My past few attempts at building a campaign setting have all sort of died right out of the chute. I realized that I end up getting hung up with large scale details and world wide histories. Essentially I'm too fucked up thinking about the forest to see the trees. I typically try to do a mix of small and large scale from the start, a brief world history some large assumptions about things and then flesh out a continent in brief and a kingdom in detail.

I just bought a copy of DCC though and it really got the creative juices flowing for me, so I've got the itch to build another setting. This time though I want to start small, like really small. However I have never really done that before.

How many of you start at the village level and work up from there?

I want to start at that level but I keep worrying about keeping the whole thing consistent if I don't have a larger picture of the world. Any particular pitfalls of this approach? Advice on building from the ground up?

we've done this before. I normally tagteam with Rob C when people ask this.  Since we have similar ideas with totally different ways of expressing them.

So, first, read this.
Then this.

I put it this way since you can't stat from the very bottom without your campaign and world framework...but once you have the really big stuff, you can go to the really molecular level and build up.

I have a series on starting from scratch -- from indeed the village level up -- on my blog, entitled (quaintly enough) "Starting From Scratch."  It's a six-parter.

Thanks for the input guys, I'll check out those links.

A few years ago, I was having a terrible problem getting a new campaign started.  I'd come up with all sorts of plans and do lots of work to get things ready, and then it would all just fizzle when it hit the table.  I went through this about 5 or more times, and both me and my gaming partner were getting sick of it.

Eventually, I just got tired of trying.  I just told him to keep his character from the last failed attempt.  I made up a single "hero" mecha type, and a single "bad guy" mecha type.  Then I just told him that his character was on a sky carrier with other people he knew.  He was the mecha pilot and defender of the ship.  Then I had some of my bad guy mecha attack.

And for some reason that stuck.  Years later, we're still playing the continuation of that.  That's what I spent last night running, as a matter of fact.

I've noticed that the longest running campaigns are always the ones started with tiny amounts of or no prep work whatsoever.  As a GM, I think the reason this works for me is because it keeps me working on the game world and interested in it rather than having it all in my head from the outset and getting bored with it.

Quote from: Arkansan;828186My past few attempts at building a campaign setting have all sort of died right out of the chute. I realized that I end up getting hung up with large scale details and world wide histories. Essentially I'm too fucked up thinking about the forest to see the trees. I typically try to do a mix of small and large scale from the start, a brief world history some large assumptions about things and then flesh out a continent in brief and a kingdom in detail.

I just bought a copy of DCC though and it really got the creative juices flowing for me, so I've got the itch to build another setting. This time though I want to start small, like really small. However I have never really done that before.

How many of you start at the village level and work up from there?

I want to start at that level but I keep worrying about keeping the whole thing consistent if I don't have a larger picture of the world. Any particular pitfalls of this approach? Advice on building from the ground up?

First: DCC is awesome for inspiring you to create a world, isn't it?

Second: I generally start with two levels.  First, the REALLY BIG world-picture.  Then, a very small detailed starting area.
It's the middle-part I leave fuzzy.

Quote from: RPGPundit;828777First: DCC is awesome for inspiring you to create a world, isn't it?

Second: I generally start with two levels.  First, the REALLY BIG world-picture.  Then, a very small detailed starting area.
It's the middle-part I leave fuzzy.

pretty similar here.

Pretty much.  Broad strokes (very broad) for the world, and a lot of detail on the local area.  Because, you know, that's the part that the players will be dealing with.

A lot of really old school settings started as just a city and a megadungeon, so there's a lot of precedence for that.

I'm skipping voice of personal experience and going directly to your approach. This problem will recur regardless of scale until addressed, IME. Let's shift your perspective so that you can recognize it.

I think you are struggling with getting lost in fine details over placing basic sketch lines. You see this in all sorts of arts, most visibly in drawing. At some point the outline must exist else the lack of frame will have the detail slipping around out of proportion.

Long story short, sketch the basics of what inspired you. Deliberately skip the details. Reduce to core and only retain that which is a clear summation of what inspired you. Upon that wire frame then fill in the empty space in manageable blocks.

Let's practice. Pitch me your village, what it is, its mood, and why players should care. At first do this in three sentences or less. We'll then reduce down to one snappy sentence. Sell me your village, Go!

Quote from: Arkansan;828186How many of you start at the village level and work up from there?

I want to start at that level but I keep worrying about keeping the whole thing consistent if I don't have a larger picture of the world. Any particular pitfalls of this approach? Advice on building from the ground up?

I find I can't start small and work up.

I can start big and work toward small.

Why?

1) I feel like the PC's need to have some basic idea about who they are and where they're from. I think you'd want the PC's to know things like where they came from, even if those stories were mostly at the level of myth

2) Large scale economic and political situation will inform the local situation. Granted this is more important the further you get away from a mideval world

3) I find things are more interesting if there's context

Now, all that said, you don't need a huge amount of detail about things that happened long ago or far away.

In the last fantasy-world game I ran, "the known world" was fairly small -- a mesa about the size of Texas in the "Great Pacific Desert" (an ocean-sized desert), with five cities interconnected with railroads.

Everything beyond that was largely legendary (if you go out far enough into the desert... you don't come back) and inacessible.

But I needed

1) The creation myth
2) The major players and political political antagonists -- basically internal and external threats
3) Living history -- what the PC's would know, having grown up the world
4) Enough about the cities to give them the kind of character that you'd know about a distant city (one city known for its university; one known for some great heresy in the past, etc.)

I made a representational "map of the world." The characters were not highly educated and had not traveled -- the background represented 'common knowledge.'

I had a bit more for myself, but at that scale? Not much. To the extent that I'd need it, I figured I could develop it based on the framework I already had.

Note: REALLY IMPORTANT -- if any significant part of the culture is based on some HUGE LIE, it's probably important to think through the implications of that... you'll want lots of common-place indicators of whatever the culture is trying to convince itself of... and a few subtle clues that things are not as they are said to be.

Cheers,
-E.

I find the bottom up approach to be imminently more gameable.  Top down creates a world that makes much more cerebral sense, but closes off many gaming avenues.

I'm of the opinion that writing up "worldwide histories" is a waste of time and effort. Most people are utterly unaware of most history from more than a few generations ago anyway as it has almost no bearing on their current situations. Better to work up details of recent times in the area your game begins, and expand from there as need or as inspired by the course of game play.

Quote from: Matt;829348I'm of the opinion that writing up "worldwide histories" is a waste of time and effort. Most people are utterly unaware of most history from more than a few generations ago anyway as it has almost no bearing on their current situations. Better to work up details of recent times in the area your game begins, and expand from there as need or as inspired by the course of game play.

Completely agree.  I have run the Temple of Elemental Evil multiple times.  Never once have the players had any interest in the Battle of Emridy Meadows anecdotes I sprinkle around.

Quote from: Old One Eye;829349Completely agree.  I have run the Temple of Elemental Evil multiple times.  Never once have the players had any interest in the Battle of Emridy Meadows anecdotes I sprinkle around.

I usually just sprinkle a few "rumors" and see what the players are interested in and continue from there to decide what is true or false history or knowledge. Also sometimes the players connect things together for me with their ideas and make what were utterly unrelated events into a better plot.

Quote from: RPGPundit;828777First: DCC is awesome for inspiring you to create a world, isn't it?

Second: I generally start with two levels.  First, the REALLY BIG world-picture.  Then, a very small detailed starting area.
It's the middle-part I leave fuzzy.

Yeah the art alone in DCC really get's me going. I also find that if you use all the assumptions in the book a good deal of the broad cosmological details are clearly spelled out for you, but are there in a manner that is pretty malleable.

I think on further reflection the way you mention might be necessary, some degree of the wide outline has to be sketched out before you can zoom in to a much smaller area.

I think part of my problem is less a problem of approach and more of focus and time management.  I have a tendency to let my mind wander then get wrapped around the axle on some detail until I'm burned out.