This Project is on hold

[ripx187]

I love homebrewing, I would love to have the time to design worlds from the top down, but is that really a practical thing for people who are employed by other industries and who have families? Top-Down design is pretty crazy, and at the end of the day, do I really have something that is unique? Honestly, I really don't think so. Coming to terms with this, I think that I can have more fun and get more out of my world-building sessions if I use a fantasy world that is already out there. This doesn't mean that I can't design, I can just use the frame and just except the help that professionals offer. I can take what I have done and apply it to an existing world, or reskin the world completely.

Forgotten Realms is an attractive place right now. There is a ton of work done for me, a complex history to inspire, and I kind of like it that all of the data that I have on the place is over a hundred years old. It allows me to create and reskin as I want. I had it in my head that somehow, by using professional property that I was stealing, or that my games were somehow unoriginal. Reevaluating things, Forgotten Realms is actually quite good. It appears to be a complete world, but at the same time, it is very generic. All of the boring stuff has been done, I can also crossreference things that I don't have time to build yet, but it will buy me enough time to do it if the players decide to go there. 

In regards to world-building, for us amateur DIYers, Spiral world design is the best method of working. This is best done with a professional templet that we intend to make our own, and instead of making huge decisions, we focus only on the world as it relates to the PCs. Currently, the Sword Coast is the only thing that is being focused on by the designers. Even then, it doesn't stop me from putting my fantasy city of Terrapin Crossing along the river. It doesn't stop me from giving the masses a false religion where the populous prefers to worship gods who don't exist because the old ones mess with their lives too much. It doesn't stop me from putting the kingdom which I hand-crafted in some empty space on the map and see what happens. 

I would love to be a builder of worlds, but honestly, my players really don't care about that stuff. They want to explore their immediate surroundings, which I should be focused on rather than designing some far-away empire that in all likelihood, would never come up in the game. 

[The Perilous Dreamer]

Feb 13, 2020 13:42:35 GMT -5 ripx187 said:

 but honestly, my players really don't care about that stuff. 

This really is true, the world building is for the ref, not for the players, because you are right they really do not care about that, if they did they would be refs too.   That is why as a ref you do what works for you. I did a fairly limited top down, how big is the planet, how much water,  how many continents and how big are they. etc. I can knock that out in a short time. Then I zoom in on a continent or in my case about 6 continent and I paint in some broad strokes, then I pick one and I start with the main campaign area. Then I transition to the bottom up in game create on the fly mode, which is how I do the part the players care about. I continue to do the top down part as I have time, but I also do bottom up stuff from time to time outside the game too.

Spiral world design, I have not seen that term before. Did you come up with it or where did you see it?

[ripx187]

I am having to change how I prepare games and am having a difficult time with it. To get some help I was pointed to Sly Flourish's The Lazy Dungeon Master, which I must say, is pretty amazing. He writes about Spiral Design. I had not heard of it either, but it makes sense. The focus in his method is totally on the Player Characters. It relies on prepping specific things and improvising the rest. Nothing fancy, but it does help as I have got a bad case of Analisis Paralysis. Starting from scratch all over again is terrifying but it is something that I've wanted to do. I keep wanting to write fiction and that really isn't what the game is about. I don't think that I was railroading players, but the stories going on around them were more important than they were. I suppose that that happens at low levels, but when you are always world building it is hard to really focus on the right things.


I just became lost in the sea of my own ambition. I always analyze my performance and ability, and I had become too predictable. I have other major issues that my ego does not allow me to print here, so I will just say that I am going back to the basics. I am a new DM now. I have lots of experience behind the screen, I tried to fix it with OD&D but that just gave me more work, and my established players hated it. They wanted 2e but I am at the point where I know all of the issues with that system, namely it gets crazy over-powered quickly and the amount of prep and forethought required to keep the game going after 9th level was insane. I had had literally a whole nights worth of gaming prep taken out by one cleric spell. That is humbling. Thankfully I had a sandbox set up, but still. It is hard to get past being beaten up that bad with such little effort. I needed it, of course. Thinking that I could challenge high level characters with orcs. It was just poorly designed. I learned a lot about myself that day.

That said (I know that I'm rambling), all attempts to fix this have been over-corrections. I do like the gaming aspect of D&D, I also like the story aspect and the improv. My players do not function well, or have as much fun when they aren't aware of the rules of the game. It sounded fantastic, but in practice, they just felt like I was making stuff up.

As a group, I think that we need a new system. We enjoy being able to lean on a system, but I think that we all must have faith in that system. 5th Edition has returned to its roots enough that I can recognize it, with new mechanics that addressed issues that I had with AD&D. We get a new game to play with that is the same but different. We only have 1 day out of the month to game and I really want to get the most out of it.

Okay, I'll shut up now.

[The Perilous Dreamer]

I would like to hear about the orcs, the players and that one cleric spell, even if it is in a pm.

[ripx187]

Feb 15, 2020 11:37:57 GMT -5 The Perilous Dreamer said:

I would like to hear about the orcs, the players and that one cleric spell, even if it is in a pm.

It was a clear case of bad design and refusing to give up on an idea. I had spent a couple of days designing a chase scene by horseback. It was crazy as all get out with several waves of orcs trying to get someone or something. I don't remember. It was designed to be played on a dry erase board and I budgeted a lot of playtime to it. I was convinced that it was going to be amazing and my players would stand up and cheer and shower me with gifts! 3 seconds into it, the priest casts some weird spell that controls plants and the next thing that I know my entire orc army was engulfed by magic which blocked the progress of any troops positioned on the other side, and it wasn't going away any time soon. 

It was no big deal really. A couple of enemy wizards would have been able to fix it. My biggest sin was spending so much time on something that wasn't really necessary, to begin with. I had wanted a game where the players controlled armies who would fight the largest orc horde that has ever been seen in thousands of years. The players managed to shut down their supply routes, destroy the mine they were using to craft weapons and armor, and end the invasion with no help from any army whatsoever. It was pretty spectacular! The campaign itself was pretty good, I learned a lot (once I learned to let go). The best thing that I had during that campaign was just the random encounters tables, but the players never even had to deal with the villain face to face. His own orc horde turned against him and he was slain off-camera for failing to live up to his end of the bargain.

We did discuss my errors in a very brutal critique afterward. I suck at magic and it was one of the first chips that I found in 2e. I needed to incorporate enemy spellcasters but there is just so many spells in AD&D that are pointless and only serve to hide the good ones. Weeding through them was just something that I couldn't really do. I found myself always using the same basic spells, as did the players. What looked like lots of options in the manuals was just a bunch of fat that needed to be trimmed. 

[The Perilous Dreamer]

There are tons of useless spells and weeding them out is a task. Some spells are useful, if you roll well. I gamed today and was lucky to roll really well in the 2E game I am playing in. I was using Summon Animal Spirits against Giants and rolled a whole slew of 19's and 20's on the attack rolls. Their THAC0 is 15 so the odds were not in my favor and they only have 16 hit points. I used them in three different encounters and it worked well, but only because I rolled well. One survived two hits and only was killed on the 3rd hit, the others were not hit. I was using them to buy time and as a distraction, but they turned out to be combat worthy this time around.

[hengest]

I appreciate the degree of self-knowledge, self-disclosure, and useful (or potentially useful) advice on the posts here, ripx187.

Lucky me, I don't have players ATM, so I don't really have to worry about displeasing anyone.

But I like the attitude that you can take what you want from wherever and make it work with the time you have what your players want. Frankly, that idea seems pretty old-school to me.