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Post by meribson on Aug 15, 2019 1:34:42 GMT
So, I know this is a forum for a D&D podcast, but there was a method of world building on the now defunct Dice Pool Podcast that I think needs to be shared here.
The hosts called it, as you might have guessed from the thread title, World-Building Roulette. You take your gaming group, everyone has 3-5 sheets of paper that have something they want in a setting. In a circle, each person takes one piece of paper from the person on their left. Once the entire group has picked something from someone else, the whole group brainstorms a setting that incorporates those ideas.
I have put together a GDoc with 100 different prompts, it can be seen here.
As an example, lets say that a group consisting of 4 people decides to do this for their next campaign. Person 1 has four pieces of paper that contain 'magic', 'werewolves', 'gothic horror' and 'no humans'. Person 2 has 'airships', 'fighting shadow creatures', 'a growing desert', and 'beast folk'. Person 3 has 'pirates', 'undersea cities', 'eldritch abominations', and 'runic magic'. The last member of the group has 'demigods', 'hacking', 'fractured world', and 'dinosaurs'.
Person 1 picks 'hacking', Person 2 picks 'gothic horror', Person 3 picks 'beast folk', and Person 4 picks 'pirates'. So the setting that they are about to brainstorm is a Gothic Horror with beast folk as well as pirates and hacking.
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Post by joatmoniac on Aug 16, 2019 5:55:31 GMT
This is so good! Which means I had to immediately do it myself!
No Gods, Orcs Rule, Dungeons, Barbarian Hordes, Magitech
Through the advancement of society Magitech was created. People began to believe that this technology was the only thing that they needed. They turned from the gods until there was nothing left of them and the gods passed away from this world. This eventually lead to the fall of society. Orcs managed to stand outside of the conflict eventually forming barbaric hordes that took over the world one continent at a time. The goodly races have moved themselves into the vacant dungeons of the worlds, using them to hide and protect themselves.
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Post by meribson on Aug 24, 2019 3:20:04 GMT
So just for the fun of it, I rolled up a setting of 5 prompts: - Necropunk
- Olympic Games
- Island on a Turtle's Back
- Fractured World
- After the End
So what we have presented to us is a post-apocalyptic setting, with enough of a society to have events between different groups. Based on the combination of the last three, I get the impression that the fracturing in the apocalypse resulted in most of the land sinking beneath the sea, turning the known world into a scattered collection of islands and archipelagos. Each major island has its own society, which on the whole use necromancy-based magitech like an undead-themed Ebberon. Every few years, a turtle will pass through the area with a large enough shell for representatives from all the various islands to gather and compete in place of waging war. Question for the Block Party: Should I develop this further? Like developing documents tailored to specific genres, decks of cards with each card having a different prompt, stuff like that? |
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Post by Mariok Soresal Hillick on Sept 2, 2019 10:18:30 GMT
This is pretty cool! So much inspiration!
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Post by DM Onesie Knight on Sept 11, 2019 20:46:45 GMT
Alright, let's take a stab at it! I think 5 is probably a good number. Vampires, Robots, Ninja, Beast Races, Giants. Good god, this sounds like something out of a 3rd grader's notebook. Okay. So with vampires and beast races in there, I'm seeing some of that classic vampires vs. lycanthropes action. But with Ninja in there, it implies subterfuge and espionage. So we're dealing with a shadow war between those two factions. Seems like we're in line with that tried-and-true World of Darkness vibe where the wider society has no idea these groups exist. But how to fit giants and robots in there...? Maybe the giants themselves are another shadow faction, hidden from the mundane world of the mortal races. But how do you keep giants hidden? Maybe they seclude themselves in remote mountains, islands, forests, and other such locations, and use robots as their agents and 'secret service,' so to speak. These robots, then, would be more like androids, passing for human and keeping an eye on society, while also turning away and, if necessary, eliminating nosy humans who get too close. To answer your question, meribson , I think that absolutely could be valuable to sort some sets of prompts by theme or genre. As my example demonstrates, total randomness can have your settings looking a little madcap. A little wacky. A little "out there." If your players already know they're looking for a gothic horror feel, throwing in robots and ninjas might kill the vibe. If, instead, the genre is horror and the random rolls are between things like serial killer on the loose, vampires, zombie outbreak, and demonic possession, things stay a little more cohesive and smooth. Luckily every genre has a million tropes so it shouldn't be too hard to throw together a few different sheets. |
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