Making Maps/Designing Worlds

[Mckma]

So I'm kind of in some preliminary stages to planning a new campaign for 4E.  I was wondering how others went about designing if they did at all.  Obviously it's a bit easier if the setting is largely "real world" or in an already established setting, but what to do if it's not?

[Shallazar]

We played a full game of dawn of worlds and limited race creation to only those in the 4E books.
It worked well enough and everyone had a blast. Took about five hours with a 5 person group.

I would also make creating orders cheaper in the last age.

[crash2455]

Yeah, Dawn of Worlds is really the easiest way to go about it.  Also your players will know pretty much everything about the world then too.

[clockworkjoe]

Maps? No, not really. My players are indifferent to maps because they imply dungeon crawls, which they've never really gotten into.

World building? yeah, you could say that. But that's a huge topic and your question is a bit vague so I can't really answer it.

[Mckma]

Yeah, realized how oversimplified the question was.  I guess what I'm curious about is, when you go about planning the preliminary stuff of the campaign, how much do you plan/outline?  I have a general idea of how I want the campaign arc to go (a very rough idea for each tier basically), and know some key ideas for the setting.  So when you start with this knowledge, do you start on the large scale covering roughly what the players might encounter and then narrow down to detail the starting place, or do you keep it local and flesh out what they'll encounter first?  How much do you plan as far as NPCs and interesting locations?

[clockworkjoe]

it depends on the campaign type to a large extent. Mysteries and investigative type games have to be plotted out in detail so they will make sense. However, the cardinal rule of planning a RPG campaign is that the world only exists as a stage for the PCs. Nothing matters unless it impacts what's on the stage.

I know some people get all obsessed and plan out worlds in intricate detail, down to the gravity and atmospheric conditions but that's too much work for me. I do the bare minimum to get the vision I want.

[Shallazar]

Also I'd recommend re-listening to:
http://slangdesign.com/rppr/2008/09/podcast-episode/rppr-episode-21-so-you-want-to-create-a-campaign/


and:
http://slangdesign.com/rppr/2009/01/podcast-episode/rppr-episode-27-grand-theft-apparatus-of-kwalish/

Maybe, "when games implode" "mail bag" and "show and tell maps and minis" for other episodes with helpful advice.

[Fizban]

Because I come up with a lot of stuff that happens in my games on the fly (because we all know that players are as good at following links from A to B as a cat in a bag on PCP) I find that having the world pre-built - with histories for races, and even large cities, with an understanding of the theology of the various gods, and stuff like that - is really helpful for making snap decisions about who NPC X is they've just met, what his/her/its motivations are, and where he fits in with the general pattern of things.

That way, you don't have people in the middle of a place they shouldn't be sticking out like sore thumbs and making people ask "What's he doing here?"

[Tadanori Oyama]

I love this thing here: http://www.apolitical.info/webgame/map/

Dick around with the settings a little and it'll give you an instant, simple, fairly easy to follow snapshot for a big area of land. Works great if you want to do a smaller scale than whole world setting and still be able to put a visual in front of your players.

Personally I avoid mapping out the world too completely because it's kind of like painting yourself into a corner. Besides, players never want to do go to the cool places.