How to Create the Universe
In 2018, I was in a Google Hangouts group chat with some friends, and some of their friends. Someone I didn’t know then posed a simple question: “If I were to make a Dark Souls campaign, who’d like to join?” I had always wanted to learn D&D, but I was scared of embarrassing myself or being bad at it, so this was an opportunity for me to finally learn something. Back then, I didn’t know just how big of a decision I was about to make, I just knew that I had sent back a simple “yes”.
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Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition is often called the easiest edition for beginners to use and learn from. It’s less punishing in combat, the spellcasting classes are easier to understand, and character creation is less confusing. That said, D&D still has quite the learning curve when it comes to learning how to play the game, much less understand it.
Almost 4 years ago, I sat in my Dad’s classroom with a friend as we made my first ever D&D character. His name was Pen, and he was a Half-Elf Shadow Sorcerer with a Wild Magic Table. He had high Charisma and low Constitution, and was primarily an effect caster with one or two high damage output cantrips.
Confused yet? In case you aren’t (and regardless if you are), let me tell you some of the new things I was taught in this one three hour character creation session. I learned that you roll 4d6 drop the lowest for stats, Sorcery Points can either make spell slots (which are used every time you use a spell, and higher slots can be used for lower slotted spells), or can be made using spell slots, or can effect a spell (but you only have a limited number of Sorcery Points and the types of effects you get), the many different actions, the way a turn works, what a round is vs. what a turn is, etc.
And yet, through all of that, I ended up making a character who made a lasting impact in that D&D campaign. He was unerringly kind and self-sacrificial, he saw his parents die and could therefore see ghosts, and he saw the good in others no matter what they did or said. Did he see some of his fellow adventurers as idiots? Yes, definitely, some of them failed incredibly easy Dexterity saving throws (another thing I had to learn), and got hit by boulders. But because he was a character I was so invested in, it made learning the game that much easier.
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The thing about D&D that makes it so appealing is the roleplaying aspect; an aspect that is difficult to fully grasp. There are a few things that are important to either understand and know about roleplaying in D&D, or are important to learn to do. Improv, understanding the expectations of different groups, and how to stay in character. Of everything, those three are paramount to making a good D&D rp experience.
Many expect that improv is the hardest part of the three, but in my experience it has been the easiest. The important part of improv in D&D is staying in character and knowing the general “vibe” and expectations of your group. Once you get into the flow, it’s simply a part of it. It’s the other two aspects that are more difficult.
Understanding the expectations is usually never explained, and it’s something that many groups expect players to click into. You look at the general campaign, you look at the setting, you look at the character you created for the campaign and setting, and many experienced players and Dungeon Masters will run/play the game believing that off of that, you know how to act.
This can be very hard sometimes. In my first campaign, we were playing in a campaign based off of Dark Souls, so the expectations were set and easy. Dark setting, dark campaign, serious tone. However, in a campaign I’ve played in recently, there are aspects of serious plot points, but we’ve also had characters eat space and eat stars as a joke, so the expected tone is much more confusing and hard to grasp. Understanding how to adapt to that flow and that possibly shifting tone is a skill that’s good to learn.
Out of all the aspects of role playing though, both the one’s I’ve stated and the ones I haven’t, getting into character has to be the most fun of them. Getting into the character of a kind and giving sorcerer, or a harsh and rude mechanic, or even a psychotic mass-murderer who also is a highly respected lawyer, all of that is incredibly fun. Getting to not just mold the mind of a character, but being able to play them off of other characters and players who also have the opportunity to do the same exact thing is a highly rewarding experience. And it’s an experience that can be hard to get into.
Committing to a character can be embarrassing, or strange, or out of place for many people. To truly get into character means to play their strengths and their flaws. I’ve played characters who can’t speak and instead use sign language, or characters where they don’t understand Common language and need to speak broken sentences. That can be hard to do, but once you figure out how to leave behind potential embarrassment anxiety, it can lead to rewarding interactions and conversations within the game.
The thing about improv, though, is that once you gain the knowledge of that specific mindset, you start to use it outside of D&D. When I worked retail, it wasn’t ever a “customer service voice”, it was me stepping into a character that worked retail. My language, both spoken and physical, changed. My tonality, the way I thought, it all shifted in the same way that I do when getting into character for a campaign.
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There is an entire other aspect of D&D I haven’t talked about, though. Building a campaign. Of every part of D&D I have used and interacted with, making a campaign is the most addicting.
I always think about making campaigns. Songs, movies, social media posts, games, all of them give me ideas for campaigns. In fact, my first campaign was a collection of multiple pieces of media that I enjoyed, because I knew that making a campaign was difficult. I had to make area maps, enemy stat blocks, NPCs, a storyline, making backup plans in case characters went off the basic storyline without railroading them into doing what I wanted, and more. It’s becoming the god of your own world. It’s creating your own small universe.
I used 5 pieces of media that, at the time, were very important to me, and put them in order of combat heavy to story heavy. In order, it was the worlds of Undertale, Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, the Percy Jackson Universe, Be More Chill the Musical, and Dear Evan Hansen the Musical. The basic plot was that an omnipotent deity named Arrow deemed four adventurers a good test for their multiversal teleportation system, and selected five major universes for them to go through. In the end, I found that combat is something that I would do anything to avoid (even though, as someone who is constantly a DM, I have to use it a lot), and story is something I thrive in making.
Through that entire first campaign, a party member circumvented an entire boss fight by taming the undead boss using bread, and then critically succeeding a Wisdom (Religion) check (another thing I got well acquainted with) to turn the boss into a living creature, and a different party member realized they liked kissing men and got together with an NPC.
That first campaign was a lot of small teaching moments for me. I learned that it’s not a bad thing to take charge of a situation, nor is it bad to let things happen as they happen. It’s a hard balance to strike, especially as it happens outside of that D&D world, where control is less guaranteed. It also was the moment I learned that no matter how much you try and perfect your universe (or multiverse), it will inevitably shift out of your control, and that is a wonderful, beautiful thing.
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After that first campaign, I became addicted to creating campaigns. Small ideas made into situations that I could put other people into and watch them play around with, but I hadn’t figured out exactly how to build a world, how to build a universe. I was making ideas, situations, places, but I was afraid to go much deeper.
That was, until I found the game Hollow Knight.
Hollow Knight was, and still is, my favorite game of all time. The story, the characters, the gameplay, it all works so incredibly well for me and my brain. One day, I decided to try and turn the Hollow Knight enemies into D&D characters, and I poured over books like Monster Manual and Volo’s Guide to Monsters to learn how monster statistics were created and used, how abilities and proficiencies were set up, and how attacks were worded.
It was eye opening to see how attacks for enemies and attacks for players were worded differently. For example, if a player used the spell Fireball, it would be worded very differently than if a creature used an ability called Fireball. If a player uses Fireball, the visual aspect of the spell is described before the conditions of the spell and whatever roll is needed is listed. However, if an enemy uses Fireball, the visual aspect and conditions are worded simultaneously, followed by a required roll if any is needed.
In the end, I spent a year and a half creating 178 original enemy stat blocks that even today, I’m learning ways to make them better and more concise. Learning how to create new enemies (or homebrewing) was only one of multiple things I learned how to do. I also learned how to create and balance new spells and items, how to create NPC dynamics and personalities, and how to create enemy maps.
Overall, creating this campaign (called Hallownest Without Time), it really taught me how to research related information to better create and write original work or homebrew. The ability to look at already well regarded pieces or parts of a specific genre I’m creating within, and being able to use it to make something completely new is a skill that I’m forever grateful I have.
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It did take me almost 3 years to get out of the “forever DM” role and mentality, and it was a friend’s campaign simply called the Kerrabane Nebula that helped me take my DM creativity and apply it to a player mentality. I looked at the system that I had spent so long analyzing and reading up on from the other side of the screen, and I used that information to create a character.
My first character in three years is named Liminal Space, affectionately called Lim. Lim is many things. It’s a highly intelligent lawyer, she’s a changeling, he’s a serial killer who’s been alive for 200 years, and it’s highly attached to a homunculus named Emen S. Hubris (pronounced immense hubris, called Emen).
It’s a sorcerer barbarian, a mix that’s highly unusual because of how a barbarian is typically a class known for being hard to kill and hard to hit with high damage outputs, and how sorcerers have some of the lowest hit points and armor class. It’s a tank class (someone hard to hit and kill) and a squishy class (easy to hit and kill), but both barbarians and sorcerers are known for high amounts of damage per round. It’s playing with what it means to be in a class, and the stereotypes associated with them.
Playing Lim was fun, and I got to play around with the D&D system a lot, which has led me to my current belief of D&D character making. When you start D&D, you make characters by the book, like you do when starting most anything new and confusing. As you get further into it, and you understand more, you start to push boundaries and play with rules more and more. Just like you do when you understand a genre, class, or places.
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What does this culminate to? What is the purpose of me telling you these various stories, none of which seem to explain what I promised? How do these experiences create the universe? That’s hard to quantify and qualify. Or, it usually is. It would be that way if these experiences didn’t lead me to, quite literally, creating my own universe.
These pieces of information are cumulative. How to filter through the onslaught of complicated bouts of information to find the most important bits, to use the collection of that information to make an entire person, to play that person and react to other people and their actions, and on and on and on. Eventually that information becomes so standard and basic that you grow more and build more on top of it, and that evolves further into going from the one being gently led around to being the one leading.
And that can lead to creating something bigger than what you thought you could create. Four years ago, I believed that I was barely capable of creating the most simple of characters. Four years later, I’m here creating a mythos of the universe, and the evolution of mortals and the pantheons worshiped by them. I’m creating alphabets, systems of magic, the many beliefs of the self, and various social structures that are dependent on the many different countries and continents scattered throughout the world. There’s various planes of existence depending on how much the gods’ eyes are on you, and which gods have taken an interest.
That’s the thing about creating a universe. It takes time, it takes years and experience and taking the initiative to gather and use information and knowledge, but all of that time and energy has led me to being able to hold an entire world created by just me in my hands. It’s the ability to have that one simple, complicated thing that makes it worth it.
