Do THIS and players will fall in love with your D&D world
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- čas přidán 28. 06. 2024
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▼ INDEX ▼
0:00 Intro
0:57 Let them do it!
2:32 Design their hometown
4:17 Design NPCs
5:47 Create spontaneously
7:00 Session zero
8:39 Cinderella's D&D game
10:04 Make collaborative worldbuilding work
Hey, dungeon masters - do you feel like your D&D players aren't all that invested in your worldbuilding? Here's one simple trick to make your players fall in love with your Dungeons & Dragons world.
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Use code "GINNY" for your discount! Love, your fairy godmother 😘
Yes! U mentioned Dungeon World. Heal Yeah!
Why does the two headed goblin stable master also sell homemade glue Ginny? Hmmmm?🤔
That would be really helpful if it wasnt a 50% off weekend deal right now with another code on the site directly :/ i feel like that eats into your affiliate revenue
I don't make affiliate revenue! They use the code to track how well my ads are performing, and my code is permanent, so one-off deals like this weekend's aren't competing with mine - folks can still use my 40% off code once that weekend deal is done.
@@GinnyDi oh ok sorry then that's great to hear. I just thought that might be a bit of a ...well not so great move by them. I love your content and it'd be a shame if they did you like that
I had a player ask for coffee in an inn and my innkeeper had no clue what that was as coffee didn’t exist in my game. This led to that player creating Caulfe, a drink brewed from a bean that only grew in the Fey Wilds. That campaign then had a long running side story of that player searching for doorways to the Fey Wilds for a cup of coffee. :)
Sounds like that bean could become an important ingredient for potionmaking.
@@Tennouseijin Indeed the potion for staying both awake and alert.
@@Tennouseijin - 1 level of exhaustion
did they get their coffee??
@@pato5996 Sadly, the campaign never got there :(
My current DM is an extrovert and therefore is in tons of friend groups. He is able to DM three campaigns all that take place in this one homebrew world he created. The idea that while we're running our adventures we occasionally catch references to the other campaigns makes me love the world we are role playing in.
wtf that's such an awesome idea
@@JustASunflowerSeeD It is 👌 he even let me run a mini campaign about how my character (who is a former emperor) 's ancestors conquered the lands that make their empire 300 years before the main canpaigns. Expanding the history of the setting even further. He even got to play one of them.
@@TheCrazeace your dm sounds like an amazing person, as someone who's about to run their first campaign next week I'm jealous lol
@@JustASunflowerSeeD best of luck to you! As long as everyone is having fun, then you've got this 👌
DUDE THAT IS SO COOL WHAT
I love doing player flashbacks with sentences like "you stand and gaze at the burning city bellow you. Who is standing next to you?" To let the player make their own story in front of everyone. So much fun
As someone who has been continuously building a homebrew world for my 4-year D&D group, this video is a godsend. While there are definitely things that I would like to remain in my own hands, when it comes to stuff connected to player characters, taking cues from my *actual* players has really worked out for me,
It saves time and builds a greater connection between the players and the story, because you know, they helped with it!
Crispy!
Ya i love when the players take part of it
Love your channel!
In the first campaign of my homebrew world, an entire town was attacked by lesser demons. (It was the first of many attacks that culminated with the party hunting down and slaying a major demon and sealing off a portal that was feeding it with constant lesser demon minions) The players fought them off but the town lost nearly everyone that lived there. So, with the King's consent, they took it over and made it THEIR town. (They even changed the name) The few surviving NPCs stayed and became permeant recurring characters that I ended up fully fleshing out.
They then brought back treasure from their adventures and invested heavily in reconstructing the town and built homes for themselves and the NPCs that were the original residents. The party started investing in the NPC's businesses and basically became silent partners or angel investors with every business in the town. (They did a lot of dungeon crawls and gathered a LOT of gold)
My party is full of writers and artisits, so when we started and they started writing their own stories about my campaign, I immediately incorporated all of it into my game. They got so invested because it became our story, not just mine.
Pardon me, but do you, or any of your players, have any online groups with room to give a stranger like me a chance? I've been trying to find/join a group of people who follow these advice channels.
I know this comment is a year old, but I love it! This is what it's all about for me. Creating a story together that's satisfying for everyone.
"...Glorp the two headed goblin stablemaster who also sells homemade glue."
Write that down! WRITE THAT DOWN!
😟
They only had one head until their sibling lost theirs and they quickly used glue to graft it on. Or its a side effect of prolonged consumption of the glue.
I've always enjoyed a sort of "yes, and" approach with my players. If they ask whether there's a certain type of shop, I'll coax them into giving me more details of what they'd like to find. Then I'll have that sort of shop exist, but also make up other things as I go to make it seem like that shop was always there. Had some really memorable NPCs come into existence that way.
Love it. That's exactly how I DM. Keep it up and have a blast doing it.
Magical DM ability of neverending asspulling!
That's the issue though
I ask my players to justify such things. I'm not trying to be hard on the players, it's my little way to make them more vested in the world. They know I like verisimilitude, so they exploit it while I sit there and let them emotionally invest themselves in the world.
@@angrytheclown801 they should be able to justify it though
If a player wants a dragon as a pet... What does that do to the world? A whole lot
As I'm a beginner DM and everyone in my group is a begginer, the first thing I told a group member: "Your character is born in this city and knows all NPCs and what the others will find there. Guide them through your beautifully created city". Everyone in the group was so happy that they had the freedom.
I did an an entire pirate world build. Had a player come to me and ask why a cleric couldn't be played. I said i never built a religion for pirates. So she ended up making an entire pirate religion with religious text and all. With her building of a religion, holy book and all made for the best pirate bible thumping role play i have ever seen.
Doesn’t Pathfinder literally have a Pirate Goddess? I could see that working. Plus Trickery, War, or Tempest Domain Clerics would especially work in that setting-or maybe you could have a being who both acts as a Cleric Deity as well as a Celestial/Fathomless Warlock Patron!
I had a moment like this in my game tonight! We filled out some lore on some random hot springs.
That's the most productive hot spring episode I've ever heard of.
Was it a session between #7 and #9?
That's when most anime gets either a beach or onsen episode for fan-service.
@@MonkeyJedi99 wait funny story i did a beach episode for a story i'm writing just for fun (no "checking out the girls in tiny bikinis" but lots of "playing beach-volley and enjoying a vacation") and it was episode 8 and i had no idea it was the standard place for this episode !
I recommend everyone look at "Beyond the Wall's" optional rule for world building!
The world building/npc building session is so fun. It can easily be adapted to 5e and can be implemented easily into an existing campaign
Thanks for the rec, I'll check it out!
Do you mean the OSR book Beyond The Wall And Other Adventures, or is there some other RPG source with a similar title that I haven't happened across? The only things I see under "optional rules" in that one are Simplified Saving Throws, Fantastic Creatures, and Multiclass Characters, which makes me think I've got the wrong Beyond The Wall.
@@nescirian i think they meant "beyond these walls" , seems pretty cool, its also free from their website
@@society_ do you mean Beyond These Walls, A Storytelling RPG by Hellaspooks? Because I don't see anything in its 15 page pdf about a world building / npc session, or anything labeled as an optional rule. Again, with the limited identifying information it's possible that you're referring to something different from what I've been able to find.
@@nescirian yea im in the same boat as you, trying to figure out what op meant by optional, pretty sure this is the game they meant but the game seems to be the world building so im not sure how you could easily incorporate that to dnd, maybe for a one shot?
Oh goodness Ginny, that fairy godmother dress is absolutely gorgeous. Also a good way to decrease 'pressure' for the players during mid-session world building is to utilise rolling tables/softly randomised assets like the backgrounds personality traits. Like rolling a 1d8 for the terrain/locale of their hometown, is it a swamp? desert? forest? Player can't decide? then roll for it. This could allow players who actually want to customise to have a good reference, while also speed things up a lot when you call someone who is less comfortable on the spot to decide something.
Is that dress homemade or did you buy it?
It is simply gorgeous and a certain somebody I know would love it if I could get one like it for them.
One of my favorite short campaign was loosely inspired by the game Children of Morta and was about a large family living in the woods when suddenly the nature rise against them. The first session was the setup of the relations of family members (players drawing the genealogy tree), the creation of the house (drawing the map of the house in a child style with bright colors) and the narration of their best family memories (each player was narrating one or two of these memories, with the collaboration of the others involved in the scene; something like "Jack, do you remember when we stole a looot of candies and hide in the tallest tree near the house?" / "Oh yeah, I remember! It's the first time you used your druidic powers, to facilitate the climb!" / And the mother jumps in : "I search for you for HOURS! I was so mad at you both but you had your lesson with the belly ache afterwards.." And after that narration, another player was already drawing the "Tallest tree / hide spot" on the map, behind the house, and it became relevant in combat (because most of the game was at that house, so the map they were drawing became a battlemap a few times).
It’s great fun (as a DM) to watch your players perk up when you use something they made in the adventure - sometimes it’s excitement, sometimes it’s dread, but it’s always personal for their character.
The most fun I ever had collaborative world building was actually in a subreddit of all places... Long story short someone set up a Civ 5 game with 60 CPU countries, and everyone had loads of fun filling in the lore of their adopted country. There were newspapers covering the "real life" events from the game, weekly updates on the state of the world war, even a Model UN with elected representatives (ok some of the elections may have been self-appointments)
It was fun to see how well everyone worked together considering we were all strangers and there were basically no rules. The world was big enough and everyone's narrative interests so niche that there wasn't much stepping on toes, and the stakes were low to nonexistent anyway
The CBR is great! I kinda fell off following them closely after the second or third one, I think. But the idea is fantastic, and the meme of Nebuchadnezzar, lurking in his Antarctic submarine, watching the events unfold, is one of my favourite niche-internet things. Canada and the Buccaneers were always my favourites.
I think it's actually possible that the CBR may have influenced Firaxis to add certain Civs into Civ 6 - Australia, Canada, Vietnam, and Gran Colombia were all beloved in those early ones, with so much lore and memes for them.
I once spent days designing my character's home city for my DM and when we finally went there it was amazing to be able to lead the others around and introduce them to the place if my character's childhood
Please tell me Glop the two headed goblin who sells home made glue was made up on the spot during filming 🤣I love this I'm currently running a campaign that is co-imagined by myself and 2 other players and its a blast. We took Fearun and made it our own and in between we sprinkled in material from the modules, while creating world spaces for different characters and their homes. Its made my life waaaaay easier!
My group did collaborative world building, taking turns drawing on a blank map and adding to a collective online lore document. The world started off fairly goofy, but after 3 years of running different games in the world we made together... Yeah, we're definitely all invested in the lore at this point!
As usual, insightful stuff that had me going "where was this when I started gaming many years ago?" Thanks, Ginny!
I often feel bad since my DM has put so much effort in their world, but my memory of all the names and places quickly fizzles away particularly when things get hectic, and I'm left with a string of notes full of names I barely recognise. Really sucks because the campaign is so much fun to delve into, and I worry my participation is annoying when I'm stumbling over what are pretty basic details.
Just make sure your DM knows you genuinely appreciate their work; it's amazing how much that can smooth things over.
I'm bad with names in real life, so I get that. But if you remember the content, like lore, or "that one shop" - things like that - that still shows you're engaged.
As DM, I love when players appreciate the world and try to take it in. Actually succeeding in keeping track of it isn't as important as the desire to do so. Tell them that you enjoy what they're doing and then don't feel bad about your memory! :)
Hey, you have notes. That's better than like 75% of players so I doubt your DM feels annoyed. Just making the effort is great. Asking questions isn't a problem if they're genuine and come from a place of interest. If you care enough to ask, that's usually good enough for us DMs.
I agree with everyone above me and to assist and facilitate what it appears you wish to occurr I'll suggest the following:
After the game and between sessions reorganize your notes, when it isn't hectic.
Obviously, I don't know how your game is run, but I struggle to picture world building AND hectic activity occuring at the same time.
Could you elaborate on "hectic"? Because I'm hearing mid combat/dire skill checks such as running from a group of mountain goblins while their mountain, now turned Volcano, is erupting.
Cuz if _that_ is when you are learning the ancient name of the Volcano, I'd actually blame your DM lol.
But the best way, imo to absorb the info would be to look at it between sessions, and if you have a question about the world AND ask between sessions, Holy crap that is what makes the Great Players imo. My favorites are the players that think about the game between sessions.
Date your notes so you have a timeline.
Organize them and reorganize them. Then you will have an use for all of those wonderful notebooks you keep collecting but are remaining blank (I may be projecting here :p).
-Your Friendly Neighborhood Druid
I just had my fourth session of D&D this past weekend and I'm finally hooked. I *love* your idea of letting players describe a location in town. There have been times as a player where I'm itching to play a role in the creation aspect of the campaign - something as small as coming up with a store or home in-town can make a session feel *magical* to the players (especially if you have a table of players who all want to experiment with DMing and world building themselves!)
Ooh! Welcome to the club, I hope you can enjoy many years of awesome games, and it's so good to hear that you are so engaged and willing to be an active participant. Who knows, maybe you'll be a dm someday. It's always cool to try a oneshot at some point to try out behind the screen, but most importantly have fun of course, no matter how you engage with the game!
This is all great advice, especially for a DND playing noob like myself. Of course I recognize not every DM is gonna be Matt Mercer or Brennan Lee Mulligan on the detail front either so if I as a player can help them then that only enhances the game.
Something interesting my group has done is that each of us has taken charge of world-building a continent for the world we play in. We're a small group and we like to rotate DMs, so each of us has worked to build a setting for us to run adventures in. And since they're all on the same world, we have to collaborate on how these different cultures interact, as well as cosmology and pantheons.
I recently introduced a player contacts system at character creation.
Basically, based on your charisma,bonus, you have that many contacts and allies you can call upon to help you in the quest in some way. For every 2 allies, you get one Rival. It works the opposite way too, while a CHA bonus of zero still gives you one so people don't get left out.
Only 3 sessions in my game and it made for some amazing role playing moments where they interacted with them, used them to gain information.
And it allowed me to create a TON of quest hooks.
This worked for me because my campaign primarily takes place in a city of two million people. And It really helped flesh it out.
In discussing collaborative storytelling as a tool, it’s so refreshing to hear a breakdown that is nuanced, balanced and includes the vast body of TTRPG wisdom and design included in other systems like Dungeon World.
D&D is my game, but it’s a grand tradition to hack it into what works for one’s group. Loved the video
We definitely used "players world-build within their own backstory" as a pre-campaign strategy. I sketched out my character's "important locations" for my GM, which in this case were all in one city. We discussed the type of place I was looking for, and then he gave me a skeleton description of the city and country we'd chosen, which I _really_ fleshed out over the next week or so. (I'm afraid I may have gone a bit overboard!)
Top notch, hilarious sponsorship ad as usual. I like how you mentioned that the DM has power of veto. This is so true; no matter what a player does for a backstory, the DM retains the final say on how or where it fits in. If something is a little funky, or contradicts something major, explaining the disconnect and working through it can keep everything in line while still letting players be involved. And if said player throws a fit, well, that might raise a flag for other behavior later down the road. After all, it is YOUR WORLD as a DM, and you get to have fun too.
My favourite example of this is in our family game. Completely out of game my now 9yo and I made up some bedtime stories about a dragon and an alicorn who were friends including how they grew up together, and various adventures they had. Then we incorporated those as legends her rural dragonborn knew, that the other characters didn't, that somehow maybe seem to relate to the ancient dragon the party met by chance, who they're supposed to travel to meet by appointment in the autumn...
One of my dm let my character come in and out of this town for several years so they gave me a list of lore, places, and people I got to know well over the years. It definitely got me more invested into the town.
in a druid campaign a location I'm very fond of was the forest druid town with elves and ware creatures, I was a ware tiger if I remember.
What made that place feel like home is it was our core location somewhere we always returned to and picked up missions.
We had to do a fight against a vampire army on their land, deal with a wolf pack and make a peace treaty with them. a party member burned down a near by forest on accident.
Basically having a home town that players return to often and get to develop along with the story is very powerful as well.
My group is super roleplay-focused, so when our characters get an idea in the moment, we ask after things our DM couldn't possibly have planned for. So if we roll high enough to locate a shop that might carry relevant items or info, that shop is created then and there by the table as a whole, and suggesting a really fun detail could even get you rewarded with an inspiration token! Even what seem like throwaway jokes above-table can get incorporated, which makes the game more engaging and makes the world feel more active and alive!
Honestly I think they retain more than I do. Many is the time I'm checking my notes for a name and my player is like 'Betty is the receptionist at the front desk'
Yes. Absolutely. My DM lets us world build our entire home countries and it works like a charm
I always ask my players to give me a very short backstory from someone in their character's family.
I LOVE that you mentioned having players build their home town because thats again what I ask my players to do, though I'm fine if they just describe a home or street.
Originally in my world Dwarves didnt exist. They were going to be stuck in storybooks in certain regions. But one player wanted to play one, so I had a God create them. Rather than retconning histories to shove them in, I had them literally be a new race that was put into the world 80 years prior to defend a stronghold.
Our DM looked at back story, asked a few pointed questions, then listened to what was said in game to create relatives. Imagine my surprise when we came across my character's home that I never thought would be relevant.
Absolutely agree about allowing the players to help create the world! I have my maps *mostly* complete with the geographical features, but I like my players to describe the cities and cultures from their homelands or areas they've passed through, informing the party as we go. Right now, my level 5 party is considering building a stone keep, so I showed them a map so they could determine a suitable location, and then I created a more detailed map of the immediate region for them to find the perfect building site. It's been wonderful watching them evaluate the terrain, wind and sun exposure, water sources, and stone and timber resources. Now they just need a lot of gold 😂
Strongly recommend this. Currently in the cyberpunk setting I'm running, I have my players doing a combat encounter where they designed the house they live in and the things in and around it. So when bad guys raided them they got to use all the things they put into their house in combat.
So far they've shot a guy mid jump while bouncing off a trampoline, used pool floats to traverse the pool quicker, and unleashed their coop of mutant chickens on the raiders.
Omg I love this idea and I will most certainly steal it!!
Although I've never DMd D&D, I have been DMing for over 20 years, and had DMd many different games/systems. Still, I ALWAYS find something useful and refreshing your videos. Congratulations for having such a wonderfully creative mind and being such a good content creator. I love to hear your ideas and pitches, and I really hope that you continue doing that for a long, long time.
As Dungeon World says "Make maps, leave blanks".
I've found it a good way to do some of your own prep/worldbuilding, but allow for cool ideas which may come from the table (prompted or unprompted) to fill in those unmapped areas. Note that "make maps" doesn't have to literally mean maps. It can mean any kind of prep.
Yeah my old DM had what we called a Cross Dungeon Universe where we had all our campaigns take place in though at different places or points in time leading to it becoming more in depth as we went (my favorite moment was when my Halfling Sorcerer went into my old Tiefling Warlock's shop (he'd retired from adventuring after losing 2 of his friends & a leg to a black dragon) looking for some interesting magical items to potentially help in sneaking into a cathedral
This is a great tool that I think all dms can use
one technique that I often use and recommend is taking the players background and building something around it
like if the depressed dragonborn bard says that their searching for their father who left them at birth, I would create a quest to incentivize doing that and then branching out into further character development that would make the players feel included into the world
That and using warlocks, all warlocks have massive flavortext potential with how customizable they are, so if you have a warlock player then make sure to double check their sheet, there might be a side story waiting to happen
I think a great example of this is in “Not Another DnD Podcast” (a great podcast by the way)
The best/fan favorite location of the first campaign was Emily Axeford’s character’s (Moonshine’s) home, “The Crick”
The DM just let Emily improve jokes about The Crick, based of the general vibe but also Moonshine’s own character and personality, and he wrote them all down and made them facts about the world.
Now this worked because Naddpod is as much an improve comedy show as a DnD actual play, and The Crick itself is so naturally chaotic that it actively bucks normal logical reasoning, but it’s also consistent in tone and has core ideas that anchor it.
So this idea does work. It is indeed the most memorable place of the campaign, and it’s where the characters wanted to spend most of their time
This is still helpful even when working with an established world! I'm running a game in Exandria and am absolutely thriving with prep when my players provide information about their character's hometowns. It is allowing them to carve their own spot in a world they already know and love, to blend their character's stories with lore they already hold so dear.
It's helping to make this version of Exandria theirs rather than riding off of the coattails of what they've seen on CR, too. Now, it just feels like another campaign setting instead of a well documented and loved place they've seen played in online.
Ginny has a way of posting a video right when it aligns with my current D&D endeavor.
To keep my players invested between session, i have them do homework. Well, we just had our 1 year anniversary so I gave them an exam! I had my players build a significant place to them while I hand drew a map of the world. Together we placed their hometowns and it made the world feel like an actual real place. The best part is that session, my players brought up their hometowns organically and it help me build personalized character quest for them too.
TL:DR: I AGREE WITH THE CONTENT PLAYING ABOVE THIS COMMENT
I have no DM experience and since I am a fairly new player, it will take a long time, before I will be able to DM. But I have started some worldbuilding for fun and I love it so much, I love thinking about a creation story, how to fit it in a story, some mythology, continents and lands, societies for different races etc. Really wish I could already try to navigate players through the world.
I’m very lucky to have DM’s that have always been super supportive of this sort of thing- which is great given my writer/actor background. For one game, I built a neighborhood into a major port town called The Little Shire- effectively a Little Italy/Chinatown but for halflings where things were designed for small creatures and community was paramount. For a oneshot, I played a bartender and had an entire menu with drinks inspired by the world and other characters that everyone was super into. And for my main campaign, I wrote out some lore about druids regarding the necessity of circles and how wildshape ties into your other abilities that ended up explaining things about my character as well as some of our npc’s. None of these things really alter the world significantly, but as a player, it’s really exciting to have my ideas make an impact on things beyond just my character!
That sounds really interesting and cool! I got a little curious about the druid part, would you mind expanding how did the wildshape tie into your other abilities? 💚
Tanja thank you! So since gaining the wildshape ability and joining a circle occur at level two, I made is so that the two actions were linked. Essentially, without a community to guide and teach you, you can’t progress beyond the couple cantrips or spells you get at level one. In theory, a druid is supposed to be a part of a circle and learn and grow with them- which both helps them grow as a caster and also mitigates the risk of super powerful mage not being a loose cannon. It played out really well for my druid and our druid npc who both were isolated from our circles- one completely stagnated and the other is regularly overwhelmed by the amount of stuff she’s learned how to do in the past couple months.
I enthusiastically appreciate the work that goes into this channel. I hope it feels like that from time to time, Ginny!
I will hereafter refer to all history as "Worldbuilding Lore"
I definitely think these tips work very well, Ginny 👍🏻
I have found this to be extremely effective as both a DM and a PC. As a DM, when my players created something in their backstory I did not have, I was able to more easily find ways to work those things in as a way to get them more personally connected to the story
As a player, it really helped me feel more connected to my world. My DM let me create my hometown and everything, but the best element was an NPC I had created. I had told my DM about three former partners my Paladin had. She found a great way to work in one of them, my Paladin’s ex-boyfriend, by having them worked into a quest in the Rime of the Frostmaiden campaign and it helped get me pulled into that quest even more
As for the collaborative element, The General Adventuring Company does that in their games, with the DM often asking the players to give some qualities to certain NPCs
Omg I just realized how much my players liked the game I did this with, definitely gonna have to remember it bc I totally forgot for a couple of campaigns that the players could do that
I am doing a prologue for my food based world right now. They have created communities and sculpted how the world is going to run hundreds of years in the future after the initial five sessions. A little ‘taste’ of what they jumped to naming their characters Cornelius Cobler, Osmund Oregano, Gavin Graham and Mitchell Crumbitiz. This world has become so much more than I initially imagined and I am so happy for it.
For my D&D campaign, I did a Session 0 that was like a quick-and-dirty version of the worldbuilding game The Quiet Year. Each player (including myself) was given a notecard to write down a feature of the world and a small sentence of detail about that feature. We then passed the notecards to our left and wrote a sentence on the card we received. We did this until everyone had written something on each card, and then did this again with 3 cards total per player, each player marking the features they started on a map. We got a lot of interesting aspects of the world out of this, and it was a lot of fun for me as a GM to try and tie everything together. One fun features is a moving city that is powered by a captured djinni, which is referred to as the city's 'en-djinn.'
I think it also helps to give players world-building options, instead of having them create something from scratch. For example, instead of asking a player "what's the nature of your druidic circle?" you can ask "Is your druidic circle an established order across different regions, or is it more of an esoteric circle?" And then whatever they answer, you can kind of branch off of there and pepper some of those details into the lore.
Some of my favourite podcasts use this method and I've started using it myself! Thank you for spreading the good word, Miss Di!
Yup, it is a fun thing to do with the group. At its most basic level can be a "is there a [BLANK] in the city?", which, if a large city, almost certainly, while a village, maybe will ask them high or low and give a 50, 75, or like 85% chance it will be etc.
That is how the party hired a Gothic Carriage driver, who we then opened up a goth name generator to get the name Blight Grimlock. The group liked him so much they spent a good amount of coin to buy out his contract with the carriage service he worked for, gave him a hefty pay raise from his previous employer, and collaboratively worked with him to build a new carriage. They also provided money to move his wife (Honeydew Grimlock, a school teacher) and their daughter to their home city.
The same campaign had someone want to play a half-vampire, but specifically his vampire father was evil, which immediately warped the campaign to create the Chaos Vampire, who over the sessions ended up growing into the big bad of the campaign. A shame the campaign ended due to covid.
Both my current DMs are great about that style of worldbuilding. As broad as adding an undersea city for our Triton, as well as making a shopkeeper an Owlin after the same player talked excitedly about wanting to play/meet one. There was even a moment specific to me, where I named my hometown after consulting a name generator and after a bit of back and forth amongst us and the players, he went, "I got ideas for that." My other DM built his current world off a battle royal that went on, which I sadly missed due to internet issues.
Microscope is possibly the most unique and amazing way to build a world, particularly histories. I have a group that I build a world with and then another group that I DM in that world. If I ever need to fill out complicated stuff in the world, I bring it to my microscope group. It's amazing
This is such good info. I love world building, but I think I'm even happier when I get to craft alongside my players. Some of our favorite NPCs and locations are due to players working with me. Plus who doesn't like to have a little work taken off their shoulders.
The Stablemaster makes homemade glue you say.... OH GOD
This sort of stuff has been super helpful for me as a DM! It’s really helped create spaces that I couldn’t have dreamed of and made my world a lot better.
Good idea !
Reminds me of the "Dungeon on demand" technique to improvise dungeon :
Tell your players they heard about a dungeon and ask them what they have learnt, and how, while they where preparing to crawl in there.
For three element they bring (Bounties, map, dangers ...) you take one point of chaos.
(Just don't overdo it and accept more that, say, 3 to 5 elements from every player else you take the risk of your dungeon going banana.)
Then, you use your points of chaos to change what they find on site and make it surpising.
The only restriction for the DM is to keep the change explainable by a false rumor of an information that is no longer true.
Did this for a Fallout RPG and our DM used it to change the map we had done by adding security doors and removing the sentient deathclaw I wanted to add.
The deathclaw was a traveler that had gone his way and the security doors where a secret protocol the chef of the factory had keep in case things went sideway.
Was fun all the way :)
This video actually really helped! I'm the DM for my group and I've just messaged each of my players asking about how they envision their hometowns even if they're using ones I've created for my world already to give them more agency and help with collaborative worldbuilding and immersion and really get them thinking creatively which I'm so excited to see what they come up with! Also your point about spontaneous creation got me thinking about what shops and merchants they might need, I had a few but I'm excited to see if they come up with anything new as well, I love worldbuilding and writing lore etc so I'm super pumped to see what my players come up with, I've had one player suggest making a new god to fit his backstory and I did cause it turns out I was missing an aspect, another even has already bought a lil bit of lore I can add to my timeline with his hometown being wiped out and it causing his character to go through a whole journey of pain, grief, depression and eventual acceptance and moving on and I'm here for it all lol, ugh I love D&D
Characters doing worldbuilding with me is so helpful. For example, I have a runaway prince who helped me build his castle and parts of the kingdom and we both had fun doing it :)
I always tell my players that any change to the world is fine as long as they run it by me first. This has led to a previously undamaged city now being under reconstruction after a dragon attack. The capitol now secretly being under the control of a powerful thieves guild, a powerful wizard now having multiple apprentices, and there being a roving band of orc pirates that most elves are terrified of and tell horror stories about. I love that my players backstories and the backstories of random NPCs they decide are important are starting to fill out my world more.
Got here from your player background video. Really impressed with the way you hooked that video into this one. Your CZcams is strong!
i run a homebrew campaign when i started i threw them a thing saying write a backstory and include 2 locations a magic item you are persuing and any lore changes you want.
one was a tiefling who's parrents were killed in an orc raid with him making tieflings not widely hated for lore and looking for a scroll to revive his parrents.
one quit part way through the campaign so most of his stuff was scrapped.
one made a minitaur his locations included a labrinth in the below ground of the setting it acts as a barrior for underdark creatures who want to make it to the surface and it is not under the obligations of reality when considering spacing or logic. only ones who can navigate it is the minitaur race which have been changed to guide types and control most of the trade because labrinth travel is normally faster than going above ground. and he added the minitaur capital city. he searched for an effretti bottle hoping it would provide the strength to push back on drow enslavement of minitaurs (have to get minitaurs to strike the surface)
the last one made a palidin which included a corrupted temple of helm and added temples to most of the cities in the setting. he came in late and did'nt choose a magic item.
fun excersize most of the campaign has been bouncing between the tiefling and minitaur's home towns with them just recently visiting the corrupt temple. other world building has been done i added an anchient forrest where tre-ents live and a cult based arround abberitions with other assorted world features but all in all main parts of the setting are player constructed
This is super helpful!! It’s a great way to give the players agency at the top of the campaign and creates that hometown love/hate relationship that can be hard to instill for characters.
I have a problem of that we had our last game at our playgroup that we could play only 3 sessions and then just got overwhelmed by studying and then the "conflict" started, but after watching this (and generally after absorbing knowledge from internet) I see some benefits)
Love this! Some of the greatest ideas come from our shared experience: back stories, NPCs I thought were throw away become major role NPCs when the party adds their ideas. Thank you for new insights here.
I think all of you Dungeon Masters are brilliant. Your creativity and enthusiasm bring enjoyment and fun to people. This is such a selfless act that impacts people much more than you can ever know. Thank you 😊
I make a sort of mini game out of sessions recaps. I popcorn to various players and have them go through last session, occasionally interrupting to offer inspiration or “fate dice” (stackable d4s) to players who can answer lore questions. They’ve gotten pretty familiar with the lore because of this. If I ask them “which Vallic tribesman led his people into the Andurn mountains to escape the industrialization of the Tarvian Empire over 2000 years ago” or “when the pirate king Edwain Durwin overthrew the merchant republic of Bandunar, which of the 79 vampires of the Gamnian Collective defeated him in single combat”, they typically know offhand.
Always love these videos! And hilariously they also come at a time when I’ve been pondering the exact subject! Though always adds new ideas or helps me syntheses loose thoughts and timey research
I love your ad breaks, they're always so creative!
I love this, I play with a bunch of amazing storytellers that already do a bit of world building. I can't help but thoroughly create a bunch of NPCs and towns whenever i make a character myself.
3 of my friends created countires as part of their backstories for our current game. My character is from the city that we're all based in, and in our 1st session I took the party for hot dogs, and I've been helping flesh out what life is like for the lower classes in that city. Our DM runs a very large Pratchett-esque world that every single one of her campaigns happens in, and anything her players add becoms canon
I don't get to play DnD.. nor do I cosplay... but Ginny Di videos are just so wholesome and entertaining.
This is a big part of our new campaign we recently started. I feel like my players are loving it so far! We started session 0 with the game Ex Novo in which they created their home and fleshed out some of the setting. They mentioned that they had a lot of fun and feel a connection to the setting since they created it together. Great video!
This may be my favorite D&D worldbuilding video. Great ideas!
My DM started us off as citizens of the various Emerald Isles, and let each of us invent the particular island that we came from, in as much or as little detail as we wanted. We got so into it, even drawing up rough maps sometimes, and pestering him with settings questions, even though we were never going to step foot on those little islands, as we were all meeting up on a bigger one. Really helped to remember/invent details about one's backstory, too.
Always enjoy these videos. They're so insightful and thought out
There were many great takeaways from this video, but I absolutely cannot get over the fairy godmother dress, the bodice and those SLEEVES, its goregeous!
My brother, aunt, niece, nephew, and I, just started 5e with me as DM. It's intimidating but SO fun. Your advice is golden. I stress about how interested they'll be in what I make. But giving them some creative control of adventures takes big pressure off me and makes it more rewarding for them. Thank you so much!
I love how every sponsor plug you do is so different and unique.
This is cool for worldbuilding. For the lore and history of the world, I want to try something different (if anyone ever tried it, do you have any suggestions or can tell me, how it went?). I want the player to experience it, so that they could "remember" it. For that I am planning a series of one shots that take place in the worlds defining moments. Sometimes they will get to play the heroes of the history and other times they will be normal people living in the moment, until something changes. How did the farmers feel, when suddenly the gates of hell were opened and the world was flooded with devils? What happened at the great war that brought the last civilization to its knees? How was it, to see the first sunrise after centuries of darkness? Some of these stories changed over time, so that the characters in the current campaign can hear legends and myths, but the players were there.
I really hope, that this concept will work! I'm running Rime of the Frostmaiden right now and after we finish that, we will take a break for a few weeks, before carrying on with the same characters. I want to use the break to run about 6-8 oneshots of the worlds history.
This is a really smart method cause then the players learn what they want to, and you don't have to write a bunch of lore that'll go to waste
New, soon to be DM, your channel has been pumping me up and preparing me for the task. Thank you so much!!!
Thank you so much for this video!! As much as I enjoy getting to learn about new worlds, I love coming up with a backstory that has a town that fits with my character if a pre-existing one doesn’t quite fit
I love my brother and I’m thankful for him that he made a campaign for me and some of his friends to join, but he was not okay with us creating any new places, societies, or NPCs for our backstory (which I can understand. It can be difficult trying to juggle this type of information in when you already have a specific vision). Depending on the race we chose, we could only start from a specific continent. He didn’t even ask any of us for our backstories beforehand and is still in the dark about most of the character’s backstories.
I’m not saying any of this to hate on him! He has a specific way of DMing and I understand that he has a certain vision. I’m still having lots of fun in the campaign he has created and I’m enjoying the world and the other player characters. It’s just that sometimes I feel like our characters aren’t treated with as much focus as he gives to the world
I want to run a campaign in the future and I cannot wait to see what the players will come up with! It’ll be fine if they just want to chose pre-existing places and NPCs, but I will definitely give them the option to help shape a part of the world so that way they feel more included
Love your videos! Happy birthday!
This is so true!! I actually never would have considered DM'ing if it wasn't for my DM friend who involved me in the building of his world. In helping him, I realized how much I love the process of worldbuilding and how impactful it can be to share the journey with the players
I had a session zero quite some time ago where players were setting up a city and world they were leaving on the first game. It helped setup species they'd encounter, gods, and generally setting relevant things. On the second game they discovered obsidian mirrors that let them see people the characters were associated with, and they eventually found ways to change their home from a distance. It really helped give a little more purpose to exploring a strange dimension.
Of course little did they know they were setting up some of the divine and meta progression of the game. The fact they focused so much on religion for their characters allowed me to weave the narrative with all sorts of crazy religion shenanigans. Important historical figures they created even showed up. It made everything that much more personal for everyone involved and I'm really glad the players had a part in world creation because of it.
Awesome video as always!
I really think it's important to take this collaborative approach, as you say some folks don't like it and just want to turn up to the game and enjoy, but most people I've played with enjoy getting to own a part of the world and the narrative, and in my experience it only heightens the fun/drama.
Love the tip!
Coming up on thirty years ago, the mid-80’s to mid-90’s, during my D&D hey day, I did this exact thing, kinda. All told there were about 10 of us in our group, even though on average only about 4 or so could ever get together at the same time. On occasion we might have the whole crew around, but mostly just 4-5 at a time. Every person in the group was running or playing in a game so it mattered not who of the group were present. Somebody pitched and the rest caught. So if Danny wasn’t around, then William chaired the game, but Eric wasn’t there so Ray ran his game. Or Chris was there so William captained our session. Each of us had a character or a dozen in each game. If only 1 or 2 could be present than we ran a side-game or epic quest. We used these one-offs the train troops or our epic mounts, we ran so many games.
Without rambling further each DM had a world in mind while running these games backed by binders full of notes. Because the parties were so mixed the only way to keep continuity was to have a large map, and most importantly different ages, decades, millennia even. For instance in the first age fey folk were born, no humans, the second age man was born and hunted elves, third age dwarves were warring with Drow. Etc. and probably the most important thing! Elect a party member to be a scribe.
After, or between sessions the scribe was to pen down an accounting of thing that occurred of note, such as… McVey the mighty pulled a Vorpal sword out of a dragon hoard in Lightfoot, or Stahn defeated the Lich of Leechfield, but caused the death of Brondarr.
It also brought us current from our last session.
I already know the question that is jumping out of the screens- “Why didn’t the DM, keep these notes?” We did. But the players seemed to rather enjoy writing an account of the battle where… “While swinging the Axe of ages at the ogres big toe, Drazz slipped in a puddle of grey ooze, ( rolled a nat 1 on a called action) and the last thing they remember seeing was their boots rushing up to meet their face. Their last memory was the pain of slamming face first onto the blood soaked dungeon floor in Sirob. “ as their head slipped from their shoulders the axe taking it clean off.
We retired the character got high and exchanged notes.
And because there were so many games going on, maybe two dozen or more when we grabbed our binders to meet we would always carry all of them. Because sometimes in the dead of night one of our occasional guests may show up. “Hey guys Richard came over and Danny’s sister is here we can finish up that one crazy Wizard tower battle….”
And because the notes were taken and it became history, players could, with the proper research rolls, etc, refer back on the history to trace amazing events, find dragon hoards, or magic items etc. these things existed as singular items, passed from one event or character to another. Clerics that follow the order of Ramaghast, a 14th lvl cleric who federated the temples into the Church of Furst, the fire eater congregation. And are gifted with a Summon fire efreeti medallion upon entering the monastery.
Or the time of Numbing when the dragon gods awoke ( every 100000 years) to rain psionic blast on the world, destroying anything above a 3 intelligence. Mankind starts over. Children grow up feral, form tribes, grow in numbers, establish societies discover the ancient knowledge. Magic is found again, etc, etc, etc.
so it really mattered where in the age you were. And when the prophecies are re-discovered.
It made for great gaming and great time. I miss all you guys and gals. But still Ginny. Awesome advise.
Good Vid. I have done this for over 25 years. I always allow them to add things to the campaign / world I started and it is pretty great. Some of my players have created random NPC's for me, they have created shops, locations, and even better yet loose ideas and inspirations. The look on their face when they walk into a shop and realize it is one they built, or they have to stop and talk to someone to find their way only to see its JoJo, the crazy potion maker who samples his potions more than sells them; ones that they have created. So yeah, totally a 100% must do for any DM IMO.
This is so great! I’m a very big picture person; I specialize in a region’s culture and geography, how concepts work, mythology, cities, politics, things with lots of detail that are big. I’m not as into smaller scale things. Having characters co-create towns and families helps me a lot so I can focus on the things that I love about worldbuilding. I love DMing any setting, but not creating every setting.
Great advice that I learnt on the way with my group, mainly thanks to a couple of players who actively embraced it and got on board with building out the world - putting things back out to all of the players makes it genuinely collaborative AND helps with investment. Win win!
This so much. One of the reasons why I wanted to run my game was so that I could have a more comprehensive story to use my PCs in. I've played in so many campaigns where my character does not matter. I want my character to be part of the world.
I actually always like doing a one shot with each player to go through their backstory and history play it out together. it makes it more integrated into my world and gives them a real sense of stakes and personal connection. it's also a great one-on-one chance for me to refresh myself on how they like to play and what sort of questions they like to ask and where their mind is during a game. I don't think this method would work for everyone though it's definitely a lot of time but all of my players are very close friends.
Great video! I played a game where I helped flesh out my hometown and family connections which are very important to my character. During the campaign we had a running joke that my character would check to see if any of the Halflings she met were family members. This turned into an actual chat quirk where we befriended several NPCs (and got some great discounts too). I still miss the shopkeeper we met in a small town and think about sending him treats in other unrelated games because it just became part of my habits to keep in contact with his family.
Just wanna say that your costuming is FANTASTIC, Ginny :)
I created a whole discord where I listed every npc we've met including physical description, personality, and how we know them, a calender, a list of every city and town we've visited and notable locations in them, a section for lore, even a section where I update the in game date after each session! I wish the other players paid better attention. All this information is quite literally at their fingertips! I'm the only one who takes notes and I do more than take notes.