.  In one campaign I created, there was a Celtic-based culture where deliberately killing a cat was punishable by death.  Possession of a crossbow without a special permit (issued for hunting creatures like beholders) was proof of intent to commit murder.  There were nine different forms of marriage, only three of which were permanent.  The most complex form had three 'levels' of spouses and permitted each person up to three tertiary marriages into different family groups.  If you killed someone who was your personal enemy, you were entitled to take their head home with you, store it in a box filled with cedar oil, and pull it out on special occasions to show off to your friends.

In a nearby human/minotaur culture based on Imperial Rome, anyone who compared a minotaur to a cow - or even made mooing noises – could be killed on the spot by the offended party.  Because they practiced ancestor worship, restoring the dead to life was prohibited by divine law; the resurrectee had no rights, no claim on their former life, and could expect to find their own family trying to hunt them down and 'lay them to rest'.  Adventuring companies were considered 'grave robbers', unless they were registered with the government as mercenaries and were working for a citizen on a specific contract. 

Details like those can make your game world come alive for your players, and give them plenty of material to role-play from.

As your campaign grows and evolves, jot down any new details you come up with as soon as possible.  It might be nothing more than an offhand comment now, but you never know when that offhand comment might become the basis for a great adventure.