Ep 52: Creation & Inspiration V-Part 01

Morgan should be an audiobook reader. His voice is like love making for the ears, especially when he gets all gravitas-y.

For me, this was the single most inspiring episode of The Dungeon Master's Block to date. Inspiring on a deep level; not inspiration for individual ideas, but inspiration to create something!

I've let my worldbuilding slack lately. My game group switched from my D&D homebrew world, to the FF Star Wars RPG. And to be perfectly honest, GMing has lost a bit of its shine. Don't get me wrong: I love the FFSW system and I love the SW universe and all the possibilities therein. But GMing has been less fun for me lately, and I've been having a really hard time coming up with compelling stories to tell in the SW universe.

I think this is because I didn't create it. For me, this a very profound and very good news. It means that at the heart of my storytelling, I need to be creating something new. I used to write SF and Fantasy stories when I was younger. I threw them all away, because I always got blinded by what I perceived as the derivative nature of my writing. I always felt like I never had any original ideas, stories or characters. I could always find a through-line to another character in a book I love, or a concept from another novel that was done better by a "real" author.

Listening to how Lou Anders built his world has rekindled the internal fires for me. 

Its really not possible for me to express here how deeply this episode effected me.

Thank you DM Mitch and DM Chris and to your guest Lou Anders. I cannot say it enough. Thank you.

The world for my previous campaign was slap-dash and off the cuff. There was a lot I made up on the fly and a lot I would change if I revisited it.

In other words: I will not be revisiting my previous D&D world. 

Instead, I am going to expand my view, and begin again. Start with a world map, populate areas with a broad brush starting with very early civilizations. This is going to take a lot of time, and I have very little spare time. So this effort will take a while. I also plan on making it a living world, independent of any game or system. I may even do some short story writing for it once a few areas, histories and cultures are fleshed out.

When/if I bring it back to the game table, I'm not 100% we will use D&D. I've really enjoyed the FFSW system and the collaborative/narrative aspects of same. I may try another game engine such as 13th Age, The Cypher System or Dungeon World. We'll see if my guys are down for learning a new system. Regardless, there will be some serious homebrewing and reskinning happening. I am as unhappy as Lou with the racial pigeon holing of good/evil races in D&D style fantasy. I want my races to have distinct cultures and for the conflicts to more accurately reflect the types of conflicts that happen in the real world. 

In the mean time, I will continue with the SW campaign, likely with a reboot when we lose a player in December. My players are really digging the SW game and world, so we will run with that for a while.

I think my problem with telling stories in the SW universe is how many good stories there already are. In the end, I'll likely lean on trope for the larger story, and lean on character background for the smaller stories, then see how it all plays out. I'm feeling pretty uninspired by what we are doing now, but ironically, my players are super inspired with their character building and RP. I guess that kind of proves the point: the inspiration is in the act of creation. I'm not really creating anything of substance (to me anyway). They are.

I work in kms.
And I have to say, I completely agree with you. And, although I love Almara and it has been with me since I was a child, I feel like I should build a new world from scratch with these points in mind. To build a world that I am not afraid of committing stories to. And it would be a great time to do it, especially since I am very close to finding a group to DM for.

So, I got my hands on fractal terrains, and I thought I'd post up a map I'm working on.

Planet draft 4.pdf (62.21 KB)

Tried to upload an image file, but it was too big.

This map was created in about an hour of noodling around. I'm super excited to see what I can create with this software!

Everyone's world building journey is going to be different, I worked on mine for 15 years then reviewing the Lou Anders and Rich Howard eps soon realised I made some fundamental mistakes and had to start again. Which is fine, rather make quality than continue with quantity.

The DMB and DM Nastics episodes are great to remind you of different areas to focus on and flesh out

Re Lou's book's, i've got the audiobooks, they are seriously awesome. He is now one of my favourite authors