Worldbuilding 5 Week Challenge - With Gygax 75 - 12th February to 19th March

[Jarric]

Are you planning on running an RPG campaign and need somewhere to start? Do you want to create a setting where your players will have loads of great stuff to ignore whilst they set up a cheese mongering empire? Do you want to create some really great content, before consigning it to the draw where all of your good TTRPG ideas are kept? Then this is the challenge for you!

 

A few weeks ago, @DarK_RaideR introduced me to the Gygax 75 Challenge, a 5-week challenge for building just enough to start a TTRPG campaign. The idea is that you don't need to start with an entire world, just enough to get your players started and keep them entertained for a few sessions while you work out what's next.

 

It looks really good, and since it's a 5-week challenge, we thought it would be the perfect thing to run in line with the forum challenges, and with plenty of people sharing their own worlds and encouraging each other.

 

Over the 5 weeks of the challenge, you will:

1. Create a general concept and a pitch for your campaign world
2. Flesh out the general area your players will start in - your green hill zone
3. Give your players a dungeon to explore
4. Detail a nearby town or city
5. Start thinking about the larger world

 

This guy explains it a lot better than I do:

 

 

So when are we doing this?

In line with the next 5-week challenge - starting 12th/13th February and ending 18th/19th March

 

What kind of world can I make?

Anything you like! Feel free to stretch the prompts as far as you like too - a dungeon can be any location your players would want to explore, and your green hill zone could be a space station, a huge metropolis, a lush forest, or a subterranean labyrinth. 

 

Who can join?

Anyone! The more the merrier! It's not a competition, I just hope people will show up and share their ideas.

 

What do I need to do?

Download the free Gygax 75 workbook here, Then just show up and start working through it when the next challenge starts.

[spezzy]

[Sepherina]

Thank you for the resource.  I am not sure how much time on the next 5 week challenge I will have to dedicate to this, but I am most def interested. 

[DarK_RaideR]

I mean, I can't really skip this now, can I? 😁

[sylph]

hmmm... I probably (maybe?) won't create much, but I'm super interested to see what the prompts are and what all of you wonderfully creative people come up with.

[Artemis Prime]

A humble scribe slides into the back of the room, hoping no one notices she's not actually a GM.

 

On a side note, I'm becoming more impressed with GMs who manage to railroad their players. I can't make my characters do what I want them to, and they don't even have players attached to them.

[Artemis Prime]

First task in week one: Get a notebook. Hey yeah! This is my kind of challenge!

[MaeradCase]

Considering using this for developing my book's preconceived existence since I don't have a current game to prepare for.

[DarK_RaideR]

5 hours ago, MaeradCase said:

Considering using this for developing my book's preconceived existence since I don't have a current game to prepare for.

Interesting, given how the challenge is rather game-focused. Have you read further into the challenge plan? Would be interested to hear how you plan to twist it into serving your book writing purpose.

[spezzy]

22 hours ago, Artemis Prime said:

First task in week one: Get a notebook. Hey yeah! This is my kind of challenge!

 

Get a new notebook? This is definitely one that I have a *lot* of experience in 😂  cc: @Knightwatch

 

 

[Artemis Prime]

9 hours ago, MaeradCase said:

Considering using this for developing my book's preconceived existence since I don't have a current game to prepare for.

Yes! Authors and GMs unite to conquer the world and from the ashes we shall build a new order like a glorious phoenix of creativity!

 

...oh, is that not the type of worldbuilding we're doing here? Never mind, then, as you were...

[Artemis Prime]

5 hours ago, DarK_RaideR said:

Interesting, given how the challenge is rather game-focused. Have you read further into the challenge plan? Would be interested to hear how you plan to twist it into serving your book writing purpose.

I'm also planning to use it for book purposes. I don't think it will take that much tweaking, although I already have the plot pretty firmly in mind, which I think helps. My MC starts in the capital city (one large settlement in week 2 which will become the Town in week 4) before troubling rumors about magic arise and she goes out to investigate - which may or may not lead her to either of the two other settlements or the major terrain feature - and finally find clues about the necromancer behind the trouble (one mysterious site) and retrieves evidence to take back to the capital city from his lair (the dungeon). 

 

I have a novel in the drafting process that entails the aftermath of the war with the necromancer. I am envisioning this as a prequel novella about the beginning of the war. If I'm happy with how it forms, I may develop it into a series of novellas that covers the entirety of the war. However it turns out, I often have trouble keeping myself oriented in my settings - how long does it take to cross this forest? Where does this river go? How far away is the port city? I'm hoping 5 weeks of worldbuilding will be enough to give me a solid framework to hang my story on without sending me down the spiraling rabbit hole that World Anvil and the like usually lead to.

[MaeradCase]

On 2/7/2023 at 3:39 AM, DarK_RaideR said:

Interesting, given how the challenge is rather game-focused. Have you read further into the challenge plan? Would be interested to hear how you plan to twist it into serving your book writing purpose.

Nope, I hadn't read ahead at all. 😅 Finally had a chance to start reading via a computer, and I'm already bewildered by how it used to be normal to expect that the majority of characters played would be humans unless the stats needed a boost. 😂 

 

Update: I was in the booklet format and couldn't figure out the page order, but the other doc does have the pages in the correct order and I'll be using that one thank you. 😂

[Sepherina]

Just a thought, I used to LOVE a good notebook for D&D. But lately I have started using Notion for a lot of things including our tracking everything in our current campaign.  It has been a game changer. I have been building a template for other GMs to use.  I would be more than happy to share it when it is done for feedback on how to make it better. It works almost like a Wikipedia but sleeker and more user friendly.

 

I think what I like best is that I can link things, sort and filter them too.  For example, if my players go to Salvation, I can open Salvation, link a map of it there, see music I have associated with that place, have descriptions about it as well as a listing of all the NPCs that could be there.  At some point I want to add businesses/shops. But since things are “linked” I can also click on an NPC and see all their information as well without having to flip through pages looking for them.

 

Here are pictures of my Live template that we (the players and I) use for our campaign.  In addition to “Player” pages, I also have DM pages.  You can share by database so you can keep stuff hidden from the players as needed.

 

Main Page: Contains all the pages/databases we use to track things

Player character details

 

Locations

 

NPC - You can also see I have included a Session Appearance on this (so the players can see where they have interacted with the NPC based on session notes)

[Artemis Prime]

It was tough, but I resisted the temptation to buy a new notebook for this challenge.  I have a notebook that I've already made some worldbuilding notes in, and despite being cheap paper, it works pretty well with my fountain pen. There is some bleedthrough, but it's a flip top notebook, so I'm really only writing on one side of the page anyway, and the feathering is incredibly minimal.

[MaeradCase]

16 minutes ago, Artemis Prime said:

It was tough, but I resisted the temptation to buy a new notebook for this challenge.  I have a notebook that I've already made some worldbuilding notes in, and despite being cheap paper, it works pretty well with my fountain pen. There is some bleedthrough, but it's a flip top notebook, so I'm really only writing on one side of the page anyway, and the feathering is incredibly minimal.

That's valid. I have two books already - one flip top notebook I used while prepping my story, and a journal I decided would get editing notes jammed into it as they came up. 😅

[DarK_RaideR]

2 hours ago, Sepherina said:

Just a thought, I used to LOVE a good notebook for D&D. But lately I have started using Notion for a lot of things including our tracking everything in our current campaign.  It has been a game changer. I have been building a template for other GMs to use.  I would be more than happy to share it when it is done for feedback on how to make it better. It works almost like a Wikipedia but sleeker and more user friendly.

That looks great, thanks for sharing and extra kudos for going the extra mile to set up a template for sharing.

 

I've used Obsidian Portal in the past, then another website I can't quite recall right now. Both of those eventually ended up limiting access or hiding tools behind paywalls, which I guess has made me hesitant to bother with something similar since. Oh and there was another VTT/wiki site that looked good but recently shut down altogether. Don't get me wrong, I'm not shooting down Notion or your post (or being ye olde grognard again), just sharing my point of view. There's something about the oldschool feel of putting pen (or pencil) to paper. The ease of being able to input information as soon as inspiration strikes, as opposed to first gaining access to a screen and online connection. Also I can sketch stuff without having to figure out some online platform's tools or googling images to use? That one's a way more personal thing, I've been using Roll20 since before the lockdown days and the way it took over during the peak of covid, I feel it's made things overly visual. On one hand, sometimes there's too much emphasis (and work put, on the DM's part) on finding,/importing/setting up maps/tokens/handouts, at times to the detriment of the actual game. On the other, I've found myself actually limited by an image; it wasn't a prompt to inspire me, it was something holding my brain to a specific image instad of letting my imagination run wild.

 

Anyway, valid criticisms or not, I feel like this post has been a bit too negative and grumbly for my taste. I'll probably use the same notebook I used last time I did this challenge, since I didn't make it past the first couple of weeks anyway (hopefully this thread will give me the drive needed to pass the finish line). Still debating whether I should re-try the same one, or at least build on the same ideas, or start something completely new.

[Sepherina]

1 hour ago, DarK_RaideR said:

That looks great, thanks for sharing and extra kudos for going the extra mile to set up a template for sharing.

 

I've used Obsidian Portal in the past, then another website I can't quite recall right now. Both of those eventually ended up limiting access or hiding tools behind paywalls, which I guess has made me hesitant to bother with something similar since. Oh and there was another VTT/wiki site that looked good but recently shut down altogether. Don't get me wrong, I'm not shooting down Notion or your post (or being ye olde grognard again), just sharing my point of view. There's something about the oldschool feel of putting pen (or pencil) to paper. The ease of being able to input information as soon as inspiration strikes, as opposed to first gaining access to a screen and online connection. Also I can sketch stuff without having to figure out some online platform's tools or googling images to use? That one's a way more personal thing, I've been using Roll20 since before the lockdown days and the way it took over during the peak of covid, I feel it's made things overly visual. On one hand, sometimes there's too much emphasis (and work put, on the DM's part) on finding,/importing/setting up maps/tokens/handouts, at times to the detriment of the actual game. On the other, I've found myself actually limited by an image; it wasn't a prompt to inspire me, it was something holding my brain to a specific image instad of letting my imagination run wild.

 

Anyway, valid criticisms or not, I feel like this post has been a bit too negative and grumbly for my taste. I'll probably use the same notebook I used last time I did this challenge, since I didn't make it past the first couple of weeks anyway (hopefully this thread will give me the drive needed to pass the finish line). Still debating whether I should re-try the same one, or at least build on the same ideas, or start something completely new.

 

No worries and to each their own.  I am a relatively new GM and while with a lot of things I still need something more tactile, like paper (checkbook registry anyone lol), I have tried to move to more digital means to organize the chaos.  I am also getting old and my brain doesn't remember as much as it used to.  

 

Too often in the past I would find random post-it notes (both physical and digital), half filled notebooks/journals, random chat requests from players ,  one off in-person asks, and napkin scribbles .  It can be hard to remember what someone asked, and these things would get lost or missed in the chaos.  Running a campaign for 7 has been a lesson in organization to say the least.  Notion is currently free for a good portion of the basics.  There is a limit on the free account with how many guest collaborators you can have (10) and a limit on file uploads (5 MB).  The next subscription level up is less than a Netflix subscription ($10/month or $96/year) and is pretty robust.  It allows for up to 100 guest collaborators and has unlimited file uploads.

 

I also don't publicly share our main campaign Notion so I am not too concerned about being shut down. It is personal use only and we don't monetize anything on it. Maybe I should have compared Notion to a cross between Wiki and Pinterest.  It also isn't tied to any VTT.  It is a stand-alone project management/note taking/organization tool.

 

I think what I like best is that it just allows me to have a centralized location for all things campaign related. I can upload pictures I have found (or drawn). I can link music I have found.  My players can add stuff around their characters.  The artificer in this group has used it to plan and create custom items, the noble/bard in our group uses it to maintain notes around all their political alignments. Others use it to request items or flush out back stories or just add art that they have created. 

 

 

And I can plot my next attempt to TPK the party.  --Evil GM Laugh

 

 

Here is the link for the template.  It is pretty barebones but includes most of the data structure that I am using for my main campaign.  If you decide to use it, just duplicate it. You can also change anything you want on your duplicate. 

 

GM Notion Template

 

[Jarric]

On 2/10/2023 at 2:20 PM, Artemis Prime said:

It was tough, but I resisted the temptation to buy a new notebook for this challenge.  I have a notebook that I've already made some worldbuilding notes in, and despite being cheap paper, it works pretty well with my fountain pen. There is some bleedthrough, but it's a flip top notebook, so I'm really only writing on one side of the page anyway, and the feathering is incredibly minimal.

 

I've resisted too - I'll be using the notebook I started Dungeon 23 in, before I gave up after 2 dungeon rooms.

 

22 hours ago, Sepherina said:

And I can plot my next attempt to TPK the party.  --Evil GM Laugh

 

[Jarric]

I'll be starting this challenge on Monday, but I'm guessing that some of you will be starting tomorrow. So, whilst I'm sure most of you have read the workbook (and if not, I encourage you to do so), I thought I would put the week 1 instructions here for ease of reference.

 

 

Week 1: The Concept

Articulate the big ideas and gather sources.

 

“Step 1 is something you do in your head. Now, fantasy/swords & sorcery games need not have any fixed basis for the assumptions made by its referee (my own doesn't) except those which embrace the whole of fantasy. This sort of campaign can mix any and all of the various bases which will be mentioned below - and then some. […] Settings based upon limits (if one can speak of fantasy limits) can be very interesting in themselves providing the scope of the setting will allow the players relative free-reign to their imaginations.” – EGG

 

Tasks

• Get/create a notebook. If you are intimidated by nice journals, get a run-of-the-mill spiral notebook or start by throwing your fancy journal down the stairs a few times and spilling coffee on it to teach it who’s boss! Seriously, get something that works for you: fancy or humble, new or used, cheap or pricey, graphed or lined or blank. If you prefer, you can work digitally, of course, keeping a folder of bookmarks, storing docs on a cloud drive, etc.

• Develop your pitch. Write down 3-7 well-crafted bullet points that will both communicate and “sell” the world to your players. Each bullet should be concise and focused – a few clear sentences is plenty. Emphasize the most essential bits for establishing excitement, expectations, and tone. Your pitch will give players an idea of what they can expect to find (or not find) in your setting and will help them create suitable character concepts.

• Gather your sources of inspiration. List them and provide a sentence or two explaining what each source brings to the setting. Cull your list so that it has no more than 7 entries. (This can be tough, but I think it’s important to focus the ideas so you aren’t getting dragged in too many directions at first.) Make sure the sources are referenced by your pitch points in some way. Sources are for you; you don’t have to share them with players and players shouldn’t have to be familiar them. In fact, Gygax would tell you not to share them as they might spoil some of the surprises for players or players might expect you to use parts of them you don’t intend to use. 

 

Extra Credit

• Assemble a mood board. You can use an online resource like Pinterest or create an old school collage of images that put you in the right headspace. A mood board is a great resource for quickly introducing the tone of your setting to players, and it can be a ‘living document’ that you work on over time, possibly together, expanding it as the setting grows. Start with a dozen or two visual references for places, characters, artistic styles, etc. As you work, think about how you decided what fit and what didn’t. Make sure the mood board elements support or inform your bullet points.

• Practice your pitch! Try explaining your idea out loud – first to yourself and then to some gamer friends (though maybe not the ones you intend to play with just yet).

[Anim07734]

I'm currently running 2 different games in the world I've been building for almost 25years, so I won't be following the Gygax challenge, but I would like to tag along and share the worldbuilding motivation.

 

My accomplishment for today was building the minibosses my Wednesday group might encounter this week; a pair of bandit captains who have taken over an outlying fortress as a base of operations.  The local baron is going to offer the party titles and ownership of the fort in exchange for clearing out the bandits and protecting the nearby road.  But I'm hoping the bandits will live long enough to make a counter offer: let us live and we'll only raid outside of your territory and give you a share of the loot.  This party is much more "protagonist" than "hero," so I want to see what they do.

 

So may I present:

 

Umei Sharpwill, dragonborn thief/battle master

 

and Isis Giantblood, hill giant rogue/tempest cleric

Both images from Will-E-H on deviantart

[DarK_RaideR]

10 hours ago, Anim07734 said:

I'm currently running 2 different games in the world I've been building for almost 25years

Aw come on, you can't just leave it at that! We need more info about this grand project!

 

 

Alright, I'm not starting my challenge on a Sunday because who does such things, but I had some time to think about a few things regarding this worldbuilding challenge. Figured I'd share to get them creative juices flowing for everyone, but it also proved to be an interesting process as I jumped from thought to thought.

 

So my initial idea was to aim for something post-apocalyptic. You can't go down that path without any influence from Mad Max, obviously, but I had Dark Sun in mind really

If it doesn't ring a bell, Dark Sun is a campaign setting/box set for ad&d released by TSR in the 90s, when they were going through their "let's try different stuff" phase (see also: Planescape, Spelljammer). It is set in the dying, magic-ravaged, desert world of Athas where the gods don't respond, clerics don't exist, magic is reviled because it makes the world die even faster, the few existing cities are ruled by mad sorcerer-kings, metal is scarce and survival is such a challenge that all Athasians are absolute badasses (seriously, in game terms everyone starts at Level 3 and has access to Psionic powers). Anyway, Dark Sun has captured my imagination since I first became aware of it, but sadly I've never managed to actually play it. The more I read about it too, the more it seems like it's tightly bound to the 2e ad&d game system, to the point where playing it using anything else would take a lot of conversion work and probably not deliver the same experience. So, I decided to use it for this challenge instead and hopefully riff off its themes for my game world. This whole system thing also convinced me to first build the world and then pick a game system that does it justice, instead of picking a specific game system first and then trying to build a world around it.

 

The two main aspects I'd like to maintain is one, survival itself is challenging even without combat (so there will be an emphasis on hunting, foraging, finding water and all these logistics) and two, I want stuff to be off the wall strange, alien and mysterious. Then came the question of technology. Dark Sun is based on medieval fantasy, which I guess after the apocalypse reverts to stone age. There is no technology involved. If you've watched Fury Road tho, guns and cars are pretty cool in such a backdrop.

Also, let us not forget THIS, whatever *THIS* is

 

It's not just Mad Max. I was raised on stuff like Bravestarr, Spiral Zone and Thundarr the Barbarian, stuff that takes a genre and shoots it into SPAAAACE! I'd like a bit of tech in my world to spice things up. Would probably make for good treasure too, motivating characters to go out and seek it. Which in turn begs the question, will this tech be a common thing like in Bravestarr or Fury Road, will it be down to a few rare and powerful artifact-level items like Thundarr's lightsaber-ripoff, or will it be plenty but super mysterious like in Numenera?

 

For whatever reason, my mind immediately jumped to the Sillage/Armada comics (spoilered narrative stuff after the image, in case you plan to check the comics out)

Spoiler

So if my memory serves, the comic basically starts off as shown above, some space pod thingy crashes into a world where this Tarzan-like girl called Navis lives with her Sabretooth tiger companion. She then rescues this poor creature, but other space folk come searching for it. They have guns and advanced tech, but she knows her jungle home better and it goes full out Rambo:First Blood from there. Eventually she gets cornered and her pursuers go like "Hey, we just want this thing back, we're actually from this galactic alliance thing if you'd care to join, you're pretty badass" and then her tiger just falls apart to reveal it's been mechanical all this time and piloted by a small robot on the inside who's like "Hey, yeah, uhm, I was kinda sent here by these guys long time in advance to gain your trust and ease you into this whole space thing so your head won't explode when you first hear it?" and then she joins them and undergoes training and becomes like their super agent and in my favourite issue they send her with one group of awesome characters into this medieval-esque world to scout out stuff and prep them to get fast-tracked into the space era so they can join the alliance.... IT'S APESHIT CRAZY AND I LOVED IT!

 

So I'm pondering something along those lines as a hack/compromise. Kinda like Warhammer 40K is grim gothic sci-fi stuff in space, but there's also Feral Worlds and Death Worlds with medieval or stone age residents where everything is out to kill you. Don't wanna lean on 40K too much for inspiration though. Instead, since I want to turn the wackiness up to eleven, the next reasonable step was to add a splash of The Metabarons.

 

Already set up a mood board on Pinterest and it's filling up rapidly. More updates will follow.

[Anim07734]

6 hours ago, DarK_RaideR said:

Aw come on, you can't just leave it at that! We need more info about this grand project!

My brother and I started playing during middle school in the mid-90's, and while it's had several upgrades and retcons, our World is a living place shaped by events of previous campaigns.  And yes, I just call it World, because it's the most realistic name I could think of; it compares favorably with the IRL planet of "dirt."   Now that we're posting info online and sharing it outside our immediate players, we've decided to name the main continent Omneth.  My current map is here (created using Inkarnayt's free version).  And I'm running with custom races, gods, and a very rough draft of what I'm calling Homelands (intended as an addition to the current race, class, and background system to further differentiate characters).  Part of what I hope to accomplish this challenge is fleshing out these Homelands enough to start playtesting them, so I'll link that doc when it's ready for critique.  The other two docs are open for comments and criticism, since that helps me continue refining them and figure out what information needs to be included.  The races doc is a complete list of the playable species, but some are missing descriptions and most need more added, if I can figure out what's missing.  The gods doc only has the major gods and a handful of others I've developed for campaigns over the years; they all need a lot more information, especially the ones that are just a name and title.  To keep from cluttering this thread too much, both docs have comments turned on, for anyone interested.

 

In one of my last games, the party decided to found a "monster" nation to protect their people (orcs, goblins, giants, etc) from the paladins of the Sepran Empire, which led to a major war through the foothills between the Northern and Southern Mountains.  Both of my current games are dealing with the results of those actions, roughly 10 years in world later.  

 

The first is based in the trade-city of Anderssted, which is doing its best to protect and shelter its people (and an ever increasing number of refugees) from the war as winter arrives.  The party initially formed in answer to a call for heroes to solve problems beyond the town guards' abilities, but having proven themselves in several quests, are going to be trusted with increasing responsibilities and authority.  However, the party is much more self-serving and anti-government than most of the city realizes, so I'm interested to see where they go with it.  

 

The second game just finished their "prologue" adventure where their middle-of-nowhere, 100-person village was destroyed by unknown attackers.  They managed to save some of the villagers, but now have to decide what to do next.  One of the players started as a higher level "trojan" character for me to kill during the attack, with the plan to take over her apprentice afterwards.  But the dice decided to let the mentor live, so she's now in a coma, as another plot hook to figuring out who the attackers were and what they were doing.

 

Both of the games are very sandbox/free-form, so I just have ideas for what's going on in the background, and depending on what the party decides, they may or may not find out what some of that is.

[Jarric]

On 2/12/2023 at 9:06 AM, DarK_RaideR said:

Dark Sun has captured my imagination since I first became aware of it, but sadly I've never managed to actually play it.

 

This is exactly how I feel. I really want to play in that type of survival-horror type setting one day.

 

On 2/12/2023 at 4:04 PM, Anim07734 said:

My current map is here (created using Inkarnayt's free version).

 

I really love the layout of your continent. It's really distinctive - I think a lot of fantasy continents are pretty interchangeable but this stands out.

[Jarric]

So a couple of random, initial thoughts about my setting. Firstly, no humans - I think the fact that most settings have humans as the default majority population is pretty boring, and I want to make better use of other playable species by not having them play second fiddle to humans.

 

Second, I want geography to be malleable. The untamed wilds are a fun idea, and create opportunities to explore and discover things, but in a medium-high magic setting the idea that the wilds would remain untamed for an extended period of time seems unlikely. With ruins, towns, mountains, being able to pop up and disappear at random, it makes sense that the whole world isn't mapped and civilised.

 

That second point is making me think of a TTRPG that would be an inspiration, and I'm hoping that @DarK_RaideR can remind me what it was called. D_R I'm pretty sure you ran a solo narrative playthrough of it on one of your challenge threads - I think it was a sort of bronze age setting, with a premise that distance travel had been all but impossible until recently when the mists had cleared and the world had opened up again. Do you know what I'm talking about?

 

I also quite want to do something with Irish mythology, because I love Irish myths and I've never really got round to building anything off them.