That would be really helpful if it wasnt a 50% off weekend deal right now with another code on the site directly :/ i feel like that eats into your affiliate revenue
I don't make affiliate revenue! They use the code to track how well my ads are performing, and my code is permanent, so one-off deals like this weekend's aren't competing with mine - folks can still use my 40% off code once that weekend deal is done.
@@GinnyDi oh ok sorry then that's great to hear. I just thought that might be a bit of a ...well not so great move by them. I love your content and it'd be a shame if they did you like that
I had a player ask for coffee in an inn and my innkeeper had no clue what that was as coffee didn’t exist in my game. This led to that player creating Caulfe, a drink brewed from a bean that only grew in the Fey Wilds. That campaign then had a long running side story of that player searching for doorways to the Fey Wilds for a cup of coffee. :)
My current DM is an extrovert and therefore is in tons of friend groups. He is able to DM three campaigns all that take place in this one homebrew world he created. The idea that while we're running our adventures we occasionally catch references to the other campaigns makes me love the world we are role playing in.
@@JustASunflowerSeeD It is 👌 he even let me run a mini campaign about how my character (who is a former emperor) 's ancestors conquered the lands that make their empire 300 years before the main canpaigns. Expanding the history of the setting even further. He even got to play one of them.
@@CB-fq2ye Yup, we just wrapped up that mini canpaign as well. Actually gonna shamelessly plug in, he actually has everything on youtube at his channel called Tales of Tarin.
I love doing player flashbacks with sentences like "you stand and gaze at the burning city bellow you. Who is standing next to you?" To let the player make their own story in front of everyone. So much fun
I did an an entire pirate world build. Had a player come to me and ask why a cleric couldn't be played. I said i never built a religion for pirates. So she ended up making an entire pirate religion with religious text and all. With her building of a religion, holy book and all made for the best pirate bible thumping role play i have ever seen.
Doesn’t Pathfinder literally have a Pirate Goddess? I could see that working. Plus Trickery, War, or Tempest Domain Clerics would especially work in that setting-or maybe you could have a being who both acts as a Cleric Deity as well as a Celestial/Fathomless Warlock Patron!
I have done this! I believe all ppl have some use for religion & they always believe theirs is “good” & “correct,” so I find ways for odd tribes, species, etc., to practice their own religions, and I turn to real world anthropology & geography to inform that practice. Right now, I’m on a bear worship kick, with a band of very rustic NPC bear cultists looking for hibernation to end - and discovering a small werebear society with its own religion - that humans are likely to misunderstand.
My party is full of writers and artisits, so when we started and they started writing their own stories about my campaign, I immediately incorporated all of it into my game. They got so invested because it became our story, not just mine.
Pardon me, but do you, or any of your players, have any online groups with room to give a stranger like me a chance? I've been trying to find/join a group of people who follow these advice channels.
As someone who has been continuously building a homebrew world for my 4-year D&D group, this video is a godsend. While there are definitely things that I would like to remain in my own hands, when it comes to stuff connected to player characters, taking cues from my *actual* players has really worked out for me, It saves time and builds a greater connection between the players and the story, because you know, they helped with it!
In the first campaign of my homebrew world, an entire town was attacked by lesser demons. (It was the first of many attacks that culminated with the party hunting down and slaying a major demon and sealing off a portal that was feeding it with constant lesser demon minions) The players fought them off but the town lost nearly everyone that lived there. So, with the King's consent, they took it over and made it THEIR town. (They even changed the name) The few surviving NPCs stayed and became permeant recurring characters that I ended up fully fleshing out. They then brought back treasure from their adventures and invested heavily in reconstructing the town and built homes for themselves and the NPCs that were the original residents. The party started investing in the NPC's businesses and basically became silent partners or angel investors with every business in the town. (They did a lot of dungeon crawls and gathered a LOT of gold)
I've always enjoyed a sort of "yes, and" approach with my players. If they ask whether there's a certain type of shop, I'll coax them into giving me more details of what they'd like to find. Then I'll have that sort of shop exist, but also make up other things as I go to make it seem like that shop was always there. Had some really memorable NPCs come into existence that way.
I ask my players to justify such things. I'm not trying to be hard on the players, it's my little way to make them more vested in the world. They know I like verisimilitude, so they exploit it while I sit there and let them emotionally invest themselves in the world.
As I'm a beginner DM and everyone in my group is a begginer, the first thing I told a group member: "Your character is born in this city and knows all NPCs and what the others will find there. Guide them through your beautifully created city". Everyone in the group was so happy that they had the freedom.
They only had one head until their sibling lost theirs and they quickly used glue to graft it on. Or its a side effect of prolonged consumption of the glue.
@@MonkeyJedi99 wait funny story i did a beach episode for a story i'm writing just for fun (no "checking out the girls in tiny bikinis" but lots of "playing beach-volley and enjoying a vacation") and it was episode 8 and i had no idea it was the standard place for this episode !
my sister is new at dnd and somehow when I asked her for a character backstory in a paragraph she told me that her character, Therese, is from Long Island (where we're from) and moved to Rome (her dream city) and I think she's really going to be great at dnd bc she just laughed at my anguish when I realized she just made both locations, Long Island and Rome, canonical to our fantasy world.
I recommend everyone look at "Beyond the Wall's" optional rule for world building! The world building/npc building session is so fun. It can easily be adapted to 5e and can be implemented easily into an existing campaign
Do you mean the OSR book Beyond The Wall And Other Adventures, or is there some other RPG source with a similar title that I haven't happened across? The only things I see under "optional rules" in that one are Simplified Saving Throws, Fantastic Creatures, and Multiclass Characters, which makes me think I've got the wrong Beyond The Wall.
@@society_ do you mean Beyond These Walls, A Storytelling RPG by Hellaspooks? Because I don't see anything in its 15 page pdf about a world building / npc session, or anything labeled as an optional rule. Again, with the limited identifying information it's possible that you're referring to something different from what I've been able to find.
@@nescirian yea im in the same boat as you, trying to figure out what op meant by optional, pretty sure this is the game they meant but the game seems to be the world building so im not sure how you could easily incorporate that to dnd, maybe for a one shot?
One of my favorite short campaign was loosely inspired by the game Children of Morta and was about a large family living in the woods when suddenly the nature rise against them. The first session was the setup of the relations of family members (players drawing the genealogy tree), the creation of the house (drawing the map of the house in a child style with bright colors) and the narration of their best family memories (each player was narrating one or two of these memories, with the collaboration of the others involved in the scene; something like "Jack, do you remember when we stole a looot of candies and hide in the tallest tree near the house?" / "Oh yeah, I remember! It's the first time you used your druidic powers, to facilitate the climb!" / And the mother jumps in : "I search for you for HOURS! I was so mad at you both but you had your lesson with the belly ache afterwards.." And after that narration, another player was already drawing the "Tallest tree / hide spot" on the map, behind the house, and it became relevant in combat (because most of the game was at that house, so the map they were drawing became a battlemap a few times).
Oh goodness Ginny, that fairy godmother dress is absolutely gorgeous. Also a good way to decrease 'pressure' for the players during mid-session world building is to utilise rolling tables/softly randomised assets like the backgrounds personality traits. Like rolling a 1d8 for the terrain/locale of their hometown, is it a swamp? desert? forest? Player can't decide? then roll for it. This could allow players who actually want to customise to have a good reference, while also speed things up a lot when you call someone who is less comfortable on the spot to decide something.
It’s great fun (as a DM) to watch your players perk up when you use something they made in the adventure - sometimes it’s excitement, sometimes it’s dread, but it’s always personal for their character.
The most fun I ever had collaborative world building was actually in a subreddit of all places... Long story short someone set up a Civ 5 game with 60 CPU countries, and everyone had loads of fun filling in the lore of their adopted country. There were newspapers covering the "real life" events from the game, weekly updates on the state of the world war, even a Model UN with elected representatives (ok some of the elections may have been self-appointments) It was fun to see how well everyone worked together considering we were all strangers and there were basically no rules. The world was big enough and everyone's narrative interests so niche that there wasn't much stepping on toes, and the stakes were low to nonexistent anyway
The CBR is great! I kinda fell off following them closely after the second or third one, I think. But the idea is fantastic, and the meme of Nebuchadnezzar, lurking in his Antarctic submarine, watching the events unfold, is one of my favourite niche-internet things. Canada and the Buccaneers were always my favourites. I think it's actually possible that the CBR may have influenced Firaxis to add certain Civs into Civ 6 - Australia, Canada, Vietnam, and Gran Colombia were all beloved in those early ones, with so much lore and memes for them.
I once spent days designing my character's home city for my DM and when we finally went there it was amazing to be able to lead the others around and introduce them to the place if my character's childhood
I often feel bad since my DM has put so much effort in their world, but my memory of all the names and places quickly fizzles away particularly when things get hectic, and I'm left with a string of notes full of names I barely recognise. Really sucks because the campaign is so much fun to delve into, and I worry my participation is annoying when I'm stumbling over what are pretty basic details.
I'm bad with names in real life, so I get that. But if you remember the content, like lore, or "that one shop" - things like that - that still shows you're engaged.
As DM, I love when players appreciate the world and try to take it in. Actually succeeding in keeping track of it isn't as important as the desire to do so. Tell them that you enjoy what they're doing and then don't feel bad about your memory! :)
Hey, you have notes. That's better than like 75% of players so I doubt your DM feels annoyed. Just making the effort is great. Asking questions isn't a problem if they're genuine and come from a place of interest. If you care enough to ask, that's usually good enough for us DMs.
I agree with everyone above me and to assist and facilitate what it appears you wish to occurr I'll suggest the following: After the game and between sessions reorganize your notes, when it isn't hectic. Obviously, I don't know how your game is run, but I struggle to picture world building AND hectic activity occuring at the same time. Could you elaborate on "hectic"? Because I'm hearing mid combat/dire skill checks such as running from a group of mountain goblins while their mountain, now turned Volcano, is erupting. Cuz if _that_ is when you are learning the ancient name of the Volcano, I'd actually blame your DM lol. But the best way, imo to absorb the info would be to look at it between sessions, and if you have a question about the world AND ask between sessions, Holy crap that is what makes the Great Players imo. My favorites are the players that think about the game between sessions. Date your notes so you have a timeline. Organize them and reorganize them. Then you will have an use for all of those wonderful notebooks you keep collecting but are remaining blank (I may be projecting here :p). -Your Friendly Neighborhood Druid
Strongly recommend this. Currently in the cyberpunk setting I'm running, I have my players doing a combat encounter where they designed the house they live in and the things in and around it. So when bad guys raided them they got to use all the things they put into their house in combat. So far they've shot a guy mid jump while bouncing off a trampoline, used pool floats to traverse the pool quicker, and unleashed their coop of mutant chickens on the raiders.
I'm "That Guy" in my friend's games. He loves going crazy deep with lore, and I'm the one who saves every prop, writes journals in character, and always wants role playing sessions over combat. I just wish we could get the others in the group to try other things than D&D and World of Darkness.
My group did collaborative world building, taking turns drawing on a blank map and adding to a collective online lore document. The world started off fairly goofy, but after 3 years of running different games in the world we made together... Yeah, we're definitely all invested in the lore at this point!
I just had my fourth session of D&D this past weekend and I'm finally hooked. I *love* your idea of letting players describe a location in town. There have been times as a player where I'm itching to play a role in the creation aspect of the campaign - something as small as coming up with a store or home in-town can make a session feel *magical* to the players (especially if you have a table of players who all want to experiment with DMing and world building themselves!)
Ooh! Welcome to the club, I hope you can enjoy many years of awesome games, and it's so good to hear that you are so engaged and willing to be an active participant. Who knows, maybe you'll be a dm someday. It's always cool to try a oneshot at some point to try out behind the screen, but most importantly have fun of course, no matter how you engage with the game!
I recently introduced a player contacts system at character creation. Basically, based on your charisma,bonus, you have that many contacts and allies you can call upon to help you in the quest in some way. For every 2 allies, you get one Rival. It works the opposite way too, while a CHA bonus of zero still gives you one so people don't get left out. Only 3 sessions in my game and it made for some amazing role playing moments where they interacted with them, used them to gain information. And it allowed me to create a TON of quest hooks. This worked for me because my campaign primarily takes place in a city of two million people. And It really helped flesh it out.
Something interesting my group has done is that each of us has taken charge of world-building a continent for the world we play in. We're a small group and we like to rotate DMs, so each of us has worked to build a setting for us to run adventures in. And since they're all on the same world, we have to collaborate on how these different cultures interact, as well as cosmology and pantheons.
My group is super roleplay-focused, so when our characters get an idea in the moment, we ask after things our DM couldn't possibly have planned for. So if we roll high enough to locate a shop that might carry relevant items or info, that shop is created then and there by the table as a whole, and suggesting a really fun detail could even get you rewarded with an inspiration token! Even what seem like throwaway jokes above-table can get incorporated, which makes the game more engaging and makes the world feel more active and alive!
Please tell me Glop the two headed goblin who sells home made glue was made up on the spot during filming 🤣I love this I'm currently running a campaign that is co-imagined by myself and 2 other players and its a blast. We took Fearun and made it our own and in between we sprinkled in material from the modules, while creating world spaces for different characters and their homes. Its made my life waaaaay easier!
We definitely used "players world-build within their own backstory" as a pre-campaign strategy. I sketched out my character's "important locations" for my GM, which in this case were all in one city. We discussed the type of place I was looking for, and then he gave me a skeleton description of the city and country we'd chosen, which I _really_ fleshed out over the next week or so. (I'm afraid I may have gone a bit overboard!)
This is all great advice, especially for a DND playing noob like myself. Of course I recognize not every DM is gonna be Matt Mercer or Brennan Lee Mulligan on the detail front either so if I as a player can help them then that only enhances the game.
Yeah my old DM had what we called a Cross Dungeon Universe where we had all our campaigns take place in though at different places or points in time leading to it becoming more in depth as we went (my favorite moment was when my Halfling Sorcerer went into my old Tiefling Warlock's shop (he'd retired from adventuring after losing 2 of his friends & a leg to a black dragon) looking for some interesting magical items to potentially help in sneaking into a cathedral
My favourite example of this is in our family game. Completely out of game my now 9yo and I made up some bedtime stories about a dragon and an alicorn who were friends including how they grew up together, and various adventures they had. Then we incorporated those as legends her rural dragonborn knew, that the other characters didn't, that somehow maybe seem to relate to the ancient dragon the party met by chance, who they're supposed to travel to meet by appointment in the autumn...
I always ask my players to give me a very short backstory from someone in their character's family. I LOVE that you mentioned having players build their home town because thats again what I ask my players to do, though I'm fine if they just describe a home or street. Originally in my world Dwarves didnt exist. They were going to be stuck in storybooks in certain regions. But one player wanted to play one, so I had a God create them. Rather than retconning histories to shove them in, I had them literally be a new race that was put into the world 80 years prior to defend a stronghold.
In discussing collaborative storytelling as a tool, it’s so refreshing to hear a breakdown that is nuanced, balanced and includes the vast body of TTRPG wisdom and design included in other systems like Dungeon World. D&D is my game, but it’s a grand tradition to hack it into what works for one’s group. Loved the video
Absolutely agree about allowing the players to help create the world! I have my maps *mostly* complete with the geographical features, but I like my players to describe the cities and cultures from their homelands or areas they've passed through, informing the party as we go. Right now, my level 5 party is considering building a stone keep, so I showed them a map so they could determine a suitable location, and then I created a more detailed map of the immediate region for them to find the perfect building site. It's been wonderful watching them evaluate the terrain, wind and sun exposure, water sources, and stone and timber resources. Now they just need a lot of gold 😂
in a druid campaign a location I'm very fond of was the forest druid town with elves and ware creatures, I was a ware tiger if I remember. What made that place feel like home is it was our core location somewhere we always returned to and picked up missions. We had to do a fight against a vampire army on their land, deal with a wolf pack and make a peace treaty with them. a party member burned down a near by forest on accident. Basically having a home town that players return to often and get to develop along with the story is very powerful as well.
At 8:41 I was like “wait a minute”, because the outfit I am currently wearing looks really similar. It’s even the same colours. It would appear that I was unknowingly cosplaying Cinderella. 😂
Top notch, hilarious sponsorship ad as usual. I like how you mentioned that the DM has power of veto. This is so true; no matter what a player does for a backstory, the DM retains the final say on how or where it fits in. If something is a little funky, or contradicts something major, explaining the disconnect and working through it can keep everything in line while still letting players be involved. And if said player throws a fit, well, that might raise a flag for other behavior later down the road. After all, it is YOUR WORLD as a DM, and you get to have fun too.
One of my dm let my character come in and out of this town for several years so they gave me a list of lore, places, and people I got to know well over the years. It definitely got me more invested into the town.
This is so true! I first played D&D with several close friends a few months back, and the first few sessions, as we were all learning to play(everyone but the DM was new to D&D), we kept making references to modern pop culture in character. At one point we referenced the Atlanta airport with its subway that runs between concourses, and our DM ACTUALLY added a city called Atalanta (abbreviated ATL on maps ofc) with a massive seaport and multiple docks accessibly by a magical carriage to the continent we were already working on. Something about him honoring our silly ideas and integrating them into the world in a way that works without being too out of place makes the world feel like ours and not just his, though of course I recognize he deserves credit for all the work he’s put in.
I always tell my players that any change to the world is fine as long as they run it by me first. This has led to a previously undamaged city now being under reconstruction after a dragon attack. The capitol now secretly being under the control of a powerful thieves guild, a powerful wizard now having multiple apprentices, and there being a roving band of orc pirates that most elves are terrified of and tell horror stories about. I love that my players backstories and the backstories of random NPCs they decide are important are starting to fill out my world more.
I ran Descent into Avernus with the gang being childhood friends from a mercenary company. They had since split, but were meeting up again and taking on this quest to find their adoptive father by their adoptive mother, who had reason to believe he was in Avernus. It was great. Because I gave them no more context than that, outside of a few "Flash back session" and during "present time" they would say things like: "Ok... Remember when we snuck into the High Halls of Kazumdahl?" when preparing for a break-and-entry etc. It was fun and everyone got into it, really building character history together!
I think a great example of this is in “Not Another DnD Podcast” (a great podcast by the way) The best/fan favorite location of the first campaign was Emily Axeford’s character’s (Moonshine’s) home, “The Crick” The DM just let Emily improve jokes about The Crick, based of the general vibe but also Moonshine’s own character and personality, and he wrote them all down and made them facts about the world. Now this worked because Naddpod is as much an improve comedy show as a DnD actual play, and The Crick itself is so naturally chaotic that it actively bucks normal logical reasoning, but it’s also consistent in tone and has core ideas that anchor it. So this idea does work. It is indeed the most memorable place of the campaign, and it’s where the characters wanted to spend most of their time
I've started letting players help worldbuild in recent games, and it goes over really well. The players like it, I like it, and we come up with far more varied and interesting ideas when we all contribute than if any one of us did it ourselves. During game I'll just...ask a player. "You've arrived at a settlement. What is it called?" The next player gets to decide what the population is like, the next decides what the settlement's primary export is... It really does work well.
One of my plot hooks was this small town getting burned down, and I didn't super expect one of my players to decide to be FROM that town. After it happened in-game, I decided to let them LITERALLY build their own town from the ground up, rebuilding that players hometown to better than it used to be. It's a fun little mini side quest that we do when one player can't show up and I'm planning on having it have big consequences on the main story, depending on how big they decide to make it as we go! They also get to invite new npcs to town, play matchmaker with the npcs if they want, open their own businesses, train npcs to be able to work specific jobs, ect. Not EXACTLY what you were talking about in this video (definitely more literal, at least lol) but all of my players are already super invested in making sure this town prospers in the background, and it acts as a good home base for them at the end of an adventure.
This is a great tool that I think all dms can use one technique that I often use and recommend is taking the players background and building something around it like if the depressed dragonborn bard says that their searching for their father who left them at birth, I would create a quest to incentivize doing that and then branching out into further character development that would make the players feel included into the world That and using warlocks, all warlocks have massive flavortext potential with how customizable they are, so if you have a warlock player then make sure to double check their sheet, there might be a side story waiting to happen
I had a session zero quite some time ago where players were setting up a city and world they were leaving on the first game. It helped setup species they'd encounter, gods, and generally setting relevant things. On the second game they discovered obsidian mirrors that let them see people the characters were associated with, and they eventually found ways to change their home from a distance. It really helped give a little more purpose to exploring a strange dimension. Of course little did they know they were setting up some of the divine and meta progression of the game. The fact they focused so much on religion for their characters allowed me to weave the narrative with all sorts of crazy religion shenanigans. Important historical figures they created even showed up. It made everything that much more personal for everyone involved and I'm really glad the players had a part in world creation because of it.
I am doing a prologue for my food based world right now. They have created communities and sculpted how the world is going to run hundreds of years in the future after the initial five sessions. A little ‘taste’ of what they jumped to naming their characters Cornelius Cobler, Osmund Oregano, Gavin Graham and Mitchell Crumbitiz. This world has become so much more than I initially imagined and I am so happy for it.
Both my current DMs are great about that style of worldbuilding. As broad as adding an undersea city for our Triton, as well as making a shopkeeper an Owlin after the same player talked excitedly about wanting to play/meet one. There was even a moment specific to me, where I named my hometown after consulting a name generator and after a bit of back and forth amongst us and the players, he went, "I got ideas for that." My other DM built his current world off a battle royal that went on, which I sadly missed due to internet issues.
Honestly I think they retain more than I do. Many is the time I'm checking my notes for a name and my player is like 'Betty is the receptionist at the front desk'
I (player) once made up three different shopkeepers on the spot during a conversation with an NPC. The DM had us meet one of them the next session, and killed him off for plot developement the session after. This may sound harsh, but I loved it. Seeing my silly little creation get tied in with the campaign so heavily made me really proud.
I created a whole discord where I listed every npc we've met including physical description, personality, and how we know them, a calender, a list of every city and town we've visited and notable locations in them, a section for lore, even a section where I update the in game date after each session! I wish the other players paid better attention. All this information is quite literally at their fingertips! I'm the only one who takes notes and I do more than take notes.
Although I've never DMd D&D, I have been DMing for over 20 years, and had DMd many different games/systems. Still, I ALWAYS find something useful and refreshing your videos. Congratulations for having such a wonderfully creative mind and being such a good content creator. I love to hear your ideas and pitches, and I really hope that you continue doing that for a long, long time.
Omg I just realized how much my players liked the game I did this with, definitely gonna have to remember it bc I totally forgot for a couple of campaigns that the players could do that
I’m very lucky to have DM’s that have always been super supportive of this sort of thing- which is great given my writer/actor background. For one game, I built a neighborhood into a major port town called The Little Shire- effectively a Little Italy/Chinatown but for halflings where things were designed for small creatures and community was paramount. For a oneshot, I played a bartender and had an entire menu with drinks inspired by the world and other characters that everyone was super into. And for my main campaign, I wrote out some lore about druids regarding the necessity of circles and how wildshape ties into your other abilities that ended up explaining things about my character as well as some of our npc’s. None of these things really alter the world significantly, but as a player, it’s really exciting to have my ideas make an impact on things beyond just my character!
That sounds really interesting and cool! I got a little curious about the druid part, would you mind expanding how did the wildshape tie into your other abilities? 💚
Tanja thank you! So since gaining the wildshape ability and joining a circle occur at level two, I made is so that the two actions were linked. Essentially, without a community to guide and teach you, you can’t progress beyond the couple cantrips or spells you get at level one. In theory, a druid is supposed to be a part of a circle and learn and grow with them- which both helps them grow as a caster and also mitigates the risk of super powerful mage not being a loose cannon. It played out really well for my druid and our druid npc who both were isolated from our circles- one completely stagnated and the other is regularly overwhelmed by the amount of stuff she’s learned how to do in the past couple months.
Ginny has a way of posting a video right when it aligns with my current D&D endeavor. To keep my players invested between session, i have them do homework. Well, we just had our 1 year anniversary so I gave them an exam! I had my players build a significant place to them while I hand drew a map of the world. Together we placed their hometowns and it made the world feel like an actual real place. The best part is that session, my players brought up their hometowns organically and it help me build personalized character quest for them too. TL:DR: I AGREE WITH THE CONTENT PLAYING ABOVE THIS COMMENT
Good idea ! Reminds me of the "Dungeon on demand" technique to improvise dungeon : Tell your players they heard about a dungeon and ask them what they have learnt, and how, while they where preparing to crawl in there. For three element they bring (Bounties, map, dangers ...) you take one point of chaos. (Just don't overdo it and accept more that, say, 3 to 5 elements from every player else you take the risk of your dungeon going banana.) Then, you use your points of chaos to change what they find on site and make it surpising. The only restriction for the DM is to keep the change explainable by a false rumor of an information that is no longer true. Did this for a Fallout RPG and our DM used it to change the map we had done by adding security doors and removing the sentient deathclaw I wanted to add. The deathclaw was a traveler that had gone his way and the security doors where a secret protocol the chef of the factory had keep in case things went sideway. Was fun all the way :)
YES. I love collaborative world building. If your party is diverse, it also helps avoid problematic shit in fantasy tropes that you might not recognize as such.
Microscope is possibly the most unique and amazing way to build a world, particularly histories. I have a group that I build a world with and then another group that I DM in that world. If I ever need to fill out complicated stuff in the world, I bring it to my microscope group. It's amazing
What my players like most is the feeling of being able to change and affect the world, mainly their home city. I have a long-running campaign in its third "season" and one retired character has become the major (I GMed an election for her, the whole party helped her win), another character then dropped her some money to build a temple for the god he worshipped, she wanted to build a magic school, so after the time skip of season 2 and 3, the map of the city was a good deal larger and had all the new spots and places. They really loved seeing their efforts "mapped out".
Letting your players make low-stakes NPCs is the best. Our home group has a little hermit crab who runs a traveling junk shop that the party invented, and now whenever they show up in a new town their first action is always to see if he's there. He's very polite and soft spoken, but don't be mean to him or he might have to go in his shell to chill out for a while (and the party will no doubt be cross with you for berating such a special boy).
one of the most effective ways I've encouraged this kind of thing in my games is in session zero asking every player to "tell me something true about the world." It gets them in the headspace of creating aspects of the world but it's open enough that they can say small things like "there's a bakery run by goblins and they make great doughnuts" or big things like "every knight in the kingdom is part of a secret cult intent on destroying the world". My players have always come up with cool things for this and it always ends up enhancing the game
For my session 0 of the first campaign I started without a module, I let my players create a map with "rumours" they had heard. It included interesting potential locations like a "forest of the lost" and a dragon's lair. The key here was that I ensured they understood that these locations were rumours, and may or may not be in the exact place they put it on a map, but may have more than meets the eye. For example, the Forest of the Lost (although they don't know it yet) is likely to be full of a druidic elven society that welcomes visitors with such wonderful hospitality, that people never choose to leave.
This is still helpful even when working with an established world! I'm running a game in Exandria and am absolutely thriving with prep when my players provide information about their character's hometowns. It is allowing them to carve their own spot in a world they already know and love, to blend their character's stories with lore they already hold so dear. It's helping to make this version of Exandria theirs rather than riding off of the coattails of what they've seen on CR, too. Now, it just feels like another campaign setting instead of a well documented and loved place they've seen played in online.
As Dungeon World says "Make maps, leave blanks". I've found it a good way to do some of your own prep/worldbuilding, but allow for cool ideas which may come from the table (prompted or unprompted) to fill in those unmapped areas. Note that "make maps" doesn't have to literally mean maps. It can mean any kind of prep.
I make a sort of mini game out of sessions recaps. I popcorn to various players and have them go through last session, occasionally interrupting to offer inspiration or “fate dice” (stackable d4s) to players who can answer lore questions. They’ve gotten pretty familiar with the lore because of this. If I ask them “which Vallic tribesman led his people into the Andurn mountains to escape the industrialization of the Tarvian Empire over 2000 years ago” or “when the pirate king Edwain Durwin overthrew the merchant republic of Bandunar, which of the 79 vampires of the Gamnian Collective defeated him in single combat”, they typically know offhand.
There were many great takeaways from this video, but I absolutely cannot get over the fairy godmother dress, the bodice and those SLEEVES, its goregeous!
For me my lazy preparation gives a lot of room for my players to hint at ideas that they want and since I want my players to have fun I go with it. This also makes me continue a straight forward story without railroading them Bc they are filling in all the gaps without them even knowing it
Love the tip! Coming up on thirty years ago, the mid-80’s to mid-90’s, during my D&D hey day, I did this exact thing, kinda. All told there were about 10 of us in our group, even though on average only about 4 or so could ever get together at the same time. On occasion we might have the whole crew around, but mostly just 4-5 at a time. Every person in the group was running or playing in a game so it mattered not who of the group were present. Somebody pitched and the rest caught. So if Danny wasn’t around, then William chaired the game, but Eric wasn’t there so Ray ran his game. Or Chris was there so William captained our session. Each of us had a character or a dozen in each game. If only 1 or 2 could be present than we ran a side-game or epic quest. We used these one-offs the train troops or our epic mounts, we ran so many games. Without rambling further each DM had a world in mind while running these games backed by binders full of notes. Because the parties were so mixed the only way to keep continuity was to have a large map, and most importantly different ages, decades, millennia even. For instance in the first age fey folk were born, no humans, the second age man was born and hunted elves, third age dwarves were warring with Drow. Etc. and probably the most important thing! Elect a party member to be a scribe. After, or between sessions the scribe was to pen down an accounting of thing that occurred of note, such as… McVey the mighty pulled a Vorpal sword out of a dragon hoard in Lightfoot, or Stahn defeated the Lich of Leechfield, but caused the death of Brondarr. It also brought us current from our last session. I already know the question that is jumping out of the screens- “Why didn’t the DM, keep these notes?” We did. But the players seemed to rather enjoy writing an account of the battle where… “While swinging the Axe of ages at the ogres big toe, Drazz slipped in a puddle of grey ooze, ( rolled a nat 1 on a called action) and the last thing they remember seeing was their boots rushing up to meet their face. Their last memory was the pain of slamming face first onto the blood soaked dungeon floor in Sirob. “ as their head slipped from their shoulders the axe taking it clean off. We retired the character got high and exchanged notes. And because there were so many games going on, maybe two dozen or more when we grabbed our binders to meet we would always carry all of them. Because sometimes in the dead of night one of our occasional guests may show up. “Hey guys Richard came over and Danny’s sister is here we can finish up that one crazy Wizard tower battle….” And because the notes were taken and it became history, players could, with the proper research rolls, etc, refer back on the history to trace amazing events, find dragon hoards, or magic items etc. these things existed as singular items, passed from one event or character to another. Clerics that follow the order of Ramaghast, a 14th lvl cleric who federated the temples into the Church of Furst, the fire eater congregation. And are gifted with a Summon fire efreeti medallion upon entering the monastery. Or the time of Numbing when the dragon gods awoke ( every 100000 years) to rain psionic blast on the world, destroying anything above a 3 intelligence. Mankind starts over. Children grow up feral, form tribes, grow in numbers, establish societies discover the ancient knowledge. Magic is found again, etc, etc, etc. so it really mattered where in the age you were. And when the prophecies are re-discovered. It made for great gaming and great time. I miss all you guys and gals. But still Ginny. Awesome advise.
3 of my friends created countires as part of their backstories for our current game. My character is from the city that we're all based in, and in our 1st session I took the party for hot dogs, and I've been helping flesh out what life is like for the lower classes in that city. Our DM runs a very large Pratchett-esque world that every single one of her campaigns happens in, and anything her players add becoms canon
I encourage this in my games....my current one I let one of my players (A turtle cleric) world build an entire monastery/temple/place of worship to the Raven Queen. It added so much to the world and I'm looking forward to when they get to that point of the game That being said..some players LOVE this stuff. Others are more laid back and will leave it all in the DMs hands. Both are okay.
For my D&D campaign, I did a Session 0 that was like a quick-and-dirty version of the worldbuilding game The Quiet Year. Each player (including myself) was given a notecard to write down a feature of the world and a small sentence of detail about that feature. We then passed the notecards to our left and wrote a sentence on the card we received. We did this until everyone had written something on each card, and then did this again with 3 cards total per player, each player marking the features they started on a map. We got a lot of interesting aspects of the world out of this, and it was a lot of fun for me as a GM to try and tie everything together. One fun features is a moving city that is powered by a captured djinni, which is referred to as the city's 'en-djinn.' I think it also helps to give players world-building options, instead of having them create something from scratch. For example, instead of asking a player "what's the nature of your druidic circle?" you can ask "Is your druidic circle an established order across different regions, or is it more of an esoteric circle?" And then whatever they answer, you can kind of branch off of there and pepper some of those details into the lore.
I definitely think these tips work very well, Ginny 👍🏻 I have found this to be extremely effective as both a DM and a PC. As a DM, when my players created something in their backstory I did not have, I was able to more easily find ways to work those things in as a way to get them more personally connected to the story As a player, it really helped me feel more connected to my world. My DM let me create my hometown and everything, but the best element was an NPC I had created. I had told my DM about three former partners my Paladin had. She found a great way to work in one of them, my Paladin’s ex-boyfriend, by having them worked into a quest in the Rime of the Frostmaiden campaign and it helped get me pulled into that quest even more As for the collaborative element, The General Adventuring Company does that in their games, with the DM often asking the players to give some qualities to certain NPCs
Maybe not completely related, but I run a homebrew world with 4 campaigns in it so far. And one of the absolute best ways to keep my players invested has been to have the actions of a previous campaign affect the current one. Statues of long lost heroes that the PLAYERS recognize, but the characters may not. Take stories of their quest and change a few details, and it keeps them always searching for the stories of characters they used to play.
I have no DM experience and since I am a fairly new player, it will take a long time, before I will be able to DM. But I have started some worldbuilding for fun and I love it so much, I love thinking about a creation story, how to fit it in a story, some mythology, continents and lands, societies for different races etc. Really wish I could already try to navigate players through the world.
Good Vid. I have done this for over 25 years. I always allow them to add things to the campaign / world I started and it is pretty great. Some of my players have created random NPC's for me, they have created shops, locations, and even better yet loose ideas and inspirations. The look on their face when they walk into a shop and realize it is one they built, or they have to stop and talk to someone to find their way only to see its JoJo, the crazy potion maker who samples his potions more than sells them; ones that they have created. So yeah, totally a 100% must do for any DM IMO.
My DM started us off as citizens of the various Emerald Isles, and let each of us invent the particular island that we came from, in as much or as little detail as we wanted. We got so into it, even drawing up rough maps sometimes, and pestering him with settings questions, even though we were never going to step foot on those little islands, as we were all meeting up on a bigger one. Really helped to remember/invent details about one's backstory, too.
I build my worlds primarily for my own creative purposes. I don't expect my players to learn my lore, however I'm frequently pleasantly surprised when the level of detail my worldbuilding utilises intrigues them. Once they start asking questions , they eagerly leap down rabbit holes of lore. I've taken to limiting the amount of lore each source has as well as how accurate that knowledge is. This leads to the characters seeking out new sources of lore and trying to patch together their best understanding of lore.
*Surprisingly, I agree with almost all said in this vid.* The idea of players designing things related to their backstory is great, as long as I give them unbendable guidelines. However, (as Ginny mentioned for which I love her) players worldbuilding on the spot may break immersion, therefore being unwelcome.
Characters doing worldbuilding with me is so helpful. For example, I have a runaway prince who helped me build his castle and parts of the kingdom and we both had fun doing it :)
Something I did that I'm still very happy I did was ask my DM to write my backstory and not tell me it so that I could feel the same wonder as my character as she learned more about the world. This wasn't because I was trying to be lazy, but I figured having my DM write the backstory would allow my story to connect more deeply with the world that she made. Since she saw how hard I was working to create my character, she accepted, and boy has it made for such a unique and personal experience.
This so much. One of the reasons why I wanted to run my game was so that I could have a more comprehensive story to use my PCs in. I've played in so many campaigns where my character does not matter. I want my character to be part of the world.
On the create-an-NPC thing, I remember the first thing we did in Session 1 of our Tomb of Annihilation campaign was come up with the bartender/owner of our group's favourite watering hole. We come up with Toddsy, the Gnome former adventurer - A Bard back in his prime, now just our favourite innkeep. He was also a patron of our group (our backstory is that we're all involved in a circus-act sort of thing where the Druid shapeshifts into wild beasts and then is "tamed" by the Barbarian in front of the crowds). We started rattling off potential names for his 26 children (Yes, he was apparently that kind of Bard). He had retired from adventuring after being killed by a jealous husband of one of his paramours. He was resurrected by his allies, then he retired and opened his tavern. I'm sure by now, anyone familiar with Tomb of Annihilation knows exactly where this is going. Yeah. We spent a good bit of time working together to come up with this fantastic little Gnome who was one of the party's dearest friends, and... Our story proper opened with his funeral. As we would find out in relatively short order: He was a victim of the Death Curse - Those who have been previously resurrected succumbing to the death they had "cheated", and resurrection magic no longer working at all for anyone. Getting into why people are dying in this fashion, is of course, the main thrust of ToA, so I'll not spoil that. We actually got a great laugh out of the whole thing. Part of our in-character reason for signing up for the whole overarching quest is now finding a way to end the Death Curse in honour of our good pal Toddsy. All of our original PCs are still alive, nearly two years IRL since the game started, so that mission lives on. Though, surprisingly, we've yet to run into Aoddsy, Boddsy, Coddsy... Or any of the rest of Toddsy's children we made up back in session one. Hang on... I think I just got an idea for a backup character, in case I need another...
Our DM looked at back story, asked a few pointed questions, then listened to what was said in game to create relatives. Imagine my surprise when we came across my character's home that I never thought would be relevant.
As a player, I always include potential plot hooks in my backstory. I've actually designed the religion my cleric follows and then ask for input as to the name of the god and if I'm the first one going on missionary or if I'm just one of many followers to do so. If a DM ever asked for something built, I can probably come up with something. Want a dungeon? I can make one up and leave a few random areas that the DM decides if they're a trap, an encounter, a riddle, or just an empty room. The DM has full control over loot. With a handful of NPC stat blocks a table could create an entire world.
For me as a DM, I create the outline of the world. Major continents, some nations, etc. But the players create the inner stuff like cities, factions, and more!
I love to play this way! Original D&D allowed for PCs to build keeps, towers, groves, cathedrals, etc., so this is simply an extension of that. Play as if player engagement & investment are PRICELESS.
As a GM who is slow at world building, I like this. I did this once for a super hero campaign where a team of medium powered heroes had to find, recruit & train an incredibly powerful super hero to save the world from a threat the team couldn't handle. I asked each player to create a potential NPC hero recruit and I ended up using even the ones who weren't chosen as the NPCs who were recruited by rival groups.
I created a questionnaire and had the players build their families, tell me about their family dynamic, and the town that they’re from. The players have loved it!
I had my first dnd session as a dm ever this week. My player are in waterdeep which has tons of players and fractions (also i am incorporating 3 villains). They got everything in lore at least this first session. Made me so proud. But i also took i spiratiom from the player like one being sure the random item he found in the shop was vital for his backstory. Well, it was a random dice roll from me. Now it is vital for his backstory
In the game development space, I sometimes see this referred to as something like "The GM declaiming narrative responsibility" if you want to throw some brainy-sounding terms around for it. I agree that its important to tailor the degree you do it to the group you have! I've run games that were more like a writer's room than a storyteller telling a tale to a group of players and it worked great. But I've also tried to do the same with different people and had the thing pull apart at the seams. People that personally prefer the writer's room format get a little sensitive sometimes about the fact that some people are REALLY not into that, but there's nothing wrong with not preferring more narrative responsibility! The one guaranteed thing that works every time is "coloring between the lines" where you say something like, "You know the Baron is untrustworthy, what is it that you see that makes you think this?" The important fact of the scene is established by the DM, that the Baron is not trustworthy, but the players get to provide their input by coloring in the hows and whys of it all. Even people that are uncomfortable with or disinterested by taking on narrative responsibility usually respond positively to that trick. Nice work, Ginny! Your videos have really bent toward comprehensive and solid DM advice recently. Very impressive stuff! Reminds me of the early days of Running the Game...just, y'know, with more pastels! :-D
I have a problem of that we had our last game at our playgroup that we could play only 3 sessions and then just got overwhelmed by studying and then the "conflict" started, but after watching this (and generally after absorbing knowledge from internet) I see some benefits)
The difference between a game where players are invested in your world and one where they aren’t is immeasurable, even with all else being equal. This had some helpful thoughts, thanks!
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Use code "GINNY" for your discount! Love, your fairy godmother 😘
Yes! U mentioned Dungeon World. Heal Yeah!
Why does the two headed goblin stable master also sell homemade glue Ginny? Hmmmm?🤔
That would be really helpful if it wasnt a 50% off weekend deal right now with another code on the site directly :/ i feel like that eats into your affiliate revenue
I don't make affiliate revenue! They use the code to track how well my ads are performing, and my code is permanent, so one-off deals like this weekend's aren't competing with mine - folks can still use my 40% off code once that weekend deal is done.
@@GinnyDi oh ok sorry then that's great to hear. I just thought that might be a bit of a ...well not so great move by them. I love your content and it'd be a shame if they did you like that
I had a player ask for coffee in an inn and my innkeeper had no clue what that was as coffee didn’t exist in my game. This led to that player creating Caulfe, a drink brewed from a bean that only grew in the Fey Wilds. That campaign then had a long running side story of that player searching for doorways to the Fey Wilds for a cup of coffee. :)
Sounds like that bean could become an important ingredient for potionmaking.
@@Tennouseijin Indeed the potion for staying both awake and alert.
@@Tennouseijin - 1 level of exhaustion
did they get their coffee??
@@pato5996 Sadly, the campaign never got there :(
My current DM is an extrovert and therefore is in tons of friend groups. He is able to DM three campaigns all that take place in this one homebrew world he created. The idea that while we're running our adventures we occasionally catch references to the other campaigns makes me love the world we are role playing in.
wtf that's such an awesome idea
@@JustASunflowerSeeD It is 👌 he even let me run a mini campaign about how my character (who is a former emperor) 's ancestors conquered the lands that make their empire 300 years before the main canpaigns. Expanding the history of the setting even further. He even got to play one of them.
@@TheCrazeace your dm sounds like an amazing person, as someone who's about to run their first campaign next week I'm jealous lol
@@JustASunflowerSeeD best of luck to you! As long as everyone is having fun, then you've got this 👌
@@CB-fq2ye Yup, we just wrapped up that mini canpaign as well.
Actually gonna shamelessly plug in, he actually has everything on youtube at his channel called Tales of Tarin.
I love doing player flashbacks with sentences like "you stand and gaze at the burning city bellow you. Who is standing next to you?" To let the player make their own story in front of everyone. So much fun
I did an an entire pirate world build. Had a player come to me and ask why a cleric couldn't be played. I said i never built a religion for pirates. So she ended up making an entire pirate religion with religious text and all. With her building of a religion, holy book and all made for the best pirate bible thumping role play i have ever seen.
Doesn’t Pathfinder literally have a Pirate Goddess? I could see that working. Plus Trickery, War, or Tempest Domain Clerics would especially work in that setting-or maybe you could have a being who both acts as a Cleric Deity as well as a Celestial/Fathomless Warlock Patron!
I have done this! I believe all ppl have some use for religion & they always believe theirs is “good” & “correct,” so I find ways for odd tribes, species, etc., to practice their own religions, and I turn to real world anthropology & geography to inform that practice. Right now, I’m on a bear worship kick, with a band of very rustic NPC bear cultists looking for hibernation to end - and discovering a small werebear society with its own religion - that humans are likely to misunderstand.
My party is full of writers and artisits, so when we started and they started writing their own stories about my campaign, I immediately incorporated all of it into my game. They got so invested because it became our story, not just mine.
Pardon me, but do you, or any of your players, have any online groups with room to give a stranger like me a chance? I've been trying to find/join a group of people who follow these advice channels.
I know this comment is a year old, but I love it! This is what it's all about for me. Creating a story together that's satisfying for everyone.
As someone who has been continuously building a homebrew world for my 4-year D&D group, this video is a godsend. While there are definitely things that I would like to remain in my own hands, when it comes to stuff connected to player characters, taking cues from my *actual* players has really worked out for me,
It saves time and builds a greater connection between the players and the story, because you know, they helped with it!
Crispy!
Ya i love when the players take part of it
Love your channel!
In the first campaign of my homebrew world, an entire town was attacked by lesser demons. (It was the first of many attacks that culminated with the party hunting down and slaying a major demon and sealing off a portal that was feeding it with constant lesser demon minions) The players fought them off but the town lost nearly everyone that lived there. So, with the King's consent, they took it over and made it THEIR town. (They even changed the name) The few surviving NPCs stayed and became permeant recurring characters that I ended up fully fleshing out.
They then brought back treasure from their adventures and invested heavily in reconstructing the town and built homes for themselves and the NPCs that were the original residents. The party started investing in the NPC's businesses and basically became silent partners or angel investors with every business in the town. (They did a lot of dungeon crawls and gathered a LOT of gold)
I've always enjoyed a sort of "yes, and" approach with my players. If they ask whether there's a certain type of shop, I'll coax them into giving me more details of what they'd like to find. Then I'll have that sort of shop exist, but also make up other things as I go to make it seem like that shop was always there. Had some really memorable NPCs come into existence that way.
Love it. That's exactly how I DM. Keep it up and have a blast doing it.
Magical DM ability of neverending asspulling!
That's the issue though
I ask my players to justify such things. I'm not trying to be hard on the players, it's my little way to make them more vested in the world. They know I like verisimilitude, so they exploit it while I sit there and let them emotionally invest themselves in the world.
@@angrytheclown801 they should be able to justify it though
If a player wants a dragon as a pet... What does that do to the world? A whole lot
As I'm a beginner DM and everyone in my group is a begginer, the first thing I told a group member: "Your character is born in this city and knows all NPCs and what the others will find there. Guide them through your beautifully created city". Everyone in the group was so happy that they had the freedom.
"...Glorp the two headed goblin stablemaster who also sells homemade glue."
Write that down! WRITE THAT DOWN!
😟
They only had one head until their sibling lost theirs and they quickly used glue to graft it on. Or its a side effect of prolonged consumption of the glue.
I had a moment like this in my game tonight! We filled out some lore on some random hot springs.
That's the most productive hot spring episode I've ever heard of.
Was it a session between #7 and #9?
That's when most anime gets either a beach or onsen episode for fan-service.
@@MonkeyJedi99 wait funny story i did a beach episode for a story i'm writing just for fun (no "checking out the girls in tiny bikinis" but lots of "playing beach-volley and enjoying a vacation") and it was episode 8 and i had no idea it was the standard place for this episode !
my sister is new at dnd and somehow when I asked her for a character backstory in a paragraph she told me that her character, Therese, is from Long Island (where we're from) and moved to Rome (her dream city) and I think she's really going to be great at dnd bc she just laughed at my anguish when I realized she just made both locations, Long Island and Rome, canonical to our fantasy world.
I recommend everyone look at "Beyond the Wall's" optional rule for world building!
The world building/npc building session is so fun. It can easily be adapted to 5e and can be implemented easily into an existing campaign
Thanks for the rec, I'll check it out!
Do you mean the OSR book Beyond The Wall And Other Adventures, or is there some other RPG source with a similar title that I haven't happened across? The only things I see under "optional rules" in that one are Simplified Saving Throws, Fantastic Creatures, and Multiclass Characters, which makes me think I've got the wrong Beyond The Wall.
@@nescirian i think they meant "beyond these walls" , seems pretty cool, its also free from their website
@@society_ do you mean Beyond These Walls, A Storytelling RPG by Hellaspooks? Because I don't see anything in its 15 page pdf about a world building / npc session, or anything labeled as an optional rule. Again, with the limited identifying information it's possible that you're referring to something different from what I've been able to find.
@@nescirian yea im in the same boat as you, trying to figure out what op meant by optional, pretty sure this is the game they meant but the game seems to be the world building so im not sure how you could easily incorporate that to dnd, maybe for a one shot?
One of my favorite short campaign was loosely inspired by the game Children of Morta and was about a large family living in the woods when suddenly the nature rise against them. The first session was the setup of the relations of family members (players drawing the genealogy tree), the creation of the house (drawing the map of the house in a child style with bright colors) and the narration of their best family memories (each player was narrating one or two of these memories, with the collaboration of the others involved in the scene; something like "Jack, do you remember when we stole a looot of candies and hide in the tallest tree near the house?" / "Oh yeah, I remember! It's the first time you used your druidic powers, to facilitate the climb!" / And the mother jumps in : "I search for you for HOURS! I was so mad at you both but you had your lesson with the belly ache afterwards.." And after that narration, another player was already drawing the "Tallest tree / hide spot" on the map, behind the house, and it became relevant in combat (because most of the game was at that house, so the map they were drawing became a battlemap a few times).
Oh goodness Ginny, that fairy godmother dress is absolutely gorgeous. Also a good way to decrease 'pressure' for the players during mid-session world building is to utilise rolling tables/softly randomised assets like the backgrounds personality traits. Like rolling a 1d8 for the terrain/locale of their hometown, is it a swamp? desert? forest? Player can't decide? then roll for it. This could allow players who actually want to customise to have a good reference, while also speed things up a lot when you call someone who is less comfortable on the spot to decide something.
Is that dress homemade or did you buy it?
It is simply gorgeous and a certain somebody I know would love it if I could get one like it for them.
It’s great fun (as a DM) to watch your players perk up when you use something they made in the adventure - sometimes it’s excitement, sometimes it’s dread, but it’s always personal for their character.
The most fun I ever had collaborative world building was actually in a subreddit of all places... Long story short someone set up a Civ 5 game with 60 CPU countries, and everyone had loads of fun filling in the lore of their adopted country. There were newspapers covering the "real life" events from the game, weekly updates on the state of the world war, even a Model UN with elected representatives (ok some of the elections may have been self-appointments)
It was fun to see how well everyone worked together considering we were all strangers and there were basically no rules. The world was big enough and everyone's narrative interests so niche that there wasn't much stepping on toes, and the stakes were low to nonexistent anyway
The CBR is great! I kinda fell off following them closely after the second or third one, I think. But the idea is fantastic, and the meme of Nebuchadnezzar, lurking in his Antarctic submarine, watching the events unfold, is one of my favourite niche-internet things. Canada and the Buccaneers were always my favourites.
I think it's actually possible that the CBR may have influenced Firaxis to add certain Civs into Civ 6 - Australia, Canada, Vietnam, and Gran Colombia were all beloved in those early ones, with so much lore and memes for them.
I once spent days designing my character's home city for my DM and when we finally went there it was amazing to be able to lead the others around and introduce them to the place if my character's childhood
I often feel bad since my DM has put so much effort in their world, but my memory of all the names and places quickly fizzles away particularly when things get hectic, and I'm left with a string of notes full of names I barely recognise. Really sucks because the campaign is so much fun to delve into, and I worry my participation is annoying when I'm stumbling over what are pretty basic details.
Just make sure your DM knows you genuinely appreciate their work; it's amazing how much that can smooth things over.
I'm bad with names in real life, so I get that. But if you remember the content, like lore, or "that one shop" - things like that - that still shows you're engaged.
As DM, I love when players appreciate the world and try to take it in. Actually succeeding in keeping track of it isn't as important as the desire to do so. Tell them that you enjoy what they're doing and then don't feel bad about your memory! :)
Hey, you have notes. That's better than like 75% of players so I doubt your DM feels annoyed. Just making the effort is great. Asking questions isn't a problem if they're genuine and come from a place of interest. If you care enough to ask, that's usually good enough for us DMs.
I agree with everyone above me and to assist and facilitate what it appears you wish to occurr I'll suggest the following:
After the game and between sessions reorganize your notes, when it isn't hectic.
Obviously, I don't know how your game is run, but I struggle to picture world building AND hectic activity occuring at the same time.
Could you elaborate on "hectic"? Because I'm hearing mid combat/dire skill checks such as running from a group of mountain goblins while their mountain, now turned Volcano, is erupting.
Cuz if _that_ is when you are learning the ancient name of the Volcano, I'd actually blame your DM lol.
But the best way, imo to absorb the info would be to look at it between sessions, and if you have a question about the world AND ask between sessions, Holy crap that is what makes the Great Players imo. My favorites are the players that think about the game between sessions.
Date your notes so you have a timeline.
Organize them and reorganize them. Then you will have an use for all of those wonderful notebooks you keep collecting but are remaining blank (I may be projecting here :p).
-Your Friendly Neighborhood Druid
Strongly recommend this. Currently in the cyberpunk setting I'm running, I have my players doing a combat encounter where they designed the house they live in and the things in and around it. So when bad guys raided them they got to use all the things they put into their house in combat.
So far they've shot a guy mid jump while bouncing off a trampoline, used pool floats to traverse the pool quicker, and unleashed their coop of mutant chickens on the raiders.
Omg I love this idea and I will most certainly steal it!!
I'm "That Guy" in my friend's games. He loves going crazy deep with lore, and I'm the one who saves every prop, writes journals in character, and always wants role playing sessions over combat. I just wish we could get the others in the group to try other things than D&D and World of Darkness.
My group did collaborative world building, taking turns drawing on a blank map and adding to a collective online lore document. The world started off fairly goofy, but after 3 years of running different games in the world we made together... Yeah, we're definitely all invested in the lore at this point!
I just had my fourth session of D&D this past weekend and I'm finally hooked. I *love* your idea of letting players describe a location in town. There have been times as a player where I'm itching to play a role in the creation aspect of the campaign - something as small as coming up with a store or home in-town can make a session feel *magical* to the players (especially if you have a table of players who all want to experiment with DMing and world building themselves!)
Ooh! Welcome to the club, I hope you can enjoy many years of awesome games, and it's so good to hear that you are so engaged and willing to be an active participant. Who knows, maybe you'll be a dm someday. It's always cool to try a oneshot at some point to try out behind the screen, but most importantly have fun of course, no matter how you engage with the game!
I recently introduced a player contacts system at character creation.
Basically, based on your charisma,bonus, you have that many contacts and allies you can call upon to help you in the quest in some way. For every 2 allies, you get one Rival. It works the opposite way too, while a CHA bonus of zero still gives you one so people don't get left out.
Only 3 sessions in my game and it made for some amazing role playing moments where they interacted with them, used them to gain information.
And it allowed me to create a TON of quest hooks.
This worked for me because my campaign primarily takes place in a city of two million people. And It really helped flesh it out.
Something interesting my group has done is that each of us has taken charge of world-building a continent for the world we play in. We're a small group and we like to rotate DMs, so each of us has worked to build a setting for us to run adventures in. And since they're all on the same world, we have to collaborate on how these different cultures interact, as well as cosmology and pantheons.
My group is super roleplay-focused, so when our characters get an idea in the moment, we ask after things our DM couldn't possibly have planned for. So if we roll high enough to locate a shop that might carry relevant items or info, that shop is created then and there by the table as a whole, and suggesting a really fun detail could even get you rewarded with an inspiration token! Even what seem like throwaway jokes above-table can get incorporated, which makes the game more engaging and makes the world feel more active and alive!
As usual, insightful stuff that had me going "where was this when I started gaming many years ago?" Thanks, Ginny!
Please tell me Glop the two headed goblin who sells home made glue was made up on the spot during filming 🤣I love this I'm currently running a campaign that is co-imagined by myself and 2 other players and its a blast. We took Fearun and made it our own and in between we sprinkled in material from the modules, while creating world spaces for different characters and their homes. Its made my life waaaaay easier!
We definitely used "players world-build within their own backstory" as a pre-campaign strategy. I sketched out my character's "important locations" for my GM, which in this case were all in one city. We discussed the type of place I was looking for, and then he gave me a skeleton description of the city and country we'd chosen, which I _really_ fleshed out over the next week or so. (I'm afraid I may have gone a bit overboard!)
This is all great advice, especially for a DND playing noob like myself. Of course I recognize not every DM is gonna be Matt Mercer or Brennan Lee Mulligan on the detail front either so if I as a player can help them then that only enhances the game.
Yeah my old DM had what we called a Cross Dungeon Universe where we had all our campaigns take place in though at different places or points in time leading to it becoming more in depth as we went (my favorite moment was when my Halfling Sorcerer went into my old Tiefling Warlock's shop (he'd retired from adventuring after losing 2 of his friends & a leg to a black dragon) looking for some interesting magical items to potentially help in sneaking into a cathedral
My favourite example of this is in our family game. Completely out of game my now 9yo and I made up some bedtime stories about a dragon and an alicorn who were friends including how they grew up together, and various adventures they had. Then we incorporated those as legends her rural dragonborn knew, that the other characters didn't, that somehow maybe seem to relate to the ancient dragon the party met by chance, who they're supposed to travel to meet by appointment in the autumn...
I always ask my players to give me a very short backstory from someone in their character's family.
I LOVE that you mentioned having players build their home town because thats again what I ask my players to do, though I'm fine if they just describe a home or street.
Originally in my world Dwarves didnt exist. They were going to be stuck in storybooks in certain regions. But one player wanted to play one, so I had a God create them. Rather than retconning histories to shove them in, I had them literally be a new race that was put into the world 80 years prior to defend a stronghold.
In discussing collaborative storytelling as a tool, it’s so refreshing to hear a breakdown that is nuanced, balanced and includes the vast body of TTRPG wisdom and design included in other systems like Dungeon World.
D&D is my game, but it’s a grand tradition to hack it into what works for one’s group. Loved the video
Absolutely agree about allowing the players to help create the world! I have my maps *mostly* complete with the geographical features, but I like my players to describe the cities and cultures from their homelands or areas they've passed through, informing the party as we go. Right now, my level 5 party is considering building a stone keep, so I showed them a map so they could determine a suitable location, and then I created a more detailed map of the immediate region for them to find the perfect building site. It's been wonderful watching them evaluate the terrain, wind and sun exposure, water sources, and stone and timber resources. Now they just need a lot of gold 😂
in a druid campaign a location I'm very fond of was the forest druid town with elves and ware creatures, I was a ware tiger if I remember.
What made that place feel like home is it was our core location somewhere we always returned to and picked up missions.
We had to do a fight against a vampire army on their land, deal with a wolf pack and make a peace treaty with them. a party member burned down a near by forest on accident.
Basically having a home town that players return to often and get to develop along with the story is very powerful as well.
At 8:41 I was like “wait a minute”, because the outfit I am currently wearing looks really similar. It’s even the same colours. It would appear that I was unknowingly cosplaying Cinderella. 😂
Top notch, hilarious sponsorship ad as usual. I like how you mentioned that the DM has power of veto. This is so true; no matter what a player does for a backstory, the DM retains the final say on how or where it fits in. If something is a little funky, or contradicts something major, explaining the disconnect and working through it can keep everything in line while still letting players be involved. And if said player throws a fit, well, that might raise a flag for other behavior later down the road. After all, it is YOUR WORLD as a DM, and you get to have fun too.
One of my dm let my character come in and out of this town for several years so they gave me a list of lore, places, and people I got to know well over the years. It definitely got me more invested into the town.
This is so true! I first played D&D with several close friends a few months back, and the first few sessions, as we were all learning to play(everyone but the DM was new to D&D), we kept making references to modern pop culture in character. At one point we referenced the Atlanta airport with its subway that runs between concourses, and our DM ACTUALLY added a city called Atalanta (abbreviated ATL on maps ofc) with a massive seaport and multiple docks accessibly by a magical carriage to the continent we were already working on. Something about him honoring our silly ideas and integrating them into the world in a way that works without being too out of place makes the world feel like ours and not just his, though of course I recognize he deserves credit for all the work he’s put in.
I always tell my players that any change to the world is fine as long as they run it by me first. This has led to a previously undamaged city now being under reconstruction after a dragon attack. The capitol now secretly being under the control of a powerful thieves guild, a powerful wizard now having multiple apprentices, and there being a roving band of orc pirates that most elves are terrified of and tell horror stories about. I love that my players backstories and the backstories of random NPCs they decide are important are starting to fill out my world more.
Yes. Absolutely. My DM lets us world build our entire home countries and it works like a charm
I ran Descent into Avernus with the gang being childhood friends from a mercenary company. They had since split, but were meeting up again and taking on this quest to find their adoptive father by their adoptive mother, who had reason to believe he was in Avernus.
It was great. Because I gave them no more context than that, outside of a few "Flash back session" and during "present time" they would say things like: "Ok... Remember when we snuck into the High Halls of Kazumdahl?" when preparing for a break-and-entry etc. It was fun and everyone got into it, really building character history together!
I think a great example of this is in “Not Another DnD Podcast” (a great podcast by the way)
The best/fan favorite location of the first campaign was Emily Axeford’s character’s (Moonshine’s) home, “The Crick”
The DM just let Emily improve jokes about The Crick, based of the general vibe but also Moonshine’s own character and personality, and he wrote them all down and made them facts about the world.
Now this worked because Naddpod is as much an improve comedy show as a DnD actual play, and The Crick itself is so naturally chaotic that it actively bucks normal logical reasoning, but it’s also consistent in tone and has core ideas that anchor it.
So this idea does work. It is indeed the most memorable place of the campaign, and it’s where the characters wanted to spend most of their time
I've started letting players help worldbuild in recent games, and it goes over really well. The players like it, I like it, and we come up with far more varied and interesting ideas when we all contribute than if any one of us did it ourselves. During game I'll just...ask a player. "You've arrived at a settlement. What is it called?" The next player gets to decide what the population is like, the next decides what the settlement's primary export is... It really does work well.
One of my plot hooks was this small town getting burned down, and I didn't super expect one of my players to decide to be FROM that town. After it happened in-game, I decided to let them LITERALLY build their own town from the ground up, rebuilding that players hometown to better than it used to be. It's a fun little mini side quest that we do when one player can't show up and I'm planning on having it have big consequences on the main story, depending on how big they decide to make it as we go! They also get to invite new npcs to town, play matchmaker with the npcs if they want, open their own businesses, train npcs to be able to work specific jobs, ect.
Not EXACTLY what you were talking about in this video (definitely more literal, at least lol) but all of my players are already super invested in making sure this town prospers in the background, and it acts as a good home base for them at the end of an adventure.
This is a great tool that I think all dms can use
one technique that I often use and recommend is taking the players background and building something around it
like if the depressed dragonborn bard says that their searching for their father who left them at birth, I would create a quest to incentivize doing that and then branching out into further character development that would make the players feel included into the world
That and using warlocks, all warlocks have massive flavortext potential with how customizable they are, so if you have a warlock player then make sure to double check their sheet, there might be a side story waiting to happen
I had a session zero quite some time ago where players were setting up a city and world they were leaving on the first game. It helped setup species they'd encounter, gods, and generally setting relevant things. On the second game they discovered obsidian mirrors that let them see people the characters were associated with, and they eventually found ways to change their home from a distance. It really helped give a little more purpose to exploring a strange dimension.
Of course little did they know they were setting up some of the divine and meta progression of the game. The fact they focused so much on religion for their characters allowed me to weave the narrative with all sorts of crazy religion shenanigans. Important historical figures they created even showed up. It made everything that much more personal for everyone involved and I'm really glad the players had a part in world creation because of it.
I am doing a prologue for my food based world right now. They have created communities and sculpted how the world is going to run hundreds of years in the future after the initial five sessions. A little ‘taste’ of what they jumped to naming their characters Cornelius Cobler, Osmund Oregano, Gavin Graham and Mitchell Crumbitiz. This world has become so much more than I initially imagined and I am so happy for it.
Both my current DMs are great about that style of worldbuilding. As broad as adding an undersea city for our Triton, as well as making a shopkeeper an Owlin after the same player talked excitedly about wanting to play/meet one. There was even a moment specific to me, where I named my hometown after consulting a name generator and after a bit of back and forth amongst us and the players, he went, "I got ideas for that." My other DM built his current world off a battle royal that went on, which I sadly missed due to internet issues.
Honestly I think they retain more than I do. Many is the time I'm checking my notes for a name and my player is like 'Betty is the receptionist at the front desk'
I (player) once made up three different shopkeepers on the spot during a conversation with an NPC. The DM had us meet one of them the next session, and killed him off for plot developement the session after. This may sound harsh, but I loved it. Seeing my silly little creation get tied in with the campaign so heavily made me really proud.
I created a whole discord where I listed every npc we've met including physical description, personality, and how we know them, a calender, a list of every city and town we've visited and notable locations in them, a section for lore, even a section where I update the in game date after each session! I wish the other players paid better attention. All this information is quite literally at their fingertips! I'm the only one who takes notes and I do more than take notes.
Although I've never DMd D&D, I have been DMing for over 20 years, and had DMd many different games/systems. Still, I ALWAYS find something useful and refreshing your videos. Congratulations for having such a wonderfully creative mind and being such a good content creator. I love to hear your ideas and pitches, and I really hope that you continue doing that for a long, long time.
The Stablemaster makes homemade glue you say.... OH GOD
Omg I just realized how much my players liked the game I did this with, definitely gonna have to remember it bc I totally forgot for a couple of campaigns that the players could do that
I’m very lucky to have DM’s that have always been super supportive of this sort of thing- which is great given my writer/actor background. For one game, I built a neighborhood into a major port town called The Little Shire- effectively a Little Italy/Chinatown but for halflings where things were designed for small creatures and community was paramount. For a oneshot, I played a bartender and had an entire menu with drinks inspired by the world and other characters that everyone was super into. And for my main campaign, I wrote out some lore about druids regarding the necessity of circles and how wildshape ties into your other abilities that ended up explaining things about my character as well as some of our npc’s. None of these things really alter the world significantly, but as a player, it’s really exciting to have my ideas make an impact on things beyond just my character!
That sounds really interesting and cool! I got a little curious about the druid part, would you mind expanding how did the wildshape tie into your other abilities? 💚
Tanja thank you! So since gaining the wildshape ability and joining a circle occur at level two, I made is so that the two actions were linked. Essentially, without a community to guide and teach you, you can’t progress beyond the couple cantrips or spells you get at level one. In theory, a druid is supposed to be a part of a circle and learn and grow with them- which both helps them grow as a caster and also mitigates the risk of super powerful mage not being a loose cannon. It played out really well for my druid and our druid npc who both were isolated from our circles- one completely stagnated and the other is regularly overwhelmed by the amount of stuff she’s learned how to do in the past couple months.
Ginny has a way of posting a video right when it aligns with my current D&D endeavor.
To keep my players invested between session, i have them do homework. Well, we just had our 1 year anniversary so I gave them an exam! I had my players build a significant place to them while I hand drew a map of the world. Together we placed their hometowns and it made the world feel like an actual real place. The best part is that session, my players brought up their hometowns organically and it help me build personalized character quest for them too.
TL:DR: I AGREE WITH THE CONTENT PLAYING ABOVE THIS COMMENT
Good idea !
Reminds me of the "Dungeon on demand" technique to improvise dungeon :
Tell your players they heard about a dungeon and ask them what they have learnt, and how, while they where preparing to crawl in there.
For three element they bring (Bounties, map, dangers ...) you take one point of chaos.
(Just don't overdo it and accept more that, say, 3 to 5 elements from every player else you take the risk of your dungeon going banana.)
Then, you use your points of chaos to change what they find on site and make it surpising.
The only restriction for the DM is to keep the change explainable by a false rumor of an information that is no longer true.
Did this for a Fallout RPG and our DM used it to change the map we had done by adding security doors and removing the sentient deathclaw I wanted to add.
The deathclaw was a traveler that had gone his way and the security doors where a secret protocol the chef of the factory had keep in case things went sideway.
Was fun all the way :)
YES. I love collaborative world building. If your party is diverse, it also helps avoid problematic shit in fantasy tropes that you might not recognize as such.
Microscope is possibly the most unique and amazing way to build a world, particularly histories. I have a group that I build a world with and then another group that I DM in that world. If I ever need to fill out complicated stuff in the world, I bring it to my microscope group. It's amazing
What my players like most is the feeling of being able to change and affect the world, mainly their home city. I have a long-running campaign in its third "season" and one retired character has become the major (I GMed an election for her, the whole party helped her win), another character then dropped her some money to build a temple for the god he worshipped, she wanted to build a magic school, so after the time skip of season 2 and 3, the map of the city was a good deal larger and had all the new spots and places. They really loved seeing their efforts "mapped out".
Letting your players make low-stakes NPCs is the best. Our home group has a little hermit crab who runs a traveling junk shop that the party invented, and now whenever they show up in a new town their first action is always to see if he's there. He's very polite and soft spoken, but don't be mean to him or he might have to go in his shell to chill out for a while (and the party will no doubt be cross with you for berating such a special boy).
one of the most effective ways I've encouraged this kind of thing in my games is in session zero asking every player to "tell me something true about the world." It gets them in the headspace of creating aspects of the world but it's open enough that they can say small things like "there's a bakery run by goblins and they make great doughnuts" or big things like "every knight in the kingdom is part of a secret cult intent on destroying the world". My players have always come up with cool things for this and it always ends up enhancing the game
For my session 0 of the first campaign I started without a module, I let my players create a map with "rumours" they had heard. It included interesting potential locations like a "forest of the lost" and a dragon's lair. The key here was that I ensured they understood that these locations were rumours, and may or may not be in the exact place they put it on a map, but may have more than meets the eye. For example, the Forest of the Lost (although they don't know it yet) is likely to be full of a druidic elven society that welcomes visitors with such wonderful hospitality, that people never choose to leave.
This is still helpful even when working with an established world! I'm running a game in Exandria and am absolutely thriving with prep when my players provide information about their character's hometowns. It is allowing them to carve their own spot in a world they already know and love, to blend their character's stories with lore they already hold so dear.
It's helping to make this version of Exandria theirs rather than riding off of the coattails of what they've seen on CR, too. Now, it just feels like another campaign setting instead of a well documented and loved place they've seen played in online.
As Dungeon World says "Make maps, leave blanks".
I've found it a good way to do some of your own prep/worldbuilding, but allow for cool ideas which may come from the table (prompted or unprompted) to fill in those unmapped areas. Note that "make maps" doesn't have to literally mean maps. It can mean any kind of prep.
I make a sort of mini game out of sessions recaps. I popcorn to various players and have them go through last session, occasionally interrupting to offer inspiration or “fate dice” (stackable d4s) to players who can answer lore questions. They’ve gotten pretty familiar with the lore because of this. If I ask them “which Vallic tribesman led his people into the Andurn mountains to escape the industrialization of the Tarvian Empire over 2000 years ago” or “when the pirate king Edwain Durwin overthrew the merchant republic of Bandunar, which of the 79 vampires of the Gamnian Collective defeated him in single combat”, they typically know offhand.
There were many great takeaways from this video, but I absolutely cannot get over the fairy godmother dress, the bodice and those SLEEVES, its goregeous!
For me my lazy preparation gives a lot of room for my players to hint at ideas that they want and since I want my players to have fun I go with it. This also makes me continue a straight forward story without railroading them Bc they are filling in all the gaps without them even knowing it
I enthusiastically appreciate the work that goes into this channel. I hope it feels like that from time to time, Ginny!
Love the tip!
Coming up on thirty years ago, the mid-80’s to mid-90’s, during my D&D hey day, I did this exact thing, kinda. All told there were about 10 of us in our group, even though on average only about 4 or so could ever get together at the same time. On occasion we might have the whole crew around, but mostly just 4-5 at a time. Every person in the group was running or playing in a game so it mattered not who of the group were present. Somebody pitched and the rest caught. So if Danny wasn’t around, then William chaired the game, but Eric wasn’t there so Ray ran his game. Or Chris was there so William captained our session. Each of us had a character or a dozen in each game. If only 1 or 2 could be present than we ran a side-game or epic quest. We used these one-offs the train troops or our epic mounts, we ran so many games.
Without rambling further each DM had a world in mind while running these games backed by binders full of notes. Because the parties were so mixed the only way to keep continuity was to have a large map, and most importantly different ages, decades, millennia even. For instance in the first age fey folk were born, no humans, the second age man was born and hunted elves, third age dwarves were warring with Drow. Etc. and probably the most important thing! Elect a party member to be a scribe.
After, or between sessions the scribe was to pen down an accounting of thing that occurred of note, such as… McVey the mighty pulled a Vorpal sword out of a dragon hoard in Lightfoot, or Stahn defeated the Lich of Leechfield, but caused the death of Brondarr.
It also brought us current from our last session.
I already know the question that is jumping out of the screens- “Why didn’t the DM, keep these notes?” We did. But the players seemed to rather enjoy writing an account of the battle where… “While swinging the Axe of ages at the ogres big toe, Drazz slipped in a puddle of grey ooze, ( rolled a nat 1 on a called action) and the last thing they remember seeing was their boots rushing up to meet their face. Their last memory was the pain of slamming face first onto the blood soaked dungeon floor in Sirob. “ as their head slipped from their shoulders the axe taking it clean off.
We retired the character got high and exchanged notes.
And because there were so many games going on, maybe two dozen or more when we grabbed our binders to meet we would always carry all of them. Because sometimes in the dead of night one of our occasional guests may show up. “Hey guys Richard came over and Danny’s sister is here we can finish up that one crazy Wizard tower battle….”
And because the notes were taken and it became history, players could, with the proper research rolls, etc, refer back on the history to trace amazing events, find dragon hoards, or magic items etc. these things existed as singular items, passed from one event or character to another. Clerics that follow the order of Ramaghast, a 14th lvl cleric who federated the temples into the Church of Furst, the fire eater congregation. And are gifted with a Summon fire efreeti medallion upon entering the monastery.
Or the time of Numbing when the dragon gods awoke ( every 100000 years) to rain psionic blast on the world, destroying anything above a 3 intelligence. Mankind starts over. Children grow up feral, form tribes, grow in numbers, establish societies discover the ancient knowledge. Magic is found again, etc, etc, etc.
so it really mattered where in the age you were. And when the prophecies are re-discovered.
It made for great gaming and great time. I miss all you guys and gals. But still Ginny. Awesome advise.
3 of my friends created countires as part of their backstories for our current game. My character is from the city that we're all based in, and in our 1st session I took the party for hot dogs, and I've been helping flesh out what life is like for the lower classes in that city. Our DM runs a very large Pratchett-esque world that every single one of her campaigns happens in, and anything her players add becoms canon
I encourage this in my games....my current one I let one of my players (A turtle cleric) world build an entire monastery/temple/place of worship to the Raven Queen. It added so much to the world and I'm looking forward to when they get to that point of the game
That being said..some players LOVE this stuff. Others are more laid back and will leave it all in the DMs hands. Both are okay.
For my D&D campaign, I did a Session 0 that was like a quick-and-dirty version of the worldbuilding game The Quiet Year. Each player (including myself) was given a notecard to write down a feature of the world and a small sentence of detail about that feature. We then passed the notecards to our left and wrote a sentence on the card we received. We did this until everyone had written something on each card, and then did this again with 3 cards total per player, each player marking the features they started on a map. We got a lot of interesting aspects of the world out of this, and it was a lot of fun for me as a GM to try and tie everything together. One fun features is a moving city that is powered by a captured djinni, which is referred to as the city's 'en-djinn.'
I think it also helps to give players world-building options, instead of having them create something from scratch. For example, instead of asking a player "what's the nature of your druidic circle?" you can ask "Is your druidic circle an established order across different regions, or is it more of an esoteric circle?" And then whatever they answer, you can kind of branch off of there and pepper some of those details into the lore.
I definitely think these tips work very well, Ginny 👍🏻
I have found this to be extremely effective as both a DM and a PC. As a DM, when my players created something in their backstory I did not have, I was able to more easily find ways to work those things in as a way to get them more personally connected to the story
As a player, it really helped me feel more connected to my world. My DM let me create my hometown and everything, but the best element was an NPC I had created. I had told my DM about three former partners my Paladin had. She found a great way to work in one of them, my Paladin’s ex-boyfriend, by having them worked into a quest in the Rime of the Frostmaiden campaign and it helped get me pulled into that quest even more
As for the collaborative element, The General Adventuring Company does that in their games, with the DM often asking the players to give some qualities to certain NPCs
Maybe not completely related, but I run a homebrew world with 4 campaigns in it so far. And one of the absolute best ways to keep my players invested has been to have the actions of a previous campaign affect the current one. Statues of long lost heroes that the PLAYERS recognize, but the characters may not. Take stories of their quest and change a few details, and it keeps them always searching for the stories of characters they used to play.
My favorite advice:
(air whooshing)
(upbeat music)
These videos are well made and I always appreciate when I have time to get around to them.
I have no DM experience and since I am a fairly new player, it will take a long time, before I will be able to DM. But I have started some worldbuilding for fun and I love it so much, I love thinking about a creation story, how to fit it in a story, some mythology, continents and lands, societies for different races etc. Really wish I could already try to navigate players through the world.
Good Vid. I have done this for over 25 years. I always allow them to add things to the campaign / world I started and it is pretty great. Some of my players have created random NPC's for me, they have created shops, locations, and even better yet loose ideas and inspirations. The look on their face when they walk into a shop and realize it is one they built, or they have to stop and talk to someone to find their way only to see its JoJo, the crazy potion maker who samples his potions more than sells them; ones that they have created. So yeah, totally a 100% must do for any DM IMO.
My DM started us off as citizens of the various Emerald Isles, and let each of us invent the particular island that we came from, in as much or as little detail as we wanted. We got so into it, even drawing up rough maps sometimes, and pestering him with settings questions, even though we were never going to step foot on those little islands, as we were all meeting up on a bigger one. Really helped to remember/invent details about one's backstory, too.
I build my worlds primarily for my own creative purposes. I don't expect my players to learn my lore, however I'm frequently pleasantly surprised when the level of detail my worldbuilding utilises intrigues them. Once they start asking questions , they eagerly leap down rabbit holes of lore. I've taken to limiting the amount of lore each source has as well as how accurate that knowledge is. This leads to the characters seeking out new sources of lore and trying to patch together their best understanding of lore.
This is a really smart method cause then the players learn what they want to, and you don't have to write a bunch of lore that'll go to waste
*Surprisingly, I agree with almost all said in this vid.*
The idea of players designing things related to their backstory is great, as long as I give them unbendable guidelines.
However, (as Ginny mentioned for which I love her) players worldbuilding on the spot may break immersion, therefore being unwelcome.
Characters doing worldbuilding with me is so helpful. For example, I have a runaway prince who helped me build his castle and parts of the kingdom and we both had fun doing it :)
Something I did that I'm still very happy I did was ask my DM to write my backstory and not tell me it so that I could feel the same wonder as my character as she learned more about the world. This wasn't because I was trying to be lazy, but I figured having my DM write the backstory would allow my story to connect more deeply with the world that she made. Since she saw how hard I was working to create my character, she accepted, and boy has it made for such a unique and personal experience.
I don't get to play DnD.. nor do I cosplay... but Ginny Di videos are just so wholesome and entertaining.
This so much. One of the reasons why I wanted to run my game was so that I could have a more comprehensive story to use my PCs in. I've played in so many campaigns where my character does not matter. I want my character to be part of the world.
On the create-an-NPC thing, I remember the first thing we did in Session 1 of our Tomb of Annihilation campaign was come up with the bartender/owner of our group's favourite watering hole.
We come up with Toddsy, the Gnome former adventurer - A Bard back in his prime, now just our favourite innkeep. He was also a patron of our group (our backstory is that we're all involved in a circus-act sort of thing where the Druid shapeshifts into wild beasts and then is "tamed" by the Barbarian in front of the crowds). We started rattling off potential names for his 26 children (Yes, he was apparently that kind of Bard).
He had retired from adventuring after being killed by a jealous husband of one of his paramours. He was resurrected by his allies, then he retired and opened his tavern.
I'm sure by now, anyone familiar with Tomb of Annihilation knows exactly where this is going.
Yeah. We spent a good bit of time working together to come up with this fantastic little Gnome who was one of the party's dearest friends, and...
Our story proper opened with his funeral.
As we would find out in relatively short order: He was a victim of the Death Curse - Those who have been previously resurrected succumbing to the death they had "cheated", and resurrection magic no longer working at all for anyone. Getting into why people are dying in this fashion, is of course, the main thrust of ToA, so I'll not spoil that.
We actually got a great laugh out of the whole thing. Part of our in-character reason for signing up for the whole overarching quest is now finding a way to end the Death Curse in honour of our good pal Toddsy.
All of our original PCs are still alive, nearly two years IRL since the game started, so that mission lives on. Though, surprisingly, we've yet to run into Aoddsy, Boddsy, Coddsy... Or any of the rest of Toddsy's children we made up back in session one.
Hang on... I think I just got an idea for a backup character, in case I need another...
Our DM looked at back story, asked a few pointed questions, then listened to what was said in game to create relatives. Imagine my surprise when we came across my character's home that I never thought would be relevant.
As a player, I always include potential plot hooks in my backstory. I've actually designed the religion my cleric follows and then ask for input as to the name of the god and if I'm the first one going on missionary or if I'm just one of many followers to do so.
If a DM ever asked for something built, I can probably come up with something. Want a dungeon? I can make one up and leave a few random areas that the DM decides if they're a trap, an encounter, a riddle, or just an empty room. The DM has full control over loot.
With a handful of NPC stat blocks a table could create an entire world.
For me as a DM, I create the outline of the world. Major continents, some nations, etc. But the players create the inner stuff like cities, factions, and more!
I love to play this way! Original D&D allowed for PCs to build keeps, towers, groves, cathedrals, etc., so this is simply an extension of that. Play as if player engagement & investment are PRICELESS.
As a GM who is slow at world building, I like this. I did this once for a super hero campaign where a team of medium powered heroes had to find, recruit & train an incredibly powerful super hero to save the world from a threat the team couldn't handle. I asked each player to create a potential NPC hero recruit and I ended up using even the ones who weren't chosen as the NPCs who were recruited by rival groups.
I created a questionnaire and had the players build their families, tell me about their family dynamic, and the town that they’re from. The players have loved it!
I had my first dnd session as a dm ever this week. My player are in waterdeep which has tons of players and fractions (also i am incorporating 3 villains). They got everything in lore at least this first session. Made me so proud. But i also took i spiratiom from the player like one being sure the random item he found in the shop was vital for his backstory. Well, it was a random dice roll from me. Now it is vital for his backstory
In the game development space, I sometimes see this referred to as something like "The GM declaiming narrative responsibility" if you want to throw some brainy-sounding terms around for it. I agree that its important to tailor the degree you do it to the group you have! I've run games that were more like a writer's room than a storyteller telling a tale to a group of players and it worked great. But I've also tried to do the same with different people and had the thing pull apart at the seams. People that personally prefer the writer's room format get a little sensitive sometimes about the fact that some people are REALLY not into that, but there's nothing wrong with not preferring more narrative responsibility!
The one guaranteed thing that works every time is "coloring between the lines" where you say something like, "You know the Baron is untrustworthy, what is it that you see that makes you think this?" The important fact of the scene is established by the DM, that the Baron is not trustworthy, but the players get to provide their input by coloring in the hows and whys of it all. Even people that are uncomfortable with or disinterested by taking on narrative responsibility usually respond positively to that trick.
Nice work, Ginny! Your videos have really bent toward comprehensive and solid DM advice recently. Very impressive stuff! Reminds me of the early days of Running the Game...just, y'know, with more pastels! :-D
I have a problem of that we had our last game at our playgroup that we could play only 3 sessions and then just got overwhelmed by studying and then the "conflict" started, but after watching this (and generally after absorbing knowledge from internet) I see some benefits)
The difference between a game where players are invested in your world and one where they aren’t is immeasurable, even with all else being equal. This had some helpful thoughts, thanks!
my entire DM style is how can I make my players write the story and build the world themselves, i haven't mastered it but its the best idea ever.