A setting tailored to your campaign

La version francophone de cet article est disponible ici. / The french version of this article is available here.

Sometimes misunderstandings and disappointed expectations can arise because the GM and players do not have the same vision of a fictional setting.

This is especially true when the setting has been designed by the GM.

A solution to avoid misunderstandings: why not create the setting with the players?

Not everyone wants to spend hours placing continents and cities on a map, so in order to have a productive collaborative design session, we might as well agree on the general characteristics of the game world.

One approach that I personally find clever is that of Ironsworn (by Shawn Tomkin). Ironsworn is an RPG where players travel through the Iron Lands, take oaths about quests and try to complete them. But what are the Iron Lands? How inhospitable are they to the people living there? Are there monsters? Is there magic?

The book offers three potential answers to each of these questions (as well for other themes: beliefs, reasons why people settled there, the presence of people older than humans, or supernatural horrors...). Of course, there is nothing to prevent you from creating your own answer, but having a list of options allows you to avoid a lack of inspiration.

With a few tracks that are more or less compatible with each other, one can obtain many possibles universes.

"Hear ye, hear ye! It's time for self-promotion!"

(source: Description Conceptual character art of the Town Crier for Doctor Who : The Adventure Games (Gunpowder Plot). Doctor Who ©2012 BBC) 

I borrowed this approach to create the game world of Compagnies Franches, an RPG where we play the leaders of a band of mercenaries, trying to make their company survive from conflict to conflict.

The game rules themselves are very generic: they could be used for games set in historical settings, post-apocalyptic, sci-fi etc.

However, I have suggested the following 5 ways to build your own game worlds:

"Ask yourselves together: what  do your characters know  about...
... the Belligerents?
... Goblins?
... Sorcery?
... Technology?
... Nature?"

This makes, using these 5 aspects, 243 (3^5) possibilities of game worlds.

Some examples of universes that we could obtain, just with 2 aspects, for example Nature and Technology.

Here are some quotes used in the examples that follow:

Nature
A► Whether for heating or erecting palisades, barracks or siege engines, the demand for wood is continuous. Paved roads scar the once impenetrable forests. The edges are pushed back with axes. The moors are cleared and replaced by fields. In addition, scorched earth tactics are regularly employed to impede the advance of assailants.
B► [...]
C► Nature offers beautiful but unsettling visions to the brave who stray from the roads. Gigantic trees, canopies of brambles with thorns the size of daggers, treacherous peat bogs dotted with islets, cataracts bathing the surrounding banks in mist, antediluvian megaliths standing on verdant hills...  We and our sterile quarrels are insignificant compared to wilderness wonders.


Technology
A► [...]
B► The war is taking a new turn as gunpowder weapons are beginning to spread. Although heavy, requiring regular maintenance and slow to reload, the destructive power of arquebuses and bombards has already turned the tide of more than one battle. For a mercenary with limited finances, a working gun is a valuable prize.
C► Engineers are remarkably inventive and their patrons exceptionally generous when it comes to finding new ways to decimate opponents at low cost. The most extravagant rumors circulate about the deadly prototypes tested on the battlefields: toxic vapors, repeating cannons, soldier-automatons, military flying machines… These infernal devices are feared as much by their targets as by those who test them.

Example 1: "Nature A + Technology C"

Here the advancement of technology has obviously come at the expense of nature. The scorched earth tactic is perhaps carried out with the help of incendiary devices, the wood could be burned in order to feed the foundries. One can think of the industrial revolution pushed to excess, or of the regions ravaged by the intensity of the fighting of the First World War.

Example 2: "Nature C + Technology C"

This time we have advanced technology, but a still wild and untamed nature. We can imagine a steampunk universe but with a majority of wild regions. A steampunk variant of Simbaroum or The Edge Chronicles is possible.

Example 3: "Nature C + Technology B"

The use of black powder is becoming commonplace on the battlefield, but nature remains largely untamed. This setting could correspond to some areas of Warhammer Fantasy where the Empire (inspired by the Holy Roman Empire during the Renaissance) still includes mysterious lands: elven forests, chaotic regions, haunted marshes etc.