GM/DM TIPS: 41) Campaign Creation Walk Through Part 1 Big Picture
A good friend of mine tried her hand at DMing a one off and left an amazing impression on her players. Now they want a campaign, and she wants to know where I start when creating one. Here are the steps I walk through when creating a high fantasy game.
My most useful resource as a Dungeon Master is the campaign setting I have already created. Before I even have players I think it is important to have the world existing in some form, they will need it to engage with when they make their characters.
When I do my world building, I need to understand where each piece I make fits. For that reason instead of starting with the town and zooming out, I start with the really big picture and zoom in - that way I truly understand how that town fits into the world rather than making the world fit around the town. I think this is the approach the Dungeon Master’s Guide also encourages, as it flows from the big picture, to pantheons, to kingdoms and so on.
The nature of the Campaign Setting’s Pantheon (or lack of) is the first thing I create. How many deities are there? Are they all equal status or are some much more powerful than the others? Do evil deities exist or do devils and demons fill that role? Do the deities have different species as part of their domains or are they all beings of forces rather than peoples? What is the culture of the deities and their interactions? How are they prevented from interfering in mortal affairs, or why don’t they (so the PCs can are the characters with influence- not deities)? How has the pantheon impacted the world?
To answers the most important of these questions I will give a run down of two settings I have created. Paethea is my own setting, and Ord is one I will come to share with four other DMs and 20 players.
Paethea: A Pantheon of Deities who were originally immature in their adolescence, and created all the creatures to come into conflict with one another and fight each other without divine interference. The impact they had on the world was to start it with “The Age of Chaotic Creation” or “The Creation Wars”. An era of battle as all kinds of creature were created to do battle with the others. This is the most significant part of the setting’s history, and I am sure you can see how it can come to frame the world - even though the deities have mellowed out somewhat since then.
Ord: Deities don’t live forever, they die or get too exhausted to keep performing in their role and need replacing. Mortal creatures get raised up and ascend into the divine positions if they proved worthy of the domain. This creates huge amounts of competition as creatures raise armies for the mantle of War, or prove them self the best nature advocate for the divine position over the forest. What happens if an evil creature becomes the deity of civilization, or of the sky, or the sea?
Once you understand your Pantheon, you will then have a much easier time creating the physical world, it will probably even be obvious to you.
