how dare you Jk this is the right approach. I recently played in a oneshot where the GM (a friend, excited to try GMing) started by reading some background info/lore for their homebrew setting. It was great to see the drive, and I almost always prefer homebrew, but if you find yourself running a oneshot and saying, "...and the most recent murder happened on Krenn - which is like Monday." Then you've done too much worl-building. Just say Monday. There's a game to play!
Thanks for watching! I remember religiously watching your videos on Icespire Peak and Frostmaiden when they came out, ran them very successfully with your guidance! And your hike videos are making me jealous, it looks like Fargo out there for me right now. - Daði
Homebrew Pantheon is made up of a god per class (including Bloodhunter). There are 14 classes; 14 days in two weeks. Each day is named in honor of a god. Done. Next. There's a game to play.
A GM can not not worldbuild. No source material is ever done. So a GM has no alternative to constantly expanding their world. And it's always "their world" even if one uses pre writen material - because its never done. PS: BOB!! :D
This was a perfect time for this video to come out! I'm about to DM for the first time for a one on one campaign with my girlfriend, and it's very reassuring to hear I don't have to have everything created and can just start small and work my way from there. Thank you both for the amazing content!
I dare say it's better that you don't have everything prepared. Players often surprise you with what they want to do, where they want to go, or even if they do the thing you wanted, the way in which you do it is not the one you expected. It's important to be flexible, and having "holes" in your worldbuilding is not a bad thing, it means you can focus later on what becomes more relevant.
I cannot agree more!! BUILD AS YOU GO! I have oneshots or as we call them: World building workshops. Where we take places or make up places that we want a lore dip into. Best part is: their awesome or grim characters live on in the world as story or reality. Thanks for the videos keep up the good work.
i love one shots to build lore, its always awesome to see a players face when a oneshot character they made becomes a part of the campaign. And even better if you let that player in on it and let them play as the character (if you can work it that way).
As a writer with a predisposition to overprepare, what convinced me to play DND (and not just Consume Content In Awe) was just. watching a UA-cam video of people literally making up the campaign setting, the goal, the encounters AS they played. The most important aspect of fake-world-building is real-world FUN.
THISSSS. It's such a blessing as a DM when you find the diamond players like this. I'm still searching and mostly getting power gamers, interested but unmotivated ones, or want to be spoon fed an epic adventure on the DMs back types. Unfortunately I find a lot of newer players I get online are falling into the, "I heard about D&D and wanna play, but put in zero effort. The DM should be Matt Mercer, and I should be as entertained just sitting here as I am watching a let's play. At least that's been my exp the last few years. P.S: Can you point m to the video you are talking about. Would love to post it in my disco as an inspiration.
40+ yr DM (since 1984) and you ARE SO CORRECT -- and even now I get caught in the " I need to build more -- to be ready" -- and that is using Greyhawk as the setting (albeit outside canon -- canon being history in my world) --
Another huge advantage to not building a ton beforehand is that you are more agile later on if you keep things small to start. Let's say you start them in the place this video describes - a town, a road, a forest - and in your mind, the players will be taking that road to the next town once they're done in the local area. But, the players instead decide that they want to hijack a merchant ship and go explore the seven seas.... If you've done months and months of world-building on land, then you're either going to A) be frustrated that all your effort isn't being used, B) force the adventure back on land, C) explain to your players that you really intend things to take place on land. In any case, SOMEbody is gonna be bummed - you, them, maybe both. BUT if you only ever built out the initial location, and all the work you did on the other locations is a sentence or two about the adjacent spaces, then it doesn't hurt so bad to file away those few sentences and begin playing off of player decisions instead.
True, as a GM you probably have your preferences but it's important to develop the parts your players care about or are more interested in, because those are the parts that will be most relevant.
I turned this on and my partner started screaming about how they were being targeted! Another great video, thank you for helping us both understand our games and ourselves better with every video! You and your girlfriend consistently do wonderful work~
Old Timer here: Just start running games. Eventually, your table ( 99% ) will split up for one reason or another. Then if you have the world building bug, you will know what and why you're building the world the way you are and you may want to take a few years to do that before forming another play group. And ( JMO ) don't create some super epic adventure that directly ties in the your world's creation. It's tired and only interesting to you. The priests and scholars of my world can't even agree on how the world was created. Why would the player characters even know that?
This video was fantastic. As a long time player and DM, I can't stress enough how much your words resonated with how I also like to approach the game. I couldn't like and subscribe fast enough. I'll be sure to share this video with my friends. Cheers!
More extremely solid advice. I've been slowing world building as we play through our homebrew campaign, and I'm having a total blast. But just like you, my friend, I will never be close to being done. One thing that I struggle with is having really enthusiastic players who pelt me with questions that i don't yet have the answers to.
It’s the best day of the week! Love the Ferris wheel analogy for how to continuously alternate what you’re “building” in the world. Great job as always!
Years ago, I ran a multiverse campaign in a setting where anyone from anywhere (and when) could get stuck. There were lots of time-travel shenanigans due to the fluctuations of time-space that sent the pcs back and forth through generations of time, ending up sometimes on the other side of the continent. You'd think I had everything pre-made and pre-planned with the story and setting. Nope. Literally winging it then entire way. My players loved that setting, and I still have a couple games of that still going to this day. This method works far better than you'd think, and the only reason I'm not doing that with my upcoming Fallout 2d20 game is because I'm doing my best to build out the lore, themes, and behind-the-scenes story in a similar vein as Fallout New Vegas.
This has got to be one of the most helpful worldbuilding videos out there. It was like a personal mind blown moment and resonated on a deep level. The Ferris wheel is a perfect analogy for worldbuilding and conceptualizing it like that does wonders for understanding the process. This is exactly how it always goes for me personally and I've never stopped to think of the cyclical nature of it. It's so true that a new homebrew setting is always just a thought exercise that can be endlessly detailed. You'll zoom in and out forever, adding on and taking away. Thinking of how it exists at a bird's eye view and through the eyes of the average joe, as well as all the different kinds of adventure that can be had. As the process goes on your going to think of something new and exciting. That new idea is going to both make you rethink your existing ideas and define how you proceed. On and on the process goes until you get to something you're happy with and can work with. You almost have to establish borders or hard anchors of some kind or else you can really think yourself mad because the possibilities are endless. And the sad fact of reality is you won't be able to make the "perfect" world or one that is "ready" by reevaluating it and adding on. It just isn't possible because those definitions don't apply to this concept and process. It's relative, subjective and infinite. I feel like a mad man writing this out. To be honest, I don't even know how to effectively express it into words how this resonates with my past 6 years of worldbuilding. Banger of video (yet again) and thank you very much, I love what you guys are doing!
Great advice! My biggest mistake was trying to build everything before hand. The problem was - I set up the first session with this exact premise: A town, a road and a forest. But session 1 one of my players is playing a paladin and asks me what gods exist. I panic - I haven't memorised the DnD guide and don't even have access to it at this point so just make some up on the spot, loosely based on greek Gods. Then he asks what temples they have and where they are - I say not in this town. He says: what town? And now I'm making up the nearby city on the spot. He asks who the ruler is. I make it up. He wants to head there next. So we do session 1 with me flying by the seat of my pants and now I have until the next session to plan all this out. But now I feel like I need to make up the whole world and exactly how it works; the government, the religions, the neighbouring towns and who live there, the economy, largest exports, how magic works and where it came from... We didn't play again for 2 years.
My personal experience with "how much worldbuilding you need to start" is slightly different, so I'll leave it here in the hopes it helps ^^ Any detail that you cannot organically SHOW (not explain, not cite, not drop, but SHOW, as in "This statue over here that you are looking at in this room of the dungeon you are inside of") during the session, plus one level of abstraction (that statue is depicting someone in a specific style; that person is removed from you because you are interacting with a statue of them, not them in the flesh, but their presence is still felt because, well, *points to statue*) you don't need to write down and force yourself to remember later when you are deep in the trenches of running the session, flipping through books, panicking because your players didn't make the choice you were expecting them to, trying not to mispronounce a word and realising that the name of the NPC you are about to drop will be twisted into a sex joke right as you are saying it. And, as Dadhi said, always, ALWAYS, allow yourself the space to improvise at the table. The initial stuff will be atrocious, that's ok, you're training the muscles ^^ it'll get less and less atrocious the more you train those improv muscles.
I actually needed to hear this. I'm not only building a world, but I'm building my own system for the world. It always feels like there is so much to do. Maybe I just need to take a step back and see if I've done enough.
I remember the first world I ever made, I spent so long creating details for it that it took about 3 months from announcing to actually running a session 0 😅 Worldbuilding is like many skills where you improve with time. I can create better worlds in less time now because I saw my failures before, failures that only become clear when running the game, so if you're new, just play!
You have like 20,000 subscribers, so I am late to the party... but this is such a well-explained and well-written and well-spoken and well-thought out video. You've got a great way of talking about world building, and I'm shocked I've never come across you before on UA-cam. I voraciously consume TTRPG content, especially world building stuff, and this has just jumped up to the same tier of standard as people like Bob World Builder, Matt Colville, Sly Flourish, et al. New sub!
Great vid! This reminds me of the opening chapter of Justin Alexander’s ‘So you want to be a Gamemaster’. Excellent tips to getting in to playing FAST with a manageable, limited scope.
I just recently subscribed to your channel after binging a few of your videos. I've been an on-and-off DM for the past few years (more off than on...) and have been writing a new homebrew world and campaign. This video couldn't have better timing for that. These videos are stellar by the way: your advice and experience, the production quality, the humor; it's all wonderful. I'm excited to see what more you come up with!
Great video! I needed to hear this. I’m for sure an over-preparer. I get sucked into a million unneeded details & it ultimately ends up making things less fun for everyone (myself & the players). In truth, my players don’t care about my overly-detailed world or backstories, or whatever; they just wanna roll some dice and have fun.
Brilliant Video! Instant subscribe. This is very similar to how i write novels. Solid advice. It combines structure with “breaking the page” by just playing. Players add the unexpected which fleshes the world out more.
This video is reassuring, my previous campaigns I felt like I had to have the world mostly prepared or at least somewhat drawn up before I began (I am a new DM), but it was always hard to get the players actually interested in the world and the history. With this most recent campaign, which started only a week ago, my players have been so interested in the world and the ongoing events because I decided to try creating the world as we go which has allowed me to actually mold the world around their adventures and make it feel more personalized for them! It made me feel proud when I was giving a small info dump via roleplay and all of the players were jotting down notes and asking questions and commenting in character!
Don't normally comment on videos but I just want to say you have some really interesting and fun to watch videos. GMing my second long campaign soon, this time in Daggerheart. Fell into a lot of world building and story traps in my first campaign and your videos are great food for thought. Keep it up.
Thank you for the awesome advice, as always! I'm currently running pre-made modules (first was Tyranny of Dragons, currently Light of Xaryxis) with some overlap between groups. Even though we are technically in the same "official" forgotten realms, the characters from the original group have changed Toril and the current group are changing multiple planets. The forgotten realms are becoming our own. I was getting bogged down in trying to make a cohesive custom world, but I feel that my players are leading me to the right creation. They are actually becoming the world, if that makes sense. Congrats on all the success, and I look forward to seeing your next video!! I know it will be FANTASTIC!
this is video just appeared on the perfect time since i wanted to start a campaign but i felt like i needed to prepare and read everything and that was overwhelming to say the least... so great advice, thanks!!!
I totally resonate in your “wheel” analogy. After hearing you say it it totally makes sense. I am a first time dm building my world, and I kinda optimized to this sort of approach unknowingly. I would feel blocked or uninspired in one category of world building, but by moving to focus on a different aspect and coming back later on really drives things forward. I guess maybe it’s because of all the uncertainty in the campaign/ world creation, and once you create in on category you have locked in some certainty which informs how another part gets defined. And through cycling through the wheel over and over again you continue to reduce uncertainty. Anyways rant aside, great video! As a first time dm I am really benefiting from your content!
As someone who is about to dm his first campaign in the foreseeable future, and has been writing in his free time. You have been a massive help! Thank you both!
I fell into this trap but I threw away my attachment to my perfectionist self and actually ran my first session this past Saturday! It went great and now I feel so relieved and finally understand the “just do it and then you’ll get it” mindset
I like to generate my world as my players play from scratch and a vauge idea of locations and iconic characters I've built. My friends love it and I love to let them be/do anything and breaking the standard rules. You've great content my guy keep it up! :D
My best friend and Dungeon Master has been running games in his home brew world for a little over 2 years at this point. Taking inspiration from myself and other players for anything from cities to gods. I recommend to him before we started playing in this world to run a series of one shots to build up crucial world events from history, and it was a blast to play different characters and get to live in this events for some time. One of which spun off into its own year long side campaign with myself and two other players. And now, I am preparing for my own campaign set in his world with his as a player. I know some people may have some reservations on truly “sharing” the work they put into their setting. But I can say confidently as a player, getting to experience and take a part in pieces of the world building is amazing for getting people attached. And I am beyond excited to add even more through my own story told in his worlds past!
Fantastic video with great advice for newer DMs! I recently started my channel to lay out how I do collaborative worldbuilding with my players using The Quiet Year game to help out other GMs in their games. It takes a TON of weight off my shoulders and gives my players agency in their world, where they're from, cool things on the map, etc. Keep up the great work!
As a fellow filmmaker, I absolutely love seeing other channels like yours and the ADHDM combine the joy of filmmaking and TTRPGs. Seriously, keep up the great work. I look forward to every one of these videos!
Mystic Arts, can you look at reducing the pop on your “T”s and “S”s? Idk if that’s a mic screen, or filtering, or mic distance. Love your content, having some misophonia responses to hard consonants. Love this. Have a Danger Room session this Saturday, putting all the campaign layout on hold and starting with some pre-gens and a Skirmish.
I've actually used the village and forest setup to start campaigns in the past and it works very well. One benefit of starting that way that I don't think you mentioned is that it avoids being trapped by your details. I try very hard not to define anything until it matters. There may be a city at the end of the road, but until it's important to the game, there's no need to work out the details. That may actually be harmful, as you can run into a case where you desperately need two different thieves guilds at odds with each other, but have decided that the city only has one--or even none. Keeping your options open helps immensely.
My eyes bugged out of my head when you said your list of 3 things. That's precisely what I did for a group I started recently. Three new players and my brother. He helps them with simple stuff like a 10% co-DM. We've had a tonne of fun. Good advice!
Love that! This is exactly what I did, when I DMed my first OS after getting stuck in mentally worldbuilding settings never to be played. I made a town, a forest and a road and build an adventure from there on, worldbuilding and playing sessions side by side and step by step. This is an amazing advise. Just start playing!
This is pretty much how I started world building - one town. Mine is at a crossroads and yes, there is a forest. One and a half years later, I’ve fleshed out parts of two neighboring kingdoms (the original town is near the border), but haven’t done much more than name other countries and continents. If we ever get to those places, I’ll deal with them then.
I just started running a game and made my own setting. After listening to the advice of many like yourself online I decided to heed the advice and start an adventure on a blank hex map. It had a town, I knew only it's name and the name of one tavern. It had a major city, that I still know nothing of other than it's name, and that's it. Ive only run a couple of sessions but they have already inspired hexes to be filled and characters within the world. I look forward to continuing to build the world with the players at the table. The world is ours that we are collectively making at the table not mine alone and I love that. If you want the world to be yours alone, write a book, ttrpg allows for a different sort of creativity.
I misread the title cause I looked at a glance and thought it was "Why You Stop Building Worlds", but this was just as helpful! This is something I've learned from other systems like Blades in the Dark and Mothership. They do a much better job at explaining how to fit some places, ideas, and NPCs together to get started, and then how to snowball and build that further and further. My new goal as a DM/GM is to put the characters in front of interesting scenarios to let them explore that space, and not necessarily have a full campaign story built out that I feel like I need to tell.
There is a lovely phrase when it comes to writers. You're either a gardener or an architect, You pre- make every blueprint and then run the game, or you get some basics in , the seeds, and run with whatever happens mid game. I tend to start as an architect and once I feel 50% done with the blueprint I transition into a gardener. It's been working wonders
think its important to note that it depends on the people. my players absolutely love when we have a little side bar and i explain to them a detail from the world on a purely technical perspective.
Great video, on a topic that most people need to hear a practical side of. The last few minutes of down to earth objectives were my favorite part. I'm still in the market for more advice on encounter objectives that are more interesting than "kill them all", if you get around to that. Thanks!
Great points once again! One editing tip, if I may. Your mic probably has a low cut filter or if not, you should be able to cut the low end (like below 200 Hz) in the video editor. You have such a deep voice that with a proper Hi-Fi setup your voice is booming :D Another trick is to move the microphone further away from you and that way it will pick up less bass.
yes! this is the way. I was working full time when I decided to start a campaign. I had two weeks before session one. That campaign lasted about 18 months and I pulled it off without a hitch. making it up as you go along allows you to be nimble and cater to the players desires as well as respond to their actions. Also, it keeps you from getting bored with your content. at any moment, you are creating what is exciting to you, not reading notes about some quest you thought was cool six weeks ago.
The section 'How to worldbuild for your first session' REALLY started to get my creative juices flowing, cheers! 4 NPCs is so much more manageable; and 'town, wilderness, road' is also a great thing to have in mind :D Video request - thought of it when you said for other npcs to just 'make them up as you go along', could you maybe give some improvisational tips? :)
I like to run my games as a collaborative experience with the players. While I have fine tuned details relevant to the adventure/quests I lay out for them, I do not detail the entire world. I don't even define all the towns and cities unless it is relevant. Only things of major interest that are of common knowledge of relevant to the campaign. I may come up with "catch all" content that can be dropped in where I need to fill. But the goal is to allow the characters explore and help flesh out the world as we go. Some of the more interesting locations, lore, and interactions were things I never planned on, but made sense given how the story was unfolding and what my players decided to do.
Let me save you all some time: Clickbait title but only because UA-cam demands it. He’s just saying to start out with a world concept then do the actual “world building” on the tabletop as you go. This is genuinely great advice.
I built a world, and started using it once the bits I needed were ready. I'm currently partway through my 3rd campaign in the world now, and each campaign has fleshed out different places.
I think that’s the best part in ttrpg : the world is building along with the adventure! I was guilty of overpreping the setting and it was such a hassle…😅 You can actually make everyone at the table invested in the world simply by asking them to come up with details in the current scene. And it can be super fun !
I’m a new DM who did make my own world. The one thing that worked for me in really pairing things down is to just keep any notes about something the players haven’t encountered yet down to 2-3 sentences. Keep it short and focus on the vibes more than anything else. “Society is run by a council of warmages (homebrew class), each focusing a different subclass that represents their virtues. These warmages belong to houses that represent their virtues, and they run into conflicts where their virtues don’t overlap.” That’s all I’ve got for that section, and then I’d go and add sections for each house as I go, but again keeping it short. I have enough that I can improvise something when the players do come across it, and then whatever I improvise becomes the new canon if it conflicts with what I’ve written. I don’t have that much experience, but my players are loving it so far.
For the campaign I started running recently, I used Azgaar's map generator to create a world map, which despite being incredibly detailed, is functionally blank. I'm filling in all the details as I go
Love the content! You're right: sketch out a town, build a few NPCs then let the party help with the rest. And if you're REALLY struggling with "Oh, but I need to know THIS and THAT and WHAT ABOUT..." then spin up DF, save it to Legends and boom - you've got your atlas & history!
I'll add murlocs to my world now. You inspired me. You inspire me with every new video. Thanks to you and your girlfriend for making the world of dungeons a little brighter with each bit of content you put out.
You can’t stop me! I’m nearly done with the calendar system and the inter-continental trading routes, and then just finish the the relations between the pc’s and their backgrounds, and then…
Even if you manage to set it all in stone, by some strange miracle, your world will not survive an encounter with your players. Details will change. You will forget something, or think of something better. It will never end, and it shouldn't. Fantastic video, as always.
This is so true. The work is never done. I'm also getting close to my 10th anniversary of DMing in the same homebrew world, and I think the To-Do list for building the setting is longer now than when I started.
100%. Build as you go. I also ask my players questions about the place they're going to. Not all the time, but places in town, maybe an NPC, and occasionally I'll ask them to tell me something that is true about the world. I reserve editing/veto power, but I try to include as many of my players' details as I can. Involving them in the initial shaping of the world, and places within that world, instantly gets them invested because now they all have a mental image of the place they helped create.
Cool video! Aspiring first time DM here. I have a strict plan in developing what I believe is the bare minimum for me to present to my players because I don't want to get stuck in this loop of worldbuilding A while ago I was going to do exactly what you're suggesting. Unfortunately for me, I received a dream sometime later that was very much a whole world for me. The dream was so vivid, I just had to take it and work my ass off developing it Several months later and now I'm oh so close to starting my first game. I'm so excited to start
@Mystic-Arts-DM I really should. I'm designing a multishot for me to get a taste of what DMing is like without committing to an entire campaign I'm writing up a primer, as concise as possible, to help my players create characters for it, for I wish to integrate my players' characters into the lore For that I believe part of my responsibility is to throw them a bone regarding just the general theme/vibe of the setting
World building is the part that makes me simultaneously feel overprepared and underprepared during every session.
big mood
@@CactusPotion yes hahahahaha
But i do it regardless
how dare you
Jk this is the right approach. I recently played in a oneshot where the GM (a friend, excited to try GMing) started by reading some background info/lore for their homebrew setting. It was great to see the drive, and I almost always prefer homebrew, but if you find yourself running a oneshot and saying, "...and the most recent murder happened on Krenn - which is like Monday." Then you've done too much worl-building. Just say Monday. There's a game to play!
Thanks for watching! I remember religiously watching your videos on Icespire Peak and Frostmaiden when they came out, ran them very successfully with your guidance! And your hike videos are making me jealous, it looks like Fargo out there for me right now. - Daði
Homebrew Pantheon is made up of a god per class (including Bloodhunter).
There are 14 classes; 14 days in two weeks.
Each day is named in honor of a god.
Done. Next. There's a game to play.
Fantasy Garfield: “I hate Krenns…”
yeah doesn’t quite have the same ring to it
@@MossyAntler "I hate krenday" See, its better :)
A GM can not not worldbuild. No source material is ever done. So a GM has no alternative to constantly expanding their world. And it's always "their world" even if one uses pre writen material - because its never done. PS: BOB!! :D
"There is no done" is the most succinct and true thing I've heard about world building. Thank you sir.
You are very quickly becoming my favorite DnD UA-cam channel!
yes he is very chill and got a nice deep voice
Mine, too.
This was a perfect time for this video to come out! I'm about to DM for the first time for a one on one campaign with my girlfriend, and it's very reassuring to hear I don't have to have everything created and can just start small and work my way from there. Thank you both for the amazing content!
Daði runs a solo campaign for me and it's one of the greatest gifts he's ever given me. Good luck! - AB
I dare say it's better that you don't have everything prepared. Players often surprise you with what they want to do, where they want to go, or even if they do the thing you wanted, the way in which you do it is not the one you expected. It's important to be flexible, and having "holes" in your worldbuilding is not a bad thing, it means you can focus later on what becomes more relevant.
I cannot agree more!!
BUILD AS YOU GO!
I have oneshots or as we call them: World building workshops.
Where we take places or make up places that we want a lore dip into.
Best part is: their awesome or grim characters live on in the world as story or reality.
Thanks for the videos keep up the good work.
i love one shots to build lore, its always awesome to see a players face when a oneshot character they made becomes a part of the campaign. And even better if you let that player in on it and let them play as the character (if you can work it that way).
As a writer with a predisposition to overprepare, what convinced me to play DND (and not just Consume Content In Awe) was just. watching a UA-cam video of people literally making up the campaign setting, the goal, the encounters AS they played. The most important aspect of fake-world-building is real-world FUN.
THISSSS. It's such a blessing as a DM when you find the diamond players like this. I'm still searching and mostly getting power gamers, interested but unmotivated ones, or want to be spoon fed an epic adventure on the DMs back types. Unfortunately I find a lot of newer players I get online are falling into the, "I heard about D&D and wanna play, but put in zero effort. The DM should be Matt Mercer, and I should be as entertained just sitting here as I am watching a let's play. At least that's been my exp the last few years.
P.S: Can you point m to the video you are talking about. Would love to post it in my disco as an inspiration.
40+ yr DM (since 1984) and you ARE SO CORRECT -- and even now I get caught in the " I need to build more -- to be ready" -- and that is using Greyhawk as the setting (albeit outside canon -- canon being history in my world) --
Thank you for approaching all of this from a story telling perspective. Your perspective as a filmmaker is key and is needed by more people.
Another huge advantage to not building a ton beforehand is that you are more agile later on if you keep things small to start. Let's say you start them in the place this video describes - a town, a road, a forest - and in your mind, the players will be taking that road to the next town once they're done in the local area. But, the players instead decide that they want to hijack a merchant ship and go explore the seven seas.... If you've done months and months of world-building on land, then you're either going to A) be frustrated that all your effort isn't being used, B) force the adventure back on land, C) explain to your players that you really intend things to take place on land. In any case, SOMEbody is gonna be bummed - you, them, maybe both. BUT if you only ever built out the initial location, and all the work you did on the other locations is a sentence or two about the adjacent spaces, then it doesn't hurt so bad to file away those few sentences and begin playing off of player decisions instead.
True, as a GM you probably have your preferences but it's important to develop the parts your players care about or are more interested in, because those are the parts that will be most relevant.
Or you can do as l do
Ok 🫡 wait a few days and i Will have things ready as you threw me out of balance here 😂
I turned this on and my partner started screaming about how they were being targeted! Another great video, thank you for helping us both understand our games and ourselves better with every video! You and your girlfriend consistently do wonderful work~
Old Timer here: Just start running games. Eventually, your table ( 99% ) will split up for one reason or another. Then if you have the world building bug, you will know what and why you're building the world the way you are and you may want to take a few years to do that before forming another play group. And ( JMO ) don't create some super epic adventure that directly ties in the your world's creation. It's tired and only interesting to you. The priests and scholars of my world can't even agree on how the world was created. Why would the player characters even know that?
This video was fantastic. As a long time player and DM, I can't stress enough how much your words resonated with how I also like to approach the game. I couldn't like and subscribe fast enough. I'll be sure to share this video with my friends. Cheers!
More extremely solid advice. I've been slowing world building as we play through our homebrew campaign, and I'm having a total blast. But just like you, my friend, I will never be close to being done.
One thing that I struggle with is having really enthusiastic players who pelt me with questions that i don't yet have the answers to.
It’s the best day of the week! Love the Ferris wheel analogy for how to continuously alternate what you’re “building” in the world. Great job as always!
Charming! 🥹 We'll continue to make sure we can make Mondays a bit better for you and me! - Daði
Years ago, I ran a multiverse campaign in a setting where anyone from anywhere (and when) could get stuck. There were lots of time-travel shenanigans due to the fluctuations of time-space that sent the pcs back and forth through generations of time, ending up sometimes on the other side of the continent. You'd think I had everything pre-made and pre-planned with the story and setting. Nope. Literally winging it then entire way. My players loved that setting, and I still have a couple games of that still going to this day. This method works far better than you'd think, and the only reason I'm not doing that with my upcoming Fallout 2d20 game is because I'm doing my best to build out the lore, themes, and behind-the-scenes story in a similar vein as Fallout New Vegas.
This has got to be one of the most helpful worldbuilding videos out there. It was like a personal mind blown moment and resonated on a deep level. The Ferris wheel is a perfect analogy for worldbuilding and conceptualizing it like that does wonders for understanding the process. This is exactly how it always goes for me personally and I've never stopped to think of the cyclical nature of it.
It's so true that a new homebrew setting is always just a thought exercise that can be endlessly detailed. You'll zoom in and out forever, adding on and taking away. Thinking of how it exists at a bird's eye view and through the eyes of the average joe, as well as all the different kinds of adventure that can be had. As the process goes on your going to think of something new and exciting. That new idea is going to both make you rethink your existing ideas and define how you proceed. On and on the process goes until you get to something you're happy with and can work with. You almost have to establish borders or hard anchors of some kind or else you can really think yourself mad because the possibilities are endless. And the sad fact of reality is you won't be able to make the "perfect" world or one that is "ready" by reevaluating it and adding on. It just isn't possible because those definitions don't apply to this concept and process. It's relative, subjective and infinite. I feel like a mad man writing this out.
To be honest, I don't even know how to effectively express it into words how this resonates with my past 6 years of worldbuilding. Banger of video (yet again) and thank you very much, I love what you guys are doing!
Great advice! My biggest mistake was trying to build everything before hand. The problem was - I set up the first session with this exact premise: A town, a road and a forest.
But session 1 one of my players is playing a paladin and asks me what gods exist. I panic - I haven't memorised the DnD guide and don't even have access to it at this point so just make some up on the spot, loosely based on greek Gods. Then he asks what temples they have and where they are - I say not in this town. He says: what town? And now I'm making up the nearby city on the spot. He asks who the ruler is. I make it up. He wants to head there next. So we do session 1 with me flying by the seat of my pants and now I have until the next session to plan all this out. But now I feel like I need to make up the whole world and exactly how it works; the government, the religions, the neighbouring towns and who live there, the economy, largest exports, how magic works and where it came from...
We didn't play again for 2 years.
My personal experience with "how much worldbuilding you need to start" is slightly different, so I'll leave it here in the hopes it helps ^^
Any detail that you cannot organically SHOW (not explain, not cite, not drop, but SHOW, as in "This statue over here that you are looking at in this room of the dungeon you are inside of") during the session, plus one level of abstraction (that statue is depicting someone in a specific style; that person is removed from you because you are interacting with a statue of them, not them in the flesh, but their presence is still felt because, well, *points to statue*) you don't need to write down and force yourself to remember later when you are deep in the trenches of running the session, flipping through books, panicking because your players didn't make the choice you were expecting them to, trying not to mispronounce a word and realising that the name of the NPC you are about to drop will be twisted into a sex joke right as you are saying it.
And, as Dadhi said, always, ALWAYS, allow yourself the space to improvise at the table. The initial stuff will be atrocious, that's ok, you're training the muscles ^^ it'll get less and less atrocious the more you train those improv muscles.
Love it! Great advice, i love the “small start”, no need to build an entire world before the first session. Great examples as well!
Brother, your posting is always delightful. I’m thrilled to watch your content.
More GMs need to see this video so I'm sharing it like crazy. Thank you 🫶🏾
shared this video aswell :D
I like the ferris wheel. I think of a camera zooming in and out.
Wide panoramic, to extreme close up.
I actually needed to hear this. I'm not only building a world, but I'm building my own system for the world. It always feels like there is so much to do. Maybe I just need to take a step back and see if I've done enough.
You're so right. This is exactly how you do it!
I remember the first world I ever made, I spent so long creating details for it that it took about 3 months from announcing to actually running a session 0 😅 Worldbuilding is like many skills where you improve with time. I can create better worlds in less time now because I saw my failures before, failures that only become clear when running the game, so if you're new, just play!
You have like 20,000 subscribers, so I am late to the party... but this is such a well-explained and well-written and well-spoken and well-thought out video. You've got a great way of talking about world building, and I'm shocked I've never come across you before on UA-cam. I voraciously consume TTRPG content, especially world building stuff, and this has just jumped up to the same tier of standard as people like Bob World Builder, Matt Colville, Sly Flourish, et al. New sub!
Great vid! This reminds me of the opening chapter of Justin Alexander’s ‘So you want to be a Gamemaster’. Excellent tips to getting in to playing FAST with a manageable, limited scope.
I just recently subscribed to your channel after binging a few of your videos. I've been an on-and-off DM for the past few years (more off than on...) and have been writing a new homebrew world and campaign. This video couldn't have better timing for that. These videos are stellar by the way: your advice and experience, the production quality, the humor; it's all wonderful. I'm excited to see what more you come up with!
Great video! I needed to hear this. I’m for sure an over-preparer. I get sucked into a million unneeded details & it ultimately ends up making things less fun for everyone (myself & the players). In truth, my players don’t care about my overly-detailed world or backstories, or whatever; they just wanna roll some dice and have fun.
Agreed! Stop building and start playing! Do it today! It's going to be okay!
YEEESSS
I'm only two minutes in and I've already laughed out loud three times! Love your videos!
Making me a better GM one video at a time, thank you!
Brilliant Video! Instant subscribe.
This is very similar to how i write novels. Solid advice. It combines structure with “breaking the page” by just playing. Players add the unexpected which fleshes the world out more.
French Guiana is indeed part of France
This video is reassuring, my previous campaigns I felt like I had to have the world mostly prepared or at least somewhat drawn up before I began (I am a new DM), but it was always hard to get the players actually interested in the world and the history. With this most recent campaign, which started only a week ago, my players have been so interested in the world and the ongoing events because I decided to try creating the world as we go which has allowed me to actually mold the world around their adventures and make it feel more personalized for them! It made me feel proud when I was giving a small info dump via roleplay and all of the players were jotting down notes and asking questions and commenting in character!
Just about to run my first campaign in about 10 years. Fantastic advice! Thank you!
You've got this! 💪
Don't normally comment on videos but I just want to say you have some really interesting and fun to watch videos. GMing my second long campaign soon, this time in Daggerheart. Fell into a lot of world building and story traps in my first campaign and your videos are great food for thought. Keep it up.
Thank you for the awesome advice, as always! I'm currently running pre-made modules (first was Tyranny of Dragons, currently Light of Xaryxis) with some overlap between groups. Even though we are technically in the same "official" forgotten realms, the characters from the original group have changed Toril and the current group are changing multiple planets. The forgotten realms are becoming our own. I was getting bogged down in trying to make a cohesive custom world, but I feel that my players are leading me to the right creation. They are actually becoming the world, if that makes sense.
Congrats on all the success, and I look forward to seeing your next video!! I know it will be FANTASTIC!
this is video just appeared on the perfect time since i wanted to start a campaign but i felt like i needed to prepare and read everything and that was overwhelming to say the least... so great advice, thanks!!!
I totally resonate in your “wheel” analogy. After hearing you say it it totally makes sense. I am a first time dm building my world, and I kinda optimized to this sort of approach unknowingly.
I would feel blocked or uninspired in one category of world building, but by moving to focus on a different aspect and coming back later on really drives things forward.
I guess maybe it’s because of all the uncertainty in the campaign/ world creation, and once you create in on category you have locked in some certainty which informs how another part gets defined. And through cycling through the wheel over and over again you continue to reduce uncertainty.
Anyways rant aside, great video! As a first time dm I am really benefiting from your content!
As someone who is about to dm his first campaign in the foreseeable future, and has been writing in his free time. You have been a massive help! Thank you both!
I've heard this advice before, but never told this well and entertaining! Nice!
I fell into this trap but I threw away my attachment to my perfectionist self and actually ran my first session this past Saturday! It went great and now I feel so relieved and finally understand the “just do it and then you’ll get it” mindset
0:24 how dare you?
I like to generate my world as my players play from scratch and a vauge idea of locations and iconic characters I've built. My friends love it and I love to let them be/do anything and breaking the standard rules. You've great content my guy keep it up! :D
My best friend and Dungeon Master has been running games in his home brew world for a little over 2 years at this point. Taking inspiration from myself and other players for anything from cities to gods.
I recommend to him before we started playing in this world to run a series of one shots to build up crucial world events from history, and it was a blast to play different characters and get to live in this events for some time. One of which spun off into its own year long side campaign with myself and two other players. And now, I am preparing for my own campaign set in his world with his as a player.
I know some people may have some reservations on truly “sharing” the work they put into their setting. But I can say confidently as a player, getting to experience and take a part in pieces of the world building is amazing for getting people attached. And I am beyond excited to add even more through my own story told in his worlds past!
I did exactly this for my game, I can say from experience "It Works!"
Fantastic video with great advice for newer DMs! I recently started my channel to lay out how I do collaborative worldbuilding with my players using The Quiet Year game to help out other GMs in their games. It takes a TON of weight off my shoulders and gives my players agency in their world, where they're from, cool things on the map, etc. Keep up the great work!
Another frackin' banger of a vid from the master of Mystic Arts!
I’d love to see a video on in session note taking and session prep! Love your videos!!
Working on one right now!
As a fellow filmmaker, I absolutely love seeing other channels like yours and the ADHDM combine the joy of filmmaking and TTRPGs. Seriously, keep up the great work. I look forward to every one of these videos!
Hail yeah! I request more of this amazing omnipresent voice. Good videos, and great advice thus far.
Mystic Arts, can you look at reducing the pop on your “T”s and “S”s? Idk if that’s a mic screen, or filtering, or mic distance. Love your content, having some misophonia responses to hard consonants.
Love this. Have a Danger Room session this Saturday, putting all the campaign layout on hold and starting with some pre-gens and a Skirmish.
Your face was really expressive this episode. Got a nice smile, man. Awesome video! Was a good watch.
I've actually used the village and forest setup to start campaigns in the past and it works very well. One benefit of starting that way that I don't think you mentioned is that it avoids being trapped by your details. I try very hard not to define anything until it matters. There may be a city at the end of the road, but until it's important to the game, there's no need to work out the details. That may actually be harmful, as you can run into a case where you desperately need two different thieves guilds at odds with each other, but have decided that the city only has one--or even none. Keeping your options open helps immensely.
My eyes bugged out of my head when you said your list of 3 things. That's precisely what I did for a group I started recently. Three new players and my brother. He helps them with simple stuff like a 10% co-DM. We've had a tonne of fun.
Good advice!
And by the fourth session you drop a reference to the Screaming Mass
All
Hail
The
Screaming
Mass
Love that! This is exactly what I did, when I DMed my first OS after getting stuck in mentally worldbuilding settings never to be played. I made a town, a forest and a road and build an adventure from there on, worldbuilding and playing sessions side by side and step by step. This is an amazing advise. Just start playing!
Right! If it worked for Matt Mercer, it'll work for us too!
This is pretty much how I started world building - one town. Mine is at a crossroads and yes, there is a forest. One and a half years later, I’ve fleshed out parts of two neighboring kingdoms (the original town is near the border), but haven’t done much more than name other countries and continents. If we ever get to those places, I’ll deal with them then.
I just started running a game and made my own setting. After listening to the advice of many like yourself online I decided to heed the advice and start an adventure on a blank hex map. It had a town, I knew only it's name and the name of one tavern. It had a major city, that I still know nothing of other than it's name, and that's it. Ive only run a couple of sessions but they have already inspired hexes to be filled and characters within the world. I look forward to continuing to build the world with the players at the table. The world is ours that we are collectively making at the table not mine alone and I love that. If you want the world to be yours alone, write a book, ttrpg allows for a different sort of creativity.
I misread the title cause I looked at a glance and thought it was "Why You Stop Building Worlds", but this was just as helpful!
This is something I've learned from other systems like Blades in the Dark and Mothership. They do a much better job at explaining how to fit some places, ideas, and NPCs together to get started, and then how to snowball and build that further and further. My new goal as a DM/GM is to put the characters in front of interesting scenarios to let them explore that space, and not necessarily have a full campaign story built out that I feel like I need to tell.
You two are acheiving the impossibile: making me eagerly wait for Monday ❤
Good stuff - I'm not a new DM, but I enjoyed this whole thing all the way through - thx
There is a lovely phrase when it comes to writers. You're either a gardener or an architect,
You pre- make every blueprint and then run the game, or you get some basics in , the seeds, and run with whatever happens mid game.
I tend to start as an architect and once I feel 50% done with the blueprint I transition into a gardener. It's been working wonders
I love your voice. It's like liquid gold.
think its important to note that it depends on the people. my players absolutely love when we have a little side bar and i explain to them a detail from the world on a purely technical perspective.
Worldbuilding is like a gnome airship: you resolve one problem at the expense of creating two. And that's the beauty of it.
Great video, on a topic that most people need to hear a practical side of. The last few minutes of down to earth objectives were my favorite part.
I'm still in the market for more advice on encounter objectives that are more interesting than "kill them all", if you get around to that. Thanks!
It's something we're working on! Not sure exactly when we get around to it... 🤔
Great points once again! One editing tip, if I may. Your mic probably has a low cut filter or if not, you should be able to cut the low end (like below 200 Hz) in the video editor. You have such a deep voice that with a proper Hi-Fi setup your voice is booming :D Another trick is to move the microphone further away from you and that way it will pick up less bass.
yes! this is the way. I was working full time when I decided to start a campaign. I had two weeks before session one. That campaign lasted about 18 months and I pulled it off without a hitch. making it up as you go along allows you to be nimble and cater to the players desires as well as respond to their actions. Also, it keeps you from getting bored with your content. at any moment, you are creating what is exciting to you, not reading notes about some quest you thought was cool six weeks ago.
no road, just river & ferryman is such a cool idea I've never thought of before! Instantly stealing that for my own game!
I’m gonna be running a homebrew magical mafia campaign. I really needed to hear this. Thank you.
The section 'How to worldbuild for your first session' REALLY started to get my creative juices flowing, cheers! 4 NPCs is so much more manageable; and 'town, wilderness, road' is also a great thing to have in mind :D
Video request - thought of it when you said for other npcs to just 'make them up as you go along', could you maybe give some improvisational tips? :)
I got into this. I decided that knowing the cities and ports of one country, is a great start
Hey! just want to remind you to rest and take care of your health as well, dont burn yourself! Amazing content!
I like to run my games as a collaborative experience with the players. While I have fine tuned details relevant to the adventure/quests I lay out for them, I do not detail the entire world. I don't even define all the towns and cities unless it is relevant. Only things of major interest that are of common knowledge of relevant to the campaign. I may come up with "catch all" content that can be dropped in where I need to fill. But the goal is to allow the characters explore and help flesh out the world as we go. Some of the more interesting locations, lore, and interactions were things I never planned on, but made sense given how the story was unfolding and what my players decided to do.
Great tips, as always! Fingers crossed for some tips on how to keep track of things as they pop in to reality ;)
Let me save you all some time:
Clickbait title but only because UA-cam demands it. He’s just saying to start out with a world concept then do the actual “world building” on the tabletop as you go. This is genuinely great advice.
I built a world, and started using it once the bits I needed were ready. I'm currently partway through my 3rd campaign in the world now, and each campaign has fleshed out different places.
I think that’s the best part in ttrpg : the world is building along with the adventure!
I was guilty of overpreping the setting and it was such a hassle…😅
You can actually make everyone at the table invested in the world simply by asking them to come up with details in the current scene.
And it can be super fun !
I’m a new DM who did make my own world. The one thing that worked for me in really pairing things down is to just keep any notes about something the players haven’t encountered yet down to 2-3 sentences. Keep it short and focus on the vibes more than anything else. “Society is run by a council of warmages (homebrew class), each focusing a different subclass that represents their virtues. These warmages belong to houses that represent their virtues, and they run into conflicts where their virtues don’t overlap.” That’s all I’ve got for that section, and then I’d go and add sections for each house as I go, but again keeping it short. I have enough that I can improvise something when the players do come across it, and then whatever I improvise becomes the new canon if it conflicts with what I’ve written. I don’t have that much experience, but my players are loving it so far.
For the campaign I started running recently, I used Azgaar's map generator to create a world map, which despite being incredibly detailed, is functionally blank. I'm filling in all the details as I go
"As little as you can get away with." Exactly.
Beautifully said, thank you!
Thank you for the wonderful and inspiring video!
WOW 10 Years, absolutely incredible! A professional, doesn't get cooler than that 😎
Love the content! You're right: sketch out a town, build a few NPCs then let the party help with the rest. And if you're REALLY struggling with "Oh, but I need to know THIS and THAT and WHAT ABOUT..." then spin up DF, save it to Legends and boom - you've got your atlas & history!
I'll add murlocs to my world now. You inspired me. You inspire me with every new video. Thanks to you and your girlfriend for making the world of dungeons a little brighter with each bit of content you put out.
You can’t stop me! I’m nearly done with the calendar system and the inter-continental trading routes, and then just finish the the relations between the pc’s and their backgrounds, and then…
Even if you manage to set it all in stone, by some strange miracle, your world will not survive an encounter with your players. Details will change. You will forget something, or think of something better. It will never end, and it shouldn't.
Fantastic video, as always.
"We both took a big step" I though that was the engagement annoncement xD Love the videos thks
🙏🏼
This is so true. The work is never done. I'm also getting close to my 10th anniversary of DMing in the same homebrew world, and I think the To-Do list for building the setting is longer now than when I started.
100%. Build as you go. I also ask my players questions about the place they're going to. Not all the time, but places in town, maybe an NPC, and occasionally I'll ask them to tell me something that is true about the world. I reserve editing/veto power, but I try to include as many of my players' details as I can. Involving them in the initial shaping of the world, and places within that world, instantly gets them invested because now they all have a mental image of the place they helped create.
This is why I started a 20 year project where I let myself do as much worldbuilding as possible and then run games in other worlds in the meantime.
Alternate title: Why You Should Stop Playing D&D And Just Focus On Building Worlds Because It's More Fun
Somebody once said "World Building is what the GM does for their own fun," and there's a lot of truth to that.
Cool video!
Aspiring first time DM here. I have a strict plan in developing what I believe is the bare minimum for me to present to my players because I don't want to get stuck in this loop of worldbuilding
A while ago I was going to do exactly what you're suggesting. Unfortunately for me, I received a dream sometime later that was very much a whole world for me. The dream was so vivid, I just had to take it and work my ass off developing it
Several months later and now I'm oh so close to starting my first game. I'm so excited to start
Just start! You'll have more dreams, I still dream up new scenarios and moments, and then I slowly build towards them by playing! - Daði
@Mystic-Arts-DM I really should. I'm designing a multishot for me to get a taste of what DMing is like without committing to an entire campaign
I'm writing up a primer, as concise as possible, to help my players create characters for it, for I wish to integrate my players' characters into the lore
For that I believe part of my responsibility is to throw them a bone regarding just the general theme/vibe of the setting